Listening to Stories by the Fireside I'm reminded of a number of groups. "444" has a vocal distinctly reminiscent of Frank Black from the Pixies which is augmented even more by the juxtaposition with the female vocal. Songs that have more of an electronic/experimental aesthetic remind me of Portishead...mysterious, black and white, filled with cobwebs but surreal and psychedelic at the same time. This makes me think that one way to tackle the visuals would be to get very surreal but keep color to a minimum. That way the images will compliment the sonic palette but not distract from the band, and will also give us plenty of room for experimentation. A filmic influence that comes to mind is David Lynch, especially his short films. He uses a technique...I can't think of the exact name for it...where frames are extracted to create a choppy then smooth look. This has been done in a lot of music videos using claymation, but I think it would work well with black and white video. There is a fairly wide range between songs that are highly experimental to those that are closer to the R&B realm, so I think it was a good idea to stay away from directly sycing to a song, but that doesn't mean we can't mess with some rhythmic stuff. Most of the songs are 4/4 and aren't rhythmically varied so we have room to work that out. I'm looking at possibilities for venues including Tonic on the LES and Crobar in Chelsea. If anyone has suggestions or has seen a good show with video recently please post the venue on the blog or talk to me about it.
On a related note, there are some exciting things going on with video/music fusion. On September 26th, Brian Eno is releasing a DVD-ROM entitled 77 Million Paintings which is a constantly evolving artwork that, if left alone, would generate over 77 million distinct images, and is combined with music from Eno's installation work:
Here's a link. The idea of the music video is also being tackled by producer-extraordinaire Nigel Godrich who will start his own video podcast that will include visual art and live performances from his basement of artists like Thom Yorke, The White Stripes, and Beck.
Read article here. Food for thought.
jay
