Legendary outfit Suede return to action with a brooding, shoegaze-infused track and a lean and disruptive performance video directed by Chris Turner, aka Favourite Colour: Black. 

As the moody opening riffs of Disintegrate dissolve into lush layers of synth, the 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, reinterpreted for a resurgent Suede by Turner and his highly experienced DoP Luke Scully. 

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 were re-shot through CRT monitors using minDV and VHS cameras inside a blacked-out tent, introducing analogue texture and unpredictability. Cables were 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 process has been continued in post production. The assembled edit was re-processed and re-recorded in layers, so what begins as a sharply rendered performance ends as something fragmented, distorted, and haunting: a meditation on impermanence, memory, and the beauty of decay.

"[This was] pretty much my dream brief," comments Chris Turner, aka FC:B, "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!"