Watch this mesmerizing music video if you like photography, architecture, geometry, juxtapositions, stop-motion animation, and/or just kick’n tunes in general:
Amazing editing work!
Filmmaker Páraic McGloughlin’s abstract music video serves as the perfect complement to the driving rhythm and headphone-worthy sounds of Weval’s track Someday. The imagery and sounds reflect the fragility of our planet, and humanity’s desire to hold on.
“Last year Weval approached me with the idea of developing a music video for ‘Someday’. Upon listening to the track ,which I loved, I had ideas of what I thought would fit. We aimed at creating an abstract journey with a sense of ambiguity holding underlying core concepts […] super happy to put images behind their amazing sounds!”
Here is another crazy music video by Páraic McGloughlin:
This sweet retro-futuristic tale directed by Will Joines, compliments BROKENDATE perfectly with its Blade Runner-esq eighties cop-nior ambience. It takes me back to a time that only exists in memory now, and I’m not concerned at all that that sentence shouldn’t have made any grammatical sense… BROKENDATE is rad.
Director: Will Joines / Producer: Sarah Romney / Cinematographer: Zoë White
How great a name is Com Truise — one of the many pseudonyms of New Jersey designer/musician Seth Haley. Love his melodious synth and the depth of atmosphere he’s able to create with minimal sounds. Here is another favourite — FAIRLIGHT:
Echinopsis cacti have some of the most brilliant flowers of any cactus, with vibrantly colored petals and explosive blooms — The trick is actually seeing it. The cacti bloom only late at night, and even then the peak moment of beauty may only last an hour or two at the most. Lucky for us, Echinopsis enthusiast GregKrehel has a knack for catching these blooming succulents in the act.
When one of his specimens looks like it’s about to bloom, Krehel brings it inside and films it overnight with a special HD time-lapse setup. Gathered in this video is a montage of his favorite shots from the 2014 season, and he’s already posting new videos from this spring on Vimeo (via National Geographic):
“The evening when it looks like a plant’s flowers are about to bloom, I bring it indoors to image. Most of the clips in this montage show approximately 8 hours of change as the flowers open and bloom. A little more than halfway through the montage, there’s a series of three clips showing different views of a 24-hour period in the life of a yellow-flowered ‘Daydream’ plant.
I hope you enjoy “Freaky Flowers” and invite you to contact me via my Vimeo account and/or visit echinopsisfreak.com where you’ll learn more than you ever wanted to know about these cacti.” ~ Greg Krehel
Visit either one of Krehel’s links and it is clear to see that this man has fallen in love with Echinopsis cacti, so much so that he even gave them an endearing pet name. Endearing in the sense I suppose, because these beautiful plants really aren’t that freaky at all.
If they were to spring legs and decided to literally dance about and burst like fireworks, now that type of behaviour would be freaky.
Installed earlier this month off the coast of New Providence, in the Bahamas, “Ocean Atlas” by Jason deCaires Taylor depicts a young Bahamian girl carrying the weight of the seas on her shoulders. It is the largest sculpture ever deployed underwater and is built from special concrete that promotes the growth of coral and marine life in an attempt to draw diving tourists away from more sensitive areas nearby:
Kawaii! I was skeptical, but it got funky good from 2:38 on, right to the fade out:
Producer Takashi Murakami / Director Mr. and Fantasista Utamaro / Animation Production NAZ
Not sure about the bikini clad anime girls, but this is a great marriage of funk driven, synth-tastic melodies and hyper-vibrant colours and imaginings courtesy of Japanese artist, TakashiMurakami. In case his name rings any bells, Murakami was producer for “Akihabara Majokko Princess” — the infamous Kirstin Dunst music video made in 2010:
Meet Klaus Kemp, master of the Victorian art of diatom arrangement. Klaus Kemp, you are my new favourite person in the world. I find this incredibly life affirming for some reason; incomprehensible geometric organisms to the naked eye I otherwise would not have known about, that are as complex in their simplicity and just as mysterious as the wonders of our expansive non-declarative universe! And aren’t diatoms just the prettiest:
Soundtrack by: Ryuichi Sakamoto “Grasshoppers” / Bernard Herrmann “Brave New World” / Cults Percussion Ensemble “Circles”.
Diatoms are single cell algae that create jewel-like glass shells around themselves. Microscopists of the Victorian era would arrange them into complex patterns, invisible to the naked eye but spectacular when viewed under magnification. The best of these arrangements are stunning technical feats that reveal the hidden grandeur of some of the smallest organisms on Earth. Klaus Kemp has devoted his entire life to understanding and perfecting diatom arrangement and he is now acknowledged as the last great practitioner of this beautiful combination of art and science. THE DIATOMIST showcases his incredible work:
These aren’t laser beam dreams, but shapes made from illuminated string! How awesome is that! (I have an urge to play ‘Tempest X’ now)
On their quest for creating classic computer effects without the computer, Dark Matters continues the analogue feel from the “Matter” video.
The new Kenton Slash Demon video, Deamon is the take on analogue wireframes in the same naive universe. An abstract space opera about loadscreens based on Strings and nails.
This music video was commissioned by Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami and was filmed by Hollywood director McG, the Charlie’s Angels, Terminator Salvation guy. Originally a hit song from the 1980s by The Vapors,Turning Japanese has been covered by none other than 27-year-old actress Kirsten Dunst:
NOTE: Video is NSFW due to anime rudness at 0:25, 0:52, 1:25, 2:39 and 3:25, so skip those parts. You’re not going to skip those parts are you? OK. And just to clarify, Turning Japanese is a love song addressing the feeling of loneliness and not about masturbation:
I sort of dig the Dunst/Murakami/McG rendition — blue hair is a good look — but this 8-BIT cover appeals to me more:
Ginger Root is the indie music project of singer-songwriter and instrumentalist Cameron Lew, who describes the sound of Ginger Root as “aggressive elevator soul.” I feel it. I took a deep dive into this cat’s YouTube page and holy wow, his creative output has been phenomenal from the jump. Dylan Hovis on bass and Matt Carney on drums join Cameron Lew when performing live, making appearances in videos as well.
SHINBANGUMIreleased on 13 September 2024, and coinciding with the release of each single was a narrative-driven music video, conceived as a serialised story.
Presented in a classic CRT television 4:3 aspect ratio and washed in VHS fuzz, SHINBANGUMI follows the exploits of a young music supervisor in 1987 Shōwa era Japan, being fired, going independent to start his own TV company—Ginger Root Productions—and gaining popularity, while his former employer—JubanTV—tries to thwart his rising success.
It is very entertaining, funny, and cool.
I am un/fashionably late to the Ginger Root party, but here is SHINBANGUMI lovingly compiled into a single short film, freely presented for our listening and viewing pleasure:
Neat, huh? Great casting! It has since been picked up by Adult Swim, and aired on Toonami. My next opinion may sound like shade and/or high-praise, but it’s really an observation: Ginger Root’s SHINBANGUMI is better than Gorillaz’s “The Mountain, The Moon Cave and The Sad God.” I said it. Scope. Effort. Execution. Entertainment. Many hands make light work special. I love seeing people as characters give a performance.
A few prelude segments missing from the movie above:
Had fun discovering these, one video at a time. Can see his interest in aesthetic was present in the early stages of Ginger Root. Personal favs: “Weather” & “Mahjong Room”
The world of Gorillaz has been brought to life in an 8-minute animated film, an homage to the aesthetic of animated features from the 1960s, the golden era of 2D animation.
“If particular visuals couldn’t be achieved in that era, then we didn’t do them. We processed our digital pencil work to mimic photocopy degradation. We scanned real paintings at high resolution and finished the details digitally. It was about capturing the tactile quality that only real materials give you.”
[…]
“In a time of AI overload, this is our love letter to craftsmanship. We’re chasing the feel of pencil on paper. Paint on board. And all the imperfections that come with it.”
-Max Taylor
And to think, we could have had a full-length Gorillaz animated film in 2023 had Netflix not cancelled it.
Throwback to 2018 where The Line studio handled animations for Gorillaz music video “Humility” featuring Jack Black:
This short tidbit of information might trip some fans:
Currently on a free Vercel server, MTVRewind is a passion project operating on the edge of capacity; a guerilla archival project built by the developer Flex (@flexasaurusrex), this fan-made “time machine” has resurrected the channel’s original spirit.
MTVRewind is a staggering database of 33,931 music videos spanning six decades (1970s–2020s), presented without the glossy sheen of modern streaming services — enjoy:
The manifesto on the splash screen is a direct indictment of the modern web:
No ads. No algorithm. No login. Just pure random discovery.
LIT-B carries the same eccentric DNA as DITB does, but with more focus on a specific kind of content. The lateral shift of where I spend my time is healthy for me, and is refreshing my goals. Wherever you are in the World, remember to have fun, and take care of yourself. Let’s make 2026 a special kind of year 💪✍️
Also, for archival purposes of course: ditb.bandcamp.com
I wrote a flash piece for a flash, pop culture journal dedicated to film, TV, music videos, celebritism, and moving image media on the things we like to watch — please check them out and follow!
In The Mood publish triannually, so watch for their themed submission windows, should you have something fun and interesting to pitch/share (Gabrielle & Sennah, thanx)
I love this frenetic, kaleidoscopic video (A.I. be damned!!), in no small part because of Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin’s awesome music!! Giving Y2K vibes & future hope:
Director: Felix Geen / AI Artist: Max Kreis /
Camera & Lighting: Josha Eiffel / MUA: Georgia Hope
“‘Dreamcatching’ is about all the places you want to know and all the places you’ll never go,” the band said in a statement. “The video uses AI neural networks to create the landscapes and worlds we long for in the lyrics, a computer’s interpretation of our dreams.”
This man knows how to squeeze a trigger and shed a damn fine tear. Bruce Willis will be stepping away from acting for good after a recent diagnosis of aphasia — a disorder that affects the brain’s language center and a person’s ability to understand or express speech.
This tribute-music-video is to you, Bruce Willis:
“I’m Bruce Willis” performed by Jeep Cherokee.
He’d probably hate that so much lol.
The video contained clips from every single movie Bruce Willis has ever appeared in…pre 2010… None as iconic as TheFifth Element, or Die Hard, or Twelve Monkeys, or Pulp Fiction, or The Last Boy Scout, or Unbreakable, of course, and I just watched Last Man Standing for the first time with bae and it was good, thank you Walter Hill. (I’m thinking Armageddon or Sin City next)
Be proud Mr. Willis, be Yippee Ki Yaymotherfuckingprou-😢-proud 😭
Personally, I don’t think these two brothers needed to engage themselves in low blow mockery and humiliation. That being said, comedy is disarming for a reason and Chris Rock is a professional comedian. Hollyweird must be a strange and alienating place to keep it together in, but damned if that wasn’t the most passionate live televised outburst not produced on an MTV reality show. …Or was it!?! (#ratings #sponsoredbylookoverherenow)
Like Chris Rock’s professionalism and Will Smith’s West Philly passion, the world responded in memes:
🎭 