Paris-Based Video Artists Bring 'Sound & Vision' to Life

While the music video has solidified as an integral part of popular music, in some ways it remains a frustratingly untapped art form. Its potential for expression is often pissed away in favor of serving the vanity of the performer, or bludgeoning the viewer’s baser instincts to death. Innovative crafters in “sound & vision” can be found, however, within the bowels of the Internet.

Pleix, a Paris-based collective of digital artists formed in 2001, has produced a handful of warped and humorous videos for European electronic groups, such as Basement Jaxx, Plaid and Vitalic. Their website is a QuickTime showcase of their award winning videos.

While there, check out “Itsu” which skillfully melds a tale of bio-corporate derangement with a dense and exciting piece from British electronica duo, Plaid. Here's the YouTube clip:



Pleix’s comic stride really comes across, however, in its direction for Groove Armada’s 2007 UK chart-topper “Get Down.” Put on some headphones and try to sit still.

- Matt Squire, Senior Contributing Editor and financial reporter (in his day job)

Pleix

Let’s Get Married in a Big Cathedral by a Priest

Hotel Yorba (White Blood Cells, 2001)
From garage rock, indie darlings to full-fledged rock stars, The White Stripes have indelibly been the most creative force in pure rock n roll in the new millennia. While they have many hard-rockin 1-4-5 tunes – with Jack’s gnarly signature lead licks – the one song that will stand the test of time is Hotel Yorba. A very, very (did we say very?) simple folk romp with a sing along chorus, this tune could very well be an Appalachia folk tune passed down from generation to generation. Enjoy.



White Stripes

Hip Hop's Most Dependable Absurdist

"Predictably Outstanding...Rehab delivers everything we've come to expect from hip-hop's most dependable absurdist — more psychedelic, coke-addled crime fiction spit relentlessly over horny rewired soul samples.”

This quote from New York Magazine’s Vulture Blog perfectly summarizes the Ghostface Killah aesthetic as captured in his new album The Big Doe Rehab.

The beats are jacked-up seventies R&B samples, laid over hard-hitting bass and snares. It is a sound that Wu Tang invented but that Ghostface has taken to new heights with Fishscale, More Fish and now The Rehab Album, all dropped within the last year-and-a-half. The end result is a sound that is both sweet and grimy, like candy that you found on the street.

The lyrics are more graphic than his last two albums. This can be accredited to the artist’s revitalized fame, which has no doubt propelled his decent into the hip-hop underworld of cocaine and ultra-violence. This is best exemplified in track number 4, Walk Around, which is a recount of an execution-style shooting at a bodega in New York City, and the subsequent getaway:

Flashbacks of me blowin' his brains out,
All I remember's my shirt, I couldn't get them goddamned stains out
Oxy cleans weak 'round the chest area, Right hand side,
I'm pluckin' off li'l pieces of meat…

While the rants on The Big Doe Rehab do not reach the levels of absurdity characteristic of albums such as Bulletproof Wallets, Ghostface breaks out the crazy with versus like:

G4 Jets with like three or four pets,
That’s bats, chickens and hens all the same sex…
Walk through the Amazon spilling Don Moet,
To find my way back I have to leave a trail of baguettes…

The Big Doe Rehab is a solid album from a solid artist who is keeping east coast hip-hop alive nearly a decade after its prime.

- Andrew Hoffman, Contributing Editor, Sound & Vision

I Don’t Think I Will Ever Return Again, My Friend

What Deaner Was Talking About (Chocolate & Cheese, 1994)
Ween is simply one of the greatest, versatile, hilarious, disturbing bands of all time. Fronted by faux-brothers Dean and Gene Ween, these guys definitely have the chops to write chart-topping songs that would send that cheese-ball John Mayer back to Connecticut. However, they choose not to. Instead we are regaled with scatological songs in a country/western, nautical, heavy-metal, folk (pretty much every genre) theme that are beautiful, thrilling and jarring – all in one.

“What Deaner was Talking About” is the second to the last track on Ween’s highly acclaimed (in my top 5) album, Chocolate & Cheese. The song is a pop respite at the end of a musical journey lined with songs about Philadelphia, AIDS, sick horses, fiestas and spinal meningitis. The melody could easily have come from the great Paul McCartney. If the combined key board/guitar solo – which matches the melody – does not put a smile on your face, then you have serious problems. The meaning of the song is unclear, but the staff at Sound & Vision have a loose hypothesis: it’s about a psychedelic hangover. Check out this post-rehab live clip.

Bruises That Won't Heal

No Surprises by Radiohead (OK Computer, 1997)
Before we dive into this song, EVERYONE must go out and buy, download or burn this album now. Clearly one of the greatest of all time…stay tuned for an in-depth feature on the power of OK Computer.

For now, we will focus on “No Surprises.” A slower song with a mix of melody, xylophones and beautiful Rickenbacker riffs, combined with lyrics of alienation and loss that make the truth even more painful to accept. Our capitalistic, digital age is too much to bear for some, and Thom Yorke hits it with the line, “no alarms and no surprises, silence.” This video is the perfect rendering of the song…Thom Yorke wearing a glass helmet that fills up with water represents how many of us are drowning in a sea of deadlines, emails and power-commutes that can be soul crushing.

I Need You to Please Explain the War

I Feel Just Like A Child by Devendra Banhart (Cripple Crow, 2005)
A cosmic visionary with an unprecedented, unhinged and often-hilarious approach to song writing, Devendra Banhart is our guy. If the world had more artists like him, we would be living in a much more, peaceful, fun and karmic environment. We are currently recruiting an army of Devendra Banharts to take over the world. Please join the movement!

“I Feel Just Like A Child” is Devendra’s seminal tune that offers an amazing rhythmic stomp – in a 12 bar blues progression – with a vocal warble that evokes the sounds of the 1920s and 1930s and laugh-out-loud lyrics about how he’s stuck in a perpetual state of arrested development. “From being my daddy’s sperm to being packed in a urn, I am a child” and “from sucking on my mommy’s breast until they lay my toes to rest, I am a child,” are the two lines that sold me – completely.

Here’s an awesome live clip of the tune. I hope you enjoy the dancing hippie.

A Hand Shake is Worthy...

Harborcoat by REM (Reckoning, 1984)
Here’s our first editorial caveat. The Sound & Vision staff are huge fans of early REM. You will see many future postings on the power and glory of REM’s IRS years. From Chronic Town through Document, we will cover it all.

The lead track from their 1984 classic, Reckoning, is an amazing song for many reasons. From Peter Buck’s signature Rickenbacker guitar jangle – many a guitarist, me included, have yet to nail that exact sound – to Mike Mill’s resound bass lines, combined with Michael Stipe’s cryptic lyrics taps into something so primal, so mysterious, so REM. “They crowded up to Lenin with their noses worn off.” What does that mean? Who knows…in fact, we don’t want to know. It would ruin the mystic. Here’s a classic YouTube clip of their video of the song from the 1987 REM Succumbs video. Enjoy

How Do They Do It?

We all have our collection of favorite songs. Whether it bring us back to a different time, inspires, evokes sadness or longing, or just has a great beat. The best songs have a unique combination of rhythm, melody and storytelling/concepts that stirs us on an emotional and cognitive level.

Our first official blog post for Sound & Vision dives in head first and showcase some of our favorite songs (from the collective wisdom of the Sound & Vision staff). While this analysis is completely subjective, we are confident – if we look at these songs from the concepts highlighted above – these hit the mark. All comments welcome!

Don’t You Wonder Sometimes?

Yes. I wonder all the time. The confluence of music, art and the creative process is an astounding phenomenon of our human condition. Sound & Vision was created to be a forum for discussing, analyzing and enjoying the beauty and power of music and art. Welcome. While we can never fully understand where and how music and the creative process works, I hope this blog will bring us closer to the answers. I hope you enjoy.

Matt
Editor in Chief

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