EDM Video Round-Up – Oct/Nov 2012

Posted by on November 8, 2012

Another day, another batch of bizarre and perplexing music videos, conceived of by our favorite producers and set to the tunes of the moment. Music videos are an inherently bizarre and perplexing medium, to be honest. But they are, for better or for worse, a medium that endures. Just as Britney Spears once restored the true balance between divine masculine and feminine on Pop Up Video, so will SKisM, Skrillex, Cazzette, and a host of others negotiate the dizzying boundaries between art and life, self and other, creation and destruction.

God help us.

SKisM – Experts

We start out on a high note with SKisM’s laugh-out-loud clever video for “Experts.” (Warning: the videos are literally all downhill from here. Sorry.) I don’t want to ruin this for anyone who was too lazy to click play, because it’s three fast-paced minutes of hilarious fun, but let’s just say that SKisM has won this round. He has handily trolled the trolls. And if by some miracle this means that we no longer have to look at 1205815 YouTube comments about how Song X does or doesn’t sound like Skrillex, the man will have done us all a mitzvah.

Speaking of Skrillex…

Skrillex & The Doors – Breakn’ A Sweat

“Hey everyone, this is Skrillex.” Scratches head. Drag of cigarette. “So, y’know, working with The Doors was really fucking awesome, and I think this video represents a lot of what the process was like and how fucking intense it was, man.” Fidgets on chair. Ashes cigarette. “When we were making the track, we just kind of dove into it, man, and we didn’t really know what was gonna happen or what was gonna come out in the wash in the end–” pause; drag of cigarette “–but that’s why it was so exciting, because the process and the creativity and the energy in that studio were all just so organic and primal and fucking real, man. And I think that’s why in the video we decided that she’d be pregnant with this…zombie mutant baby, you know, because like…we’re all possessed with that same totally consuming creative energy, man, and it’s just a question of harnessing it. And like, chasing it down and shit. Like those sharks were chasing the people in the video. It’s all about making that energy and that feeling yours, even when you aren’t really sure what it is.” Fidget. Cigarette drag. “You know what I mean?”

Nah, man. Not really.

Cazzette – Beam Me Up

Unlike the last video, “Beam Me Up” tickles your feel-good sensibilities and has an easy-to-follow narrative. But does anyone else feel kind of cheated on this one? I don’t know about you, but I was expecting aliens. Aliens and intergalactic travel and maybe some ray guns. I don’t want to see footage of Cazzette jumping around at EDC for the nine hundredth time. I want aliens, dude! Is that so much to ask for when your song is literally called BEAM ME UP? Ugh. This gets a B-, because I’m walking away from it unsatisfied, like a vegetarian at Five Guys.

Borgore feat. Miley Cyrus – Decisions

I got really excited when this video started. Then I realized I wasn’t watching the actual video, but an unskippable YouTube ad for Ellie Goulding’s album. I am generally of the belief that hell is a 30 second ad without a skip button, but this time my video selection would prove to be a far more fatuous waste of time than any ad spot ever could.

Let’s start with the song. Real talk, this is a profoundly stupid song. The melody is tired, the lyrics were written by a fourth grader, I have friends from college who can spit better verses, and the drop — which maybe, MAYBE could have saved it — is nothing to write home about. Borgore, word to the wise: stop checking out pictures of girls’ asses on Twitter and get back to business.

Onto the video. A spirt-hooded Borgore slow rides through vague, Instagrammed LA streets, towing — what else? — a giant cake behind his antique man-trike (last seen on the A-deck of the Titanic). This goes on for a while until some midgets in tuxes show up and guide us into an anonymous club/hotel/brothel where Lindsay Lohan may or may not have come close to overdosing in 2005. Sounds about right. Then, we stealthily enter the secret bookcase room from Young Frankenstein, where lo and behold there are a WHOLE LOTTA drugs and strippers CAKES. There’s not much else to say beyond this. The video immediately devolves into a totally predictable cake-throwing party scene, notably involving Miley Cyrus and her blonde Olivia Benson ‘do and a guy in one of those goddamn unicorn masks that have become the international sign for “this party is really edgy and full of hipsters.” Whatever dude. I’m over you and your Miley Cyrus cake-throwing hipster parties. Next.

David Guetta & Nicky Romero – Metropolis

Ugh. ANOTHER. UNSKIPPABLE. AD. And adding insult to injury, this one’s for Glee. Well, hopefully the video will hold more fruitful things, which I will now contemplate as I sit here enduring a solid minute of unsolicited a cappella music.

Oh no. This doesn’t bode well.

That seems just a tad overwrought, considering that what we’re watching is taking place on VEVO: Home of Katy Perry’s Magical Whipped Cream Boobs.

Okay, clearly this video has an ART THEME that it’s going to bludgeon us over the head with for the next four minutes. Well, at least the video itself is visually appealing so far.

Oh no. Is that…

Yes. It is. It most definitely is Guetta, looking alternately like a chalk drawing from your worst nightmare or an extra from Madeon’s “The City” video. Oh god, and there he is again, profiled in technicolor in all his Guetta glory against a gritty neon wall flashing with a profusion of signifiers for the creative process. Now he’s running through a train station with remarkable cat-like agility. Now a disembodied hand is smashing a guitar out of frustration, or desire, or…

JESUS MAKE IT STOP.

Here’s a shot out of a cannon: where the hell is Nicky Romero? He’s part of this song too, you know. My guess would be that he’s manning the decks while Guetta continues to run around this random and conveniently unpopulated urban space, spray painting walls with heavy shit like “DREAM” and “PASSION” and then fixing the camera with an intense, troubled stare because he’s thinking really serious ART THOUGHTS.

Oh. Yep. There he is. Manning the decks, just like I thought. Somebody’s gotta hold down an honest job around here. Of course there’s now an immediate cut back to Guetta, who is superimposed over abstract phrases about ART in an uncomfortably messianic manner. God, this video is so inspirational, even though it seems to be all party and no business. Poor Nicky Romero — you’re doing all the heavy lifting, while Guetta gets to troll around the set from I Am Legend with aerosol cans and a breeze running through his hair.

So by about one minute and forty four seconds in, I think we’ve all gotten the gist.

That is to say: the creative process is messy, but if you just follow your passion and your dreams, you too can run around defacing public property. Just like David Guetta.

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

COMMENTS | VIEW COMMENTS

+