I take what I said about MGMT. This song should be their single.
It has been the soundtrack to my brain for the past couple days. I think MGMT is brainwashing me to listen to Brian Eno. I found myself listening to Brian Eno album Here Come the Warm Jets yesterday and my head is a little clearer.
I love the jumpy, manic feel this song has and the weird key they play in (sounds all horror show). The song reminds me of a band from Peoria, Illinois called The Amazing Kill-o-Watts. I went through their back catalogue trying to find the song it reminded me of, but I was unsuccessful. Anyone from get the same feeling I do?
Dum Dum Girls feel like lofi-ed 60s pop rock with a hint of 90s girl-la-la twee. They have certainly have a sunny, summery feel, like the Jacuzzi Boys, although Dum Dum Girls come from the West coast. With the hot summer ramping up, this is the music I feel like walking to while sweat drips down the back of my neck.
This video has a washed out female Easy Rider feel with lofi video effects to match the song. My favorite part is the scene that looks like a clip from a French new wave film with subtitles. It gives smoking that sexy ennui before it become a dirty habit associated with sleazy car salesmen and cancer.
I am in Beijing now and this song has been in my head since I woke up. Listen to the first line of the song and you will understand. I love this city.
One of the best aspects of this song is the percussion. In the album version, Patrick Watson plays a bicycle, drumming on different parts of the bike for different sounds. While there are no bike parts used in the making of this video, I love watching his drummer use an assortment of stuff from the kitchen as instruments. It is almost as interesting than the weird expressions that stretch across Watson's face when he sings.
After a week of posting several boring pseudo-psychedelic music videos from big indie artists (see Neon Indian and MGMT), I am pleased to actually post a good psychedelic video.
The video starts with a wonderfully flakey public access tv meditation guru bit. Then the video explodes into a vivid rainbow space scene. The best part is the band playing and dancing, covered in light sticks and probably wearing green suits. Its fun, colorful video you can watch more than once without yawning. (hah)
I don't know anything about YAWN and I think this is off of their first EP. Looking through their twitter page I am guessing they live in Chicago and like to play old-school Super Mario Kart. They may be unknown now, but they are playing Pitchfork this summer, so they may be the next big thing. Kind of Guy is a lighthearted, summer song and the whole EP is pretty solid. Who knows what the fickle Pitchfork hipsters will say.
Oh how the mighty fall, well at least stumble. MGMT helped usher in a wave of good and not-so-good electro-pop. With a handful of singles, MGMT permeated pop culture in 2008-09. Kids and Time to Pretend showed up not only in every hipster's party mix, but in teen dramas like Gossip Girl, clothing store soundtracks, and commercials. French President Nicolas Sarkozy illegally puts Kids in some of his videos and played it at rallies and had to copyright infringement. (This happened as he was trying to pass a law to deny Internet access to file-sharers)
The point is that MGMT was one-hot-hit-making machine. Everyone was salivating for the next round of pop hits to accompany the kissing scene for their teen vampire show or sell their Bar-B-Que sauce or to play in the background to convince the young kids that they are still hip. But that didn't happen.
Instead, MGMT put out a record with no singles, no electro-pop, and nothing that sounds like the two songs that everyone knows. Ad-men and suburban teenagers everywhere moved on to tow-headed teen boys that sing like Stevie Wonder.
The record isn't bad at all. Congratulations isn't the wonder-child album that Oracular Spectacular is. It's much more rock and roll and pulls from old psych-pop and maybe some geek rock from the 80s.
The problem here is that MGMT is MGMT. If this record was released by an unknown group called MGNT or MGNR, the album would have been consumed in a completely different way. Congratulations is being panned for being inaccessible and pretentious, which may be true, but it is mainly being panned for not being Kids or Time to Pretend.
I want to talk about the video, but it is forgettable. The duo has shed their wild and colorful rag-tag outfits for tight jeans, Buddy Holly glasses, and plaid shits. For being a psych-pop song, this video is surprisingly strait-laced. Magical IKEA furniture that dispenses pink ice cream, contains a dollhouse and an angel ballerina sounds like it was dreamed up by a committee of the suburban teens that watch the vampire show. Oh I get it...it was all a dream. Yawn.
If you are bored you can count the excessive number of dashes I used to this post, I will send you a psychedelic unicorn that poops pink ice cream.
This isn't exactly a music video as much as it is a live performance, but it should be the music video for this song.
The X-Ray Spex were a short-lived teenage punk band from the late 70s in the UK. They are sometimes credited as the first grrrl rock band more than a decade before the riot grrrl movement and this song could easily be considered the first riot grrrl song. Poly Styrene, the woman screeching and wailing, paved the way for decades of feminist rock. See the Raincoats, Sleater Kinney, Patti Smith, and Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
This song is manic emancipatory rock. Poly Styrene starts the song, "Some people think little girls should be seen and not heard. Well I think, OH BONDAGE, UP YOURS!" and never relents.
zZz is a Dutch duo that uses just a drum kit, an organ, and a some effects. I don't really know much about them other than, I like this song and I love this video.
Whether the the director intended it or not, this video is an homage to the long running Korean television show Kasou Taishou. Twice a year, there is a competition to impress the audience with the most innovative and entertaining skits. One specific type of skit became popular and now the show is known for it.
The people competing on Kasou Taishou create live special effects. The point is to act out something that would normally be done with camera tricks and editing. The most famous skit from Kasou Taishou is Matrix Ping Pong. It was a hot internet meme several years ago so most of you have probably come across it. There are thirty years of skits from this show, some more clever than Matrix Ping Ping.
The zZz video is at inspired by Kasou Taishou, but also include some fresh ideas. Pay attention to the progress bar slowly being painted throughout the whole.
Los Massieras is a DJ duo that is part the disco scene in Spain and in Berlin, Germany. The label/collective is Discoteca Oceano in Spain, but Los Massieras are on an off-shoot label called Bananamania, based in Berlin. Whatever the lineage, the music coming out of this scene is good. They revive the electronic sounds and the dance feel from disco, thankfully leaving the orchestral instrumentation of late 70s disco behind.
The video is the highlight here. The creator Gerson Aguerri seemlessly combines animation and some live-action shots to create a world reminiscent of HG Wells's distant future in The Time Machine with the Eloi and the Morlocks. The camera constantly pans through a world with peaceful furry humanoids being attacked by Skeletor-looking bat people that turn everything into static. I love that world loops through the video several times and you see the destruction as the invasion progresses. The whole video is beautifully devious.
My roommate mentioned that the last I posted of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You looks very similar to this Alanis Morrissette and I agree. It has the same blown out look in a desert interspersed with slow, choppy video clips, but for a completely different effect. Rather than being slow and lonely, this video is harsh and angry.
I posted this video for several other reason. Sure, I love this song and the entire album, Jagged Little Pill. Alanis Morissette is a staple of the mid 90s and she helped paved the way for mildly confrontational female pop rock artists like Meredith Brooks in the 90s and Avril Lavigne in the 00s.
Another reason is that Alanis Morissette just got married a couple days ago to rapper Mario Treadway aka Souleye (not the Souleye from Sweden that does chiptune music).
Finally, this song is important because of who it is about. Alanis Morissette has claimed that song is about a specific person, but has never revealed who that person is, similar to the legend surrounding Carly Simon's You're So Vain. For over a decade, there have been rumors about who she was talking about, but now most people believe that it was Dave Coulier.
Yes, Uncle Joey from Full House is most likely who Alanis Morissette "went down on in a theater". To give you some context, here is Dave Coulier:
According to Snopes, the reason that they broke up is that Dave Coulier wanted to start a family but Alanis felt she was too young. At that point, Dave Coulier had already been married and divorced with a kid and I guess he wanted something serious. Well I guess Alanis won out in the end because now she has married and poor Uncle Joey has remained a bachelor.
As I mentioned in my last post, I Can Hardly Waitsounds very similar to Fade Into You. Mazzy Star is much cleaner and this song is in 3/4 as opposed to 4/4, but the music is very similar, even down to the slide guitar at the end of the song.
Mazzy Star had one hit, but they never really were a hit making type of band. Their music was slow, shoe-gazey, post-punk. I think they got lucky with Fade Into You, but the fame was well deserved. This song is a darkly beautiful ballad that exemplifies one wave of alternative music in the mid-nineties. I still get shivers listening to Hope Sandoval's haunting wail.
The video is also visual time capsule of music videos from that era that were heavily influenced byGus van Sant's music video for Red Hot Chili Peppers. The shots of band loosely arranged performing together are interspersed with shots of driving, landscapes, and random things treated with some film effect. The washed out look was also very popular (see Alanis Morrisette's You Oughta Know).
Beyond that, I just love the feel of the video. It does what a good video should do, echo the feelings of the song. The video has a lonely, melancholy feel that is accentuated by the shots of the wide empty desert and the bright overpowering sun.
How about we start with Frederik Valentin. This is Frederik Valentin. His favorite food is pizza and his favorite quote is from Futurama. Complicated Universal Cum is Frederik Valentin's new project. He is a Danish artist that is also in bands such as Hard Rock Power Spray and Vomit Supreme, whose influences are: "Weed!" I have heard Vomit Supreme before, but I wasn't particularly interested.
Complicated Universal Cum, on the other hand, I love. This song is beautiful and I really enjoy all of the songs they have posted on their myspace page. It doesn't sound or feel like Valentin's other bands. Its calm and more lofi and subdued. I Can Hardly Wait reminds me a lot of Mazzy Star's Fade Into You.
The video is also a perplexing juxtaposition in comparison to Valentin's previous work. On one hand, this video is beautiful portrait of a long kiss that sparks all those feelings you have when you are really in love with someone. So in love, that you can just sit next to each other in silence, stare into each others eyes and make-out.
On the other hand, judging by the comments on the video, it also taken in a completely different light. Here is a gem from engmoodyzeid on Youtube, "OMG....toooooo hoooooot.... ill make sure tht my next gf will be an EX-lesbo." The video is not hardcore or pornographic, it is soft and passionate, but it is also two beautiful girls kissing.
The directors of this video had to be aware of what they were making, especially put into context with Valentin's previous work. They had to be aware that their video would be appealing on different levels for different people. If they were only going after the engmoodyzeid's on YouTube, they would have made the video look more like a late night softcore porn on Cinemax. There is a definite beauty in this video but there is also another element that reflects how our society views homosexuality.
The YouTube version of this video is flagged as content for 18 years and older. Why? There is no nudity, just a long passionate kiss. I guess homosexual content equals adult content on YouTube.
In my news feed on Monday, Gawker claimed to have found Barack Obama in the music video. Here is a snapshot that is taken from about 1:02.
I don't think anyone at Gawker actually believed that it was true, but as for the rest of America I am not sure. If you believe that Barack Obama is a secret muslim that was born in Kenya, I guess you can believe that Barack Obama was a secret rapper that did MTV videos. It won't be long before we will see this picture with a Hitler mustache on a sign at the next Tea Party rally.
Well Gawker has finally debunked the coincidence by simply asking Cecil Glenn aka DC the Brain Supreme and Steve Gibson aka Steve Roll'n of Tag Team. So no, it isn't Barack Obama and the woman at 0:47 is not Michelle Obama.
As for the video and the song, they are classics. The song has been a staple of sports events, cheerleading dances, and wedding DJ's for over a decade. The video feels like it was taken from a night scene on MTV Spring Break. Its the Who Let the Dogs Out of the 90s, but we have enough distance now to not be annoyed.
On this blog, I usually post music videos that are innovative or interesting or have some cultural relevance, good or bad. Most of the time, when I come across video that doesn't really need much mention, I just move on. There is such a huge array of good videos out there that I don't really need to post the countless bad or mediocre videos I see. So, as you may have guessed, I am not so thrilled with this video.
Neon Indian has been hot stuff for the past year, in part thanks to a Best New Music endorsement from the music blog elite guard at Pitchfork.com. The other reason is that Alan Palomo, the man at the heart of Neon Indian, is talented and put out a great record. I loved Neon Indian's Psychic Chasm and the entire lofi, throwback synth sound. I am also partial to music from Denton, Texas. (Please release another album Chris Flemmons from the Baptist Generals. There has been over seven years of talking about a new album and my heart can't take it anymore.)
I came upon this video a couple days ago with the headline, "Neon Indian makes first ‘official’ music video", on some blog that seems to be a instruction manual on what to like if you want to be a hipster. My first thought was, wait, I thought I have already seen a couple Neon Indian videos, but I guess they weren't official. My second thought was, fantastic, I can't wait to see the first official Neon Indian video.
After the first viewing, I thought, oh well, on to the next video. But instead of moving on, I investigated a bit. I watched the "Making of" video for the music video:
From the first 20 seconds of this video I realized something was wrong. Alan Palomo subtly rolls his eyes and says, "especially when it gets to be something so collaborative, it becomes something bigger than the sum of its parts." And then I not-so-subtly rolled my eyes. Who are you collaborating with Alan Palomo? Then we meet the two obviously very artistic directors as they vaguely describe their inspiration that seems to have been cleverly lifted from the title of the song. You see, the song is called Sleep Paralysist and so the brilliant directors wanted Alan Palomo to "walk through all these crazy scenarios" and "animate sleep paralySIS" (with emphasis on the SIS, in case you didn't catch the the title of the song is Sleep Paralysist).
So Alan Palomo goes through all these crazy scenarios like throwing plates against a wall, a white horse, masks that were stolen from the set of Eyes Wide Shut, a pile of wooden folding chairs, a game of backgammon, and lots of creepy smoke from a smoke machine. You know, like the crazy stuff scenarios you see in your dreams. How do they come up with this stuff? Don't get too freaked out.
Ok, enough with the sarcasm. This video is a boring and uncreative mishmash of unrelated random and cliched images. The video takes place in some weird house with a bunch of crazy rooms, but the video only touches on one or two rooms and a zoom shot of the outside. The description and footage of this house in the "Making of" video is more interesting than anything in the actual music video.
How do you shoot a video in such a interesting place and barely shoot anything interesting. Why even shoot there? It seems that someone with a chunk money rented the house, a white horse, and a smoke machine and just started filming. Since this video is "so collaborative," who else are you collaborating with Alan Palomo?
Then I check to find out who this Green Label Sound record label is that is hosting all these videos. Oh, its Mountain Dew. What??? Mountain Dew? Oh I am sorry Mtn Dew. I guess that is easier to tweet when you want to vote for your favorite high fructose corn syrup infused artificially flavored drink in PepsiCo Inc.'s DEWmocracy. Perhaps they should also let me vote on my favorite high fructose corn syrup infused artificially flavored music video.
Look, I am not saying that nothing good can come from a label run by an multinational corporation whose goal is to sell you overpriced sugar water. I am sure millions of PepsiCo dollars have gone to treacle-sweet acts like NSync and Christina Aguilera, but Neon Indian? There is a place for mindless commercial pop music, but I hard pressed to categorize Neon Indian as commercial pop for the masses. In don't know, maybe that is what Alan Palomo is going for with this video, covering it up with a vaguely artsy veneer. Maybe he wants to be the next pop superstar, but he isn't going to do it with this video.
To end on a happy note, I am going to do something else I don't usually do. I am going to post a fan made music video. The first time I saw this video, I just assumed it was official and it is too bad that it isn't. This video looks to be shot on a handheld digital pocket camera (watch at minute 1:07) by some kids on a vacation to Chicago. These kids made a much better video for the song than the crap that the MTN_DEW laxative has helped Alan Palomo and the directing team at Focus Creeps to poop out. Good job SaintEcho7.
I apologize to everyone for the prolonged absence. I had some passport/visa issues that unexpectedly pushed a trip home up nearly a month. I have spent most of the last two weeks sleeping on couches and visiting friends and family.
This summer, I will be studying Mandarin in Beijing. I am excited for the summer, not only because I will finally get to spend 24 hours working on Chinese, but because Beijing is one of the most amazing cities. It is the hub of music, art, and culture in Asia and I hope to bring some of that to this blog.
I still intend on posting regularly, but my weekends may be more sparse than usual. However, I will have at least a day each week for Chinese music videos.
This was posted on on Tuesday, June 8th, but I am going to backdate to Monday. I actually tried to post on Monday, but the blogspot.com posting was down for some reason. While this is not the only reason, I am looking to move this blog to wordpress and self-host. If you have any suggestions or know anything about transitioning, please contact me.
I have some good posts coming up that make it worth the wait.
Thanks for reading.
The Black Keys have a sound that is reminiscent of the early blues recording. They sound as if they were performed in a dark basement through a tin can. They are a two piece, guitar and drums, but they sound much bigger than a two-piece. Dan Auerbach uses a loop pedal, so he is able to lay down one dingy, distorted guitar riff after another. They find a way to use some of the best parts of old blues and still make it sound fresh.
Their videos are usually low-budget and comical and usually involves some sort of fight or violence. This video is no exception. What I like about this video is lip syncing kids. And they really found some good kid version look-alikes.
Last month, Kesha was on SNL and performed the song you see above in full neon body paint under a blacklight and it is amazing. The giant keytar in the background is also amazing.
The music video just came out this week and features clips of Kesha in the neon body paint. It also features a hallucinogenic desert scene that is an obvious homage to the Beatles' Yellow Submarine. The first half of the video is kind of boring, but the second half is great. I am not sure why they didn't do the animation throughout. Maybe to match the fact that the verses of the song are kind of boring but the chorus is rockin.
Here is a clip from Beatles' Yellow Submarine so you get what I mean.
I don't normally do this, but I am going to have two days of Ke$ha.
Today I am posting Kesha's biggest song Tik Tok along the the amazing Simpsons intro-parody and tomorrow I will post the new Your Love is My Drug video with the SNL body-paint performance.
I am not exactly sure who Kesha with a dollar sign is supposed to be. There are elements of vapid pop star, bold pop art, music industry superficiality, and feminist expression. Kesha is caught somewhere between Lady Gaga, Peaches, and Christina Aguilera. The first time I heard Kesha was on NPR, the second time was on Saturday Night Live, and the third time was on a ground breaking episode of the Simpsons where they changed the song and the opening sequence to parody of a Kesha video.
The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live are two of the gatekeepers of pop culture and Kesha broke through in less than a year. Kesha may not be doing anything as controversial as Lady Gaga or Peaches, but she is changing the face of pop music in ways we won't really see for years to come.
Kesha doesn't seem to be another auto-tuned, corporate music tool, but that is where she got her start. She got hired on by major pop producer Dr. Luke because of a demo tape of songs she wrote. She did backup vocals and music video appearances for best of the worst: Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, and Flo Rida. But beyond being Barbie filler, she has also co-written several songs.
Kesha was getting some exposure, but it was Tik Tok that changed everything. Tik Tok got noticed on MySpace and the record company started pushing it. It was released as a single and reached top ten status in several countries. In the US, it has broke into mainstream.
The Simpsons have had the same theme song intro for nearly 20 years. This season they aired the a pardoy of the Tik Tok video with Lisa playing the part of Kesha, supported by loads of secondary characters. It not only boosts the status of Kesha, but also boosts the relavancy of the Simpsons.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 5, Styx - Mr. Roboto
Intro film
Mr Roboto
Mr. Roboto is part of a concept album released by Styx called Kilroy was Here. The concept is explained in the short film that goes with Mr. Roboto. Its truly amazing and you should watch it first. Styx used to start every show with the 10 minute film.
The story line is that the world has been taken over by a group called the Majority for Music Morality, who aren't concerned with money or power, just making sure no one can listen to rock and roll. The authoritarian powers imprison not political agitators but rock stars. This has to be the best scifi music project ever. Also robots walk around cursing in Japanese (I guess Japan became a superpower because they build the best robots?).
The music video for Mr. Roboto picks up where the film leaves off. Dennis Deyoung plays Kilroy, the imprisoned rock star who kills a robot and takes his suit to escape. He escapes to find the rock and roll dissident Jonathan Chance so that they can bring down the anti-rock government together. Mr. Roboto is about Kilroy's search for Chance and then the unveiling as he reveals he is not a robot.
Oh and I am not sure what "the modren man" is, but I know he likes to wear purple.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 5, 2pac - California Love
Part 1 - Beyond Beyond Thunderdome
Part 2 - Tiki Torch Dance Party
Both of these videos are California Love. The first is the original release and the second is a remix, but the first video has a to be continued ending that leads into the second, but videos have little else in common.
The first is an homage to the 80s post-apocalyptic classic Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome starring Tina Turner and everyone's favorite anti-semite Mel Gibson. This video also has some star appearances. In the beginning you will see pre-Rush HourChris Tucker and the godfather of funk, George Clinton. Then, dance party in the Thunderdome! Its pretty unique for a rap video. The second is your standard dance party rap video.
California Love is one of the best rap dance songs of the 90s and easily the most famous 2pac song. The song came out and went to the top of charts, but it was while 2pac was still in prison for a sexual assault charge. When he got out, 2pac was at the height of his career.
However, the mid 90s was not a good time for musicians at the height of their career. Only a couple months after Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died, 2pac was almost killed in an robbery in New York that has long been suspected to be part of an feud between East and West Coast rappers. 2pac survived, but two years later, months after Brad Newell of Sublime died, 2pac was shot again and this time he was killed. Many implicate Notorious B.I.G. along with other East Coast rappers like Sean "Puffy" "P. Diddy" "Puff Daddy" "Diddy" Combs in the shootings, nothing has ever been proven. A year later, when Notorious B.I.G. was on West Coast turf, he was gunned down and killed.
Now, its widely suspected that Death Row Records founder Shug Knight orchestrated the murders of both 2pac and Notorious B.I.G. Several cases have been brought against NYPD officers that worked for Shug Knight, but nothing has stuck.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 4, David Bowie - Space Oddity
Bowie is the grandfather of scifi inspired rock. Ever since Bowie's second album, Space Oddity, and the song with the same name, Bowie has had a scifi bent. The album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars is a concept album about an alien who is bringing the news of Earth's impending demise. Even though all of the songs have a scifi theme, none of the video follow the theme.
This video is great for several reasons. You get to see young Bowie, clean cut and crooked teeth. Space Oddity introduces the character Major Tom. Major Tom pops up in later songs, like Ashes to Ashes and in other artists songs, most notably the song Major Tom (Coming Home) by Peter Shilling.
In the video, Major Tom is floating around in space craft. You know it is Major Tom thanks to the giant name tag on his chest. Major Tom all of a sudden falls through space, but of course he is saved by two beautiful girls. They take him back to their space bed to spoon with Bowie.
You've probably never heard this version of Space Oddity before. This was the original version on the album. You are probably more familiar with this recording that came out with the release of the Aladdin Sane album.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 3, The Darkness - I Believe in a Thing Called Love
This video is campy 70s scifi goodness. A David Bowie-like singer circa-Ziggy Stardust sings in falsetto while battling a tentacle monster with his laser guitar. What more could you want?
This song is The Darkness's one hit. Its fun, sounds like Queen, and gets stuck in your head.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 2, Sigur Rós - Untitled #1 (Vaka)
Vaka truly illustrates the potential of the music video as an art form itself.
Sigur Ros is a prolific Icelandic band that you have probably heard in a movie, if you have heard an album. They have a very distinct sound, ethereal and atmospheric with very high-pitched vocals. Jónsi Birgisson sings both in Icelandic and Hopelandic, a nonsense language made up of syllable from the Icelandic language.
They started on Iceland's most well-known label, Smekkleysa (Bad Taste). It's a label started by the Sugarcubes, Iceland's indie gods from the 80s who helped shoot the lead singer, Bjork, to international fame. Iceland is a tiny island nation with a population smaller than Minneapolis, but they produce a lot of good music.
The video shares the sullen beauty that is exemplified in the song. School children bundle up to go outside and play in the flurries of ash of nuclear winter. Wearing WW2 style gas masks, they throw ashballs and make ashmen. The video ends a young boys mask falls off and he slip away.
The ending is very peculiar for a music video. The song ends nearly a minute before the end of the video, and the rest is done in silence, as if giving priority to the video and not the song. However, I don't believe this is the case. They are giving priority to the experience. The music and the visuals are interwoven to create a new work that conveys a new message and elicits a different emotional response. The absence of sound in the last minute is no longer silence, but a part of the song and completes the final product, the music video.
Sci-fi Music Videos Week, Day 1, Yeasayer - Ambling Alp
Yeasayer is an experimental Brooklyn band with obvious world music influences. They have just released their new record Odd Blood. It is about time. It has been nearly three years.
This video is an homage to Alejandro Jodorowsky's 1973 film, Holy Mountain. If you have never heard of it, check out the trailer here.
Holy Mountain is amazing and all sorts of messed up. Supposedly, the cast meditated together for 3 months before the shooting and were on psychedelic drugs for at least one scene. John Lennon and Yoko through in some money for production which doesn't surprise me because the movie is like a visual interpretation of one of her songs.
You could argue that this video isn't exactly sci-fi, but avant-garde or surrealist. To you I say, shut up and watch the video.
Closer is Nine Inch Nails most well-known song and probably the most well-known video. Even though both the song and the video were censored, it was on heavy rotation on MTV in the mid-90s.
How Nine Inch Nails made it to the mainstream is still a mystery to me. The 90s was not a good time for electronic music. The glitz and glam and the plastic, colorful shallowness of the 80s was being rejected. The rough singer-songerwriter and the garage band were kings of the 90s as grunge exploded. Perhaps thats how Nine Inch Nails made it into hearts of angry teens of the 90s.
Whether you like their aesthetic or not, Nine Inch Nails kept synths alive in the 90s. The only other electronic music going on was the techno/house/electronica raver scene, but that music never really made it to the mainstream. While that era of electronic was important, most of it was repetitive and formulaic, with some notable exceptions (Aphex Twin is one).
This video is reinterpretation of the stop-motion short film, Street of Crocodiles, inspired by the art work of Joel-Peter Witkin. Check them out and you can see what I am talking about.
This video caught my eye earlier today. Its a little gothy and unsettling but its a pretty great video with convincing special effects that don't in the way.
The song starts off slow and then the vocals come in. I thought, "there is something vaguely familiar about this music," but I couldn't place it. As the video goes on, there are morbid scenes of two people bludgeoned to death and one of them singing. After a couple minutes, I recognize what the song reminds me of, Nine Inch Nails.
Part of me thought, "hey its another goth/industrial through back band trying to be Nine Inch Nails, but at least there isn't a white guy poorly rapping in the background." (ala Evanescence)
The other part of me though, "wow, they guys do Nine Inch Nails really well." The songs sounds like it could have come from the golden era of Nine Inch Nails, off of Downward Spiral or even The Fragile. Those were two albums that got me through years of teenager anger and depression. I wore out and re-purchased the Downward Spiral CD three different times.
So, I finish the video and check out the bands website. Yeah, well in case you haven't guessed already...its Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nails and his wife is singing.
After a few listens I just had to dig out Downward Spiral and listen to it again. Last year I bought the vinyl version of the Downward Spiral for more money than I wanted to admit spending. I listened it once and thought, "why did I spend so much money on a record I probably will listen to once and put away." [you get to hear a lot my thoughts in the post today]
This was a turning point for me in the realm of buying vinyl. In my late twenties, I don't find myself listening to Nine Inch Nails as much as my late teens, but Downward Spiral is still a vital album to my musical identity. Downward Spiral was on my list of albums that are important to me and I felt obligated to buy it. It was at that point I realized that I was truly turning into a vinyl collector, and I was ok with that.
Well I am glad to know my fears about never listening to the album again were unfounded. A year later I have found a time in my life that I just need to listen to Downward Spiral and it was just sitting there waiting for me.
Buster Keaton is a like a video interpretation of an Adbusters magazine. Or maybe a four minute G-Rated ad for American Apparel. I am not exactly sure what is going on here, why this woman is going through hoops named after life stages or why someone is dressed up as the Nobel Prize in Literature. There may be some po-mo symbolic reason for everything, but I don't get it.
What I do get is that this video is that this video is beautiful. I love the vivid colors on the drab scenery and the amazing costumes made out of paper. The art direction in this video is stellar.
Quadron's a Denmark duo that just released their first album this year. I have read a couple reviews that compare the music to early 60s R&B, but I don't hear it in this song. You can hear it in the instrumentals in some of their others songs (check their myspace). I think the music has a distinctive late 80s/early 90s R&B sound, especially the bass beat underlying ever song and the singers vocal style. I know I am splitting hairs, but there is a big difference. What do you think?
Lazer Crystal is a trio from Chicago doing this new fangled electro/synth/pop stuff fueled by the resurrection of 80s electronic music. But they are more than just band playing old Roland Juno's on tape machines. The music sounds like a moog having sex with drum machine in the alley behind a video game arcade. The video looks like an Apple ][ getting high with a VCR in Andy Worhol's basement.
Lazer Crystal is more 80s than the 80s. This video is an excellent example their hyperreal 80s-ness. I am pretty sure the glorification of the 80s is intentional. This song is from their album MCMLXXX, the roman numerals for 1980. MCMLXXX is their first album, but a handful of the songs are from the EPs that came before. I love the song Hot Pink BMX and I play it everytime I DJ. Love Rhombus is a slower, gothier song. Check out their dancier stuff too.
Last night, Jeff Mangum performed at a benefit show in New York at the Le Poisson Rouge for Chris Knox of the Tall Dwarves. He sang five Neutral Milk Hotel songs and he sounds just as amazing as he did 10 years ago.
Neutral Milk Hotel is my favorite music. I found Neutral Milk Hotel a year after they stopped playing and I have waited a decade to see Jeff Mangum perform. Last year, he traveled around with member of Neutral Milk Hotel and people from the Elephant 6 Collective. I saw them in Chicago, but Jeff Mangum was only playing one song, Engine. It nearly killed me. I am sure five songs would have ended my life.
I am just going to post every video that gets uploaded in the next couple days. If you know of a video that is not posted up here, please email me or add it to the comments. I will also list articles at the bottom.
Set list:
1. Oh Comely
2. Baby For Pree/Where You'll Find Me Now
3. Two-Headed Boy (pt 2)
4. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Encore
5. Engine
Small Black (check out their blog) is a two-piece from Long Island who has been touring with Washed Out with a self-released EP that has been getting some hype. They have the lo-fi summery synth sound that is all the rage right now (see this Jacuzzi Boys video). There is something really peaceful about this song.
This video is a beautiful slice of the life of an aging surfer. The guy with the handlebar mustache is the lead singer's uncle Matt. Its reminds me a lot of Darren Aronofsky's stunning film The Wrestler from 2008. Its about a washed up professional wrestler who can't give up the professional that is killing him. Its the best film from 2008.
If you haven't seen the wrestler, you may have seen the 2009 movie that basically stole the script from the wrestler, inserted a country music singer, and gave the story a sappy, happy ending. That movie was called Crazy Heart. Well, this video is like a real-life version of the Wrestler or Crazy Heart, but doesn't rip-off either films. Its beautiful in its own way.
Believe it or not, but this group started as a black metal band called Skull. They were part of the Swedish metal scene and they reinvented themselves in early 2000. In order to set themselves apart from their roots and the rest of the Swedish grindcore bands, they chose the name Teddybears.
Cobrastyle has been around since 2004 and you have probably heard it somewhere. Its been in television shows, movies, advertisements, videogames, corporate shopping background music, and sports games in between clips of 2 Unlimited's Get Ready for This and Techtronic's Pump Up the Jam. It is one of the most recognized songs that you don't know who sings and you don't know the title.
Other than being inserted as the background of every form of mass entertainment, there is another reason that you recognize this song. Cobrastyle is the result of mixing several songs from 80s artists like Sugar Hill Gang and Fine Young Cannibals. Kid Rock refenences some of the same songs in his song Bawitaba. So even if its possible that you haven't heard this song, you have heard the songs that make up this song.
The video is a great commentary and on the excesses of rock and roll of the 80s. Its a documentary style Spinal Tap-esque video with giant teddy bear heads. Its funny with great references to famous rock and roll scandals. I also love that they are playing an Atari game that is 8-bit. (Atari is only 4-bit for those of you not nerdy enough to know.)
I now this post is sounding negative, but I am not anti-Cobrastyle. There is a reason that this song is so ubiquitous, its catchy and fun. Its a mix of styles and time periods. While there is a lot of 80s elements in this song and video, it doesn't sound or look like the 80s at all. Its unique in a familiar way.
The Red Hot Chili Peppers are a divisive band in rock. Like U2, they have a huge following with millions of fans and with An international following, they can pack a stadium in almost any country. However, as their careers have progressed, their music has become less and less interesting. Well, because they are so well-known, it is hard not to have an opinion about them, so they end up becoming a love/hate band.
No matter your opinion the the Chili Peppers, it is hard to deny that this earlier song is still good. And it hard not to like this video.
Gus van Sant, the director of Drugstore Cowboys and Good Will Hunting, also directed this video. It won Viewers Choice Best Video and Breakthrough Video at the MTV Music awards and deservedly so. There are so many great images in this video. Notably, the guitarist solemnly playing against a fake desert backdrop, Anthony Keidis walking around LA and interacting with peeple, and the final scene of Keidis running heedlessly toward the camera in slow motion while an atomic explosion expands in the background. This was a very influential video and traces of its impact can be seen all throughout the 90s.
I am still talking about this video.
The major critique of this video around the internet is the concerning the graphic sex and raw violence, but the shock scenes are not glamorous. If the director wanted to make an indelible mark on the viewer, he had to startle the view with the stark consequence of xenophobia and racism.
The problem with sex and violence is that it can be glorified. The director made the right choice by making the sex and the violence to ugly to glorify. The sex scene is dirty, frightening and humiliating, with two particularly unnappealing naked people.
The violence is uncomfortable. The most vivid scene portrays an officer shooting a child in the head. There is nothing to glorify in this scene. Even a fan of ultra-violence will feel uneasy watching a child get shot. The sex and violence really punctuates the injustice without glorifying it.
This video is about xenophobia/racism and power. The video tries to illustrate in stark detail what happens when the state or the group in power uses xenophobia/racism to maintain power.
The result is that people the people in the in-group (the naked couple) and those outside of the group (the redheads) are dehumanized. The dehumanization allows the state to rationalize denying privacy and denying rights and enacting violence and murder and eventually genocide.
I am pretty sure the point of the video is to allow you to draw parallels to conflicts around the world. The conflicts between Hispanics and Blacks in the US and Muslims in Europe are less violent right now, but as xenophobia and racism grow, they can lead to situations that we see in Israel with Palastinians, with Kurds in the Middle East or with Tamils in MIA's own Sri Lanka. If conflict is not resolved, it leads to what we saw in Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia, and the Holocaust.
This is one of the best music videos I have ever seen. It features police that look like US SWAT violently breaking into apartments looking for someone and some intense music. Initially, Universal Music Group pulled the video from YouTube, but after some shaming by M.I.A. and other groups, the video has been put back up. Watch it, all the way through.
M.I.A. is the most important musician in the world. Her music is fuel for revolution.
M.I.A. is Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam, the daughter of Tamil Tigers and a refugee from the Sri Lankan conflict. She grew up in London studying art and slowly made the move to music. After touring with Elastica and Peaches and even directing a music video for Elastica, M.I.A. recorded a 6-song tape with a 4-track, an MC-505, and a mic. One song on the tape, Galang got a couple remixes and eventually being a world underground club hit.
The song Paper Planes off of the second album Kala is what made M.I.A. an international sensation. The song is a mix of genres with a strong political message about life in the third world and immigration into the first world. In the last years of the 00s, you couldn't watch a movie with a socio-political message without hearing Paper Planes. You have heard it even if you don't know you have heard it.
I say that M.I.A. is the most important musician in the world because her appeal spans rap, electronic, dance, indie, and even mainstream pop. You can hear her all across the globe, in the richest and the poorest areas in the world. Her music is not about heartbreak and love or sex and drugs, its about war, violence, domination, and most important, struggle for freedom.
Johnny Depp as a director? Well its pretty good. Depp does a music video version of the popular high school literature class short story An Occurrence at Owl Creek by Ambrose Bierce. This is a plus for me because this is one of my favorite short stories from my teenage years. If you have a half an hour and want to know the inspiration for thousands of other novels, stories, television episodes, movies, and even video games, you should read the original Bierce short story.
This video is a good interpretation of the short story. Johnny Depp proves he is more than a multitalented actor...he can direct.
Babybird was a big name in the UK from 1995 to 2000, but Stephen Jones, Babybird's heart, hasn't done much for the last decade. If you like this song, you can check Babybird's 1996 albums Fatherhood and Ugly Beautiful, but even if you don't like the son, you should still check out these albums.
The Nurses are psych-rock out of Portland OR. Their music is intimate and entrancing with a touch of haunting weirdness. Most of the songs feature an old echo-y piano that drifts beautifully in and out of tune supplemented by some other oddly altered instrument. What gets you are the ethereal vocal harmonies that span several octaves.
This song is off of The Nurses latest album Apple's Acre. The first time I played the album when the LP came out, everyone in the house came out of their rooms at some point during the album and said, "Who is this? I know I have heard them before." I don't think anyone had heard The Nurses before, but there is something that feels so at home, so natural and familiar about their music while being completely new. Apple's Acre isn't an album that needs to grow on you. It just feels right the first time you listen to it.
The VCR kaleidoscope collage really compliments the music. It has the same calming, homemade simplicity the makes the song so wonderful.
Rivers Cuomo wrote two of the greatest and most important albums of the 90's. Both albums fathered entire sub-genres. In 1994, Weezer's The Blue Album is a cornerstone of geek rock and it inspired countless nerdy high school garage bands and even some famous ones (see Ok Go). Two years later, Pinkerton was released, but wasn't well received. Rolling Stone called it one of the worst albums of 1996. However, as you well know, Rolling Stone was barely relevant in the 90's and isn't relevant at all in 2010. Pinkerton grew in popularity after 1996 and is one of the cornerstones of both Blue Sweater Emo and Eyeliner Emo.
Unfortunately, Rivers Cuomo took the rejection of his masterpiece pretty bad and Weezer stopped playing for nearly four years. As the early Internet was starting to explode, the online fan base was exploding with it. Armed with 14 new songs and minus Matt Sharp (bass player, founder of The Rentals), Weezer sold out several tours in 2000. With tons of hype and excited fans, they went to the studio to record their third album. They enlisted Ric Ocasek of the Cars, the producer of the Blue Album, to return and produce number three.
This is where the story goes sour. An exec from Geffen, their record label, came by to hear the songs and he didn't like them. So what did the band do? They moved to a new studio and Rivers wrote an album's worth of songs on the spot. Instead of recording meticulously crafted, interesting, heart-felt music as they once did, Weezer recorded 10 simple, formulaic, bland, lifeless songs for the Green Album.
And that was it. Weezer, one of the most important bands of the 90's, died, and in its place and empty space. --- Pink Triangle was a song on Pinkerton, but this video wasn't released until 2004. It was created by Karl Koch, the super roadie and band documentarian. He is a great guy. Back in 2000, me and some friends followed Weezer around the Midwest for three tours. I had been talking to Karl every night after the shows, he was an awesome guy. We didn't have tickets for a show in Columbia, Missouri and it was sold out. It looked like we weren't getting in, but then I bumped into Karl. He said we were lucky Weezer didn't have many friends in Missouri and he let us in as guests of the band. We got in before everyone else and stood right in the front. That was the best rock show I have seen.
I can't say this video is really that great. It is about the hard life of the alienated, ostracized zombie. I posted it because the song is just so damn good. HEALTH should have recommended Eric Wareheim to direct because he did a great job on their amazing video.
The xx was all the rage last year. Their calm, minimalist stylings have made them a favorite of music critics and anyone that wears all black and has a dramatic hair swoop. Their music is good, but all of the songs sound the same. Hopefully there will be a bit more diversity on the next album.
Islands is a good song and the music video makes it so much better. The video really fits well with their entire sound as a band: a well-choreographed, artful construction played over and over again with hypnotic repetition. I am really not a fan of interpretive dance, I am drawn to this video. There is so much simultaneously going on in each short clip that you find yourself focusing one person or one dance move for several cycles. You can't really take in everything that is going even in one viewing. I guess if you can appreciate the repitition and subtle beauty of the video, you should be able to appreciate The xx.
The Flaming Lips are still making albums after over twenty-five years and they are still on the cutting edge of rock, more relevant than ever. Any band can continue to tour and record far past their expiration date and riding their previous fame to sell a crappy new album that is forgotten after the first week. (I am looking your way Rolling Stones, Ozzy Osbourne, and Brett Michaels. Sure, you made good music at one time in your life, but you partied too much and you really don't have any soul left to make good music. Stop pissing on your legacy. You don't want to be remembered as sad old men churning out trash.) But The Flaming Lips are still making influential albums that will one day have an effect on our unborn children.
This is a simple but effective video. As with all Flaming Lips visuals, there is a mix of creepy and happy, absurdity and beauty, unsettling and erotic. I love the ending. Blind freedom.
Welcome back to music videos Spike Jonze. Over the past half a decade, Jonze has only done a handful of videos, the only one of note being theKanye West'sFlashing Light, which Jonze only co-directed. Spike Jonze is one of the best, if not the best, music video director. I could go through the list of amazing music video that Jonze has won award for, but I should probably just post them. Someone remind me to a week on Spike Jonze.
This video is madness. James Murphy, the man behindLCD Soundsystem, along with the keyboardist and drummer are just trying to sing about drunk girls when a horde of grinning pandas start hazing them like a bunch of drunk frat boys. It revives memories of fourth grade bullies in the boys bathroom minus the swirlies. As the song goes on, the assault on the musicians gets more and more violent and a little unsettling. There are parts that remind me of the gang rape scenes in A Clockwork Orange.
Jonze is really successful at capturing the raw energy and the creepiness in the room and converting it to music video. There is also an eerie similarity to the latest Ok Go video, This Too Shall Pass . While this LCD Soundsystem video is not an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine, it is one uncut, hand camera shot following around the mayhem and people in white suits make a mess in a big white warehouse. Also, both of these video include live sound from the video recording on top of the music track. Perhaps this is a trend we will begin to see more of.
Chairlift is a band that got its name because of a video...well a commercial...an IPod commercial. Their song Bruises will forever be associated with the 4th generation IPod Nano.
This is a video is made possible by the rise of the online digital video. It is inspired by the problems that occur in compressing video and streaming video online. Sometimes when a video isn't displaying properly, you see a leftover image that is stuck on the screen. Slowly as the video progresses, the stuck pixels are replaced and the video goes back to normal. The director is replicating these residual artifacts to create a unique visual style. All made possible by broken music videos.
Major Lazer is a music project from DJ's Diplo and Switch. You may know the them from their work with MIA and Diplo from remixes of tracks by artists from Kanye West and Brittany Spears to Radiohead and Daft Punk. Both Diplo and Switch do some killer remixes, but Major Lazer is the best thing that either of them have done.
The music is pulling from some of the more popular dance music of the past decade with a handful of characters doing over-autotuned vocals. It might not be music you want to listen to while you are sitting around the house but the live show is where it is at.
I saw Major Lazer last week and the live show is unbelievable. Smoke, a hi-tech laser show, simulated sex, and thousands of sweaty hipsters jumping up and down.
The video is not far from the feel of the live show. Its like tripping through the cover of one of those old geometric Trapper Keepers.
The creepy, weirdness of the video isn't surprising being that it is directed by Eric Wareheim, Eric of Tim and Eric's Awesome Show, Great Job. He has directed nearly ten music videos in the past several years but they aren't all orgies of the absurd. Wareheim has shown a great range of ability in hislast video he directed. For the band HEALTH, Eric Wareheim has created a stark homage to the slasher films of the last decade. If he is going to be making videos as fresh as these two, he may need to dump Tim and just do music videos.
This first video is a short film prequel to the actual music video. Its funny and has a kitschy 70s public access television or instructional video aesthetic.
The Apples in Stereo are part of the greatest music collective of all time, the Elephant Six Collective. Ok, so maybe they are the greatest, but the E6 Collective has made some of my favorite music. Bands like Neutral Milk Hotel, Olivia Tremor Control, The Gerbils, Elf Power, and Of Montreal (who are technically "friends of Elephant Six").
In the videos, Robert Schneider plays the bearded scientist who has harnessed the power of space and time and the genius behind The Apples in Stereo, but he is oh so much more than that. He is the also the genius behind the recording and production of the greatest album pressed, Neutral Milk Hotel's Aeroplane Over the Sea (so my love of Neutral Milk Hotel is really showing through here). He also recorded, mixed, produced NMH's On Avery Island, Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk at Cubist Castle, all of The Apples in Stereo's albums and a couple more.
The Apples in Stereo have been playing for nearly 20 years and have continued to stay relevant while still maintaining their original sound. Heavily influenced by the Beach Boys and the Beatles along with some Pink Floyd, they have created their own pysch-power-pop sound.
The video is is fun and funny. Elijah Wood, who runs a record label that is putting out the album, is a great addition in the video. Of course I was also thrilled to see all of the Elephant 6 references (Schneider's t-shirt and the name of the time machine).
