No Signal » Music

‘Dance 101″ Week 2: Kelis – Acapella

Paras G. — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 07:30:33 +0000

For this week’s ‘Dance 101″ track, I present to you this video:

Quite a radical approach to art direction, huh? I’m not buying the Africa inspired visuals though. And that last shot of Kelis turning around to reveal a baby on her back is downright ridiculous. Nevertheless, it’s still got enough neon-pop-funk aesthetics to take inspiration from. Andy Warhol would have been proud.

David Guetta impresses as usual with his music. He seems to be on a roll, considering his other hits doing rounds of Dance music charts worldwide: Memories (feat. Kid Cudi), One Love (feat. Estelle) and Gettin’ Over You (feat. Chris Willis, Fergie and LMFAO) among others.

‘Dance 101″: Eric Prydz vs. Floyd – Proper Education

Paras G. — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 13:34:35 +0000

Of the many genres of music that I enjoy listening to, Dance/Electronic is one. I caught this video on VH1’s “Dance 101″ show last night and thought it was worth sharing:

Great beats and interesting video, aye?

My Dream Is To Fly

Paras G. — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 16:14:11 +0000

If there is such a thing as a visual representation of poetry (“in motion”, as the now famous cliché goes), than it has to be this music video for ‘Rise Up’ by Yves Larock. I mean just look at those boys’ mad rope-skipping skills. If I could create art in four dimensions (yes, including time), it would be something like this (though probably not even half as cool):

If you can’t see the video above, click here to view it on YouTube.

I’m turning green with envy even as my own nylon skipping rope remains purple. Some day…!

Her Morning Elegance: A Stop Motion Photography Music Video

Paras G. — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 05:42:47 +0000

A friend of mine posted this music video for ‘Her Morning Elegance’ by Oren Lavie (he has a very elegantly designed official site too) on Facebook and it is so well-executed that I had to share it with you.

Created by an Israeli couple (Yuval and Merav Nathan), the video is an example of stop-motion animation made from still photographs. In fact, according to an article on Oren’s myspace blog:

The video was shot all stills – roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.

and

It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.

I, personally, can not imagine the amount of thought and effort that has gone into conceptualising the video but it is terribly stimulating, nevertheless. Kudos to everyone involved in it’s production!

Aren’t you amazed by such clever creativity?

Rocking The Microphone

Paras G. — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:13:14 +0000

Listening to music can do wonders for journal-ist’s diarist’s block as I found out while thinking of an interesting topic to write on, with iTunes playing my favourite tracks in the background. Turns out, the song itself could be something worthy of a few paragraphs. Like this one called ‘Freestyler’ by Bomfunk MC’s from around the time when the Internet had just about started penetrating homes in the third world.

I remember watching this video in Mumbai for the first time, on a music channel where you could dial in to request songs from a list on the telly. The year was 2000. I was in 11th grade and discovering music outside of the Bollywood Soundtrack genre thanks to cable television.

The music and lyrics (“… as I rock .. rock .. rock the .. rock the .. rock the microphone …”) were funky for sure, but the real gem was the video and its conceptualisation. I loved (and still do) the idea of a white kid with dreadlocks (that in itself was brilliant) who could control time with a button on his music player (even better) after a chance meeting with a mysterious stranger. Wish my Blackberry could have such powers conferred upon it by someone standing next to me on the tube. Imagine pausing annoying people mid-sentence or speeding up those who are slow. I could take ’selective listening’ to a whole new level with this power to control my own time-line!

Another thing that I really like about this video is watching different sets of men and women dance cool moves in interesting outfits. The ‘funk’ in Bomfunk is very cleverly evident in both.

What do you think of the song and video?