Today, rising Dublin talent banríon have released an intimate new video for their track ‘sugar water’, a track from their second EP ‘dare to crush’. Directed and edited by Anna Heisterkamp, the video was filmed in the iconic Avona amateur boxing club in Dublin 7, a cornerstone of the city’s historic culture.
The newly released visuals match the tracks profound, personal nature, featuring detailed shots of frontwoman Róisín Ní Haicéid in a darkened boxing ring, as she reflects on her relationships and embraces an unnamed lover. Taking inspiration from Johan Renck’s ‘Pass This On’, the video seeks to take a lens to the sexualisation, desexualisation and the ‘watching’ of queer people that often pervades modern media.
When speaking on the video, Ní Haicéid has said: “Myself and Anna wanted to make this overtly sexy music video as a bit of a pushback against the current wave of palatable, marketable and inoffensive ‘queer art’, I’m just bored of it. I wanted to bring it back to the 80s and 90s queer media that was unapologetically sexy.”
In addition, Heisterkamp commented “The video was born of a frustration with myself and my relationship being either sexualised too much, or entirely de-sexualised. It hopefully asks you how and why you’re watching it, what it means to be watching someone, or to be watched. I ultimately wanted the video to feel like a performance shifting between something intimate between two people, to a performance to an audience, and a performance for oneself only. That idea of what something is as opposed to how it is perceived.”
Like ‘sugar water’, the rest of banríon’s discography also deals with themes of heartbreak, love, sickness and emigration, being inspired by the likes of Soccer Mommy and Alex G. With this release following the band’s successful string of live dates, banríon are making themselves known as darlings of the Irish indie circuit, only gaining momentum as they go on.
Photo by Niamh Barry
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