Reclaim Love

A worldwide get-together is happening on Saturday the 12th of Feb.  The purpose?  To celebrate Love.

Check out http://www.o-i-l.net/ to see where it's happening near you :)

Name that Painting!

Dear anyone-who's-ever-appreciated-a-painting,

This music video for "70 Million" by Hold Your Horses! is an art montage - with a difference.  Each painting is a recreation, with the singers popped into the mix.

List of paintings is in the comments.

The Fun Theory

People often don't do what's best for them.  Would they if was fun?

That's the thesis behind The Fun Theory



This is actually an initiative started by Volkswagon.In one way I think it's fantastic that a corporation are making an effort to spread positivity in the world.  On the other hand, they're probably doing it to improve their company image and sell more products.

Your thoughts - does the end justify the means?

Labyrinth Ear

Labyrinth Ear are synth-pop duo hailing from South East London.

An amazing electronic cover of a Disney song was what turned me onto them, but because they're such a new band (formed last summer) there wasn't much info out there... So I dropped them a line to see what I could see.  (Interview after the tracks)

You can get their Oak EP free off their site.

"Snow White" (video is taken from the Betty Boop film of the same name)


"White Gold" (Video features puppet work of the late Czech animator Jiri Trnka)


"Wild Flowers"

"Navy Light" (video taken from the David Bowie film "Labyrinth")

Morning Parade - Under the Stars (Labyrinth Ear remix)

- How did "Labyrinth Ear" come together?

Tom had made music for a while but hadn't really shared any of his music with anyone before, I'd never planned to be a singer and was applying for university to study fashion design, then Tom played me a couple of his tracks he had made several years ago and I was stunned, they were really good and no one had ever heard them before, I encouraged him to start producing again and to look for musicians and vocalists to produce for, he was unable to find people, so I reluctantly offered to do some vocals for a couple of tracks he had produced, we uploaded 1 or 2 onto myspace and the response we got was amazing. We haven't stopped since then! I never knew how satisfying it was to produce music and to finish tracks, I now feel like this what I should have been doing all along! All I can say is if you think you can't do something, just try it and see.

- What are your influences (musically and otherwise). 

Our influences are very varied and vast, my taste is quite odd sometimes, most of my music collection is made up of film soundtracks, Tom has quite a big music collection, a lot of electronic stuff. A few influences we both agree upon would be Arthur Russell, Joanna Newsom and John Maus.

Non musically, we're both very much into art and film. I'm into fashion, you also might have noticed that we like cats.

- How did "Snow White" come about?

This was our first track, I'd never written lyrics or songs before so we decided to do a cover. It was my idea to do 'I'm Wishing' from Snow White, it seemed a bit silly at first, but we were delighted with the result and completely amazed at the response we had to it.

- You're a pretty new band - what are your hopes for '11?

Yes, we are quite new. We're really excited about 2011 - we have a lot of aims for the year. At the moment we're working on lots more tracks, remixes, music videos, and playing plenty of shows.

The making of "Wanderland"

Hermanos Ingleso are Belgium brothers, and an electronic music duo.  I recently stumbled upon this deadly tune "Wanderland", but I was even more impressed with the video, which was recently awarded "Best Belgian Music Video 2010" at the International Film Festival Leuven. 

In fact, I liked it so much that I dropped the directors, Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys, a line and asked them a few questions!

God bless Vimeo - it makes it so easy to connect with film makers whose work you like :D (Interview below the video)

- What was your creative inspiration for the video?

Kristof:  The album artwork of Hermanos Inglesos contained birds (from encyclopedia books), so I took this as a starting point.

The title 'Wanderland' and lyrics like 'take me to your dreams' inspired me to find an idea so we could show lots of "dream sequences". Or in this case a psychedelic trip. I had the idea of 'birds doing drugs', and then letting them hallucinate and have a bad trip and then an overdose. But because the song is rather positive and sweet, we decided to soften the idea and make it more suggestive. Hence the "magic berry".

Michèle:  Kristof was going mad with the delirious drugged bird :)

I knew Hermanos  would find this maybe a bit too much, so we softened it down.

And afterwards I think this was a better thing for the storyline.. 

How did you go about planning and making it?

Kristof:  Hermanos Inglesos approached Michèle. We had about 1,5 month to make the video. We had creative freedom, the only thing they asked was to include the two musicians. But we spoke with Hermanos Inglesos about the idea/style before executing the storyboard. And after getting the storyboard/animatic approved, we continued designing and animating.

It was very low-budget (like most music videos), but we did this for our portfolio and self-promotion (and do enough commercial work to compensate).

Michèle:  Hermanos contacted me, because they had seen a little test movie on my blog and they liked the `girly sweetness` in it ..  but they had no idea what they wanted to make... "something with birds" ..!

They had almost no budget either, so we had to come up with a style that was easy and quick, also because of the short deadline..

So I called kristof, who i`d knew as a great illustrator and graphic designer/motion graphics animator ..

and he was immediately enthusiastic, even do we didn`t really knew each other and i don`t think he really knew my work.

Because I had no time to work on it and we had the deadline ahead he started with the main idea and made the main style of the movie..

- What motivated you to work together, and what do you think the ingredients for a valuable partnership are?

Kristof:  Michèle asked me if I had time and wanted to direct the video. We knew each other, but haven't worked together before. But it went very well, we both concluded afterwards.

Michèle:  I liked his graphic style, very minimal.  And i had never directed a movie by myself (exept my graduation project) 

so, with the deadline and the opportunity that we could make  whatever we liked, 

I thought getting someone like Kristof on this project would make it .. better :)

And  once we went to a guitar movie together, so i knew, he had my kind of taste in music :) very important if you work together!

Michèle and Kristof are both based in Ghent, Belgium.  Anticipating great things from both of them in the future!  Check out more of their work here:

http://www.kristofluyckx.be

http://www.michelevanparys.com/

CREDITS:  Music video for Hermanos Inglesos feat. MeMe (Wanderland).

Directed by Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys.

Design: Kristof Luyckx & Michèle Vanparys

Art Direction: Kristof Luyckx

Editing: Stijn Deconinck & Kristof Luyckx

Animation: Michèle Vanparys, Michélé De Feudis, Dries Bastiaensen & Kristof Luyckx.

A Record's Eye-View

This, and more from the photographer here