Portishead’s Beth Gibbons shares Weirdcore-directed video for new single, ‘Reaching Out’: Watch

Portishead’s Beth Gibbons has shared a new single, ‘Reaching Out’, alongside an interactive video. Check it out below. 

The new track is lifted from Gibbon’s debut solo album, ‘Lives Outgrown’, which was announced last February and features work recorded over a decade. 

It’s said to be Gibbon’s most personal work to date, the result of a period of reflection and change. You can listen to the first track from the album ‘Floating On A Moment’ here. 

To complement the release, Gibbons collaborated with visual artist Weirdcore, who has previously worked with Aphex Twin and Arca, to create an interactive video. 

The video features 4D models of the artist free-falling through a futuristic sci-fi landscape, with the interactive models changing throughout the video to represent different stages in her life. 

Speaking on the release, Gibbons said: “I realised what life was like with no hope. And that was a sadness I’d never felt. Before, I had the ability to change my future, but when you’re up against your body, you can’t make it do something it doesn’t want to do.”  

“People started dying. When you’re young, you never know the endings, you don’t know how it’s going to pan out. You think: we’re going to get beyond this. It’s going to get better. Some endings are hard to digest. Now I’ve come out of the other end, I just think, you’ve got to be brave.” 

Last year Beth Gibbon released a cover of Joy Division and David Bowie, which she recorded with the Afghan girl band the Miraculous Love Kids. The acoustic remake fused two classic tracks, collaborating with the group formed by US activist and musician Lanny Cordola, comprising musicians who fled Afghanistan for Islamabad, Pakistan. You can watch the remake here. 

Gibbons will embark on a tour across Europe later this year. The tour kicks off on the 27th of May at La Salle Pleyel in Paris, followed by performances in Zürich, Barcelona, Lyon, Berlin, Copenhagen, Utrecht, Brussels, London, and Manchester, concluding 11th June at Usher Hall in Edinburgh. 

The interactive video for ‘Reaching Out’ is available here. Check out the static version of the video below.