Pictureplane, “Self Control”

A few days ago, the world of extraterrestrial iconography suffered a major loss with the passing of 74-year-old H.R. Giger, the Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor and set designer best known for his work on the movie Alien. His images are burned into the popular psyche, standing metonymically for what people think of when they hear the word 'alien.'

With his personal ideas percolating, and no doubt influenced by Giger, Denver producer Pictureplane has been building up his own brand around the corporeal concept of the alien. It's called Alien Body, and he recently came out with a so-titled mixtape, giving dimension to his brand project beyond the production of merch. It flows logically out of his Thee Physical release from 2011, for which he composed a succinct manifesto for us to go along with the album. In it, he grapples with notions of self, perception, and "the real," asking more questions than he answers. Having just released the video for his new track "Self Control", it would appear he's still pushing through the conceptual foliage. It takes place in a dungeon-like New York City rave, jumping between virtual and cosmic realities, like so much of his work tends to do. Stream the darkly trippy video above, with this quote from the manifesto in mind:

"Thee orgasmic future. The place of no mind and thee trance. Your DNA structure. Understanding/remembering. Thee psychic field as playing field in an infinite galactic game. Not one part of you separate. Thee interconnectedness of selves. Touching/transform.