*** See the behind the scenes of this video shoot here****

We recently shot the music for the Two Fingers Song “Keman Rhythm”. The song is lryicless, so it really allowed us to interpret the song however we wished.

The song sounds combative and tense, so I knew what I was working with in terms of the tone of the video. But it took some time for me to come up with a story. I tested two different ideas, but ended up scraping them both. That’s when I stumbled upon a book.

I was given a series of essays by Normal Manea. When I opened the book “On Clowns: The Dictator and the Artist” there were some scribbles on the first blank page. The book was given as a gift and the sender wrote out a Pier Paolo Pasolini poem as a note in the front. The part of the poem that’s quoted was.

Pasolini quote

Intelligence will never have much value
in the collective judgment of this public’s opinion.
Not even the blood of concentration camps
could draw from a million of our nation’s souls
a clear judgment of pure indignation.
Each idea is unreal, every passion unreal,
in a people who lost their unity centuries ago
and use their gentle wisdom
only to survive, and not to gain freedom.
To show my face – my leanness -
to raise a single, childlike voice,
makes sense no longer. Cowardice accustoms us
to seeing others die atrociously,
locked in the strangest indifference.
So I die, and this too causes me pain.

This theme of indifference stuck with me. I just watched the film  by Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne called “L’enfant” (The Child) which also explores the issue of a lost and indifferent generation. So now I had my idea and tone, but how was I going to communicate it.

What I decided to do was to respond to the Pasolini poem above as it relates to the sounds of the song. So I wrote this:

What value do words have?
I’ve yelled “never again” too many times now.
Lacking an audience my words became  less  real, less focused.
I was only able to articulate  need,  not ideas.
In the absence of a  listener I retreated to study new words.
In the crowd I emerged more compassionate and angrier than ever before.
We were  the rebellious voices of dissent.
Our collective chant is the sound you hear now.
A bottomless war cry.
The  sound of pure & passionate  indignation.
But our chants were  as  different as we were. Our demands for “freedom”, “justice”, “power”,      “help” all layered  on top  of  one  another and  became  entangled and deformed.
What words lost  in their definition was rediscovered in their collective vibration.
A new word was born.
Angry, rhythmic  and distorted.
But they couldn’t  understand us.
I will not whisper.
Volume is the ammunition of communication.

… So I whispered “Fuck that. I refuse to be indifferent”.

I chose this idea because it allowed us to play with the deep vibrations of the song. As the deep bass of the song is introduced the text across the screen reads:

But our chants were  as  different as we were. Our demands for “freedom”, “justice”, “power”, “help” all layered  on top  of  one  another and  became  entangled and deformed.
What words lost in their definition was rediscovered in their collective vibration.

The idea, is to communicate that this sound is the sound of layered protest. But as the more layered the words of protest become, the less identifiable the demands are. All that is left is a sound. Interestingly enough, that sound still embodies the main tone of the ideas of the collective. The layered voices become indistingishible from one another but nevertheless still sound angry.

The baseline therefore becomes a word. It communicates all of the demands of the protesters at one time. The sound embodies all of their wishes.

But this new word isn’t understood by the powers that be. If everybody whispered the sound, or took turns speaking, it would be less distorted and possibly understandable, but as our narrator points out

Volume is the ammunition of communication.

Therefore, they refuse to whisper.

The song ends with the narrator “giving in” and whispering “Fuck that. I refuse to be indifferent”.

The music video is a modern day response to the Passolini poem found above.

As the video scrolls across from left to right we see angry, scared, tortured and helpless faces intermixed with photographs of representatives of the state. The video ends on the face of indifference.

Enjoy the video.

Toby Benson (MySpace), a London native, but now residing in Brooklyn, New York grew up under the influence of his father’s (a well known jazz musician) record collection and musical tastes. After discovering his father’s vinyl collection of jazz legends like Bix Biderbeck, Milles Davis, and Bill Evans, it wasn’t long until Toby found himself gravitating to the rich, melodic sounds of the trumpet. Growing up, Toby carried his horn with him everywhere.

Toby is trained in classical composition, attending schools in the UK, India and the United States which have helped him develop his craft. While Toby was in the United States he started developing his love for electronica music.

We’ve recently completed the music video for “Analog Glitch”. The video was inspired by the sounds in the song. The song is composed of two main sound sources. One sound is chaotic, modern and electronic while the other sound shares the musical qualities of a classical orchestra or choir. The lone female’s voice, backed up by stringed instruments and glitches of digital distortion make this off beat song one of our current favourites.

We found images to represent each sound. The chaotic, electronic sounds were paired with images of a dusty circuit board. Cutting in and out of focus through the use of digital effects.

We coupled the angelic sound of the women’s voice with the center of an orchid flower. The flower, not only has the shape of a singing angel with wings, but also embodies some of the shapes of a person such as a mouth, the back of a singing throat and a head. The perfect object to compliment the beautiful sounds within this song.

The video was also an experiment in lighting, editing, compositing, color and space. All of the strobing effects you’ll notice on the top layer of the video are done through a dirty mirror while creating the light pulsing effect with a bright flashlight. This is just one of the many subtle tricks you’ll find in this music video. Enjoy.

Sterling

You can watch the high quality version of the video on Vimeo here

To here more of Toby’s music visit his MySpace Page

The Two Fingers album is an inspirational musical uprising by a seemingly odd group of collaborators. The album was highly anticipated because it brought together the two worlds of electronica and hip hop which have been colliding for years with artists like RJD2, Zilla, Z-Trip, DJ Shadow, Nerd and even The Roots. Two Fingers however is a massive collision of these worlds, equivalent to a 300 car pile up. This album is the wreckage from that collision.

Although the album is classified as a hip hop album, there are still similar (but not familiar) Amon Tobin and DoubleClick confrontational electronic undertones.

Songs such as Ms. Jade’s “Better Get That” involve high frequency alarm sounds seemingly surrounding the listener as they stand still and alone in a dark, empty underground parking lot with unusually bad florescent lighting.

The song “Keman Rhythm” which, beyond its interesting use of Middle Eastern rhythms, introduces a bass line that is not easily describable. It will leave you scratching your head realizing you’ve been introduced to a new sound today.

The song “What You Know” chronicles the problems of police discrimination and the blurred lines between different worlds of gangsterdome. The song contains a dreadful, yet surprisingly hopeful audio which simulate the sounds of a man in a jail cell running a police billy-club along the bars of his cell. An undernourished free man, with the opportunity, but not the ability to escape. This is just one example of the many confrontational sounds you’ll hear on this album. Sway’s vocals only enhance the story of these mad rhythms.

Amon Tobin and DoubleClick are known for their creative slant towards an area of music that goes way beyond the confines of being considered simply “electronica”. Sway on the other hand is undoubtedly UK’s biggest hip hop artist, and offers the album sometimes light-hearted and funny and at other times politically charged and issue based lyrics over Amon and Doubleclick’s beautifully crafted soundscapes.

Two Fingers is a surprising album. It’s not surprising in the sense that it’s a great album (I think most people expected that), it’s surprising because listeners have no idea what to expect with this collaboration.  It’s a new sound with new dub, jungle and hip hop rhythms, highly accented rhymes, and unpredictable soundscapes. Whether you’re interested in the sounds of dreamlike obscurity or mainstream rhythms this album will hit you hard.

Just to give you an idea of how seemingly contradictory this album is, listen to an Amon Tobin Track (Bloodstone) for example.

You can also buy the album below.

Now listen to the recent Sway song featuring Akon (Silver and Gold).

Yes, it’s an odd collaboration, but it’s refreshing to be surprised by music isn’t it?

We are working on the first Two Fingers video for the song “Not Perfect” as well as doing a video for the lyric-less track “Keman Rhythm”.

I’ll continuously update this post with making-of photographs and videos.