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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
Another cover of a female pop artist was released yesterday and I feel compelled to talk about it. This video is a promo for the FOX musical television show Glee. In case you are you have been out of the loop, Glee is a new show about a struggling glee club in a small Midwestern town and it is one of the most watched shows in the United States.
After watched the first couple episodes of Glee, I said, "This show is too good to be on television. It will never make it through a season on FOX." I had good reasons to think Glee would get canceled:
1. Network television tends to prematurely cancel anything with a unique concept that don't fit the well established tv format (with the exception of Lost). Shows like Arrested Development, Freaks and Geeks, Twin Peaks, and My So-Called Life get canceled but shows like Baywatch, The Nanny, Step by Step, Life According to Jim, and hundreds of pointless reality shows go on for five, ten, even fifteen season.
3. Glee doesn't know what it wants to be. It has the cheesy and wholesome feel of High School Music with the quirky and controversial feel the film Election. Really, Glee is just a television version of Election with songs thrown in. It has some of the same characters, the same voice-overs, the same focus on student and faculty interactions. The creators of Election should really be suing, be I hope they don't because the reason I watch Glee is for its the Election-like qualities.
I couldn't have been more wrong about the failure of this show. Glee is everyone's new favorite show.
