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Squid share "Sludge" video made with fan-submitted quarantine footage

Back in March, Brighton post-punk band Squid released their first single for Warp, “Sludge.” They’ve now released a video for that single, created using videos submitted by fans. “There’s a place I go when I’m all alone,” lead singer Ollie Judge quips as the track opens, and in this case, we’re able to see many examples of what that place might look like. The video exhibits 360-degree footage of the living spaces of various Squid fans, including flashing LED lights, partially finished paint jobs, an impressive collection of guitars, a couple of chickens, CDs piled high, unwashed dishes, and a few hilarious cameos (take 0:34 and 3:31 for example). While watching this video, it’s as if you’re playing a game of i-Spy, scouring each individual scene for hidden gems from band posters you might appreciate to interesting knick-knacks.

As the instrumentation picks up, so does the rate at which the scenes speed by, panorama-style. When the intense synth-infused chorus comes around, you might just have to sit down so as to not get too dizzy. Though Squid had to conceptualize this track’s music video under unusual circumstances, they managed to not only do right by their killer track, but bring about some kind of sense of community between their fans and themselves, even when everyone’s isolated at the moment. Though we’re all alone, we’re all experiencing the same sense of uncertainty, and this video’s cohesiveness displays that well.

Watch that, and read more about it from the band, below.

Here’s our new video for Sludge by Ali Amiri. Thanks to everyone who submitted an isolation video, we wish we could have included them all!

When we wrote Sludge we had no idea that these isolated times would ever present themselves. Now we find ourselves physically distant from another but connected in our work and play through the technologies that we’re now so grateful to have.

We were amazed when we saw that visual artist Ali Amiri had uploaded a clip in isolation from Tehran, scanning his surroundings to our music. We worked with Ali and Warp, and asked our fans to submit a 360º video of wherever they’re locking down, which we then made a music video out of! As our shows are cancelled and loads of our plans have been put to bed for now, we wanted to bring people together in this way instead, by sharing an insight into everyone’s isolation stations.

After looking through all the videos it was really interesting to see how spatially different everyone’s situation is but how they’re all tied together through the same feeling of isolation. Some videos were claustrophobic, others showed deserted cityscapes and some even featured other people but they all had a lingering feeling of loneliness and uncertainty.

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