Cream with a K Travels Late Night Tokyo in '5:35'
Cream with a K (AKA Lee Tatlock) has reinvented her music style after an early career in J-Pop, and from a first glance, her new sound has adopted a stripped-down grunge aesthetic. The British artist's all-English tune, "5:35," is the second single off of her debut album and charts the feeling of going home after a night out. Its accompanying video, premiering right here on L'Officiel USA, captures this with a hazy journey through Tokyo public transit.
The video, directed by Lawrence Randall, opens with shots of relatively quiet Tokyo streets, then shows Cream with a K riding and dozing on the Ginza metro line, encountering both early risers and fellow creatures of the night on the long journey home. The images are like a mix of 2012 Instagram filters and the '90s-nostalgic Huji app, which perfectly complements the slow-moving music but doesn't feel overly curated or aesthetic: construction workers and signs are fully visible, and the singer's vibrant beauty look has gotten slightly messy, both reminders of the exhausted, surreal feeling after partying the night away.
"It was made with no preparation and just a basic idea to spontaneously capture the natural, unglamorized side of Tokyo’s nightlife," Cream with a K says of the project. She and Randall filmed this video after a literal night out, traveling around Shibuya for documentary shots that the star then edited herself, explaining: "The color correction referenced '90s Bjork videos and Fifth Element. I wanted to get a glowy, dreamy sci-fi vibe."
With the relatable single, Cream with a K launches into a new era of her career, one in development for a while since she left Neko Punch in 2016. The eclectic grunge of her solo project effectively blends her London roots with her Tokyo experience, showing as much lived experience as artsy aesthetic. For those who have soundtracks for getting ready and dancing at the club, maybe this can be the backdrop on the way home.
