Monday Morning Music Videos

Today’s first three videos are culled from the archives of the Colonel Blimp collective, named after a brilliant Michael Powell film and currently producing some of the most interesting videos around.

Jamie Lidell’s Multiply is, as has been written several places several times, the most left-field album you’ll hear all year. Warp Records isn’t exactly known for releasing music that resurrects Sam and Dave and Otis Redding (and, might I mention, Terence Trent D’Arby), but Jamie Lidell executes a blue-eyed soul voice so perfectly you think it’s another unearthed soul treasure refigured Shadow-style. But it’s not–it’s the most straightforward, unpretentious, and simply best R&B album you’ll hear all year. Dig the video for the title track here (.mov).

Maximo Park’s debut A Certain Trigger, also on Warp, is a bit spotty, but delivered with a semi-academic earnestness that allows you to overlook it’s often half-formed ideas. The video for “Apply Some Pressure” (.mov), directed by Blimp staffers Diamond Dogs, is fun, in a soft, spotlit, vaudevillian kind of way.

One of the best videos I’ve seen all year, from one of the top albums, LCD Soundsystem’s “Tribulations” (.mov) directed by Dougal Wilson. Pudgy James Murphy’s lateral, seamless movements through a garage sale of 16mm projections and “real” set-ups make for some good viewin’.

Martha Colburn directed the video for Deerhoof’s first single from their solid new album The Runners Four, for “Wrong Time Capsule” (.mov). Its delightful collage style combines elements of Aardman Animations’ videos for Peter Gabriel and the experimental, primitive early visual work of Devo.

I’ve never been a big Kate Bush guy, but I’ve got to hand it to her, at least, for sticking to her ethereal guns–her new album Aerial offers more of her New Age pop (and a conspiracy-creating cover image). First single “King of the Mountain” (.mov) features plenty of billowing fabrics and an anthropomorphized fat-Elvis jumpsuit.

Filed under: Colonel Blimp  Deerhoof  Jamie Lidell  Kate Bush  LCD Soundsystem  Maximo Park  music video