Eyes lit
On sharp threats
From dark lips

But lights press
The soft skin
To rough hands.

Alice Glass’s voice, like that of the Knife’s Karin Dreijer Andersson, is merely a suggestion for Crystal Castles, a flesh-and-blood formation to digitally gild, deconstruct and rebuild. We don’t hear her sing the word “hands”, we hear nine diced-up jabs at “hands”, varying slightly in pitch, like a lilting melisma fed through a dot-matrix printer. “Soft” isn’t soft at all. Halfway through the one-syllable word, it becomes an inclement two-syllable word, suddenly shifting into what sounds like syntax-error feedback for its second half. It’s the same sort of binary-based aesthetic amputation performed on a sliver of Ethan Kath’s left shoulder.

————–

Rox – “My Baby Left Me“

Ah, ooooooooo-uu-oohh yeah!

The soul beneath Rox’s sweet shout sounds like the product of peak-era Motown labor division–each piece molded with micro-level human care and macro-level cold precision. The excerpted vocal above is no exception: it only distantly exhibits characteristics that one would instantly recognize as “human.” Like the studio-constructed self-choir Stevie Wonder made of his own impossibly keening falsetto on the middle eight of “We Can Work It Out” (2:08 to 2:15), this background holler is chrome. Most crucially is the break in the middle of the “Ah, oooooooo” part. It’s the quick-hiccup sort of modification that most would identify with record-scratching, but there’s no “scratch” sound present. Just a frozen microsecond of space, like gleaming side-panel detail work temporarily interrupted by the gap where the door opens.

J&B would base each episode of their show around a topic, upon which they would riff in myriad ways. They always circled back to what was most important, however: Bloomington, Indiana (and drinking). ROX was (and is) the epitome of “local” media–the kind that is only possible with the loyal civic support of government-sanctioned entities like Bloomington Cable Access Television, or BCAT. But ROX isn’t city-council meetings or world music in the local library. It’s a very well-produced (given the typical budget of, well, nothing) and incredibly creative and funny magazine-style television program–birthed when B had to perform community service for streaking through Indiana University’s campus (semi-NSFW), and started goofing with the readily available machinery at the cable-access station he wound up at.

For a better description of what it’s all about, from the creators themselves, check here.

ROX also happens to hold the distinction, actually trumpeted by The Washington Post, of being the first regularly produced program to stream in cyberspace, in 1995. Wired Magazine also called it the “best TV show in America” at one point, as well. What’s so great about ROX is what’s supposed to be so great about any form of independent media form–the content is completely up to the creators, with no intervening forces sticking noses where noses really shouldn’t be stuck. Allowing J (your bartender) and B (your editor) to craft shows like Episode 82, “The RCA State“, which wonders what will come of Indiana’s nickname after the Hoosier Dome was re-dubbed after an electronics manufacturer. And the most famous one of all, that got them notice from all kinds of national press, for obvious reasons, Episode 59, “J&B Get Baked“, which explains itself, and the follow-up, Episode 60, “Sustaining the Buzz”, which brilliantly presents and skewers the deluge of press coverage as a result of #59.

There was a hiatus from, um, May 1995 to January 2003, due to the fact that J moved to Missoula, Montana and B relocated to New Orleans, but they managed to resurrect the show in grand and innovative form—namely, taping themselves talking on the phone to one another. And, well, B’s position in the Big Easy led to perhaps the best personal history I’ve seen on Hurricane Katrina, Episode 93, “After the Levees Failed“, which proves that the show is irreverent and locally oriented as it’s ever been, and that comment on the greatest natural disaster the country has ever seen does not have to be deathly serious.

That video production class set out to create professionals in the field, which it did in my case. But it also had the important side-effect of carving into my mind that the visual media can, in fact, present ideas beyond those sanctioned by corporations and focus groups. And, more importantly, that it can be better.

Visit ROX here, and B’s blog here.