I’m not one for broad sweeping statements about social, ideological or technological change, but we may very well be on the brink of a huge worldwide change – not as major as the industrial revolution, splitting the atom or the cast of Seinfeld reuniting, but still something rather important to this blog’s content.
Changing the world one strobe at a time, here’s Lupa J’s latest video for her single Virus, and dang is it catchy (get it?).
I’m talking of course about the introduction of the slow motion video feature in the latest thousand dollar Facebook machine brought out this month by the world’s favourite company. Never before has it been so easy for affluent suburbanites to create something visually enthralling, and there is no doubt in my mind that we’re about to see a huge influx of small, low budget bands make slow-motion music video clips, many of which hopefully will be featured here.
Which brings us to today’s premiere – a rather artistic moving portrait of Lupa J‘s latest single Virus. Of course it would be silly to oversee the impressive choreography of the Rhapsody Studios dancers, Imogen’s own glammed up Peter Garrett moves and of course the amazing song behind it, but I reckon the coolest part is the faux-slow motion that the video sporadically drops into. There are moments of more traditional slow motion throughout, but the use of strobe lighting gots me all kinds of trippin.
Not only is it trippy to look at on face value, but it trips me out to also think that it might not be too weird to see music vids like this become a fetishised relic of a past technology – much like hearing about genuine tape delay effects in an era of cheap Asian digital delay pedals or a super-8 film camera in a world where mobile phones have had the ability to capture motion for over 14 years. As we enter a generation of ubiquitous slow-motion capture, people might someday say of Virus: “Wow, that’s cool! Imagine trying to get the effect of something in slow motion before the almighty iPhone granted us salvation from this arbitrary woe”. That trips me out.
At any rate, trippy or not, Lupa J is proving a bit of a tour-de-force in her own right. Channelling the haunting post- XX pop vibes of stuff like St. Vincent
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