Drag City YouTube
A few years ago, I'd come to the conclusion that videos were a dead art amongst indie artists. The chances of getting playtime on MTV or making a big 'breakthrough' without a massive budget video appear almost infinitely small these days and I'd just assumed that indie labels had found better places to spend their money.
Clearly Drag City didn't get the memo, though. This video for the new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy single, "Cursed Sleep", is everything that a video is supposed to be: a standalone narrative that's edited using the musical cues of the song (rather than an attempt to literally describe what's going on in the song itself) in order to create something far more than just images with a song playing in the background. It helps that this song is so fucking good, as well. It makes me very, very excited about the "The Letting Go" album.
But, as a cursory YouTube search will show, Drag City has been making amazing videos for a long time. I mean, this Smog video starring Chloe Sevigny is one of my favourite videos I've ever seen. Using a much less abstract narrative approach than the "Cursed Sleep" video, it manages to allude to a larger story using only a few mundane scenes in the life of a hotel maid.
This Joanna Newsom video is much more conventional than the above two, but I've always wanted to see what these songs looked like played live. I figure that this is a much more visually satisfying video of Newsom playing than some of the bootleg concert performances out there on YouTube because it manages to achieve a pretty good mix of showing the artist just playing the song while keeping the video visually interesting, especially with the 360 camera work and chalkboard animations.
And finally there's this amazing mashup of Planet of the Apes and the Silver Jews song "Punks In The Beerlight". Don't try to tell me that Charlton Heston wasn't the image that popped into your head the first time you heard this song. This is awesome on so many levels.
[I just realized that each of these four artists put out one of my top ten favourite albums of the past decade. Seriously, Drag City is one of the few record labels out there that actually make the concept of 'record label' mean much of anything. Go out and buy that shit.]
Clearly Drag City didn't get the memo, though. This video for the new Bonnie 'Prince' Billy single, "Cursed Sleep", is everything that a video is supposed to be: a standalone narrative that's edited using the musical cues of the song (rather than an attempt to literally describe what's going on in the song itself) in order to create something far more than just images with a song playing in the background. It helps that this song is so fucking good, as well. It makes me very, very excited about the "The Letting Go" album.
But, as a cursory YouTube search will show, Drag City has been making amazing videos for a long time. I mean, this Smog video starring Chloe Sevigny is one of my favourite videos I've ever seen. Using a much less abstract narrative approach than the "Cursed Sleep" video, it manages to allude to a larger story using only a few mundane scenes in the life of a hotel maid.
This Joanna Newsom video is much more conventional than the above two, but I've always wanted to see what these songs looked like played live. I figure that this is a much more visually satisfying video of Newsom playing than some of the bootleg concert performances out there on YouTube because it manages to achieve a pretty good mix of showing the artist just playing the song while keeping the video visually interesting, especially with the 360 camera work and chalkboard animations.
And finally there's this amazing mashup of Planet of the Apes and the Silver Jews song "Punks In The Beerlight". Don't try to tell me that Charlton Heston wasn't the image that popped into your head the first time you heard this song. This is awesome on so many levels.
[I just realized that each of these four artists put out one of my top ten favourite albums of the past decade. Seriously, Drag City is one of the few record labels out there that actually make the concept of 'record label' mean much of anything. Go out and buy that shit.]
posted by ian at 9:03 AM
3 Comments:
well said about drag city. i'm sure there is another label as carefully selective as DC, but i have not found it yet. and that the monthly newsletter is funny adds something, too. have you ever noticed how humorless the people at merge are? (i say it's no coincidence.)
Bonnie Prince Billy is Kes!
...and some US Maple stuff here....
http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=HardeyeFilms
Post a Comment
<< Home