Blood Orange’s ‘I Know’ Video Proves That Even Practice Can Be Pretty

Blood Orange‘s whole sound comes through like the lushest bedroom recordings money could buy in 1985. He warps the sterile synth sounds of that decade through a DIY lens, ending up with something like a mix between Sade and Ben Pollard. And he held true to that in his video for the Freetown Sound track “I Know,” turning the amateurishness of a ballet practice into something slick and beautiful, while making room for imperfections in the tape.

Barring two framing shots of New York City, the entire video consists of Hynes and dancer Maria Kochetkova twirling around each other under a bed of scratches and problems with the film stock. Hynes only lifts the low-budget curtain once in the entire video, with an unbelievably pretty 360-degree shot of Hynes and Kochetkova going through a series of poses. Check out the whole thing up top.

It’s a beautiful video in the middle of what’s been an incredibly ugly year — one that’s consumed a lot of Hynes recent output. He took on racial inequality in police brutality in “Do You See My Skin Through The Flames?” and “Sandra’s Smile,” respectively. Hynes even dedicated his performance on Conan to the victims of gun violence. Of course, choosing not to wallow and releasing a lovely video doesn’t mean these things are over — as he says in the song, it’s not his to change — but any bit of brightness in 2016 sure helps.

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