WHATEVER I CAN THINK OF//

//BEEN THERE,SEEN THAT.

Music videos are a strange thing.They are a platform for a band to say as much as possible in the littlest of time.They either make an impact and infiltrate our memory our way of looking or they just become another one of a gazillion videos that get sent to the deep downstairs of your brain and eventually just get tossed in the recycle bin because they simply were not remarkable enough to remember.The latter case is what happens to me most of the time...I watch a music video and either lose interest after a few seconds or just close the youtube window because the visuals aren't enticing enough to deserve my patience when loading the video or even the attention span when watching(i know-this sounds arrogant but it's just honest).

Apart from that, music videos seem to make the music industry (concerning established and non-established bands alike) even more of a battle field than it already is.If you have an uninteresting music video than you might as well start posting an add for your instruments in the Junkmail, as that means you will probably end up as one of the million bands to be overlooked.

Hence it is clear that the music video is quite a daunting thing for a band to put out there.
Thus,most bands try to sell themselves by using the latest flashy effects in their videos.Everything from rocking space to mysterious disappearing acts.Seriously though...haven't we become accustomed to these effects?We are no longer fooled into thinking that just maybe this band is really nifty enough to have put foot on space or to randomly disappear into thin air as an 80's audience might have been.We now know that in a music video everything and anything is possible.Therefore one could say we might have just arrived at the posit in time where flashy effects have been exhausted,leaving us disinterested and apathetic.It is nearly more noble for a band to just depict themselves as they are than to try impress by applying a million effects.Isn't it fair to say that the real as become the "abnormal" and the flashy the mundane?

When looking at film,many directors are returning to something that is meant to feel "more real" to us.Something that makes it easier for us to focus on the story and the raw emotion of the tale told rather than becoming distracted by the air of flashiness about it.Perhaps it is the same with music videos?Maybe it is time for the music to become the main focus again and not the "glamour" involved.

Two recent local (South African) video releases have done just that for me.One of them being for the Folktronic group "Fulka" directed by the one and only Louis MInnaar,and the other for the mantra pop ensemble (i think they made up that genre) "A skyline on fire", done by the UK based wunderkids Shotopop.
They are both honest and focus on the music and the feeling induced by the songs rather than trying to make the band suit a certain tag.The talk about more than selling but rather embrace a realism and sense of joy that celebrates the music rather than the image that so often gets involved in music.

here are these two videos for you to enjoy:

FULKA:
go visit band site here: Fulka



a skyline on fire
go visit band site here: a skyline on fire