Becky Black and Maya Miller play some awesome bluesy garage rock. If you like The Black Keys or The White Stripes or some other color/noun combo-named band, you'll probably dig this stuff. I found their album Funeral Mixtape a couple years ago and it became a jogging soundtrack staple. I can still remember this particular moment where I ran up a large hill near my apartment and right as I crested it and started to sail down the other side, their song "Making Gestures" hit a huge crescendo and the an absolutely slammin' guitar solo came in ... It was fanfuckingtastic. Just listen through the first minute 80 seconds of the song and you'll see what I mean. And then keep listening, because there's just more of that awesomeness.
They released We Kill Computers about a year ago, and put out a video for the chug-a-lug rocker "Cobra Matte". I wrote about that video over at Draw Us Lines a couple months ago when it came out, and you can see that description below.
The Pack a.d. / "Cobra Matte" / We Kill Computers [Mint] / dir. Jimi Cuell
The music of The Pack a.d. and the style of this video are remarkably similar. The goal of both is to make the most mess out of a few basic elements. For the band, the idea is to take a guitar and drums and make some pounding blues-rock sounds with heavy riffs and powerful vocals. For the video, the idea is to take the two band members themselves, with instruments, and film them against a drab backdrop getting slaughtered with food, beverage, silly string, and so forth, in between playing their instruments, all in one seemingly-continuous shot while maintaining the appearance of pristine black clothing. I dig their albums, myself, but even if this song isn’t your bag, try watching and figuring out how in the heck they spliced the video clips together to make it into a seamless view. Did they have to play anything backwards? Who’s tossing the shit in from the sides? Just how tall is the guitarist? And so on.
The reason I bring this all up today, though, is because some of the band's friends just made a Lego version of the video you saw above! It's an interesting idea to do, in general, and I think it works pretty well with this one. I would have liked to see the "messy" parts of the video a bit more inventive in the Lego version, but I guess you don't want to ruin your toys when you play with them, ya know? Anyway, enjoy this one, too:
Bonus video! I found this one a while ago and haven't had an occasion to share it, but now it's kinda relevant, so here it is. There's a classic video of Joy Division on the BBC playing "Transmission" (a tune I've "covered" here before, hah). It's a great song and a great performance, especially with Ian Curtis' dance moves. Someone recently made a stop-motion version with Playmobil! Man, I had so many of those toys when I was younger. They're still in my basement somewhere, hmm ... Anyway, check out the original video here, and enjoy the animated one below:
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