Keeping track of new music, media and industry news.

We had two NSFW videos vying for supremacy this week. The first, Poliça’s ‘Tiff’ is a disturbing slice of torture porn where singer Channy Leaneagh plays both aggressor and victim. It’s well put together and obviously has a strong message about female self-hatred, but it’s also an uncomfortable watch which doesn’t invite a second viewing, unless you enjoy immense queasiness.

The video for Slava’s ‘Girl Like Me’ is also an uncomfortable watch, but it doesn’t feature hammered knuckles and we did at least manage to sit through it twice, so it wins this particularly craven battle by default. When it was posted on The Needle Drop yesterday they avoided any spoilers, except to reveal it “portrays one of the greatest taboos in Western Culture” – which is a bit of an odd thing to say as it implies that the taboo in question is more acceptable everywhere else.

You can work out exactly what taboo it concerns within about twenty seconds, but just in case, here’s a SPOILER ALERT! – the video revolves around incest. Director Eugene Kotlyarenko claims here that he intended to “film a sex scene that had psycho-visceral repercussions rather than just moral ones”, going on to state: “These sorts of thematic and formal interests can make listeners or viewers uncomfortable. I think that’s a good thing as long as the material is compelling enough to maintain their attention throughout. It’s important to challenge accepted morality and also important not to be pedantic or boring while doing it”.

Well, the best compliment that we can give is that he achieves his aims, helped by some fantastic acting, editing and cinematography. Just prepare to feel somewhat unclean after watching it…