New Collections Of Colonies Of Bees Videos - "Flocks II" & "Flocks III"
I've posted about Collections Of Colonies Of Bees' Birds songs in the past -- now we have videos for "Flocks II" and "Flocks III." (The tracks come from the Bees' most recent release, Birds, which consists of four different "Flocks.") Visually, the Wisconsin group keeps it simple in both clips, but when the purity mixes with conceptual depth and the airy resonances and Reich-meets-Tortoise pulses of their sounds, it makes for moving visual documents. After the Bees forwarded these, we asked for descriptions. This is what they said about the especially gorgeous piece accompanying "Flocks II":
Michinori Saigo of Tokyo, Japan put a lot of work into his video for "Flocks II." Paint drips, pink boxes, and paper cut birds all play a role in his part live action, part stop-motion interpretation of the song. Saigo uses a very fresh visual language and succeeds in visually illustrating the process and structure of the 10-minute long song, while adding new insights and something of an abstract storyline with his duo-chromatic video wizardry.
Judge for yourself:
"Flocks II"
Their thoughts on the video for "Flocks III":
The concept and goal with this video was to somehow convey the ideas of potential vs. kinetic energy using the most spare of resources, namely two cameras and 15-foot white background. The director Arthur Ircink filmed each Bees member playing their parts, using mostly very tight shots of the instruments or the musicians. Things start off fairly intact. Cymbals are hit and strings are strummed. But as the structure of the song unravels, so does the visual information you are presented with. Did the guitar or piano just make that sound, or was it the computer or synth? As the music blends together into one resounding chord, the images break apart and you are left with motion, not musicianship. Sounds, not notes.
"Flocks III"
Or, listen to "III" without images:
Collections Of Colonies Of Bees - "Flocks III" (MP3)
Birds is out via Table Of The Elements.
Posted at 2:14 PM by brandon in Video
Tags: Collections Of Colonies Of Bees
My favorite insturmental album of the past few years has been soft machine third. it's like the soundtrack to a french connection "electric company" nightmare politcal thriller from 1972... as far as this stuff goes ... nice 1982 lo-fi clever video but if i need to go someplace like this i play real good stereolab like olv 26....
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LOVE these guys and this album! Thanks for the videos! 'made my day!
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YEA! COCOB!
My favorite...the only thing better than this was seeing them play it at SXSW. They absolutely killed it.
Score = 2
Never heard this stuff before. Just got really into Mogwai, so perfect transition! Great Stuff!
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