UVB-76, in collaboration with Squeaky Wheel's TechArts for Girls Program, recently released a new music video for their song "2 if by Sea." Squeaky Wheel's TechArts for Girls Program has been running since 1999 and is"a community action project that encourages girls from the city of Buffalo and Erie County to receive an affordable hands-on education in computers, technology and media literacy." As part of the advanced experimental video workshop, led by teaching artist, Alice Alexandrescu, a group of students listened to the song and then collaborated with UVB-76 to produce the video with a green screen and a collection of found footage. Students individually edited the footage and collectively compiled the final video. With everyone donning UVB-76's trademark white hazmat suits, the duo and the girls dance around the shifting images on the green screen. The result is a fun video that captures both the song and the overall playful aesthetic of UVB-76's consistently inventive and inspiring music.
Buffalo hip-hop duo Network is a collaboration between Derek Sullivan and rapper Quinton Brock that combines progressive production with insightful lyricism to achieve a fresh sound that pushes genre boundaries. The first single from the pair, "Chocolate Milk," features crisp drum production, smooth flows and introspective lines set to a mellow instrumental and can be downloaded for free on their bandcamp page. Today, the video for the track was released and follows Brock as he sips on chocolate milk, runs through a snowy field, and ends up in on a beach before wandering the streets with his beverage of choice in hand. With impressive visual work and production, it's liable to be one of the most creative hip-hop videos you've seen in recent memory. Check out the clip below.
This past Saturday, Essex St. Pub hosted a local music video showcase, featuring clips from some of Buffalo's best acts. One of those acts, dark garage rockers, JOHNS, debuted the video to their song "No One's Watching," a cut from their excellent cassette House of Wrongheads. The layering of all of the band members reminds me of that scene in Ghostbusters II where Vigo the Carpathian tries to transport himself into baby Oscar.
As for Bourbon and Coffee, the Jeff Mace directed video for the beat poetry/jazz troupe's "Magic Mushroom" follows frontman Ian Be strolling through a parking garage and storage basement until he joins his band. The single tracking shot is a nice nod to Goodfellas by the way. Be spits some spoken word onto the audience before being attacked (?) by some black clad folks. Both videos can be viewed below.
Today is Halloween and that means "Monster Mash," inappropriate costumes, freak outs, and a customary Halloween list of whatever. This list is of "scary" music videos to get you in the mood... the mood for what I don't know, and I don't want to know because I am washing my hands of this. Any psychotic breaks/episodes/sprees this list might induce are entirely on you. You've been warned. Pink Floyd: "Careful With That Axe, Eugene" This actually qualifies as "scary" straight up because Roger's psychotic shriek still shivers my timbers 20+ years after the first time it seriously freaked me the ____ out. Here in the Floyd's legendary "Live at Pompeii" he shrieks for 25 seconds, I don't know how long he shrieks on the version that appears on Ummagumma, the version that freaked me out during sixth period at ___'s house.
David Bowie and Frank Black: "Scary Monsters & Super Creeps" This is the music blog trifecta: Bowie, Black Francis, and the word "scary" is in the song title.
Radiohead: "There, There" I'd like to say this is included because it's trippy and weird, but mostly it's because our man Thom Yorke catches a bad one at the end, and for a music blog with standards, there's nothing scarier than a world without Radiohead.
Meatloaf: "I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)" Nuff said. This epic awfulness, this shameless ode to trite pablum, will haunt you for days. I could have linked to the Loaf's recent immoral annihilation of "America The Beautiful," but that would have been wrong.
Justin Bieber with Selena Gomez: "One Less Lonely Girl" If this doesn't make your blood run cold, Jebus help you because everything that is wrong with the world can be traced back to this unholy union of abject YouTube rubbish and the frankly alarming premature sexualization of our nation's little girls. I don't care if Selena Gomez is 20, looking at her makes me feel wrong, indecent, and unclean; and just embedding this link made my eyes bleed. Two of the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are already riding, folks.
So, it was a slow week for the Listener and I did not find anything that grabbed my attention. However, for some unknown fortuitous reason, several music videos, all coming from some of my favorite albums this year and last were released . Readers of this blog, and our ongoing column "Picking Up the Slack for MTV," should already be well aware that the music video did not die with MTV switching to an all "original programming" format, but that there are still quite a few enjoyable videos being released. So, in the spirit of mixing things up, here is a special music video edition of "Listener's Digest."
The Sea and Cake - "Harps:" Off this year's excellent Runner, the Sea and Cake's "Harp" is a great distillation of the veteran band's overall style. The video captures the song's twinge of nostalgia by going with a 70's motif as two girls wander a seemingly abandoned and idyllic town collecting field recordings.
Wild Nothing - "Paradise:" There is a surprising local connection for this video, which at one point features Michelle Williams wandering Niagara Falls and going on the Maid of the Mist. Another video that visually captures the tone of Wild Nothing's music and which also suggests a slight retro dimension with the brief appearance of a walkmen, "Paradise" follows a lone Michelle Williams around from airport to airport. Midway through, Williams reads a brief passage from Iris Murdoch's novel, A Word Child.
LA Vampires and Maria Minerva - "Seasons Change:" Off the forthcoming collaboration LP between the two artists, "Seasons Change" is an airy and haunting track that suddenly crystallizes into a dance song half way in with the introduction of a tinny synth driven groove. I am kind of cheating here since I really wanted to put this song in the column a last week but failed to see it in time. It is really an intriguing song and the video - which looks to have been shot on a $10 budget, follows the two electronic artists around a sun drenched Los Angeles.
M83 - "Steve McQueen:"Apparently, M83 is really into psychic children as the two videos before this ( "Reunion" and "Midnight City") all featured psychic children. In this video, a yellow suited kid creates a large scale lawn display using his wits and apparent ability to bring electronic circuitry along with all sorts of inanimate objects to life. You have to wonder where the neighbors are, or the parents, or anyone really. Pretty much all of today's videos feature, in some way, solitary individual(s) wandering empty landscapes. Where did everyone go?
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