Making a music video these days can be pretty easy, especially with all the technology out there that’s available to the creative minded. But then there are people who are up for a challenge, people like Katarzyna Kijek and Przemyslaw Adamski who decide to make a music video by drawing each and every frame by hand. The video is for the song Pirate’s Life by the band We Cut Corners, which is made up of 1850 marker drawings on paper and took about 2 months to complete. The results are amazing and show that despite all the technology in the world, sometimes it’s still good to do things by hand.
You can see some of the behind scenes work done on Kijek / Adamski’s blog by clicking here.
In 1924, a 26 year old French actor and aspiring director, Rene Clair, was given the opportunity to create a 20 minute short. Sandwiched in the intermission of a new ballet named Relâche, Clair’s debuting act as a filmmaker was presenting Dadaist cinema at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. The resulting work, Entr’Acte, is one of the most ambitious debuts of any film maker I have ever seen. It is Dada absurdity at its best. In attempting to create new art devoid of war, common sense and apathy, Clair’s debut is a provoking examination of culture and societal culture.
Leave it to the Cinematic Orchestra to go back in time and throw a new musical veneer on a classic. This might be one of my favorite things the group has ever released. The original performance of Entr’Acte was silent. In his his understated and iconic style, Erik Satie wrote repetitive motifs to be repeated during the performance. In the process he created an early instance of film scoring, creating themes and loops to be embellished for affect. The Cinematic Orchestra does a great job not only reintroducing the film but staying true to both Clair and Satie’s goals. With a deft melodic touch, the film feels ripped into two parts. The first half rides strings on a loose time sequence to create an aura of ethereal indefiniteness. The second begins a revelatory examination of man’s actions and eventual disappearance through a driving, immaculate instrumental charge. These are a beautiful twenty minutes of film with an excellent score. But the final few minutes? Timeless.
A friend recently tweeted this video for Timothy Blackman’s song Wolves, and I’m certainly glad they did. His style is a mix between old Devendra Banhart, but without quite so much of the weirdness, and the subtlety of The Microphones. You might not get the second reference from watching the video above, but you’ll definitely hear the Devendra-ness to his music. Once you’re done watching the video be sure to listen to his album as well, which I’ve pasted below the video. I listened to it last night and it’s kind of perfect for the changing seasons, definitely has a fall vibe to it.
Ok, so about two months ago Toro y Moi released this really great video for the track How I Know and for some reason it went completely under my radar. The video features three guys who explore a haunted house in the middle of suburbia and it’s a hell of a lot of fun!
Directed by Jordan Kim; the video plays tribute to the goofy horror movies of the late 70s and early 80s and it also adds a healthy dose of Michael Jackson’s Thriller into the mix. Fans of cult horror films might also spot that Kim plays many nice homages to Nobuhiko Obayashi’s classic Hausu and this really adds to the crazy and fun nature of the video. The colors and lighting also really add to the vibe of the piece and they perfectly compliment the late 70′s synthesizer sound of Toro y Moi’s music. How I Know comes from the album Underneath the Pine, which I can imagine will easily be featured in Bobby’s list of Best Albums of the 2011 at the end of the year.
In the past two posts we watched the animated launch of a rocket, we circled around the earth from space, and now we’re visiting the moon with Björk. See what I did there? This is a video for Björk’s new track Moon, off her upcoming album Biophilia. The song is pretty good, a simple melody and her beautiful voice, a thumping bass every now and then. It’s certainly restrained for someone like Björk, but it’s kind of nice. The video though is pretty weird, certainly not the greatest. I do love her costume and makeup though, she looks crazy in the best way, which is in part because of M/M Paris. I hope you enjoyed your journey to space!
There is some mystical quality to Jonti’s music. The musician/producer/songwriter seems to have never lost his desire to find those weird sounds you accidentally create. In his debut, the newest addition to Stones Throw records takes on the whole record himself – playing all the above roles to create a cohesive sonic imbroglio that is Twirligig. Firework Spraying Moon feels like a vignette lacking another verse or a true chorus. It lacks some finality. But in that absence it keeps the listener wanting completion. It’s a subtle pop trick. Keep the audience on their toes.
Quite frankly this video is a psychedelic walk through the fields. An open field with water dripping on a ball, strange lights from the hills, people holding hands underwater. I really can’t explain it and that’s a rare enough occurrence to let you know that you should just watch this music video. It’s an ambitious journey that pays off in the sway of Firework Spraying Moon. Jonti brings an untraceable amount of pop influences into it, sometimes recalling 60s psychadelia, other times 90s shoegaze pop. It’s a beautiful fuzzy blend that is equally as fun to watch.
