It didn’t take long for the laptoppers to realise that concertgoers quickly get fed up of parting with hard-earned cash in return for having to stare intently at young men and women staring intently at their screens behind those annoyingly unavoidable luminous Apple logos. Unless, that is, you happen to enjoy watching Christian Fennesz smoke a cigarette or Christof Kurzmann swigging at a beer. Hence the frequent incorporation of live video in today’s electronic music, for which the DVD format is especially appropriate. This companion DVD to the earlier CD compilation of the same name, Essays on Radio from the Portuguese Cr\u00c3\u00b3nica label is a fine showcase of 28 two-minute videos \u00e2\u20ac\u201c they call them “clips” in France, and that’s a rather apt description of the short form works on offer here \u00e2\u20ac\u201c ranging from grainy home movie footage (Nuno and Pedro Tudela’s “Guandong Tuning Tone”, Maximilien J\u00c3\u00a4nicke and Random Industries’ “Media Corrosion”) via primitive animation (J\u00c3\u00balio Dolbeth’s “AM\/FM”, to music by Steinbr\u00c3\u00bcchel, and Brigitte B\u00c3\u00b6denauer’s video to the DVD’s title track, with sound by Miguel Carvalhais) to more abstract visuals (Stefan Mathieu’s “Radiance” is especially touching) and accomplished psychedelic \/ geometric mindfucks by Tina Frank (perfect for General Magic) and Erich Berger (“Free Radio Azimuth”, music by Pure).<\/p>\n
Needless to say, the whole project has the feel more of a collection of holiday snapshots, and eyes and ears are quickly saturated (but don’t feel any compunction to watch the whole disc through from beginning to end \u00e2\u20ac\u201c just dip in and out); accordingly, the tracks that work best are those where the correspondence between sound and image is clear. Marius Watz’s “Int.15\/35” with music by @c gives General Magic and Tina Frank a run for their money, and the filtered desert colours of Ran Slavin’s “Golden Twilight Memories” are as haunting as his music. Slavin’s work throughout is impressive and moving \u00e2\u20ac\u201c his “Radiophonic Fairytale” (with The Beautiful Schizophrenic, whoever that may be) and “Radio” (with James Eck Rippie) are magnificent. Maybe the good people at Cr\u00c3\u00b3nica could release a full length feature.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It didn’t take long for the laptoppers to realise that concertgoers quickly get fed up of parting with hard-earned cash in return for having to stare intently at young men and women staring intently at their screens behind those annoyingly unavoidable luminous Apple logos. Unless, that is, you happen to enjoy watching Christian Fennesz smoke … <\/p>\n