If you listened to Yves Tumor a year ago and then listened to him now you would swear they were two completely different artists. Tumor's recent rock-pop singles on Warp Records feel like a far cry from the dark experimental-noise collages that defined his album Serpent Music.
However, if you look past the catchy hooks and head bobbing melodies of "Licking An Orchid," we can see something more sinister lies beneath the surface. A chorus of "Some call it pain/Some call it torture/Baby I enjoy it/Please come home" indulges a masochist definition of romantic longing that Tumor luxuriates in. The music video for the track in a similar instance features Tumor and a partner wearing an unsettling flesh-like mask both intertwined and at odds in dark depiction of courting.
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Scanning laser beams and warped bodies place the video in a space between cybernetic dystoptia and nightmarish delusion. As the song ramps up into a screaming wall of distorted sound, Tumor's body glows white hot shifting into the outline of a demon. Perhaps Tumor is trying to get at the fraught hellish nature of making love or is simply enveloping us in another one of his terrifying visions. Either way "Licking An Orchid" is engrossing.
Watch the full video for "Licking An Orchid" below and catch Yves Tumor on tour with Blood Orange this fall:
Photo via Instagram