The story was based on The Machine from the album cover – where had it come from? How did it end up here? The video consists of 6,480 cells of imagery and took me roughly 14 weeks to write, animate and piece together. When I began working on the animation, The Spark had only just been released and Undercover Agents was my favourite track from the album.

I’m a huge fan of Enter Shikari, and their music has really helped me through a lot, so it’s great to be able to give something back.

The Undercover Agents animation was the final piece for my Major Project at university. It follows the journey of the robot featured on the album art and is 8-bit.Įnter Shikari were interviewed by Kerrang, Creator, director and fan of the video George Cheswick revealed that Yes, as well as an official audio video, there is a fan made video. Music is one of the best ways to do that, so it’s nice to be able to address this whole thing with a song. It’s something we all deal with, whether we know it or not, and it’s wanting to see the realness, and yearning for real connection.

It’s not me speaking down to those who use filters on Instagram – this is something I do! And I experience the pressure to feel like you have to constantly portray the best side of you. The chorus – ‘Tonight I’m howling with the wolves’ – is wanting to get away to a slightly more raw and real life, away from all those pressures. That has lots of negative effects, especially on a social scale – everyone just sees the good points of other people’s lives, which then translates in their minds as: ‘oh, my life is so crap compared to them.’ It encourages comparisons to others, which is something that isn’t really, on a mental health line of thinking, a good thing to do. It may be real, and you may think it’s real, but it’s a thin slither of you, and it’s often a very polished version. Social media is the biggest way that you can do that – you have your profile, you have your filters, you put out into the world exactly what you want to put out, and you create an act, essentially. Kids are growing up not thinking they control how everyone perceives them. It’s mainly about perception management. Enter Shikari’s vocalist Rou Reynolds talked with Kerrang! about the track:

David fesliyan undercover spy agent