Sigur Rós - Untitled #1 (Vaka)

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.

Yeasayer - Ambling Alp

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.

Nine Inch Nails - Closer

Nine Inch Nails: Closer (Uncensored) (1994) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.


After watching the new Trent Reznor project How to Destroy Angels, I had to post this 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.

How to Destroy Angels - The Space in Between

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.

Quadron - Buster Keaton

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 - Love Rhombus

Lazer Crystal - Love Rhombus from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

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.

Finals are almost over....

I will be back full time on Saturday.

Jeff Mangum performs Neutral Milk Hotel songs after a decade of silence

I keep this post brief.

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

[click below for the videos and links]

Small Black - Despicable Dogs

Dispicable Dogs on Vimeo

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.

Teddybears - Cobrastyle

YouTube version that the stupid record company won't let you embed

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.

Finals Week(s)

Its finals weeks.  I will be back everyday on May 15.

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Under the Bridge

Red Hot Chili Peppers - New Music - More Music Videos

YouTube version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwlogyj7nFE

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.