Watch a Modern Dance Odyssey From Itinerant French-Iranian Artist Lafawndah

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This is “Tan,” the debut video from Paris-based musician Lafawndah’s forthcoming EP of the same name. Setting aside the video for a moment, there is not much else out there like her new music at present, whether in vocal tone or urgency or the beats’ unwillingness to adhere to a particular pattern or preset. It’s a sound she calls “ritual club music,” and according to a press missive from her new label Warp Records, it’s inspired by her travels between her upbringing in Iran, her Paris homebase, and the various cities around the world she’s visited to play and record music (including classical flute and drums). You can hear her itinerant nature within; through the lyrics, there’s a restlessness, a lack of willingness to settle, and an abandon about the way she lets the loose rhythms form around her words into an industrial clamor.

As for the video—Lafawndah studied art history at Le Sorbonne, which you might glean from the lighting or contemporary dance breakdown, or from the eerily-lit boudoir and queer undertones of having her friend Eshil Omar lip sync the song while Lafawndah herself whispers her the words, plays with her hair, pats her lap in unison.

Tan was recorded on Fire Island, New York, a flip from her last EP, recorded on Guadeloupe. It’s out in February.


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