I recall first seeing a Die Antwoord video two or three years ago. It was the strangely trashy YouTube video for the single ‘Beat Boy’ with an interview about South African Zef counter-culture:
I can’t recall how that video hit my radar, and I promptly forgot about it. In the meantime, Die Antwoord has broken through and their videos attract millions of YT views. The stuff is viral, addictive, and toxic as crack. Zany and sometimes wicked parody seems to work as a kind of Trojan Horse for critical viewers. Most viewers, who may not understand much of the parody are probably dazzled by the eye-candy (eye-smack, really) and the uncanny vocals that mix South-African English, and unfamiliar Afrikaans and Xhosa languages. Where did Ninja and YoLandi park the UFO? In one YT interview, shows Ninja (humourously) losing his temper at an interviewer who ask about their involvement with ‘conceptual art’, while Yolandi pretends not to understand the term. But dig a little deeper and you’ll see that indeed Die Antwoord have dablled in the art world and have collaborated with Leon Botha and Harmony Korine.
This pre-MTV music video shows Brian Eno performing the track China My China from his second solo album Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) in front of a Nam-Jun-Paik-like television wall. Judy Nylon and Polly Eltes provide backing on guitars. Check out the use of a typewriter for percussion from about 1:40. This is post-punk from the period before punk. Performance artist/musician Judy Nylon looks really new wave, but this is 1974, not 1980. This is closer to video art than music video. Surely Eno’s concerns here are artistic, not aimed at gratification of a pop audience. As with other innovative Eno works there seems to be a focus on process over product. Something to reflect on as we begin a new year.
Here’s another track from the same album. Third Uncle is considered notable as an example of proto-punk, but again this is really closer to post-punk. There’s a strong resemblance to Joy Division here, however this was recorded a couple of years before Joy Division was formed.
This is what really good electro sounded like live in 1982. In those days this was known as industrial music. Cabaret Voltaire was one of the first groups to play like this along with Throbbing Gristle. Lo Fi video art was de rigueur for industrial bands even in the days before MTV.
Check out the video for the early CV track ‘Obsession’. This may be more accessible than the above live track.
I’ll bet Grimes has given Cabaret Voltaire a good listen. Certainly there’s a direct link via Skinny Puppy.
Finally, here’s the video for one of my fave CV tracks, ‘Nag Nag Nag’.
I first heard Cabaret Voltaire on an alternative radio show in the late 70s and a while later saw some of their videos on late-night cable tv. It seemed pretty fresh then because there was not much else around combining techno (at that time disco) beats with noise. In retrospect this was experimental pop music, though at the time it seemed too deviant to be pop. At some point, the subversive deviance of the late 70s/early 80s industrial subculture was recuperated.
This could serve well as the anthem of a global corporation!
Lyrics (use the translation bar at the right if you can’t read French)
L’Opportuniste
Je suis pour le communisme, je suis pour le socialisme
Et pour le capitalisme parce que je suis opportuniste.
Il y en a qui contestent, qui revendiquent et qui protestent.
Moi je ne fais qu’un seul geste, je retourne ma veste
Je retourne ma veste toujours du bon côté.
Je n’ai pas peur des profiteurs ni même des agitateurs
J’fais confiance aux électeurs et j’en profite pour faire mon beurre.
Il y en a qui contestent, qui revendiquent et qui protestent.
Moi je ne fais qu’un seul geste, je retourne ma veste
Je retourne ma veste toujours du bon côté.
Je suis de tous les partis, je suis de toutes les partys
Je suis de toutes les cauteries, je suis le roi des convertis.
Il y en a qui contestent, qui revendiquent et qui protestent.
Moi je ne fais qu’un seul geste, je retourne ma veste
Je retourne ma veste toujours du bon côté.
Je crie vive la révolution, je crie vive les institutions
Je crie vive les manifestations, je crie vive la collaboration
Non jamais je ne conteste ni revendique ni ne proteste
Je ne sais faire qu’un seul geste, celui de retourner ma veste
De retourner ma veste toujours du bon côté
Je l’ai tellement retournée qu’elle craque de tous côtés.
A la prochaine révolution, je retourne mon pantalon.
This MV may be interesting to Ushioda-san. Looks like it is made with low quality VHS video recording/editing equipment. Possibly shot with a digital camera and re-recorded using a cheap VHS VCR. Or are the effects digitally simulated? It’s doubtful they would go to the trouble of doing that, but you never know. In any case, it makes a useful catalogue of various kinds of artefacts you can get with low quality ‘analogue’ video.
Seems that lo-fi video may be part of their style, here’s another (less artefacty) vintage vhs MV:
Really lovely vocals and playing on both of these tracks. There’s some nice stuff coming out on Arbutus records.
Way back in 2005, when Momus (aka Nick Currie, a former zemi guest), was at the peak of his blogging form, he posted an entry titled Fashion Goth that began:
I’m not into this thing, fashion goth.
It’s probably because I’m not into rock and roll, Romanticism, or Christianity.
I’m not into Asia Argento or Vincent Gallo.
I think their way of thinking is inherently right wing.
I mean, Gallo votes Republican. Fucking fashion goth!
The Fashion Goth Rant was a brilliantly scathing and simultaneously brilliantly funny indictment of the modes of late twentieth century American popular culture and music. Wondering how the rant would sound spoken aloud, I ran the (slightly tweaked) text through a speech synthesis program with the most British sounding voice I could easily find. I happened to be listening to an ambient track at the same time, as was my habit while working, in my ATR days, and noticed a good fit. Here’s how the mix sounded:
I vaguely recall Nick saying he was tempted to include the mix on the ‘Friendly’ album he was planning at the time, but that his FG rant wasn’t friendly enough.
My all time favourite quote from the Fashion Goth Rant, and perhaps all time fave from Momus’ Click Opera blog is the line:
The Marquis de Sade was mounting a critique of the Enlightenment.
What’s wrong with the Enlightenment, girls?
Near perfect deadpan rendition of this by the robotic British voice! And I really love the quasi-mathematical:
When I say “I like X much better”, it’s usually because X has a keen sense of the absurd.
And also because I can’t immediately pigeonhole X’s style.
which serves nicely as a definition of what was great about the anti-rock, post-punk aesthetic of the late seventies and early eighties, Nick’s formative years as an artist.
Click on the link to go the entire text (with images) of Momus’ Fashion Goth Rant.
Artist Dan Graham also considers connections between rock and religion in American culture in the collection of his writings published by MIT Press, Rock My Religion, but from a standpoint that is not anti-rockist. Here’s some related documentary video art with the same title:
