It’s hardly surprising that a video for a track by someone like Com Truise (aka Seth Haley) would have a sci-fi bent, but the video to his latest one takes things far, really really far. The track is called Propagation, and it has all the hallmarks of Haley’s work that we’ve come to expect. The video, which like all the best music videos is a short film unto itself, is not what you’d expect, and it may haunt you for days after watching it.
It starts out low enough, as we watch a Stepford-style robotic housewife going through all the unpleasant motions her husband/owner dictates, from waving goodbye when he leaves for work to cleaning the house while he’s gone to lying motionless on the bed while he uses her to masturbate. From there, it turns into a kind of elongated, elaborated version of what happens with the butter robot in Rick & Morty, as she becomes aware of what she is, and slowly moves towards comprehending what that actually means. Once that’s happens, things get even more unsettling.
It’s a beautifully made film, directed by seasoned Ghostly International collaborator Will Joines and Karrie Crouse who alongside writing and directing several shorts also had a role in the quirky Icelandic-American comedy Land Ho!. The tone of the video gels perfectly with the feel of the song, which has a kind of creeping unease to it which only synths can really achieve, that odd feeling you get when a melody sounds happy on the surface, but in such an artificial way that you almost feel like you’re being tricked. Com Truise excels at this kind of untrustworthy, sinister production and this is far and away the best music video ever tied to his name.
The wife-bot is played by Trieste Kelly Dunn, who some might recognise as Siobhan Kelly from Banshee. She was one of the strongest entries in that show’s recurring cast and she absolutely shines her, taking cues from the Brigitte Helm school of creepy robot acting (especially that wave). The album the track is taken from, Iteration, is out now, download it here.
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
