Live Review: PREMIERE: Autosuggest uses a lush mullet to sell perfume in his 'Graphic' clip

18 February 2019 | 3:10 pm | Caitlin Medcalf
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Not too long ago, we had a chat with Sydney artist Alec Mallia AKA AUTOSUGGEST to get to know him. With the release of his debut record Tame Harm coming at us a little later in the year, we thought it apt to get to know the electro-pop artist.

Around that time, he'd given us a taste of the record in the form of 'Graphic', a nostalgic wave of 90's pop-punk accentuated by elements of dark electro-pop. He said the track was "an exercise in confidence, pushing my own vocals through what used to be a layer of murky reverb to be up front, and as gnarled and broken as the synthetic components surrounding it."

We're stoked today to be part of the continuing journey of Autosuggest. We've got a first look at his self-directed clip to accompany 'Graphic' and it's every bit as lo-fi and nostalgic as you'd hope.

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The video is both gripping and intense, but despite that, there's a bit of a humorous back story to it.

Of the clip, Autosuggest muses "The music video is essentially a joke that got out of control. Jack McFarlane, the bass player for the live band who’s played with me since we were teenagers, decided to shave an absolutely mighty mullet to his head."

"The man (McFarlane) has a very strong poe-faced expression and I kept mulling over the idea of him doing some sort of arty video to praise his distinguished look. I found a perfume bottle that looked the part, watched a bunch of awful compilations of 80’s commercials. Making Graphic a perfume commercial seemed like the obvious choice because really, how the hell do you sell a smell on TV?"

So with that, the swirling pool of mullet imagery and an infomercial fever-dream was born, and as outsiders, we're left with a hazy, lo-fi peer into the backstory of this stylistically apt clip.

Autosuggest has such a specific vision for this project, and it's cool to see that across all mediums, he's dedicated to fulfilling that whether it be through serious applications of his vision, or ones born out of something a little more on the humorous side.

Keep an ear out for his debut LP Tame Harm set to be out later in the year.

Image: SUPPLIED

Words by CAITLIN MEDCALF

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