Ashley Huizenga a.k.a. Actually a.k.a. Wet Look is a Los Angeles musician and performance artist. Ashley is the daughter of a Playboy Playmate, and in her own words, she was “born into a Kenneth Anger-like world of privileged Hollywood decadence.” Her similarity to Kenneth Anger does not end with her Hollywood upbringing. Actually’s video work mines a comparable aesthetic universe, combining Tinseltown decadence with a surrealistic approach to mise-en-scène and a preoccupation with the (homo-)erotics of occult ritual. Her videos are sumptuous and dreamlike, and her music is an appropriately glossy iteration of 80s dance-pop pulled through a hypnagogic vortex of satin and sequins. Check the awesome clips for “You Won’t Die” and “Hush” if you need evidence.
Actually’s got a new album entitled Actually due July 21, and “Tropical Winter” is the second official video, the first being the deliciously naughty “sexual May Pole” of “Me and My Late Night Boys,” released last month. The songs are great, the videos are better. But more importantly, we appear to be witnessing the opulent emergence of a unique convocation of pornography, pop surrealism, and conceptual fame whoredom that makes Lana Del Rey look like… well… Lizzie Grant.
• Actually: http://www.actuallyactually.com
• Actually (Bandcamp): http://wetlookvshardplace.bandcamp.com
• Actually (Tumblr): http://actuallyhuizenga.tumblr.com
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