Video Premiere: “All Time” – Vancouver China

“All Time,” the new single from Vancouver China, invites us inside and underneath the mask. There’s a whole landscape in there, made of synths and memories, populated by the lone voice of Tawaine Noah—the singer, songwriter, and producer behind the project. “All Time” is a driving but melancholic pop track about interior conflict set in an age of staying indoors and in our heads. Something in the song’s middle distance bounces back and forth, and we’re left to wonder if it’s bouncing between two people, two poles, or simply rebounding off the wall in between them. “If I can’t decide, if you’re real or not,” muses Noah in a line that echoes out into each of the weird individualized spaces we’ve hollowed out for ourselves. What do we still believe in, and what have we all begun to question? 

The video works in layers, images laid over one another that continually resolve into Noah alone with his thoughts. The compiled home-movie style creates a sense of familiarity but also one of distance, as though the overlays are memories following Noah throughout his day. Within the memories, we see good times—friends and laughter, alongside solo dances and introspective stares, which sometimes turn towards the camera. Who is there, we wonder, doing the filming? It may be you, the one who may or may not be real.