PEG 2.0

I'm an internet industry analyst for Business Insider Intelligence.

This is my personal blog where all my views are my own, etc.

Creative Commons License

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

hypem: somesongsconsidered:

“Kelly Watch the Stars” – Air
(Words/music: Jean-Benoît Dunckel and Nicolas Godin, available on Moon Safari, Astralwerks 1998) 

At one point in my life, music videos were very important to me.  The thought of a band releasing a video for one of my favorite songs (or falling in love with a song through its video) would have make my week as a teenager, and the best part of a Monday morning was getting up before school and watching part of the previous night’s episode of 120 Minutes before leaving.  Today, even with a staggering amount of videos available on demand through YouTube and other sources, I rarely watch videos.  Part of it is that I generally need to actively seek out a video; in the past, I could put on MTV and watch videos while I did something else.  Now, I have to take the step to think of a specific video and search for it.  Truth be told, at this point in my life I’m not often impressed by videos either.  In most cases, I’d rather just listen to the song.

A video like “Kelly Watch the Stars” (in fair warning, I’m going to talk about it, so you may want to watch it first here) works because it captures the tone rather than mirroring the narrative.  In this case, there isn’t really a narrative to tell in the video, so the slow shots of the ping-pong match and supernatural touches.  Whether it’s the members of Air controlling the ping pong via a game of pong or the lack of an emotional response from the crowd when Kelly falls down (and this is how I’d imagine a video game audience would respond), all of these odd touches somehow work within the world of the video.  Even as Kelly’s spirit momentarily floats above her body, only to return for her triumphant match point, the actions in the video fit in perfectly with the shifts in the song’s arrangement.  At times, the video comes close to rendering the song as mere soundtrack, but watching the video on mute for even a second shows that the short film needs the dreamy music more than the song needs its video.  

More on Air: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm

I love Air. They’re just awesome. 

Notes about this post from the Tumblr community:

  1. mymusicawards reblogged this from somesongsconsidered
  2. vincemick reblogged this from hypem
  3. burndownthedisco reblogged this from hypem and added:
    good springtime morning or summer evening music. Air (French band) for the win! courtesy of
  4. dustforeyes reblogged this from hypem
  5. pegobry reblogged this from hypem and added:
    somesongsconsidered:...I love Air. They’re just awesome.
  6. biggreenguy reblogged this from hypem
  7. 100andmore reblogged this from hypem and added:
    “Kelly Watch the Stars” – Air
  8. humansvsrobots reblogged this from globochem
  9. globochem reblogged this from hypem
  10. hypem reblogged this from somesongsconsidered
  11. fuckyeahsynthpop reblogged this from somesongsconsidered
  12. lovepopsuicide reblogged this from somesongsconsidered
  13. thedustatdawn reblogged this from somesongsconsidered
  14. somesongsconsidered posted this