[Cover photo credit to Alex Wall ]
Sydney, Australia Punk trio Bloods will release their full-length album Together, Baby! via Share It Music this Friday, September 23rd, 2022. They’ve also recently released the official video for “Radical”.
The video is a visual exploration of Romina Pistolas, and thereby other Latin migrants in Australia, going through similar experiences and feelings. Pistolas is Chilean and migrated to Australia eight years ago in search of safety and financial security. Like Bloods’ frontwoman Marihuzka Cornelius, her immigration is the result of political exile from their South American homeland.
Pistolas, also a writer, has a book due out this year in which she discusses “her struggle reconciling her cultural identity and navigating taboos while growing up in Australia and advocating for safety and de-stigmatizing the sex work industry”.
Video director Triana Hernandez says:
When Bloods asked me to create a music video for “Radical,” I got excited to create a subversive political video, something true to my experience as a latin migrant and my community. The song is refreshing because it’s political but has a very upbeat brass section, and this element inspired me to create a video with a similar vibe – a depiction of a migrant that’s not suffering or proving their worth to be living here, but enjoying their freedom unapologetically instead.
My friend Romina Pistolas, a Chilean migrant who is a proud stripper and writer, was the perfect person to explore this with. She’s one of the most empowered women I know despite her backstory. We workshopped the concept together, she told me every detail of her day-to-day life and we soon realised that the most powerful moments of freedom for us latina migrants is things like eating a kebab late at night without fearing for our lives, working hard but also having lots of time to rest and unwind. Amidst these conversations we realised that the video is about the every-day subtle politics of a migrant woman who has found the things all of our abuelas were fighting for; freedom to rest, relax, walk freely down the streets, earn good money and exist safely, without being attacked, hassled or judged by society for being simply us.
Bloods’ upcoming album Together, Baby! is a “a celebration of humanity and all that connects us” and is described as their “most thought out record to date”.
