Event: Bug 53

The final Bug of 2016 had a cold-ridden Adam take us through another selection of entertaining music videos with a great selection and a few that I'd seen in recent weeks that I predicted would be up for inclusion in the show.

"Vowels" by Capital Cities was a good start with a signing dancer taking to the streets of downtown LA. The choreography is great and at the end was cute! The director of this was Remy Cayuela. Two hours after the show this is the one I'm being drawn back to so is probably my pick of the night on that basis.

The second video from the recently reappeared Avalanches is for, what I think is, one of the stronger tracks on the new album "Because I'm Me". The director Greg Brunkalla has done a great job turning the mashed up track into a video about a young lad who's trying to impress a ticket booth attendant with the power of dance. 

The first time Katie Melua has been at Bug and as terrible as her music is the video here for "Perfect World" was lovely with a small story playing out in a world made of sugar. This was directed by Karni & Saul.

Adam sometimes has a section called Netballs featuring amusing videos from the internet. On tonight's show we got to see two completely different clips.

The first was "24" by Not Waving. Directed by Simon Owens this is just dogs wagging their tails in time to the music. No CGI or computer trickery, just a lot of footage filming and selection to find the clips that matched the track. This was surreal but very well done.

The second was a clip that had gone viral in the last few months and shows why you shouldn't eat an entire Carolina Reaper chilli in one go, why you shouldn't try to cool your mouth with water and why it's perhaps not a good idea to do this if you suffer from asthma. This split the crowd with some a little uncomfortable with what they were watching and the other laughing hysterically. I'll let you guess which camp I was in!

Up next we had Simon Landrein's video for Coco Banana's track Earthquaker. This was bizarre, looking like something Roy Lichtenstein would do if he tried animation whilst on drugs. Bizarre! and the track sounded like it had been slowed down too much.

Bonobo's video for Kerala was one I knew would be shown here having seen it a few weeks back. A trippy piece that benefits from multiple viewings and that works incredibly well with the video although it might be too much for some to watch; it's bound to elicit fits in some people. This was directed by BISON.

Following that we had a bizarre but funny video by Bad Bad Not Good for their track Lavender. The Director was the rather silly named Fantavious Fritz and has a group of lads playing Dungeons & Dragons. This was a quite dark and amusing video but went well with the synthy track. There's great use of the Yoda horn at the end too...oh, and the website mentioned is real :D

The guest rapper Kaytranada on the last track also had a video of his own for his track "Lite Spots". I liked this video, simple and a little bit emotional featuring a robot that just wants to dance. This was directed by Martin C. Pariseau and I loved the motion capture work on this.

The next video is one I'm unable to find online. It was called "The Second" and was directed by James Lees. It's a powerful short on guns and why they're not good things! This was great and it's a shame I can't find it...If it ever appears I'll post it up. Instead here's his video for DJ Snake so you can get an idea of his directing style.

A total change of music style as we moved to folky-sounding The Furrow Collective and their track "Wild Hog in the Woods". This features a video by Chris Cornwell and looks like a Dr Seuss production but with a slighter darker story, actually Seuss would probably get away with it.

Up next Blaze and their track "Virile" with a video by Jonathan and Guillaume Alric, so very French then. The track is pretty decent and the video ok despite it's straightforward story featuring two guys getting stoned to the track that one of them is playing on some decks. It's clearly shot on a cheap budget and is probably better for it.

The band for the next video, Francobollo, were in attendance at our show so were able to give some insight to their video Finally which was directed by band member Sam Bailey. It was intended to be a video compilation of the band on tour but they ran out of cash and the will to finish the video so they dicked about and filmed a soap opera which they then spliced in. The Soap Opera part was ridiculous but had the audience in hysterics. They should release more of that!

The final video is the latest by OK Go, who always feature in the show whenever a new video is released. This one is clever (aren't they all) in that the video is 4 seconds of footage slowed down and timed to the music. A great idea, although it has been done before; Adam showed a Beck video from 2003 that had the same idea but lacked the tech available today. A great video to finish with.

So, another great show and we have the 10th birthday celebrations to look forward to in 2017!

Epilogue

This video was mentioned in the crib sheet but wasn't played due to time. It's pretty good, more so if you're an MJ fan (I'm not that big a fan)! It's cool to be able to say I've been to a lot of the locations and good to see Lil Steph at the end!