Cool as fuck jazz rock gubbins. Somewhere an HBO drama is missing the soundtrack for a great scene.
Tuesday 12 May 2009
Sunday 10 May 2009
The Ocarina of Rhyme
Straight up love for these mashups of prime Nintendo Zelda tunage with hip hop stylings. Gotta give credit to Team Teamwork for mostly doing a nice job. Hear Link spit pure fire!!
It's available HERE
Tuesday 5 May 2009
Z-Movies
For quite sometime now I've been obsessed with collecting awful VHS movies. It's a strange compulsion that in all honesty needs to be validated in some way in order to smokescreen the more obvious idea that there may be something deeply wrong with me. Yet I'm not alone and for fellow VHS collectors like myself there's no pleasure to be gained in gathering up the great films in that format. Oh no! It's all about the worship of trash and obscurity. The simple joy in knowing with absolute certainty that no DVD version exists is a thrill in itself. Or the insanely comforting ritual of watching the pre-film (and post-film occasionally) trailers with genuine surprise and interest because in doing so it can open up another world of desirable insanity, filth and coolness with a new batch of trophies to pursue. It's beautiful as it begets itself.
So what to look out for? It may not work for books but you can ALWAYS judge a VHS by its cover. Does it contain any of the following: ninjas, mutants, cyborgs/robots, post apocalyptic worlds, creatures, vehicles, hillbillies or Vietnam vets? These elements will guarantee a boner for all but the most discriminate of VHS collectors.
Alternatively as in many private press records it could be an awful artistic rendering with stylistically bland fonts, odd human perspectives and unappetizing still shots adorning the back. Its whole essence screams out that to actually watch this film would be such a gargantuan waste of time that the only solace you could take when it was over is that it took you considerably less time to watch it than it did the person to make it. Or actually possibly the other way round. To stick a film like this in your VCR means you have the heart of a lion but the ambition of a tramp.
When entering this world though you have to believe in failed ambition. That there's something fascinating about a glimmer of a great idea that's been executed so incomprehensibly poorly vis-à-vis the paradoxical lack of ambition/effort involved in alternatively just making a formulaic exploitation film. To enjoy these works is to willfully embrace the concept that somewhere and by some means, some guy/girl scraped together a little money and then set about crafting a celluloid turd that history probably would not bestow a footnote upon.
Collecting these films however is a more perverse art in itself. It is akin to being a member of a depraved elitist club whose single goal is to pride themselves on how rare, obscure and downright awful looking their new acquisition is compared to their last one or indeed those of their peers. I'm proud to say I belong in some form to this rogue, mutant community and I've posted about 40 or so VHS covers on MySpace and Facebook for others to cringe and wonder at. However after arrogantly believing I was a master for some years I have since learned that it is I who is truly the student after all. So good luck to you if you decide to take a walk down this idiosyncratic path. A path inexplicably shrouded in both light and shade, where there's honeysuckle in the air and dog shit on the floor. A path whose woods are lined with magic mushrooms and disused porno mags where out there, somewhere deep in the darkness, you swore you saw yourself riding a BMX to the video shop.
So what to look out for? It may not work for books but you can ALWAYS judge a VHS by its cover. Does it contain any of the following: ninjas, mutants, cyborgs/robots, post apocalyptic worlds, creatures, vehicles, hillbillies or Vietnam vets? These elements will guarantee a boner for all but the most discriminate of VHS collectors.
Alternatively as in many private press records it could be an awful artistic rendering with stylistically bland fonts, odd human perspectives and unappetizing still shots adorning the back. Its whole essence screams out that to actually watch this film would be such a gargantuan waste of time that the only solace you could take when it was over is that it took you considerably less time to watch it than it did the person to make it. Or actually possibly the other way round. To stick a film like this in your VCR means you have the heart of a lion but the ambition of a tramp.
When entering this world though you have to believe in failed ambition. That there's something fascinating about a glimmer of a great idea that's been executed so incomprehensibly poorly vis-à-vis the paradoxical lack of ambition/effort involved in alternatively just making a formulaic exploitation film. To enjoy these works is to willfully embrace the concept that somewhere and by some means, some guy/girl scraped together a little money and then set about crafting a celluloid turd that history probably would not bestow a footnote upon.
Collecting these films however is a more perverse art in itself. It is akin to being a member of a depraved elitist club whose single goal is to pride themselves on how rare, obscure and downright awful looking their new acquisition is compared to their last one or indeed those of their peers. I'm proud to say I belong in some form to this rogue, mutant community and I've posted about 40 or so VHS covers on MySpace and Facebook for others to cringe and wonder at. However after arrogantly believing I was a master for some years I have since learned that it is I who is truly the student after all. So good luck to you if you decide to take a walk down this idiosyncratic path. A path inexplicably shrouded in both light and shade, where there's honeysuckle in the air and dog shit on the floor. A path whose woods are lined with magic mushrooms and disused porno mags where out there, somewhere deep in the darkness, you swore you saw yourself riding a BMX to the video shop.
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