Ladytron - Destroy Everything You Touch

What this video is

Released in 2005 as the second single from Witching Hour — Ladytron's third studio album and their major-label breakthrough on Island/Universal — 'Destroy Everything You Touch' represents the apex of the mid-2000s UK electronica revival. The band, formed in Liverpool in 1999, had helped pioneer a neo-new-wave synth aesthetic drawing on 1980s Eurodisco and cold-wave. The single reached number 42 on the UK Singles…

Why it matters

A landmark artefact of mid-2000s dark synth-pop and electronica, the video fuses allegorical fantasy filmmaking with electronic performance aesthetics. Its Bosch-referencing purgatorial concept elevates it above typical performance-clip conventions of the era, signalling how UK electronic acts of…

The director

Adam Bartley is a UK-based director and production designer credited on music videos in the early-to-mid 2000s. His IMDb credits as director include Ladytron: Destroy Everything You Touch (2005) and art department work on Shivaree: john 2/14 (2002). His…