Synopsis

Broadcast perform "Papercuts" in a stark, retro-futurist setting filled with flickering light, geometric patterns, and hypnotic visual distortions. Trish Keenan and the band appear alongside a rotating, perforated optical device, while pulses of color and shadow create an increasingly hallucinatory atmosphere. Rather than following a conventional narrative, the video translates the song's uneasy mixture of sweetness and psychological tension into a carefully controlled psychedelic experience, making the performers seem caught between a television studio, a science laboratory, and a dream.

Factoids & Trivia

• The video was released in 2000 alongside Broadcast's debut album, "The Noise Made by People," on Warp Records.

• Its rotating optical device is a reference to Brion Gysin's Dreamachine, an experimental apparatus designed to produce flickering visual patterns when viewed with closed eyes.

• The video's retro-psychological imagery closely matches Broadcast's wider visual identity at the time, which drew on 1960s psychedelia, early electronic culture, and the look of educational or scientific television.

• "Papercuts" was later included in "WarpVision: The Videos 1989-2004," placing it within a broader collection of the label's influential music videos.

• The clip is notable for treating the band less as the subject of a performance video than as participants in an optical experiment. The effect reinforces Broadcast's balance of familiar pop forms and unsettling electronic textures.