More Weird Music Videos

Following on from my post earlier this month about weird music videos I thought I would share a few more utterly strange and fantastic music videos.

The Tears of the Dragon by Bruce Dickinson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXClBjNxiOA

I have absolutely no idea what is going on in this six minutes of epic rock aside from Mr Dickinson appears to have been transported to some dream land where he is tormented by a fat gold guy and then has to have a fight with the ocean. Brilliant stuff. :) The presence of the fat guy always makes me think of the Dunlop Tyres advert from the early 90s which featured the Velvet Underground's Venus in Furs.

God of Emptiness by Morbid Angel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYdfsZRURF0

The power of the dark side is strong with these ones. There's something horrifically Lovecraftian about this video. The transformation of the supplicant over the course of the video coupled with the bizarre albino monks and the Middle Eastern/Classical Mediterranean feel of the setting makes this an especially weird video. Not really surprising seeing as the album from which this ditty comes, Covenant, also features the song Angel of Disease with the following chorus:

Angel of disease one who shuns the light
Shub Niggurath goat with one thousand young

Can I Play With Madness? by MAIDEN

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocFxQjPeyiY

Couldn't have this much metal ( \m/ ) in a post without including the masters of fantastical metal now could I? After all, I've already included Brucey. This video always made me think of MR James for some reason. The dusty academic meddling with that which he doesn't understand. That being METAL in this case. :D

Revolution Action by Atari Teenage Riot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkb3r9filcM

Watch what happens when the capitalist hegemony devours itself. ;)

Sweden Mon Amor

I want to move to Sweden. This looks like amazing fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMQtwUKs_HI

Role Playing was a large part of my early teenage years and whilst I've only ever played one live action game(it was a fantasy setting and not as much fun as I had anticipated it being) this looks like a whole barrel of dark belly laughs. Looks like Sweden has been bumped to the top of my "Where to flee should the Scottish referendum go the wrong way in September" list.

 

Words just... I... What the...?

The Daily Mail Fail is a British tabloid paper that has a long and sordid history of being a mouthpiece for the extreme right and the most reactionary and regressive elements of British society. They have long championed attacks on everyone from working people, the unemployed, the sick, single mothers, refugees, foreigners, and pretty much everyone that makes up the majority of the population of this wee island. So I'm rarely surprised when I see the latest bile to be issued from the hallowed halls of Northcliffe House. This story, however, did make me do a double take.



Now, things are bad in Britain and they are getting worse. The number of people who rely on handouts of food from charities is sky rocketing and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, especially with the ongoing attacks from the government in the guise of austerity measures.

The government claim that this rise in a reliance on charitable hand outs has nothing to do with their attacks on the welfare state and is due to people simply being more aware of the existence of food banks. As if people who didn't need to would go begging to the Citizens Advice for a handout rather than just popping to the shops. Now, it seems, the Daily Fail has joined in and is trying to brand the poorest and most vulnerable of our society as scroungers. Same as they have done with the unemployed and refugees.

The journalists who wrote this piece of shit article, Simon Murphy and Sanchez Manning, are the lowest of the low. I understand that we all have to make a crust and that the world of journalism has been changing rapidly over the last few years but there is absolutely no excuse for this. How can a person claim to have even the slightest shred of humanity and think that it is acceptable to write an 'expose' on how a group giving away free food are somehow enabling immoral/unethical behaviour? By giving away food to the poor? It just beggars belief.

The right believe that if we just got rid of food banks then the need for them would simply disappear, rather than it would lead to families going hungry and having to choose between bills, rent, and food. Well, I think that one of the greatest philosophers of our small island, Mr L Kilmister, has a possible solution should we see the end of food banks without a rise in the standard of living for the majority of people in this country.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvzePsDYv7k

Here's to the formation of the RTCEFB. The  Revolutionary Tendency for the Culinary Expropriation of the Flesh of the Bourgeoisie. :)

 

ETA: A wag on Facebook just summed this article up perfectly.

So basically one of their well paid reporters told a series of complicated lies so that he could steal food meant for starving families. Then they can't even keep their headline consistent with the body of the article where they brag about this.

Why aren't the Mail's offices on fire yet?

ETA 2:  This: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwJRjf2BSD4

 

Ghostbusters 3

Here's hoping that if they actually do make a third Ghostbusters film they go for a more gritty realistic feel than cartoonish comedy. ;)

Dissertation in the Bag

I've been working like a crazy person for a while now on this damnable tract and now it is finally complete. 11,600 words on psychogeography, chorography(see also), and the Antonine Wall with a wee bit about the Situationist International for good measure. The feeling of relief was palpable last night when I clicked "send"and fired it off to the printers(Clydeside Press btw, if you are in the west of Scotland and want stuff printed, use them. They're awesome.) and it was finally out of my hands.

I think I'm going to take a day or two to just relax(no work until the weekend, yay!) and then I'm going to get into some serious reading. I have built up a veritable mountain of books I want to read over the last year or so. Now I can begin, the only problem is. Where do I start? Options paralysis!!!!

It also means that I'll be able to get started on honing my fiction writing skills. I have one unfinished story, The Hermit and The Orphan, that I want to get done and about 30 ideas for short stories/novellas. Fun times!

Here are some of the images I took on the field work for my dissertation, ones that didn't make it into the document itself. Hope you like them. :)

The Comedy Bigot!

I discovered a whole new category of Facebooker today. I've not been using Facecrack for a while as I'm really snowed under with Uni work(3 days til my dissertation is to be handed in, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!) but I had to log in after my partner, C, pointed this out to me. Her Ma had posted a wee rant about the Royal Family wanting to exterminate all badgers for... well.. reasons and so there was a brief conversation about how utterly awful the Royal Family are, which they are, when all of a sudden some random pops up and decided to bring immigrants into it. To a bit of a collective



I mean, people were discussing Bovine TB(the reason for the Royal bloodlust) and all of a sudden some plum is trying to blame immigrants. This kinda tickled me as the image I had in my head was of a bunch of people sat around a table discussing something completely unrelated to immigrants when some wee pinhead pops up and simply says "immigrants" before scuttling off chuckling that they had done their bit to keep Britain British(or some such nonsense). I'm sure that in other situations other comedy bigots will likely try and randomly bring up homosexuality, teh wimminz, or whatever else floats their particular bigotry boat. It's the randomness that amuses me. :D

Anyway, I found it funny so I thought I would share. :)

Weird Music Videos

Music videos have the potential to be a form of experimental audio/visual flash fiction when in the right hands. Most however seem to focus on the performers rather than on trying to use the medium to tell a story. This is not always the case however. There have been some videos in recent times that have excelled at bringing strange narratives to the screen, often narratives that have little to do with the lyrical content of the songs themselves. Which I don't really see as being a problem.

Two notable examples of weird flash fiction in music videos have come from Iceland. Two very different bands and two very different videos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A6j7mUxGz20

The song Fjara by the post-metal band Sólstafir(Icelandic for crepuscular rays) is a heart wrenching scream of betrayal. The video however takes a different tack as it follows a young woman's journey across the stark Icelandic landscape pulling behind her a coffin. Presumably she is attempting to fulfil a promise to the deceased. Along the way she is beset by scum encrusted ghouls lurking in the sand of the beach, by a cosmic spirit that torments her rest when she takes a break from her gruelling journey. All the while she is, unbeknown to her, accompanied by the spirit of the person in the casket. Eventually the spirit is able to manifest and there is a moment of seeming forgivness as it embraces her and helps her finish her quest.

Quite a different story to the one told by the song's lyrics.

Fjara

Þetta er það lengsta sem ég fer.
Aldrei aftur samur maður er.
Ljöta leiðin heillar nú á ný,
daginn sem ég lífið aftur flý.

Ef ég vinn í þetta eina sinn,
er það samt dauði minn.
Trú min er að allt fari ej vel.
Þessu er lokið hja mér.

Dag sem nótt hjartað var órótt.
Þrotið þol lamað bros.
Áfram ríð, hjartað pumpar tárum.
Dag sem nótt ég geng nú einn.

Grafin bein grotna í jörðunni,
eins og leyndarmálin þín
sem þú hélst forðum burt frá mér.
En blóðið þyngr´en þögnin er.

Svikin orð, grót í kjafti þér,
rista dýpra en nokkur sár.
Brotin bönd aldrei verða söm.
Lygar eins og nöðrubit.

Beach

This is the furthest I will go.
Never the same again.
The vile path calling me,
the day I ran from life again.

If I win this one time,
it will still be the end of me.
My belief that nothing ends well.
This is the end for me.

Day and night heart was uneased.
Broken will frozen smile.
Riding on, heart pumping tears.
Day and night I walk alone.

Bones rotting in the earth,
like your secrets
that you long kept from me.
But blood weighs more than silence.

Broken words, shards in your mouth,
cut deeper than any wound.
Broken vows will never be the same.
Lies like the viper's bite.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A76a_LNIYwE

Of Monsters and Men are a completely different band to Sólstafir. Where Sólstafir are post-metal, having emerged from the underground black metal scene, Of Monsters and Men are cheery folk-pop/indie music. The video to this song, King & Lionheart, is absolutely heartbreaking weird science fiction. Following two royal siblings captured by invading barbarian alien hordes. The siblings, with the help of strange spectral animal spirits, escape from captivity and race to one another across a beautifully rendered alien landscape. The ending is heartbreaking, I'll not spoil it, and I demand a sequel. :( Again, the video and its narrative have very little to do with the song's lyrics.

King & Lionheart

Taking over this town they should worry,
But these problems aside I think I taught you well.
That we won't run, and we won't run, and we won't run.
That we won't run, and we won't run, and we won't run.

And in the winter night sky ships are sailing,
Looking down on these bright blue city lights.
And they won't wait, and they won't wait, and they won't wait.
We're here to stay, we're here to stay, we're here to stay.

Howling ghosts – they reappear
In mountains that are stacked with fear
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart.
A lionheart.

His crown lit up the way as we moved slowly
Past the wondering eyes of the ones that were left behind.
Though far away, though far away, though far away
We're still the same, we're still the same, we're still the same.

Howling ghosts – they reappear
In mountains that are stacked with fear
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart.
And in the sea that's painted black,
Creatures lurk below the deck
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart.

And as the world comes to an end
I'll be here to hold your hand
'Cause you're my king and I'm your lionheart.
A lionheart. [8x]

Howling ghosts – they reappear
In mountains that are stacked with fear
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart.
And in the sea that's painted black,
Creatures lurk below the deck
But you're a king and I'm a lionheart.
A lionheart. [8x]

I do really love both of those videos. Hopefully we will see more interesting use of the music video format in future. Maybe there is already loads of coll interesting stuff out there and I've just not discovered it yet. I do hope so. :)