There is something about the song “Embassy” by Laurel Halo that makes me feel like I am listening to a soundtrack — not necessarily the soundtrack to a film, but the soundtrack to an idealized way of life. The airy synth tones and Halo’s angelic vocals reminds me of getting a back rub after a day of swimming and spa-ing. It almost feels like a play on the zen notion of Utopia, as marketed to Western consumers.
In Josef Kraska’s video for the song, he takes this mood to the next level. We are shown a montage of close-ups of women’s faces. Most of the images look as though they’ve been taken from 1980s television commercials, and the women are prime specimens of the red-lipped, smiling, squeaky clean standard of beauty that was prevalent at that time. These images are quite ephemeral, and it seems we aren’t meant to relate to them. The glowing starbursts, kaleidoscopes, and other geometric shapes that loom over the women’s faces are both beautiful and sinister. They seem to suggest an impending erasure, as if our “heroines” are headed for an ending of the Logan’s Run variety.
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