Start your morning off right with a big helping of violent imagery, compliments of SBTRKT. Directed by Ross Anderson, in video ‘Trials Of The Past’, the world seems to be populated by machines, as a young girl runs past a store awning that reads MORE HUMAN HUMAN.  Finally she reaches her destination, which looks like a rundown barber shop but none you’ve ever seen or ever care to encounter – it actually reminds me of a cross between the scene in ‘Minority Report’ with Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell et al, where he goes to see an unlicensed ‘eye doctor’ (played by Peter Stormare) that replaces his eyeballs with someone else’s for mistaken identity, with a hint of most of the crime scenes in ‘Seven’ with Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Spacey + Gwyneth Paltrow.

She kicks the big bag she was carrying to the ‘barber’ – whom by the way, has elfish ears,  making him look even creepier – then sits in the barber’s chair.  (Is it just me or doesn’t this chick look like a very young Chloe Sevigny?)  When the barber goes to his tools, you know something’s up when instead of combs, scissors and brushes, you have more like surgical equipment.  Then the fun begins.

‘Snip, snip’, would be the sound of the first cut but here, it’s more like ‘buzz, buzz’ from a cranial saw.  At this point, you realize, she’s not there for a haircut.  She’s scalped followed by the removal of her face.  When her arms are torn off, I’d like to think that the ‘droid’s’ spraying white ‘blood’ is a nod to Bishop, the droid in ‘Aliens’ (having a geek moment).  

‘Barber’ finally pulls out limbs from ‘her’ bag, into her arm sockets and finally, adjusts her new face making her a ‘he’.   Very Blade Runner.