Benin City return with their latest video ‘All Smoke, No Fire’. Addressing the issue of the constant closing down of London nightclubs and pubs, the Shaun James Grant-directed visuals capture a desolate nighttime feel throughout the city as well as locations of various venues that no longer exist. The song is definitely one that many London clubbers can surely relate to. The track is taken from Benin City’s forthcoming album Last Night, out April 6th via Moshi Moshi Records.

Touching on the video Benin City frontman Joshua Idehen said:

“We met up with Shaun Grant; we’d loved his work with Lemonade Money and Mikey Lightfoot. We ranted over pints about Passing Cloud’s demise and gentrification in general, the changes in our respective neighbourhoods and our
helplessness. In him we found a twin creative spirit who shared our anger and visual ideas and knew how to present them on camera. It was shot on a single night. We asked our friends – poets, musicians, journalists – to meet us at various times, in front of closed clubs, Brixton Arches and libraries. There were too many. The last voice we got, Ben, was just someone who we’d met whilst filming in front of Carnegie Library. He’d organised a squat party to delay its closing down and he wanted to say something.”

Going into details about the track itself, Idenhen continued:

“London nightlife has been our way out, our release, our daily escape. We’ve been clubbers, ravers, barmen, part / full-time drinkers. We’ve served cocktails and downed shots. We’ve found ourselves on dancefloors and lost our dinners on night buses. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve engaged in dumb drunken squabbles and we’ve found ourselves in strangers’ houses. We’ve danced to songs we didn’t know the name of. We made landmarks out of hidden corners of London: Passing Clouds, Ghetto, Trash Palace, Plastic People, Vibe Bar, Cable, Crucifix Lane. Those places, and the stories they held are gone for good as London becomes pricier and ever more grey. On this album are some of those stories: this is an ode to London’s nightlife.”