Monday 22 July 2013

VIDEO VACUUM - Low, That Fucking Tank, Magnets, Hibou


Monday can be a lonely kind of day. Regardless of what kind of a weekend you may have had, you end up trudging off back to work, as much as you may love it, and realise that you have five long days before you can do what you want once more. It's a strange way of living, but we are conditioned to it. Still, we all need to get through it. And here are four excellent videos that will surely help, at least for fifteen minutes...



One of the best cuts from Low's last record The Invisible Way, 'Clarence White', has received a video as part of Pitchfork.tv's City of Music. Its a great track in that it showcases how brutally powerful the trio can be in their incredibly studied performances, and reinforces why they are one of my favourite bands.



I've always been a fan of Leeds/Bradford noisy spazzoids That Fucking Tank, so it isn't a surprise that I'm a fan of their latest track 'Making A Meal For Beethoven.' It's on their incumbent live LP A Document of the Last Set, due in September on Gringo Records as a gift, a "document" of their ten years' service to stupid noise. The video is a play on people pulling surreally distorted faces, something that fits the band as guitarist Andy Abbott constantly pulls lurid O faces as he kills it night after night. The duo are playing RECON Festival with Black Pus (Lightning Bolts' Brian Chippendale) in Leeds September 22nd - a fitting tribute, I'm sure you'll agree.



Staying in the UK (just a hop/skip/jump to deepest, darkest Kent) we encounter Magnets, a band whose influences (motorik pummelling, and references from This Will Destroy You and Sigur Ros to Sonic Youth and Slowdive) seem tailor-made for Sonic Masala. The four-piece are releasing their second EP on Something, Something Records, and if lead-in track 'Scatter' is anything to go by it should be something special. A complete bottoming out of a distorted track, the accompanying visuals plucked from the most intrinsic tropes of the psychedelic formula, 'Scatter' surprises in its hidden hooks, seemingly swallowed by the shoegaze wash before suddenly coming forth and burying deep within the ear. Can't wait to hear the rest.



Hibou caught my attention with his Dunes EP, and now follows up with this washed-out VHS vid for EP track 'Above Us'. It's 80s baiting beach montage set-up suits both the time (if in summer, let's get to the beach; if in winter, let's get warm) and the aesthetic Hibou is trying to create, a more introspective take on the beach-pop medium that actually sounds suited to the bedroom, staring out at the sun and the surf, wondering if now is the time to venture out into the world. The answer is yes.

NOW GET BACK TO WORK!

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