Kia ora koutou. It's been a big few weeks, I'm tired and there's work to be done yet – so I thought I'd just whack in a few quality music-related videos for you all to enjoy. See the (very simple) instructions at the end if you'd like to add your own.
First up, a somewhat sobering advance clip (spoiler: things got better!) via Pitchfork from the forthcoming Chills documentary, currently being called just The Chills Film. This is at once a personal story and one about the culture. There's a new Kickstarter to help fund the film's completion, with background to the project and some pretty cool rewards.
Also fresh out this week: the amazing new clip for 'Oh Yeah' from the Disasteradio album Sweatshop. Luke has made marvels before, but with the assistance here of Simon Ward he's taken it up several notches. I don't think I've seen better mocap dancing than this:
Another one-man band, Blair Parkes, also has a new clip, from his Saturations album, which I'm playing quite a bit to take me away from whatever I'm stressing over. I like the way this works as kind of a tonal analogue to the music itself.
I watched the 2014 Kate Bush documentary Running Up That Hill: The Kate Bush Story the other night – again, just to get out of my own head for a bit. It's a clips-and-commentators affair leading up to her return to performance that year, but the cast of commentators is bracing: everyone from Tori Amos to Neil Gaiman to John Lydon and Tricky sharing their love for her work. Not all of which I enjoy, but the best of which is unlike anything else.
The beautiful, contemplative 'Terrorise Me' from the live stream of Neil Finn's Out of Silence record three weeks ago. Apart from it being a wonderful album, I'm enjoying the tiny sense of ownership I have in it after watching its creation. It's a really nice way to relate to music. More artists should do this.
I also watched Ben Lewis's The Beatles, Hippies and Hell's Angels recently. It's the mad story of Apple Corp told by people who were there and I found it fascinating. It's not on YouTube, but the trailer is, and offers a little taste.
As reggae music broke into the mainstream, there were quite a number of documentaries and reports about, which we generally see cut up into later works. But it's quite nice, and sometimes revealing, to see the originals too. This 1977 film features an array of reggae stars of the time, including Scratch, Toots, Jo Higgs and, of course, Bob.
Related: the trailer for Musically Mad, the 2010 documentary about UK sound systems scrubbed up and officially launched online for Notting Hill Carnival 2017. You can watch the full documentary here.
And finally – because no shit I literally watched this the other night – this 25-minute video of a horde of happy gurners at an illegal rave in London in 1989. The way it's shot – lots of panning and focus-pulling, not many edits – means the viewer wanders from one group of ravers to the next, tarrying just long enough to maybe get inside their heads a little. Where, you find yourself asking, are they now?
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This is one everyone can play at home. If you want to post a video in the comments, just paste in the URL from YouTube or Vimeo (not the embed code, and try and remember not to have the playlist box checked) and it will automagically embed for everyone to enjoy. New clips, old favourites, long, short. Have fun.