Calgary, AB art duo HAIR CONTROL (Ryan Bourne & Rebecca Reid) share “TV in the Afterlife,” an anthemic synth-pop workout jam that transcends both the celebratory and the existential. Ebullient art pop with dream-drenched ‘80s-inspired textures, the track transforms apocalypse anxiety and digital-era disconnection into a strangely uplifting, physically charged release.

Originally written by Ryan as a three-chord guitar sketch with a post-punk edge, the song first appeared in earlier form on his Plant City record. Revisited through HAIR CONTROL’s lens, it evolved into an ‘80s-leaning synth pop piece with Rebecca stepping in on lead vocals, reshaping it into what the duo affectionately dubs their “existential workout jams.”

1. Tell us the story of this song, why did you choose to visualize this song specifically? 

RYAN: “TV in the Afterlife” is a kind of sensual satire set to synth pop. I was messing around with three-chord pop feels on guitar, and the melody felt really ‘80s, so the synth hooks took ‘80s baroque pop and dream pop cues, and the lyric took shape as a kind of metaphysical dystopian daydream. I initially released it as a postpunk garage jam on my 2023 “Plant City” record, though the instrumental of HAIR CONTROL’s version was recorded first. The melody begged to be re-imagined as ‘80s synth pop with Rebecca on lead vocals, so it became one of the first in a song cycle we’ve come to affectionately dub our “existential workout jams”.  The lyric muses on waning attention spans, apocalypse anxiety, engineered isolation, the vacuum of egoic consumer culture, the threat of technofascism, the consolation – as well as the existential horror – of  “never being alone”. But there’s a defiant exuberance to it too, it’s ultimately meant to be fun, and a little funny – as well as celebratory, and the lyrics as well as the track itself are a kind of visually evocative stream of consciousness sequence, which easily lent itself to visualization as a music video.

2. What was the inspiration behind this video (visuals, storyline, etc.)? 

REBECCA: While browsing Marketplace, we found an MCM TV that felt perfect, so we followed the impulse. It became the starting point. The first footage we shot was the TV cycling through different static patterns in the middle of a patch of lilac bushes.

I experimented with 80s-inspired looks for the lip sync components, which naturally influenced parts of the color palette. Ryan got into making short stop-motion animations with whatever objects around the house felt right. Building environments and sets together is already part of our shared visual art practice, so handmade pieces and collected props gradually worked their way into different vignettes, like the giant red glitter lips striding across the screen or the hand-painted spiral rolling across the horizon. 

The narrative evolved as a stream of consciousness, guided more by the movement and pacing of the song than a fixed storyline. Some images, however, have a more direct lineage. For the lyric “renaissance hermaphrodite”, we pulled in photographs I made last fall at the Louvre of the life-size Roman marble sculpture Sleeping Hermaphroditus, which lies on a carved marble mattress added at the end of the Renaissance period. It felt like an apt visual anchor for that moment.

As we got closer to the final edit, we realized it needed one more burst of motion. Ryan had previously scouted a blue wall along the Transcanada, near where we live, so we stopped there before our Sled Island set in-between rain showers and caught what we needed. I improvised a few passes of a mock cheerleading routine while Ryan filmed, carefully framing each shot without backing into traffic on the busy road just behind him. It was one of those last-minute ideas that ended up feeling essential to the finished video.

3. What was the process of making this video?

REBECCA: The process was driven almost entirely by intuition with only a few moments unfolding according to a clear or precise plan. We’d stumble across an image that seemed to connect to a lyric or just landed as a kind of psychic hit, then we’d film it. It felt more like gathering material than executing a plan.

For the “Sweet and Sticky” sequence, we saw a hand with brightly painted nails holding a melting ice cream cone. We scouted a few locations and waited for a hot day. Once we settled on ice cream colour, we drove over and filmed it melting in my hand. Our backup plan was an off-camera hair dryer, but the weather did the work for us.

A lot of the image-making followed the same DIY logic: we like that, it feels right, now how do we make it do what we want or compose it till it feels right. Found footage became part of the process too: mining archival footage and clips from our own collection that suddenly felt like they belonged, folding them into the project wherever they clicked.

This is a way of working we often return to when we’re making videos for ourselves: run-and-gun, intuitive, and open to whatever happens in the moment with a loose vision that feels palpable or precise in a certain detail and following that to see where it leads. When we’re creating work for someone else, we’re much more structured, with detailed shot lists and tighter planning. Personal projects give us permission to experiment, follow instinct, and make decisions as we go. That freedom naturally shapes the DIY aesthetic that runs through a lot of our visual collaborative work.