Jordan Reyes’ “Kraken” video is pure nightmare fuel

Jordan Reyes — the Chicago polymath best known as the founder of American Dreams Records and backup vocalist/noisemaker in his hometown’s coolest band, but also a prolific solo artist (and music journalist) — released a relentless record full of droning doom titled Everything Is Always in 2022. Today, he premieres a music video for the chilling “Kraken” — a mid-album cut that comes as close to capturing the pitfalls of life on the high seas as any modern artist since the pirate song salad days of the mid-aughts — with The FADER.

The new clip comes courtesy of Victoria Shen, the San Francisco-based sound artist and experimental turntablist who performs as evicshen. She generated today’s terrifying visual treatment by running “prompts relating to deep sea creatures, intestines and machinery” through an AI tool called Disco Diffusion, creating a twisted aesthetic to match the emphatically bleak ethos of Reyes’ soundscape. Lines like “I can unhook my jaw / I can make dust of my bones” are rendered genuinely disturbing alongside algorithmic depictions of tentacled, toothy viscera.

“Victoria and I met up in New York in October 2019 after a number of online exchanges following a cold email in which I gushed over our mutual friend Ryan Martin (Secret Boyfriend not Dais, though he’s great, too),” Reyes tells The FADER. “I was there for a wedding and Victoria was playing at Market Hotel in a trio with Miho Hattori and Bonnie Baxter. The next day we played pinball for like eight hours straight, maybe more, then saw Denton Mutoids Flesh Narc at Hart Bar. Was classic. Victoria’s a visionary in so many ways and one of my best friends at this point — her restless curiosity and drive inspire me in everything I do. I was thrilled to be able to link up on this project. When she started utilizing AI in surreal, occasionally disturbing ways — in that way where you’re kinda nauseated and titillated at the same time — I had to let her in on my ‘I want to become an octopus’ fantasy. Obviously, she related. The rest…well you know what the rest is.”

Watch Shen’s “Kraken” video above and listen to Everything Is Always in full below.