Wednesday 1st June, first day of a new month, my first time at BUG! a bi-monthly showcase for new music videos of both mainstream and indie acts and shown on a big screen at the BFI Southbank. Tonight in a special edition, hosted by Adam Buxton (of Adam & Joe fame and 6Music DJ), is a retrospective of one of the most iconic and noticeable music video artists over the last 20 years.
Moby, who rose to prominence with his second single, Go (Ondrej Rudavsky) in 1991 with a video that was hypnotic and a hallucinatory fit set to three minutes. Moby was marked as an artist who knew what he wanted to do with his videos, and how they were an important outlet for his artistic and polemical outlet.
Moby will forever be remembered for the 1999 album Play, one of the biggest selling albums of that decade and a seminal work, which thanks to every track being available for licensed use in advertising, TV or films made the album ubiquitous and landed Moby some notierity for his wish to make as much money as possible. In the interview with Buxton, Moby quoted that the reason he did that was because the album was initially not a success and landed him some awful reviews, his only regret was he wish he did not allow the licensing in the UK and left it only to non-English speaking territories like Japan and Portugal, for example.
Watching the music videos there is a recurring theme of morose mortality, death is a common thread in certain videos; the allure of celebrity and the use of famous actresses (Christina Ricci in Natural Blues (David La Chappelle, 2000) and Heather Graham in The Day (Evan Bernard, 2011) are most memorable, and now even Moby himself or thelittleidiot character of his is itself a character.
In the interview with the ever entertaining Buxton, who bought a lightness and touch to proceedings making an audience laugh when commentating on the comments left on YouTube for three videos, Moby touched upon his collaborations with David Lynch, his input into the videos - stating that he leaves the creative process to the creative minds, except for In This World, which was his idea initially and the work of mobygratis.com; a new venture that allows non-profit organisations and independent filmmakers to use his exclusive work and tracks for use in their films. Another capitalist venture? Moby stated that if profit was made, a portion of profits must be paid to the Humane Society, so he cannot make money even if he tried.
The other excellent venture of the evening was the opportunity to focus on new videos for new Moby material from the new album Destroyed; sanctioned by Moby, BUG, Saatchi & Saatchi and Vimeo to search for new directorial talent - the 'Hello, Future' Music Video Challenge showed three videos selected for the final. The winner to be selected at the New Director Showcase at the Cannes International Festival of Creativity on June 23rd.
Two videos for Be The One were shown, the better being the animated version by Roland Wittl of Germany, incorporating the littleidiot character in an animation video that was indicative of past work and recurring themes. However, the best one in my opinion, was After directed by Alberto Gomez of Mexico; an intoxicating and mysterious and at times terrifying video that was spellbinding in its editing and getting great performances from a young cast. Again, this showed the global reach of Moby as an artist whose work can reach all corners of the globe without pandering to different nationalities; the work can speak for itself.
For more on BUG at the BFI go to http://www.bugmusicvideos.com/ for details the next night is on July 13th/14th at the BFISouthbank. Or follow on twitter @BUGmusicvideos or on Facebook; bugvideos.
For more on Moby go to http://www.moby.com/ and http://www.mobygratis.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment