Autechre - Second Bad Vilbel

What this video is

Released in April 1996 as a promotional video for Autechre's Anvil Vapre EP (Warp Records, 1995), this video emerged at the height of UK IDM's cultural prestige, when Warp Records was repositioning experimental electronic music as a legitimate art form. Cunningham's debut as director — made concurrently with his work consulting for Stanley Kubrick — represents a collision between industrial body-horror visual…

Why it matters

A foundational artifact of the IDM music video canon and a historically significant directorial debut. The video established the aesthetic vocabulary — hyper-edited, body-horror, non-narrative abstraction — that Cunningham would refine across his defining works with Aphex Twin and Björk. As one of…

The director

Chris Cunningham (b. 1970, UK) is a director, artist, and visual effects designer. He began his career designing creatures and robots for major films, including work on Judge Dredd, before collaborating with Stanley Kubrick on the unfinished A.I. project.…