Music People

a roundup of indie music videos with the effervescence of a freshly opened can of seltzer

I ENJOY MUSIC VIDEOS! Here are some that I have enjoyed lately.

"Love Is In The Rain" - Lane
Love me some Lane. "Summer's here and there and everywhere /I can't complain" - yes! Wow, this is their first video—a collage affair directed by the experimental artist Jib Kidder. Lane's Wes Kaplan gave me the scoop on its making and wowee:

"One thing Jib Kidder/Sean Schuster-Craig mentioned was 'whenever I make a video I always uncover a new helpful search phrase. This time it's 'vhs magazine.'" When asked for further comment, he said, 'I have been magnetically pulled to collage in all media for at least 40 years. I have heard it disparaged in a million ways over that time, been encouraged to compare it disfavorably to 'original' works, and hit a lot of walls in trying to work with above ground labels (Asthmatic Kitty got around it by giving me their entire catalog to work with, Domino wanted me to pay the Beach Boys 10k dollars for 5 seconds of drums). My wife is a developmental geneticist and neuroscientist, so I get to eat dinner anyways.

'Tsai Ming-liang says comedy is realism. Similarly, I find appropriation to be a higher resolution method of building on the ideas of others. Reuse is realism. No artist works from scratch. I feel like IP has distorted our idea of what an idea is. I like to dream, I hate to pretend. In a video like this one, I'm trying to make memories that aren't mine mine. I want to use association as a glue in way that matches my storage of memories to blur what is mine and what is not. I do not ignore that advertising is blasted into our memories or that ads are cultivated to be highly memorable. I work very repetitive and I can tell when a memory is failing to root. When that happens I weed. The aim is for it to be confusing, poignant and funny. Reality is confusing, poignant and funny. Confusion and resonance in combination are such a fundamental part of our experience and it's hard to put that into words."

All I have to say to that is...YEAH. YEAHH!!

"It's Behind Me, Now It's Gone" - Krissanthemum
Did you see the premiere of this one? It was on this very blog. Love to premiere a music video on the I Enjoy Music web site. Celebratory psychedelic nouveau-retro harmonic goodness, with a video that's all about freaking out and running around on the beach. Shot on 16mm film, magical.

"Korean Studies" - Campus Seance
I met Esteban from the band at a Richard Pictures show and was thrilled when he started dropping some sick music videos for his band Campus Seance, out of Phoenix Arizona baby. I asked him about the makeup artist he credited on his IG and he said it was...his sister Noelle! [Vin Diesel voice] Family. "Her main hustle for years has been her makeup for weddings and photo shoots. I showed her some early '90s black metal pics and asked if she could do it and she happily obliged. She specifically was drawn to Dead from Mayhem and could see his very specific pattern complement my face." Noelle also contributed vocals on two tracks of the Campus Seance album, Kinda Like a, Yeah. which is out now.

"Swimming Laps" - Sean Gunner Lee
Big ass saxophones and gritty scenes from the L.A. shoegaze/dream pop artist. Sean on the process: "My friend Jules and I filmed that one on Hi8 at the LA 2nd street tunnel at 5am in the morning!" Is there anything better than doing something at 5am before anyone normal is awake and out doing stuff?

Curls Ultra - "Vegas (Mandalay Bay)"
A freaky, funky, garish visual for a lurid torch song. Dig into the full 'behind the video' here.

"Breathe Through Your Hips" - Steve Delamater
Zesty nerd rock with a sleeper pun about AFI somewhere in there. If the music video has cats in it, I am sat. Sat 4 cats.