The record has proved that the worst case will turn out, in the end, to be the one that nobody planned for. Pain has many eyes and can see things underground. When those open, like pockets, what’s to be found? Swollen flesh that is as delicate as molded wood. Cataclysms and tempests that can level a whole building as if it were a castle of sand.
Hordes would overrun it, bleary-eyed monsters, giant insects with steel mandibles, blind termites, great white worms with insatiable mouths: the tile would crumble, the stone would turn to soot, the cupboards would collapse under their own weight, all would turn to dust.
Ironic amounts of rubble flourish with towns. In this video, shot in Chicago, Thoom explores a demolition site, caresses a bulldozer’s thorny claw, smashes already smashed glass doors, ascends a staircase that once had some meaning, some direction, and now leads to a brutalist future.
Shot honestly and portraying images as unstaged, raw, and intimate as Thoom’s grating techno. Music like some technical complication not much talked about in public but hanging over our heads like a great, lightning-laden cloud poised to fall at any moment. Music that reaches the conclusion that the world is on the wrong track. Music that runs like a rabbit into the headlights of an oncoming truck. It is a gamble, it is the only game in town.
Shot by Charlie Clateman
Edited, and with typeface, by Paul McNamara
More about: Thoom
