Kid Koala Dubbed Out in Mexico

Kid Koala performs in Mexico City. 2004.

Lee "Scratch" Perry: Pum Pum

A music video by the legendary aging but never dull dub/reggae artist/producer Lee "Scratch" Perry.

The first single from Lee Perry's upcoming album REPENTANCE on Narnack Records. Its titled Pum Pum The video was shot in Kingston, Jamaica and directed by Jay Will (Game Over).

Repentance is the the title of the fifty-fourth studio album by Jamaican musician, sonic innovator, and master producer Lee "Scratch" Perry. It was released on August 19, 2008. The album is released by Narnack Records.

Repentance is co-produced by Andrew W.K., and features guest appearances from Moby, Don Fleming, Brian Chippendale, Josh Werner and Sasha Grey.

Medeski, Martin & Wood: Uninvisible

The super cool title track from the groove jazz virtuoso trio Medeski, Martin and Wood's album "Uninvisible". Dig it!

Massive Attack: Karmacoma

Karmacoma is one of my very very favorite Massive Attack songs. It's got fantastic aesthetics of Dub/Reggae, Trip-Hop and Tricky does vocals as well. The track is on the album Blue Lines. It has also been done beautifully by a string quartet tribute that I don't recall the name of. A very artfully done music video worth watching.Enjoy.

Wiki Analysis:

"Karmacoma" is the promotional video made for the single of the same name by British trip-hop collective Massive Attack. The experimental musician Tricky who collaborated on the track, also recorded his own version of Karmacoma, renamed Overcome for his debut studio album, Maxinquaye. It premiered in May 1995 and was directed by Jonathan Glazer. The bass line sample featured is the same bass line used by Serge Gainsbourg in the song Melody from his 1971 album Histoire de Melody Nelson.

Description

The video shows a hotel corridor and the occupants of the rooms along the corridor. The band are in one of the rooms accompanied by Tricky and an actress. 3D, Daddy G, and Tricky are all dressed in uniforms that say "Texmex" on the front. Mushroom is sitting on the couch with a hand on his stomach, where he apparently has been shot and his shirt is bloody.

The rest of the occupants are shown intermitently throughout the video, and are all engaging in eccentric activities. Some of the scenes cross over from being weird to being supernatural and magical.

* A man is in the corridor, holding a gun in one hand and a plastic bag with something in it on the other. He's walking backwards and pointing the gun at everything he sees, in a clear state of paranoia and distress. He's sweating and mumbling under his breath, desperately attempting to memorize the room numbers for reasons unknown. At several points he is menaced by two mysterious, identical twin girls (an homage of the 1980 film The Shining), and at one point he glimpses a double of himself, pointing a gun at him.
* A man with long, unkempt hair and beard is sitting in his room, staring directly into the camera and speaking in a dazed manner. "I am a... dangerous person," he announces at one point. Later: "All those guys I killed... nothing personal." (He bears a strong resemblance to the man with the gun from the corridor, although it is unclear if they are actually intended to be the same person.) At the video's end he tells the camera, "I want to be free... and I am free."
* A man in one of the rooms is covered with oil among cameras and mirrors, apparently performing some sort of bizarre artwork.
* A middle-aged man with a moustache is in a room with two women dressed in red satin robes. He asks "Who's gonna be a bad girl, then?". One of the women answers apathetically, "I am".
* A boy watches tv news in which the journalist covers his half face with his hand. The boy repeats what he sees. As this is happening, a woman dressed in campy, old-fashioned clothing is talking on the phone about the boy.
* A man plays golf in the corridor.
* A man attempts to drown a miniature copy of himself in a bathtub.

Censorship

Some of the scenes in the video were censored in some countries and a second copy of it was made that excluded them.

* The man with the moustache stands on top of a mattress and sticks his tongue out. He has a big pointed piercing in his tongue.
* The actress that accompanies the band is resting her head on 3D's shoulder. She then lifts her head, looks straight into the camera and blood spills from one of her nostrils.
* The man with the gun passes along another version of himself, the second man points the gun at the first. Cut to a different angle, where the first man is alone and pointing the gun where the second man was a second before.
* The man covered in oil is shown with his index finger stuck inside his stomach. He slowly removes it until it's all out, without leaving a wound or a hole of any kind.

Analysis

The video is full of homages to other filmmakers, particularly Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining, including the eerie twins, the obsessive typing of a single phrase and the shots of long, eerie hotel corridors. Also, the suited woman with the black bob is reminiscent of Mia Wallace, Uma Thurman's character in Pulp Fiction, particularly with the inclusion of the nosebleed. The man at the typewriter resembles Henry, Jack Nance's character in David Lynch's "Eraserhead" - particularly with his haircut, although aspects of his scenes also recall the Coen Brothers film Barton Fink.

David Lynch: The Alphabet (Dub)

Credits:

Directed by:
David Lynch

Writing credits:
David Lynch ... writer

Cast:
Peggy Lynch ... Girl

Produced by:
H. Barton Wasserman .... producer

Cinematography by:
David Lynch

Film Editing by:
David Lynch

Sound Department:
Robert Cullum .... sound mixer
David Lynch .... sound
Robert McDonald .... sound editor

Animation Department:
David Lynch .... animator

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Sound Remix & Music: Ky Olsen

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Plot:

(from imdb user jodiac ):

Another Phobia Envisioned by David Lynch, 29 May 2002
Author: jodiac from Lexington, KY

David Lynch says this film was an attempt at visualizing the "fear of learning." In it, a young girl is tortured by the alphabet in a competely abstract nightmare. Lynch has always been fascinated by the darker side of dreams, the seemingly nonsensical black procession of symbols and fears, and this film simply adds another phobia to the canon.

We are shown images of a head with information going in one side, and this eventually causes the head to erupt into a black mess. Lynch juxtaposes the most innocent of subjects (the alphabet), which usually marks the beginning of our schooling, with disconcerting images of blood and vomit. Disturbing? Yes. Lynch apparently formed the idea after hearing of a girl who was found reciting the alphabet during a nightmare.

On a more profound level, the film examines a fear that perhaps appears for most later in life: the dread of knowledge. There's quite a bit of truth to the oft-repeated line "ignorance is bliss." Gradually, we realize that the more we learn, the less we understand, and therefore, the less control we have over our situations. It's a problem that has vexed people since the conception of "science." We ask questions out of curiosity, find there are no accessible answers, create a religious penumbra that satisfies a great deal with a few simple passages, and then science comes along and we are confronted once again with the inconsistencies of our faith. Thus, we fear that which turns the rock-solid black and whites of our existence to a confused mass of gray.

Also, The Alphabet hints at what linguists and intellectuals and songwriters have known for centuries; words are wholly inadequate to describe even the simplest of human perceptions. And once one has etched that list of letters into one's mind, in a sense, there is no turning back. Life becomes shapes patterned on paper, and conceptions of reality will no longer be formed purely and internally; they are immediately attached to an imperfect language and remained tethered to that which will never truly suffice.

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The Film:

Lynch on The Alphabet



Original Film



The Alphabet Dub
(Original Film with audio remix and music)

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Sources:

The Alphabet on IMDB.com

The Alphabet on Lynchnet.com

David Lynch Home Page

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