Friday Night Videos

I was browsing Coudal’s “Fresh Signals” — always a good place to find some link love — and came across a couple of excellent music video links. The first is a music video for Broadcast’s “Tender Buttons.” It’s all done in one take, starting off somewhat horrifically before growing increasingly surreal — what’s with the flaming chairs?!? — before ending up in a place that’s almost serene.

The second is an amazing video for Alva Noto and Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “Trioon I” which translates the song’s melancholy piano notes, glitches, and static beeps and hisses into an array of visuals that are precisely tuned to the song’s musical elements. For example, bright bars of light burst out in time with the piano notes and slowly disappear as the notes fade, growing more diffused as the sounds grow silent.

Obviously, this sort of conceptual video probably wouldn’t work too well for anything other than a minimalist piano/glitch piece. But here, the visuals perfectly convey the fragility and ephemeral nature of the music, which seems to be in a constant state of fading. It actually becomes a fairly melancholy experience, as you are constantly reminded that these beautiful sounds won’t be here for very long.

The video was done by Karl Kleim, who has done a variety of videos under the Dienststelle moniker. A number of his videos have been done as companion pieces for Jan Jelinek’s work, such as this video for “My Favourite Shop,” which looks like a Jeremy Blake painting that has suddenly come to life and taken on human form.

As you go through Kleim’s portfolio, you’ll see he has a thing for pulsing lights (which I can only watch for so long before I get a headache — consider yourself warned).

All videos require QuickTime.