Ulver release the new single “Russian Doll” from a forthcoming album. The song is again mixed by Michael Rendall and Martin “Youth” Glover, in London, who the band worked with on the The Assassination of Julius Caesar and previous album..
“Although this is pop music in our heads, the images and connotations in the lyrics are probably far away from what one usually associates with this genre. It actually began with some images and memories from the movie “Lilja 4ever” by Lukas Moodysson, which arrived in the early 2000s, and hit us like a brick. A dark and disillusioning film about human trafficking in the Baltic” explains Kristoffer Rygg. He continues, “Russian Doll” refers to the babushka, we began to think about this figure in the extension of “Lilja 4ever” and Eastern Europe. The doll became an object, an object of desire, which we mixed with mise-en-abyme – a composition technique that places pictures, or stories for that matter, inside each other. In this context we see it as a kind of vicious circle, unfolding inwards,”
Watch the video for new single below.
The video was filmed in Thamesmead, London, where A Clockwork Orange and Aphex Twin’s “Come to Daddy” were filmed. It stars the young dancer Annija Raibekaze.
“A young filmmaker tipped me off about Thamesmead, where parts of A Clockwork Orange was shot,” says Marek Steven, the director. He continues, “we did a couple of location scouts and realised that although the part Kubrick had filmed was currently rubble, nearby was still a huge estate with loads of similar and consistent concrete locations. We roughly planned a pseudo linear location routine with Annija, coming back a third time to shoot on one cold and short November Sunday. It was a small crew of four and two Sony A7’s. Annija is a young Latvian from the border of Russia. She recently moved to London to study dance and we felt she that fitted our idea perfectly, with her suitably aggressive urban dance style.”