This is a music video directed by Ian Bucknole. This might sound weird but I’ve never met him. OK that in itself doesn’t sound weird. But how about this… I’ve met his wife briefly on another video shoot I was directing. Sorry that actually sounds weirder than it’s meant to. Let me set the record straight… I was shooting a film about gardening. I also know another filmmaker who has worked with Ian. She speaks very highly of him. Anyway to cut to the chase, I’m not posting his latest music video in the hope that he’ll ask me to work with him on a project in the future. OK yes I am. But it’s also a bloody good song, and video.
Stop the Press. I’ve been mocked in public by our hickory nines founder! Having recently reignited my love for the band Little Dragon in a big way, the slightly tongue in cheek remark from Mr H Nines himself of “old news” appeared on my all new facebook timeline (which, by the way, has made my life seem eventless since birth!) Knowing full well how to hit this new music obsessive where it hurts, I’m here to post some “old” but nevertheless incredibly well executed rhythmical Swedish dream pop for your listening pleasure. Obsession is for life!
My hat was not only taken off but thrown to the ground in delight when this music video hit my eyeline and lugholes. With a pomposity not straying to the wrong side of pretentious, or maybe the right side of pretentious. Either way, It’s a treat!
Alex Winston – White Blank Page (Mumford and Sons cover)
Cai’s earlier post about Alex Winston’s cover of the Black Keys is excellent. I was reminded of her version of Mumford and Son’s ‘White Blank Page’. Here it is. Enjoy.
Continuing with the theme from yesterday’s post; I’ve always found it interesting that the music selected to accompany a travelogue or the surf action can make or break a surfing video. Of course much is down to ‘the ear of the beholder’ and our own personal tastes but if the music matches the visual style, the weather, ocean state and surfing sequences then all so much the better.
ACL Production’s video ‘Matt Meola FINAL’ uses David Guetta’s ‘Open Your Eyes’ to excellent effect for Matt’s above the lip surfing. You hear the track before the images appear and you just know the surfing is going to be explosive.
Matt Meola FINAL by ACL Productions. Released October 2009.
The remixed ‘Collect Call’ by Metric works really well with the surfing in Peter Devries ‘A winter day’ video. The excellent film editing and synchronisation of the track neatly brings the surfing and music together; it simply flows.
A winter day by Peter Devries. Released January 2012.
And for your listening pleasure here are both tracks courtesy of SoundCloud;
Open Your Eyes – David Guetta. From the album Guetta Blaster, released June 2004.
Collect Call – Metric (Adventure Club Dubstep Remix), released December 2011.
I am hiding in a bush, deep in a Buckinghamshire forest. It is about four in the morning. There are several hundred people about, but I am safe, sitting down, hidden by the foliage. I can see feet and legs walking past. There are a lot of shouts and screams. The noise of an illegal early 90′s rave, deep in the woods is raw, anarchistic and throbbing with acid house. There are a lot of very high people, especially me. I have been trying to work out just how high I can get over the last few months, and this is a culmination. I am having a very psychedelic moment. What hasn’t helped is that I’ve been told that someone has been shot, by the lorry trailer that is being used as a stage. It hasn’t stopped the music, but there is a very weird vibe going on. I am too high, I have taken a microdot every half an hour for the past three hours, I thought I’d keep on coming up. I’d better sit down.
Soon I have to lie down and I let the light and shadows and footsteps and sounds wash into a maelstrom of emotion. Time, slip, slips and that distant dissonant beat is my heart. Then I hear a slow jangled fuzz with overdubbed throat singing. It is late and the dj’s have put on an album called ‘Chill Out’ by the KLF. Of course I don’t know this, and I am taken on an aural journey ‘all the way down the East Coast’ to a deep south Louisiana. There are trains, bleating goats, Elvis and Acker Bilk drifting through the forest. My heart slows from a rabbits pace to a slow steady metronome. When the beat eventually develops I have slowed my breathing down to a manageable level. Some forty minutes later as the dawn light starts to thread through the trees the album finishes and I climb out of the bush and wander back to where I left my car. It is a summer morning, it is a new day.
The KLF’s Chill Out arrived in the spring of 1990 and by that summer was already being feted as a huge underground classic. It was the beginning of a whole ambient sound. I would say it is one of the great vinyl masterpieces, which is ironic as the KLF always liked to be seen as musical swindlers. The KLF deleted their entire back catalogue in 1992.
Drummond said this about the album: That’s a very English thing and it has the vibe of the rave scene over here. When we’re having the big Orbital raves out in the country, and you’re dancing all night and then the sun would come up in the morning, and then you’d be surrounded by this English rural countryside… we wanted something that kind of reflected that, that feeling the day after the rave, that’s what we wanted the music for.
Writing this has made my palms sweat. One thing it taught me as I started to DJ was that all performances are about taking people on a journey. Cauty and Drummond certainly did that for me, and in homage, here’s a few minutes of a quick mix I made, I’m sorry for the weirdness, but well, you know…
I’m not a musician, but I can imagine it’s easy to murder a good Black Keys number. Alex Winstonhasn’t. She’s not strayed far from the original, but she’s de-bearded it and made it her own.