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Music

Earl Sweatshirt Gets Painted in Neon for Samiyam's "Mirror" Video

Ruff Mercy's animation brings the whole thing to life.

There are few people more perfect for the job of animating Samiyam’s Earl Sweatshirt-featuring “Mirror” than Ruff Mercy. One of the standout tracks from Samiyam’s excellent Animals Have Feelings—a dimly-lit, off-kilter work itself—the track is both inviting and harrowing, darker than that guitar sample suggests. Earl starts out assertive and clear, annunciating every word, before wearing himself out and giving way to his own self-analysis while a lazy snare keeps him going in the background.

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And UK-based artist Ruff Mercy’s otherworldly black-and-neon aesthetic amplifies all that. The video is a perfect hallucination, all flickering color and disorienting imagery. Earl’s face, the paint thickening and thinning in flashes, changes shape and gives way to cigarette-smoking animals, beer-drinking skeletons and old cartoon dogs while the darkness remains set around him.

Check it out below.

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