Digital Good Time II

Digital Good Time II
(Digital Good Time is a series in which xoxobra focuses on the visual arts of music)

If retro garage rock duo the Raveonettes and motion graphics studio Blind have one thing in common, it's the knack for releasing awesome music videos. So it's only natural that the two got together for this project for the Gap clothing store called Sound of Color. Here, the Raveonettes provide the music for "Black and White". How this video advertises clothing I have no idea, but visually it's quite sexy. Blind combined a mixture of different media to create the video, most interesting is the use of shadow puppetry shot behind a translucent vellum sheet. They complete the movements by nesting the characters in After Effects and animating them at the joints, then compositing them on top of each other. Here are some stills from the pre-production and production stages:

Style frame to establish the final look.

Owl sketch.

Shot of how the vellum screen was set up...

...and a couple of shots of the screen as the puppetry was filmed, both here...

...and here.

Check out Blind's website for more behind-the-scenes shots on this process, which includes all the scenes above plus storyboards and more. And here's the result of all of their hard work:



This is only one of 5 advertisements done by five different directors. The Blakes, Swizz Beats, Dntel, and Marié Digby were the other 4 artists involved in the project, all of whom worked with different colors.

Links:
The Raveonettes
Blind

Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008)

Sigur Rós - Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (2008)

Takk was an album that had a handful of some of the best songs Sigur Rós has ever recorded somewhat marginalized by a handful of some of the worst. Because of this, what was otherwise a smooth transition from epic sad music to upbeat pop songs was viewed as a step back for the band. With Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust (I've yet to even bother trying to pronounce this, and in future conversations will just refer to it as "the newest one" or "the one with the naked dudes on the cover.") they don't seem to try to reinvent themselves as much as they try to do Takk again the right way. An effort that, for the most part, has mixed results.

"Goobledigook" sets the tone for the first half of the album and feels like a natural transition from the sound established on Takk. And just to make sure you're aware that their new sound is here to stay, at three minutes long, it's their shortest song with lyrics but is still loaded with the most beats per minute of anything they've previously done. Surprisingly, it doesn't feel too out of character. Though there are Animal Collective comparisons floating around, no one familiar with the band would mistake this for anyone but Sigur Rós. The following three songs are nice enough but fail to make much of an impression. In comparison to similar songs from Takk like "Hoppípolla" and "Gong", they don't really stand out or give you goosebumps; they merely transition and move the album along. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing as it works well for the album experience as a whole, but I can imagine skipping them on a randomized playlist.

What Með suð does better than Takk, though, are with the longer songs. While Takk's longer tracks -- outside of the excellent "Sé Lest" -- suffered from being too formulaic for their own good, Með suð's longer songs, including "Festival" and "Ára bátur," don't fall off track so easily. The difference isn't necessarily in the formula, as the crescendo's are quite predictable, but simply in the fact that they don't sound as forced and tacked on (pun avoided; +10 points to xoxobra).

The latter half of the album slows the flow down considerably, for the most part abandoning the upbeat sound of the first half. It may annoy people who wish the band would do something different and stick with it, but I'm fine with the Sigur Rós that goes for achingly beautiful sounds. By doing so, they compromise and give both types of fans what they want.

As mentioned above, this albums works best when listened to all together, which will lead to vastly different opinions on how good or bad the album is. To put it in concrete terms: I don't think they'll ever make another album as good as Ágætis Byrjun (probably one of my top three of all time), and they don't get much closer with this one. But still, I'm not going to fault them for at least trying to move forward.

Score: 6/10


"Gobbledigook"


"Fljótavík"

Notes: Count Bass D; Sigur Rós

Greetings friends. Just a couple of notes for the week ahead. First, I'd like to bring attention to Count Bass D's (who's album, Dwight Spitz, I reviewed earlier this month) new instrumental project, Robbed Without A Pistol, that he featured on his blog just last week. It can be downloaded at 320kbps from the link on the entry page. He's releasing a new album later this year called L7 (Mid-Life Crisis). Which I'll likely be checking out.

I'm going to a concert tomorrow night for the band Sigur Rós. Maybe I'll review it and maybe I'll take some pictures and post them in the future. It's probably because I'm getting older, and also probably because I'm actively trying to practice something resembling financial responsibility, but I'm not very big on concert going lately. If this were four years ago and I was seeing Sigur Rós live I'd be pissing myself with excitement right now. As a matter of fact, I did see them four years ago and I was pissing myself with excitement (not literally; mom wouldn't be proud). Of course, four years ago I had a lot more time on my hands and Sigur Rós were still recording classic material.

But they do put on a good live show, and I figure this could be the last opportunity I have to see them (considering next time they come through I might not even care). I'm just hoping they play a good mix of their earlier material.

To coincide with the concert, I'll post my review of their latest album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, tomorrow.

G'day, folks.

Links:
Count Bass D
Sigur Rós

Digital Good Time I

Digital Good Time I

(Digital Good Time is a series in which xoxobra focuses on the visual arts of music)

When I started to pursue my degree in Visual Effects & Motion Graphics, I did so with the dream that one day I would one day be making music videos. Though the unpredictable nature of life has pushed that dream back somewhat (hopefully temporarily?), I've maintained a great interest and appreciation for the visual side of music, so I wanted to start a recurring feature in which I post some of the more visually stunning music videos, shorts, and album artwork that I've seen recently.

First is a short called "Blissful", done by the motion graphics studio Left Channel. This is over two years old, but it still blows my mind. Using excerpts of Fantomas' 74-minute album/song Delirium Cordia, the black and white short makes excellent use of negative space in 3D to create a rather creepy environment. Also, I single-handedly credit this for getting me into Fantomas. Here's a YouTube link, but this really deserves to be enjoyed in all its clarion, non-pixelated-YouTube-FLV glory at the website:

Next is a music video. Can't say I'm much interested in Solange's sophomore album, but the video for her single, "I Decided", is awesome. Directed by Melina Matsoukas through Black Dog Films, the overall look resembles 60's-style pop art, complete with cut outs layered over highly Technicolor gradients and halftone circle patterns. Familiar pop culture references and images from the past 40 years a flash throughout, many of them related to icons of protest and revolution, such as Che Guevara, the Civil Rights marches, and the Tommy Smith/John Carlos black power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympics.

The visuals seem to have little or nothing to do with the song lyrics, and the entire thing comes off like a high budget rip ripoff of an M.I.A. video, but it really is well done. And, to give credit where credit's due, the song itself isn't bad. You can almost convince yourself that she actually had some creative control.

Links:
LeftChannel
Black Dog Films

Trees - Lights Bane (2008)

Trees - Lights Bane (2008)

What's with this trend of the 30-minute doom album? Who resurrected this? Did the guilty party feel that doom fans had long been spoiled by the doom records that stretched easily past the one hour mark on a consistent basis (the Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, if you will) and figured that our greedy doom-loving asses had had too much for too long? Or were their intentions more noble, feeling that doom had come to a point where it was getting too overblown, and figured some fans would welcome a more streamlined doom album? The answer is likely that I'm reading way too much into this and have just wasted several seconds of your time. But if it wasn't obvious at this point, Light's Bane, at 27-minutes, is yet another entry into the "doom LP's that feel more like EP's" category.

And of course it's good, otherwise it's length wouldn't be a problem. Comparisons of Trees to the now defunct Khanate are more than valid. The music is just as intense, slow, and suffocating. Vocalist L. Smith's delivery isn't quite as memorable as the shrieks and growls that came out of Alan Dubin, but it does the job. I found myself wishing that the changes in the songs were slightly less subtle. At first it was easy to miss the variations and have the whole thing sound like one jumbled mass of noise and screams, but I did begin to recognize the nuances and started to "get" the songs after repeated listens. It's a minor complaint, and may have more do to with my own listening habits than any flaw on the band's part.

Still, I keep coming back to the length. Even though I'm trying to judge the album based on the music that's actually there, it's difficult not to think of the music that isn't. As if it's expecting something to follow it, "Black" lacks the climactical quality that an album closer should have, so when it ends it's hard to shake the feeling that a third song should be starting. But alas, your (insert music playing device of choice) tells you a different story. And as a result, Lights Bane comes off like a teaser trailer before the real show starts, though it's tantalizing enough to build anticipation for what's next.


Score: 6.5/10


"Nothing" (excerpt)

Metal Friends?

Two recent events have convinced me that I need more metal friends. By that I of course mean friends who listen to and can discuss metal music (not cyborgs, although I wouldn't mind that so much either). The first event came last weekend when I ran into some old college friends after I had left a local record shop. After brief introductions and small talk, they asked about the CD's in my hand. I had picked up Daedelus' Love To Make Music To (review forthcoming), which I described as electronica, as well as one called Radiance of Shadows: one of the two billion albums by the band Nadja that, at that point, I had yet to hear (review also forthcoming). My immediate reaction was to describe Nadja as drone doom metal and leave it at that, but then my common sense kicked in and remembered that most people have no idea what that is, so I simplified:

Me: "It's like....drone....metal."

Yes! Brilliant! Drop the "doom" and they'll totally know what the hell I'm talking about!....right?

College friends: "....drone metal?"

Of course they didn't. So my fiancee chimed in and managed to eventually change the subject, which was probably for the best.

The second event was the discovery of this picture:

(He's madly in anger with you)

Yeah, I know it's old (so three weeks ago!), but I didn't find it until last week because I'm usually pretty late with these kinds of things. As was the case with most people that know what it's referencing, I laughed out loud and kept laughing probably long after I should not have found it funny anymore. Immediately I wanted to tell someone about it who would care so that we could both share a laugh and maybe they could make fun of me for not having seen it sooner (because only on the internet can having a life outside of the internet be used as an insult both ways), but I came up blank.

I have friends and acquaintances that I can talk to about pretty much every other form of music I listen to besides metal. Psych rock? Yup. Old school rap and R&B? Uh huh. Jazz? Surprisingly. General weird, unclassifiable shit? Sorta. Indie? I can throw a rock in any direction from where I'm sitting and hit someone who can talk about indie bands. But metal? None. I used to work with a couple of guys who's knowledge (and collection) of metal dwarfed mine and anyone that I knew or have known since, but we didn't keep in touch after I quit the job.

I think the main thing I miss is having someone open-minded to talk to about music. Most of the people I've known who were into metal had very broad musical pallets that didn't end with metal. Whereas it's always been a stereotype (and with good reason) that metal fans only care about metal and think that everything else is, shall I say, "fuckin' gay!!!1", my experience has been that people who were fans of metal have always been the most open-minded about all forms of music. Bringing up metal in any conversations these days, though, I usually find myself having to defend it.

It's not really as big of a deal as I'm making it, I suppose. But it is nice being able to say "stoner doom" without having to explain himself.

Dengue Fever - Venus On Earth (2008)

Dengue Fever - Venus On Earth (2008)

I'm glad Dengue Fever are getting more popular. I can tell this because a Google search for their name actually brings up the band's MySpace near the top of the page, directly below images and information on the actual disease. That's a huge step up from a couple of years ago when they were delegated to the ass end of the search results.

So they have this new album now, and it's not too shabby. The band gives us more Cambodian-flavored pop music with a number of songs performed in singer Chhom Nimol's native language, Khmer. The really exotic, somewhat snaky intonation of the language on top of her already beautiful voice gives the music real flavor, so much so that when singer/guitarist Zac Holtzman contributes English vocals on a few tracks, the album tends to falter. Which raises the question: why ruin a good thing? Nimol is one of the most unique voices in modern rock. Holtzman, while not a bad singer by any means, would better serve the band by sitting back and letting her do her thing.

Musically, Venus on Earth maintains an upbeat pop tempo with a surf rock/spy music kind of feel. Personally, I was hoping for a little more progression into the psychedelic territory they've explored previously. Instead, they've given us more of the same and taken no significant steps forward or backward, which is both good or bad depending on how you approach it. The hooks are still there, so I'm happy. They aren't as huge as they were on their last album, but trying to outdo those hooks would've been asking too much, and I'm just not that selfish. It's good music nonetheless. Interested parties should check out the band's previous album Escape From Dragon House first, though, and then give this one a shot if you're left wanting more.

Score: 7/10


"Clipped Wings"


"Laugh Track"