Ill-Studio takes us behind the scenes of its new video for Soulwax

The newly released video for Soulwax’s track Do You Want To Get Into Trouble bears all the hallmarks of Soulwax’s longtime collaborators, Parisian based Ill-Studio.

“Aside from our ongoing collaboration and friendship with the Dewaele brothers [David and Stephen Dewaele of Soulwax and 2 M any DJs], what Ill-Studio and Soulwax have in common is that we really enjoy exploring different creative fields or aesthetics, whether it’s about music, art or popular culture," the studio’s founders Thomas Subreville and Leonard Vernhet tell us. “We thought it was time to show something ‘unexpected’. For this video, we made a point of doing something different from what we’ve already done whether with Soulwax or [the pair’s record label] Deewee, something more organic or let’s say ‘human’. That being said, it remains connected to the rest of the project through many references to Soulwax, Deewee or even 2 Many DJs that we’ve been hiding here and there over the course of the video. Some will notice them and some won’t but wHether you are a Dewaele enthusiast since day one or simply curious, we hope you’ll enjoy the result.”

The music video for Do You Want To Get Into Trouble takes a highly-stylised look at teenage rebellion in all its bong-smoking, camo-wearing, topless-dancing, soul-searching glory, splicing footage of an adolescent boy and girl with more abstracted images, among them television sets and burning flowers. In one section the male protagonist gazes into a shard of mirror, recalling the studio’s short film Mirrored, commissioned by It’s Nice That for Channel 4 last year. Elsewhere, impressionist portraits are wittily matched with selfies displayed through a typically teenage cracked iPhone screen.

“We decided to treat the theme Do You Want To Get Into Trouble through the prism of adolescent life and its numerous aspects such as the discovery of your own body, attraction for risk, sex, new technologies, drugs, emotional change, sub-culture and rebellion,” the studio explains. “It is about that specific time of life when you imagine being an amplified version of yourself: more rebel, more muscular, more dangerous, more experienced, more good-looking etc. But you are in fact a completely normal teenager in a normal world. This video is our visual interpretation of this idea of duality and contrast between your imagination as a teenager and the world you really live into.”