Gazelle Twin Picks Her Ten Favorite YouTube Videos

Welcome to YouTube Utopia, where we have musicians pick out their favorite YouTube videos and tell us about them. First up is Gazelle Twin, whose music is inspired equally by goth, industrial, and body horror films. Needless to say, she has aggressively unique taste in internet videos. Gazelle Twin's Unflesh drops September 22nd, which gives you more than enough time to figure out how you're not going to pee yourself while listening to it.

The Brood (1979) by David Cronenberg

I really hope that my own neuroses never takes on physical form and comes back to get me in the middle of the night. This brood of freak-faced kids in pastel snow suits are doing just that to their own father and big sister. The idea of murderous children, plus my own experience of being a kid and feeling disempowered by many things, really inspired the way I chose to present UNFLESH. The girl in blue that developed in the making of it really owes a lot to this film.

Piercing The Android

The disturbing creation of a Mister John Bergeron. There's a series of clips of this anamatronic (possibly sexual vessel) called Tara on YouTube - but you have to hunt for them. The camera work, the styling, the subject, the sound quality - everything about it is unintentionally genius and smacks of post-internet masterpiece. I don't know why you need to be able to pierce Tara, but John can, if he wants.

Oxana Malaya - 'Dog Girl'

Oxana's parents were too drunk and depressed to take care of her, so the family dogs taught her how to run, feed and scavenge, and they gave her affection (which probably saved her life). Although she has since been 'reconditioned' and has suffered major trauma, she made it. Children are really good at doing that against ALL the odds and that inspires me massively. Oxana's story, along with a host of others I read about feral children, directly inspired the song 'Human Touch' on

UNFLESH

, along with many other aspects of the record.

Dean Blunt - Unknown track

I don't do drugs and never really have, but Dean Blunt's ultra Lo-Fi, ultra-weird self-made videos have a sort of 'John Bergeron' (see above) meets David Lynch effect which I imagine is similar to smoking large amounts of certain illegal or semi-legal substances. You can't quite place it. You can't quite see it. You just can't STOP watching to see if you get any more clues. The same goes for the music. What am I hearing? Tis run of videos on youtube - the drab settings playing host to borderline mental health emergencies - are the sort of thing I enjoy. But I can't tell you why.

Trance States in Bali

In Bali, trance states are prized, but they're also an education neatly providing entertainment at the same time. Some of the footage I have seen is way too graphic to show. I just saw one that made me whimper out loud (WOL?) and I never want to think about it again… But the most interesting aspect of these incredibly ancient Hindu rituals is that people volunteer themselves to become possessed by other entities which can range anywhere from animals to objects such as the lid of a pot. Yes, the lid of a pot.

Who Can Kill A Child? (1976) - Narciso Ibáñez Serrador

Again, little children murdering adults in gangs is probably one of the most disturbing ideas I can fathom. Ray Bradbury once wrote a short called 'The Small Assassin' where a newborn baby manages to murder its own mother, and this film by Serrador just goes for that kind of revenge on a mass scale. In this case the kids act out revenge for all the wars waged on them and other vulnerable adolescents throughout history. It's a sort of behavioural evolution that has happened on one island. A similar thread of supernatural childhood revenge runs through

UNFLESH

in more ways than one.

GreenScreenRefrigerator - Mark Leckey

This piece is my all time favourite piece of performance and video art, ever. The anthropomorphism of a domestic appliance as a sort of post-pagan ritualistic sermon and very familiar ancient monolith, is the sort of thing that I have hallucinations about when I'm running a high fever and dosed up on codeine. I was lucky enough to enter into an email conversation with Mark about it recently, and he told me that when he performed it live, he huffed the coolant liquid in an attempt to "channel The Green Man." Can you get more far out? I don't think so.

8/ The Mamuthones of Mamoiada, Sardinia

The Mamuthones are mysterious ritualistic figures forming part of a tradition which happens every year for the Solstice and Equinox in a village in Sardinia called Mamoiada. I went to film the procession they make for a music video for 'Men Like Gods' a few years back. It was deeply disturbing, and when trying to find out more than I should, I ended up ordering a "Panini made only with dog meat" because they didn't understand a word of my badly-pronounced, misremembered Italian.

9/ BEASTS (1976) by Nigel Kneale

In typical 21st century style I came across this via stalking guests of a recent Gazelle Twin show on Twitter. Someone commented that the video for 'Belly Of The Beast' reminded her of Nigel Kneale's (Quatermass) TV play series from 1976 called 'BEASTS'. I immediately ordered a copy and got hooked right away. 'BABY' is by far the best and most disturbing of the set. The style of this series, an unintentional by-product of 1970's aesthetics and technology has very much influenced a video I am currently making for one of the tracks on the LP.

10/ On The Run - The Spaceape

I have long been interested in Haitian voodoo culture since it is possibly the most graphic of its kind in the world and best known. I came across Spaceape's 'Xorcism' EP (Hyperdub, 2012). It didn't get a huge amount of attention at the time which it greatly deserved (and still does). This video and track is so simply shot but is still so compelling. I was lucky enough to meet Stephen recently to chat more about the making of the video and his ongoing battle with serious illness. This is an Xorcism in more ways than one and that really inspired me for UNFLESH in terms of drive as well as musical style. Big up to Stephen.