Squid - Crispy Skin

What this video is

Released November 12, 2024 as the lead single from Squid's third album Cowards (Warp Records, February 7, 2025), Crispy Skin marks Squid's most conceptually ambitious visual statement to date. The video's source material — Takashi Ito's Zone (1995) — bridges Japanese avant-garde film history with contemporary British art rock, creating a rare intercultural archival crossover. Lyrically, the track was inspired by…

Why it matters

Crispy Skin sits at the intersection of UK art rock, post-punk experimentalism, kosmische, and avant-garde cinema. Squid's incorporation of a canonical Japanese experimental short film into their music video practice signals a maturation beyond the post-punk revival toward genuine conceptual art…

The director

Takashi Ito (born 1956, Fukuoka, Japan) is a leading Japanese experimental filmmaker. He studied under Toshio Matsumoto at the Kyushu Institute of Design, graduating in 1983. Known for avant-garde shorts including Spacy (1981), Thunder (1982), Ghost (1984),…