Harlows Nice Sad Youth Who Drink Beer at the River

Hidden far at the outermost point within Harlow Town, Essex, runs the River Stort. Ostensibly this
swathing, snaking piece of the town encompasses such a distance it should be impossible to miss-
yet it is situated so far out of the way many people may never experience it. Enveloped by beautiful,
verdant greenery and stretching into multiple towns, it is a genuine spectacle to walk down. Yet you
would be hard-pressed to find many people that have taken even a quarter of it in.

Within the generational rush to escape ones hometown, Liam Kinahan and Tim Brown have
attempted to capture and distil the essence of what makes a small town beautiful and idiosyncratic.
The character of Harlow can seep through the lens in the right shot- in their videos today and
autumn they are merely attempting to candidly capture footage of each other and their friends
drinking and walking. By doing so they manage to preserve a fragment of one of the most
paradoxical sights one might imagine- genuinely startling natural beauty within a grey, Brutalist
prison.

The videos are more a celebration of the repressed natural beauty within any town that
modernisation has forced, and a documentation of friends as time inevitably passes, as opposed to a
singular piece of visual reverence towards Harlow- and somehow, taken merely as the latter, they
remain no less watchable. They decry all expectations of one of the rougher towns within Essex. The
cold light shimmers off of plants, giving an almost alien glow in the afternoon. The sun coruscates in
the reflection of the water, illuminating the surroundings and casting silhouetted figures across vast
green expanses. As the sun sets, surrounded by nothing by empty fields, the cool blue light evokes a
sense of nostalgia for a youth spent elsewhere, as though we all experienced a similar time.

Both videos are soundtracked by original music from Liam; his soft ambience and ear for minimal
aural tones adding to the pervasive feeling that even a day can be an occasion with the right setting.
Taking something as banal as drinking beer with your friends and making it interesting is difficult;
making it beautiful is almost Sisyphean. But with ease they manage it, and it is impossible to watch
these videos and not get a sense of longing to experience such serenity oneself.