Maria Mihailik is signed to Folklore, I’d worked with them before for Mock Deer’s release ‘Ontological Dig‘, so when Maria was set to release the first track from her upcoming debut LP, they reached out to me to record a live version of the track.
I booked a venue near the train station to make Maria’s travel from London easier, the venue assured me the smoke machine would not cause an issue. It did. The venue had six smoke alarms in total and it took us a while to find and disable all of them! Once our ears had stopped ringing we got to work. We recorded three tracks in total that afternoon (the others will be released later in the year) and for each song I lit the room completely differently.
Maria’s voice is incredible, without seeing her you wouldn’t be able to put an age to the sound, and the song writing also feels from an unplaceable era. As such, I wanted the video to look timeless. Monochrome, film grain and a dreamy veil of smoke all add to force you to look closer, let your imagination fill in gaps and not for a second think it was filmed on a rainy afternoon in 2026 Didcot.
