You know that old adage, “bad things come in threes”? I think 2016 has taken that and multiplied that by 20. We lost yet another legendary artist this week when the great soul singer Sharon Jones lost her battle to pancreatic cancer. Kanye West was also hospitalized “for his own health and safety” after acting pretty erratically all week. The news has been pretty grim as of late, but we’ve still got music! This week, all the good videos come in the theme of “four”.
Earlier this year, Badbadnotgood released their fantastic album, IV. One of the highlights of the album was definitely the instrumental track, “Lavender” which they created with Kaytranada in their home studio called “Studio 69”. Now, they’ve released a video for the track which features the quartet playing a life or death game of Dungeons & Dragons. We even get a little holographic cameo from Kaytranada himself.
If you’ve been sleeping on experimental R&B artist, serpentwithfeet, you are seriously fucking up. His music is absolutely transcendent. The track “four ethers” hits you especially hard with its booming drums and haunting horns and compels you to give it your undivided attention. The video for the track is equally stunning and uses really cool visual effects to capture the atmosphere of the song. The otherworldly movement of the dancers was inspired by the Japanese avant-garde dance form of Butoh. If you like this, I highly recommend that you check out the rest of his debut EP titled blisters.
Former Crush of the Week, PUP, hit us with a music video this week! PUP’s videos are always fantastic, but we were even more stoked to find out that this video for “Sleep in the Heat” is actually a continuation of our favorite video, “Guilt Trip”. The video stars Finn Wolfhard (aka Mike from “Stranger Things”) who plays a younger version of PUP’s singer, Stefan, along with younger versions of the rest of the quartet. The video really captures how difficult it is to be a band on tour, but also all the magical moments like being able to connect with fans across the country. In the video, the band picks up a cute dog that travels along with them in their van, but they soon have to go through some tough situations when their dog gets sick. I’ve got to warn you, this one is definitely a tearjerker. The director, Jeremy Schaulin-Rioux, has collaborated with the band on six music videos prior to this one, and they are all fantastic.
In the past 50 years or so, we’ve seen music evolve in amazing ways with the incredible advancement of technology. More recently though, technology has been advancing faster than ever before and delving into directions like virtual reality and artificial intelligence. It’s exciting to try to anticipate the infinite ways music will evolve alongside with these new advancements. The new 4DSOUND system and 4D.animator are just one example of these technologies that turn this video for Max Cooper’s “Gravity Wells” into more of an experience than a music video. The song was recorded on the 4DSOUND system, which allows the listener to experience sound spatially, and the visuals were made with the 4D.animator, which visualizes the composition. This is a lot more than just panning the sound from left to right. Each component of the song becomes a physical entity and occupies different spaces, near and far, up and down. Listening to this with headphones is a must to get the full experience!
If you’ve ever thought to yourself, “Wow, I wonder what a collaboration between Four Tet and Oneohtrix Point Never would sound like”, the two artists have answered your prayers and then some! Four Tet not only remixed Oneohtrix Point Never’s “Sticky Drama”, but he also made it almost an entire hour long for some reason. Then, Oneohtrix Point Never collaborated with Boiler Room to turn it into a film which starts in the Barbican’s famous concert hall and descends into the pits of the building.
The lovely and multi-talented Qualiatik just released a video for her song “Physicality”. The purple tinted video features three versions of herself that she is constantly trying to reconcile. Although this was her first foray into video production, the result is amazing, proving that she is not only a great musician, but animator and director as well.
7. Bonus ~ Fantastic Four Intro:
I really couldn’t write a post titled Fantastic Four, without a nod to one of the best classic cartoons I used to watch reruns of as a kid: the old 1967 version of the Fantastic Four. Here we get to see our heroes fight some of our favorite villains, like Doctor Doom, Galactus, etc. all to a great jazzy soundtrack.
