Sex Cells' music video is a masterclass in how to shoot on a £28 budget

South London act Sex Cells is a brilliantly beguiling duo, Willow Vincent and Matt Kilda, that mixes influences as divergent as the psychedelic '60s/'70s synth sounds (think Silver Apples, earlier Amon Duul II and the like) and paranoia-pumped punk alienation with angular post-punk and Lewisham high street.

They describe their debut album That's Life as "a disenfranchised, dystopian collection of dark dance tracks", which sums it up pretty nicely. To mark the release, the pair (who are also a couple) have unveiled the video for their single Deranged, archetypal of their eerie, compelling but ultimately pop-led sound.

With a budget simply led by what they could afford, in this case, £28, one half of Sex Cells, Matt Kilda, says they made the video in their bathroom with a camera borrowed "from our mate Dave". Looking to nod to the videos that they'd previously made for the release of their earlier Avenge Miriam EP – namely the simple approach for the track Youth Club Disco – the Deranged video also aims to be "something like an old skool '90s band promo in essence".

Kilda and Vincent art directed, starred in and edited the video entirely by themselves. "We are faithfully, and always, naturally 'Outsiders'," says Kilda. "We don't like capitalism; we don't engage in games of winners and losers – on any level, we don't like exclusive cliques or monopolies."

As such, Deranged draws on feelings of alienation and detachment that come from feeling "at odds with the way the world appears to be fixed," says Kilda, "You end up feeling less a part of reality, more just a voyeur in constant shock and awe of the inequality and madness you're observing."

He adds, "The video is simply a portrait of two people trying to get on and survive the waves of whatever life continually throws at us." This is represented visually in the video by the weird gunge and debris that deluge its stars—sort of like '90s kids TV classic Get Your own Back if those cheeky, revenge-seeking kids had gone to Goldsmiths.

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