Qual is the solo project of British musician William Maybelline, who currently resides in Athens, Greece and also forms one half of the popular dark post-punk duo Lebanon Hanover. Having threaded in and out of William’s life both professionally and as friends over the past decade, a plan was hatched to work on a collaborative video for Qual‘s 2024 release Tech Sick which included conceptualisation, planning and shooting of the promotional video along with Athens-based jewelry artist Maria Morris (also William’s wife). Once the initial concept was fleshed out by Maria, the footage for the video was shot both in Glasgow (performance shots) and Athens (“cyber-studio” shots) which were then collected in the JJD studio with a rough edit created. Once that rough edit was approved by all involved, the technical work of establishing video effects, colour palette and the flow of the video were created, with some more technical imaging done including creating a “dating app” interface that would be scrolled in post-production by another Athens-based artist, Alice Roussou. The result is an intense, almost sickly looking future that pairs up nicely with the song’s subject matter — a critique on reliance of modern technology.
