As Muse disappear yet further into the supermassive black hole started by Queen, it's comforting to remember that someone once told them self parody might not be such a bad idea... Back in 2006, they were responsible for at least authorising, if not conceptualising one of the most enjoyable music videos in mainstream pop.
Directed by Joseph Kahn, it seems to tread a similar path to Joss Whedon's Firefly, and is every bit the compact, high-gloss fun music videos can sometimes be. (A much higher-res version can be found at the directors website).
If Apparat isn't everything that's good about electronic music at the moment, he's certainly a reminder that it can be meaningful and emotional. Not the sweaty, pilled-up emotion of Soulwax or Justice, but the heart-string plucking kind; the kind that's usually the preserve of a well scored slice of premium cinema.
He started with Orchestra of Bubbles, a collaboration with Ellen Allien in 2006 that hinted at the human behind the techno beat; placing a subtle question mark over the typically soulless nature of electronic music. Then came the solo Walls in 2007, experimenting with downtempo and providing moments of sheer beauty (Useless Information, Arcadia).
Most recently was the collaboration with Modeselektor; Moderat. Initially I was worried the collaboration might see him straying from this living, breathing roboticism and into the more disposable aspects of his collaborators, but it seems the opposite was the case. What the collaboration brought in repetition and structure seemingly amplified the contrast... the industrial and the mechanical, and the emotive.
A friend recently recounted the following; it was a rainy, artistically productive day, and a group of them were sat smoking weed and drawing. Conditions, as Flight of the Conchords stated, were perfect, my friend put on LP highlight Out of Sight and returned to his drawing. When he looked up, he noticed an Australian, shedding a solitary tear.
If you can find it, there's a deluxe edition of the LP that has a second disk with a visual accompaniment, a sort of minimal series of music videos. Again, a hint at how to progress given the dismal future of albums, music videos and budgets in general.
It's hard to tell whether Above Magazine is new, or just under new management... either way the ambitious concept makes for an interesting first issue; it is an ecological publication with an eye on fashion, art, architecture etc. However, articles like the missing link between fashion and fish offer a unique slant, and it's even developed its own fonts to use less ink.
Apparently people were queueing up to collaborate, and some of the editorial (and commercial) imagery is spectacular (see above, shot of fish is previously featured Trent Parke), but I wonder if this will last beyond the maiden voyage, I get the feeling the concept might have been better suited to a book. Sustainability?
While in Milan, I was lucky enough to finally stand in front of some prints of one of my favourite photo series... Hiroshi Sugimoto's 'Theaters'. Aside from being based on a good, old fashioned, stroke-of-genius photographic concept (the lens is open, and the film exposed for the entire length of the film playing), the images are stunning, especially in the inky forest flesh.
There it is again, that symmetry... yet there is something tense and almost frustrating about this series', especially in print; Sugimoto's symmetry is not quite perfect... As a consequence, there is something post-apocalyptic and Lynchian about the atmosphere, sort of 28 Days Later meets Eraserhead...
I've been away, and missing London... all its cliches and eccentricities, whether genuine or well honed. Take for example, oh I don't know... Shoreditch... just off the top of my head. 'The Glasgow Collective' just ran their final exhibition in the basement of Shoreditch Town Hall, a building I've never cast a second glance at.
The basement, as it turns out is a fantastic space; a matrix of deriliction and adventure. The final graduates from The Glasgow School of Art used it to great effect, named it accordingly for the area, and even produced a free paper to sit indigenously alongside The Stool Pigeon, Loud and Quiet and The P.I.X. in your local Vice pub. It's good to be back. There will be more, more often.
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