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22.6.12
Our Top Three Videos Of The Week #8




















Hi there!

Time for more music videos, hell yeah! What about diving into some sort of fantasy music videos? A different kind of fantasy in each of them for very different styles of music, but all of them with a touch a poetry ;)



3) Whale Song - Modest Mouse (Dir. Nando Costa)

I will already start saying I'm not a massive fan of Modest Mouse but I do like some of their music. But the other day I was watching this music video and I must say I absolutely adore it. The music is so good and the music video, even better! I love this kind of music video that has many different things involved in it, many ideas and a great creative brain behind it… and still everything is beautifully connected. The story of this music videos is about: "The visuals follow an artist who enters his personal sanctuary where he is presented with a hand-crafted drawing tool that assists him in materializing his mental impressions…The story progresses to reveal that he is divided between two worlds, one of dull reality and the second of warped memories" according to the statement in their video, which explains a bit about how the story goes. Shot with two RED's so they can take advantage of the 4K size and add movement in post production to produce all the ideas of the film. The director also went to the woods to find special locations to shoot, have a look here

Well, Modest Mouse is an American band from Washington based nowadays in Portland, whose name comes from a story called "The Mark on the Wall"* from Virginia Woolf. Active since 1993, Modest Mouse started writing about loneliness, love and booze (any similarity between all that?). Between 2000 and 2002 Brock the lead singer didn't write about anything because of his broken jaw, making a more experimental album. In 2003 things started to change, they started to become more main stream having their music in TV shows and being nominated for a Grammy for Best Alternative Rock Album.

* "I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises." (Text of "The Mark on The Wall", From: Monday or Tuesday by Virginia Woolf. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1921. - read everything here

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2) This - Modeselektor & Thom Yorke (Dir. Andrew Jones)

So Modeselektor is a German duo more specifically from Berlin. Gernot Bronset and Sebastian Szary started to play in 1996 with a great mixture of electronic music, experimental techno, hip hop, breakbeat, downtempo, chillout, idm, minimalism and much more. But if you'd prefer to understand better what Modeselektor is all about, I'll let you read the description on their website (http://www.modeselektor.com/) by a man called Shilo Urban (but not sure if it is going to help or make them sound even crazier...): "Modeselektor's inarguable grooves seem to emanate from every conceivable musical genre, creating a controlled chaos whose sonic expression elevates the eyebrows and heartbeats of critics and dance floors around the world… and ideas that would soon force music journalists to make up new words: bastard dancehall, euro crunk, acid rap, big bass techno, labstyle, happy metal, psychedelic electro." Yes, they have a unique style for sure, being part of the new era of electronic music, so unique they developed their own software to play with, made in Max/MSP and MIDI controllers. (Talking about equipment, the name "Modeselektor" comes from a function on the Roland RE-201 Space Echo analog delay effects). Thom Yorke has pushed them many times in interviews and gigs, ended up by playing with them here and there since 2009 when Modeselektor supported Radiohead for some gigs around Europe.

This music video was done in a "short film" way, which is a "model" I deeply love because the director can create a much stronger story/script and develop the characters in a more intense way. It's the second video from them that I truly love, the first one can be seen here, it's completely insane! So besides all this the music is very dark (and I honestly love the partnership between them both), there's so much creepiness from all toys used in the film and also so much darkness from the location and art direction. The mixture of real film and 3D/animation is quite interesting but not necessarily the best part of this music video. The reason I chose this music video is because of the care that was taken especially with the art direction, the photography and the edition/grading.

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1) White Nights - Oh Land (Dir. Canada/Partizan L.A.)

Oh Land is Nana Øland Fabricius, a tall beautiful Danish singer-songwriter, daughter of an organist and an opera singer, who is also a ballet dancer and a record producer. Actually, she used to dance ballet until she had an accident and then decided to start making music! She's only been active since 2008 and has already released two albums. All her music is quite electronic pop experimental but with some classic elements, full of rhythm, symphony and dreams. You can listen to something slightly different, less pop and more electronic (which I really liked) full of Oh Land beauty here.

And talking about dreams, this music video was chosen because all the fantasy of dreams matching with reality and synced with the music. I love it because it makes me think of lots of different things, the imagery from Talking Heads, Björk, and CocoRosie. The effort of this music video is immense, I love when the director does everything he imagines while he's listening to the beats and lyrics of the music, and all this gives so much work to art direction and still they executed it beautifully, they really deserve a prize! The idea and the actions are also really well developed. The way it starts is so subtle and also so sweet with the repetitions of the music and action. The development of the many scenarios that are there to come is also very subtle and sweet. Very smart beautiful music video! Another thing I really love is the credits, when someone thinks with care about the credits it makes me really happy and they get all my love and respect. The music is not my favorite but anything with that much of effort, care, beauty and love deserves our attention.

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Let us know what you think and send us some music videos you find amazing too! Love, Lara.

If you'd like to see a bit more of Lara's work for Day Job Records, click here and for her other projects click here