Category Archives: YouTube

Omar Souleyman – Music Video for ‘Leh Jani’

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Applause
Leh-Jani (2007?, 10 MB, 3:22 min)

Omar Souleyman being the performer not the video maker,
whose name unfortunately I can’t find.
[STOP PRESS: Mark Gergis has got in touch to say he made the video.
Googling him has unravelled an interesting trail of audio & video work
which we hope to follow further in future]
Anyway the wonderful video ( & it is wonderful -even the cheesy ‘boxy’
effect which is used once & in exactly the right place –
& edit & pacing are pretty much perfect)
serves performer -what a voice!- & song admirably…couple of minutes
of sheer cool & utter exhilaration somehow
paradoxically delivered in the same package.
This is fast shaping up to be my favourite ever music vid,
and the album from Sublime Frequencies (they say they’re sold
out, but a little searching secured me a copy elsewhere) is as good
as this promises.
More to be found on Y**T***.

John Berryman – Dream Song #14

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watchingthem
Dream Song #14 (1967, 8MB, 1:43 min)


Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatedly) ‘Ever to confess you’re bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.’ I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.
Peoples bore me,
literature bores me, especially great literature,
Henry bores me, with his plights & gripes
as bad as achilles,

who loves people and valiant art, which bores me.
And the tranquil hills, & gin, look like a drag
and somehow a dog
has taken itself & its tail considerably away
into mountains or sea or sky, leaving
behind: me, wag.

Another Dream Song.
For details see original post

Wikipedia Art/Wikipedia Heart – David Kent Watson

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Wikipedia Heart (2009, 36MB, 3:12 min)


Wikipedia Art (2009, 15.3MB, 1:32 min)

Being two songs by David Kent Watson inspired by the Scott Kildall/Nathaniel Stern
Wikipedia Art project, which has engendered some huffing & puffing amongst the humourless & imaginatively challenged.
The songs are neat – skillfully made, performed and recorded, & beneath the surface whimsy
there’s some depth ( in particular “Heart” seems to found a whole new hybrid discipline of
epistemological meditation through popular song).

This is in keeping with the whole WA project which unlike so many art projects which claim
to investigate something ( & usually my heart sinks when I see the word) actually does
and very effectively too.
Not only that (and I would expect this from anything involving Stern, whose work in whatever medium
or genre, is always touched with poetry) there’s a wonderfully twisted lyricism* to the WA project, which is very difficult to sum up in the usually one line required for much second rate conceptualism -the Duchamp epigone crew- which is possibly why it seems to have mostly drawn responses ranging from surly to mystified and back to grumpy in discussion in places like Art Fag City and Rhizome.
Now, generously & mischievously, Kildall & Stern have thrown the whole thing open for remixing, which is where these songs appear**.
The remixes in turn form an ongoing contribution to the padiglione internet of the current Venice Biennale -here’s the open call for contributions so what are you waiting for?!

And of course, coming back full circle to David Kent Watson, clearly one to watch. Bravo.

* & I use the term precisely & advisedly, not simply as a term of general approbation.
What I mean is this: it’s the very not-rightness, surface clumsiness
of the WA project that makes it resonate so much. This is what those who want their
art laid out like the ABC or like wonder pills, miss. It’s the failure, or refusal, of glibness,
the stimulus to real thought, that spawns the poetry of it.
Even the language the Wikipedia serf-bureaucrats use as they flounder blindly, hilariously and painfully
seems to have been dusted with a kind of magic satire brush.

** D.o.I – I have a couple of things in there also.

Laric – 50 50, 50 50 2008

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Oliver Laric – 50 50 (2007, 12.1MB, 2:06)

Oliver Laric has really grown on us over time.
In 2007, he mashed up fifty YouTube videos of
random kids lip-syncing (or really singing, sort of)
to “In Da Club,” “Candy Shop,” and “How We Do”
by the American rap artist (artist?) 50 Cent,
leaving them in their original YouTube format.
Also keep in mind that “In Da Club” is around five
years old by now. I guess the youth know what they
like, though it’s worth noting these songs are generally
foul and offensive at best. Nevertheless, due to what I’m
calling the constant influx of amateur 50 Cent covers onto
YouTube, Laric decided that he had to make a follow-up
video, 50 50 2008, seen below.


Oliver Laric – 50 50 2008 (2008, 10MB, 2:07)