Disintegrate embraces the beauty of falling apart

Disintegrate is a hypnotic visual companion to Suede’s brooding, shoegaze-infused track — where moody opening riffs dissolve into lush layers of synth. Inspired by Alvin Lucier’s experimental sound piece I Am Sitting in a Room, this film explores visual erosion in a similar way: beginning with a clean, high-quality base recording, then gradually degrading it through analogue processes until the image becomes abstract and unrecognisable.

The video draws from a rich lineage of visual and aural artworks that meditate on decay and transformation — from William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops to Peter Greenaway’s queasy time-lapse sequences in A Zed & Two Noughts. Like a piece of video art in the vein of Bill Viola, Bruce Nauman, and Marina Abramović, Disintegrate centres on painterly still-lifes, rotting fruit in slow, unsettling time-lapse, and the gradual breakdown of the moving image itself.

Key moments of the performance will be re-shot through CRT monitors using minDV and VHS cameras inside a blacked-out tent, introducing analogue texture and unpredictability. Cables will be physically manipulated to create flickering, rolling glitches, percussive visual elements that echo the sonic violence of performances like Nine Inch Nails’ March of the Pigs.

This deliberate visual degradation continues in post, as the assembled edit is re-processed and re-recorded in layers; a slow, ghostly unravelling. What begins as a sharply rendered performance ends as something fragmented, distorted, and haunting: a meditation on impermanence, memory, and the beauty of decay.

"Pretty much my dream brief," said Favourite Colour: Black, director at Octopus Inc. "Fantastic track by a fantastic band. Black and white. Lo-fi, performance based and with visuals that disintegrate as the video plays out. All achieved in-camera, utilising progressively lower quality equipment, shooting and re-shooting from screens as the signal was increasingly interrupted. Worship the glitch!"

"When the brief came in from Suede, a legendary band we’ve admired for years, there was this immediate jolt of excitement," said Beth Montague, EP at Octopus Inc. "It was one of those rare moments where everything just aligned. The concept, the tone, the creative freedom... it felt like it was written for us. Sometimes you just know it’s going to happen. And this one did; fast, instinctively, and with complete creative clarity."

The full film can be viewed by visiting www.octopus.inc or by following @octopus_inc_uk.