Mid week video round up

Iyaz, the frontman for my proposed racially diverse boyband, the sugar thugs, gets in to the summer vibe with his new cool island video for a groan worthy pun song. It's got all the hallmarks, except for the 'tropical' lyrics. He might well be from the dominican republic or something like that (no, not going to the wikipedia page.), but some astute record executive should have realised that the video made this a coll island song to warm our hearts, and should have (1) pina colada or fruit reference...



The youtube comments for this are grumpy about this song sounding somewhat like Ace of Base's 'Don't Turn Around' as if Ace of Base is a paragon of originality, no one's commented on ABBA's Fernando, which is name checked. But what I really want to know, what's the video going to be like? Subject matter, etc. seems to point to a bolero jacket made from garbage bags and Gaga in a bloddy bullfighting match. Can't wait!

April fool's day is now approved by major corporations

I've seen no pranks whatsoever by real people today, but hundreds of youtube video's, etc. by those brave defenders of comedy, the marketeers. Welcome to the new age of boring wackiness, with tons of bland comedy and lack of interest. Not that relying on the organised wackiness of your friends and family wasn't often gut-wrenchingly awful, but at least there was the possibility of someone spectacularly missing the point or doing something awful and inappropriate. Another monocultural milestone crumbles...

Musical hairsplitting makes your life easier..

Thanks to the genius of music writers, I can now identify the two musical trends I love and loathe by easy labels. Kindercore is a label name but feels like it should be the name of the twee 'movement'. Owl City fits the definition but it also includes Belle and Sebastian and weirdly the Smiths, which I like. I can assume that's a bit of absurd bombardment of influences to forerunners, since for me at least, the whole point of the Smiths is the palatable lack of sincerity. Unfortunately for the label, which has a quite a few acts that I don't mind I'll never be able to identify them with anything else but this shit:



On the positive side is stuff like new young pony club, alphabeat, etc. Now collected under the name 'Wonky Pop'. Terrible name, but at least I can use it as a search term. Even if I've never heard of the band, it's become a reliable way of identifying what I like. Most of the DJ's doing the remixes are people left standing after 'electroclash' failed to become the next rock 'n roll. I couldn't think of a better recommendation.



If you want to make a sweet song, at least make it fast and danceable.

Cheap effects

I inadvertently flicked through the space battle at the beginning of Star Wars episode 3 recently and instantly reconnected with my boredom the first time I saw it. J.G. Ballard, apocalyptic fiction writer extraordinaire, famously wrote an essay pointing out why Star Wars' visual aesthetic was so convincing and philosophically interesting. It was a future filled with technology that was dirty and malfunctioning, i.e. the often overlooked downside to advancement. Most sci-fi tries to make the most of the future, all cars are new, everything is shiny, etc. Just ask yourself from 1990 what they thought 2010 would be like. Whereas the old Star Wars had handmade cardboard and plastic models, covered in grit, scratches and fingerprints, this one cgi's the shit out of that space battle, leaving us with a day-glo plastic version of a battle with graphics that you'll be able to make with an iphone app in a year or so.