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

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.

We’ve just wrapped the music video for one of the more popular songs off the album entitled “Not Perfect”. You can see the music video below.

Just to give you an idea of how seemingly contradictory this album is, listen to the Amon Tobin Track entitled “4 Ton Mantis” (Directed by my favorite Canadian Photographer: Floria Sigismondi)

And now listen to Sway’s song entitled “silver and Gold” featuring Akon.

COLLABORATORS

Directed by: Sterling Pache
Designed by: Timothy Hung
Produced by: Damian Kuehn

Music Collaborators:

Two Fingers:
Amon Tobin
Doubleclick
Sway

Before leaving for New York we shot a video for another Ninja Tune artist “Shuttle“.

Shuttle found a home for his original sounds amongst the underground Boston musical scene. His unique live shows are now all but infamous within the tightly knit Basstown crew. Their all night parties fuel Boston’s underground music culture with Shuttle’s insatiable sounds and the thrill of no tomorrow at the forefront of every show. Shuttle’s music moved beyond the basements and clubs of the Boston scene and receives spins on Britain’s tastemaker Radio 1.

The Basstown crew are not the only notables for which Shuttle has shared a stage, recent luminaries include: Devlin (Spank Rock), Yelle, Crystal Castles, Diplo, and Classixx. His remix credits are equally as credible and diverse including commissioned remixes of Daedalus, The Little Ones and rockers The Death Set.

While still at school Shuttle honed his production skills devouring anything remotely considered listenable. Armed just with his laptop, he began making remixes of his favorite sounds of the day. These bedroom remixes caught the attention of the influential and tastemakers label, Ninja Tune. His highly anticipated debut release will feature Cadence Weapon and a remix by fellow up and comer High Rankin courtesy of Ninja Tune worldwide at the top of 2009.

We’ll have the music video for the song “tunnel” completed in June 2009.Here are some production stills from the shoot.

Also in the last couple of weeks I’ve found the time to visit a year end school concert at a talented and gifted school in Harlem where my friend teaches music. I haven’t had my camera with me too often, but here is a picture of the Kindergarten kids from Harlem and another group of kids learning about art at the MoMA.

*** 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.

Yesterday, we screened our film “The Purpose of Life is Rice… Wink!” starring Danse Crowkiller at the Reel Justice Film Festival in Vancouver. The film was incredibly well received as was the CBC film it was screened after; “The Devil Plays Hardball”. It was interesting to watch both films screened back-to-back as both films chronicled the life of a particular individual from two completely different standpoints.

A few days before the festival Danse and I were invited to a CBC radio interview to discuss the film. It was a really good interview and Danse managed to complete a crossword puzzle while he was being interviewed without missing a question. Kind of surprised the CBC radio host.

We also just spent 2 days prepping and helping out on the short film “Fix” shoot by Damian Kuehn (production picture above).

Now, we move into music videos for ninja tune!

Enjoy the music!

tunez