In my Clash review of HTRK‘s third album (Psychic 9-5 Club), I likened the smooth, sensual dubby soundscapes of Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang‘s music to the ‘aural equivalent of Prozac’, an effect that leaves their music devoid of any discernible ups and downs.

The duo have worked with director Nathan Corbin on a short film for the track ‘Chinatown Style’, which finds the viewer following various Chinatown residents around seemingly quotidian pastimes – cooking octopus, jazz dancing and so on – all jarringly set to Standish and Yang’s ethereal ambience.

Here’s what Corbin had to say about the film: ‘I worked as a delivery boy in Manhattan in my early twenties. It’s an intimate way to experience the city. The delivery is a conduit into an extended, physical exchange. It can be erotic and psychedelic; the repetition of “opening” in a city full of guarded skyscrapers and locked doors. You float invisibly, drifting from one ambiance to the next.

‘In NYC there is fluidity between everyone. You’re constantly “encountering”people. Always entering. The energy can vary wildly with successive shifts from light to dark to light like yin-yang. You found luck! You find yourself in a utopian center: a Psychic 9-5 Club.

‘People are dancing.

‘I chose to work with people I didn’t know for the most part..so that our interaction was new, innocent..like a delivery.

‘The cinematography concept was crucial. Shoot with a wide angle lens to create that innocence. You see everything so the “gaze”… the obsessive and voyeuristic part of looking is reduced. The eye of an open heart.’

Chinatown Style can be viewed below. Probably not one to watch at work (or if you’re a vegetarian).

Thanks to Matthew @ Ghostly.

(c) Mat Smith / Documentary Evidence