Can't Get Loose - Can't Get Loose

What this video is

Released in 1998 on Mute Records, 'Can't Get Loose' marked Barry Adamson's full emergence as a lead vocalist on his album As Above, So Below — a conceptual work described by reviewers as a 'soundtrack for a film that doesn't exist,' blending jazz, funk, hip-hop, industrial and avant-garde rock. Adamson's career had traversed post-punk band Magazine (1977–1981) and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (1984–1986), before a…

Why it matters

A rare intersection of post-punk's cinematic avant-garde tradition and the late-1990s art-music-video movement. Sigismondi's visual language, rooted in hallucinatory surrealism and painterly chiaroscuro, amplifies Adamson's own noir-jazz compositional sensibility. The video reflects the cultural…

The director

Italian-Canadian director, photographer and artist (born 1965, Pescara, Italy; raised in Hamilton, Ontario). Studied painting and illustration at the Ontario College of Art and Design. Transitioned from fashion photography to music video direction via…