One look at the music video for ‘Naked Love’ by The Orange Apples., and you know it’s been made by a photographer. There’s a certain instinctiveness about how to approach an image; an understanding about how best to capture a still image which transfers so easily to film. A great sense of composition, lighting, shade, balance, poise, and shot selection, are all hallmarks of a great photographer, and Riga native photographer Egija Smeile, one half of the team who created the gorgeous clip for ‘Naked Love’, the new single from fellow Latvian artist The Orange Apples. It’s not all Smeile’s work however – she has joined forces with Stanislavs Tokalovs, an award winning film maker who is making a name for himself as one of the most daring in the Baltics.
The Orange Apples., aka Ilona Skuča, writes consistently artful and ambitious songs, and her voice is akin to Enya’s with its chords and notes that hang in the air like so much mist. Her debut release, ‘What’s Your Name?’ is effectively the musical equivalent of a photographic exhibition, and the perfect subject for Smeile and Tokalovs. The song is haunting, seductive, sweet, and yet ever so slightly dangerous.
The music video for ‘Naked Love’ opens with a shot of two young women and a young man, similarly dressed, all very attractive, together in a field, with their backs against a tree. The grasses are swaying in the wind, and it’s both idyllic and slightly unsettling. The unease continues when another man approaches the trio; it’s all very intriguing and confusing, deliberately ambiguous. From there on in it becomes a bit more concerning: the subjects are shot in increasingly more provocative poses. One moment they’re in black leather bodysuits with their legs tied, next they’re in gauzy plastic cocoons – standing so closely that their faces touch and they should kiss – they really should – yet they don’t. It’s arousing and mysterious and yet dark and alluring….and confusingly beautiful.
Watch the video for ‘Naked Love’, and find out more about The Orange Apples. from their Instagram.
