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Pete Birkinshaw, CC licence http://www.flickr.com/photos/binaryape/2335322468/
Well, the future is here. A future in which we as a species are overwhelmed my a raft of incredibly tawdry first-person bongo flicks. Come on, we all know that within a matter of hours of Google Glass being made available to the general public there will be a comedically-named website compiling the hundreds of thousands of ‘erotic’ home movies which the world’s exhibitionists have seen fit to foist on us. Don’t try and fight it, it’s what we’ve been evolving towards for millennia. Not that any of the people shilling for a test pair will admit it – can someone please make a more accurate version of this Twitter feed, please? Thanks.
But that’s not all that’s happened this week. We’ve seen another, almost even more scifi, aspect of the future unveiled; we’ve seen the media gripped by a debate that has proven beyond all reasonable doubt that here in the UK our own media are engaged in an almost daily attempt to troll us; we’ve moved a week closer to being able to wave goodbye to good ‘ol Benny and start looking forward to his successor; we’ve hopefully finished with the whole bloody Harlem Shake thing (as an aside, is this a new record for the time taken for a meme moving from new and fresh to insufferably played out?); we’ve revisited and remixed one of the more odious advertising trends of the 90s; we’ve arrived at what can only be described as the apotheosis of televisual entertainment; we’ve perfected the cat delivery system which the internet has been waiting for; the line between advertising and horror became blurred to the point of indistinguishability; and I discovered the ULTIMATE version of Believe by Cher (no joke).
All of that OBVIOUSLY pales into insignificance before the majesty of all the rest of the stuff that’s been going on now, which I’m about to tell you about in migraine-inducing detail (prepare the darkened room now, you may need it). Don’t worry, though – I, and by extension Web Curios, am on holiday next week, so you have a whole extra 7 days in which to recover from this edition. Oh, in the meantime, should anyone want the two spare tickets I’ve got to see Momus on Friday 1st March in East London then please get in touch with me on Twitter. He gives great gig, honest.
Right. Let’s get to it. If we all grit our teeth we can probably survive this with only minor psychological scarring.
2) Next, by way of a mood change, is the excellent Watsky. Watsky became famous a couple of years back thanks to this frankly incredible little bedroom recording, and has an excellent back catalogue of mixtapematerial. He’s coming to the UK in May – I saw him last year and he’s very good indeed. This is a song he’s done with Kate Nash (who I know is a bit Marmite, but I confess to having a massive soft spot for ‘Foundations‘), and it’s called
3) See, I told you – drone paranoia is RAMPANT in art. This is called ‘Seagulls’:
4) You may remember the band Smash Mouth, and their song All Star. Last time I heard it, it didn’t sound like this:
5) Just in case you don’t feel quite grubby enough as it is, this should help. This is by a band called Bot’Ox, and it’s called 2-4-1:
6) Darwin Deez is some sort of nerd music superstar. The video for his new song ‘You Can’t Be My Girl’ is composed of stock footage and is charming – enjoy:
7) The video’s a bit so-so, unless you’re a particular fan of VHS-style video, but this is a perfect 2-minute pop song. Warm Soda with Busy Lizzie:
8) The lyrics here are a *bit* iffy, I think, but the fact that the artist has a puppet of himself (which reminds me of Franklin from Arrested Development) makes it a winner in my eyes. Antwon with 3rd World Grrl (well, yes, exactly):
9) There was a lot of good animation this week, including this lovely short called ‘My Strange Grandfather‘, and this technically stunning WWII zombie short called ‘Paths of Hate‘ – I’m closing out with this one, though, as it gave me proper goosebumps. It might be a bit emo for your tastes, but the technical artistry in the animation is incredible even if the poetry isn’t your thing – give it a go and see what you think – this is To This Day by Shane Koyczan:
That’s it for now
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