Flight of the Conchords LipDub Fansterpiece!

To all Flight of the Conchords fanatics, heres a chance to flex your creativity and love for this show. The LipDub Fansterpiece contest! For detailed information, check out www.flightlipdub.com/

Universal Mind Control.

UMC Teaser from kwest on Vimeo.

Finally.

Common's "UMC", my favorite leak of this summer ("Swagger Like Us" being a close second), is finally getting some motion love. Kinda.

Okayplayer posted a preview of the final music video by Hype Williams, one of the few dudes who can still pull a decent budget nowadays. The post-heavy clip fits well with Pharrell William's back-to-the-future electro beat and it looks like Hype is making an attempt at leaving his usual sandbox. Kinda. Can't wait for the full-length to get finished and released.

On a personal note, I actually almost ran Common over a couple of months ago a while ago when he was jaywalking on La Brea after walking out of American Rag Cie. Whoops.

Spike Spends Saturday With Kanye West.

You should never feel completely satisfied. You should always feel like you could do something greater...

Spike Jonze overload tonight. Just found an old series of videos from VBS of Spike interviewing Kanye during the coloring session for the Hype Williams-helmed "Can't Tell Me Nothing". It's an interesting look at Yeezy's thoughts regarding his process, his expectations of himself, the relationship between fan and artist and how that changes with success, his arrogance as overcompensation for his fears, etc. Highly recommended for people that love Kanye. Even more highly recommended for the people that hate Kanye.

P.S. If you thought the dude was cocky before, this won't change that belief. At least it's not an interview of Lil Wayne.

Drop.

As you watch the video you will start to see weird stuff happening...

Plenty of people remember Pharcyde's video for "Drop". You know, the one where dudes are rhyming forwards but moving backwards? The one with the cameo by the Beastie Boys? The one directed by Spike Jonze before he became a hipster household name?

I'm a big fan of seeing other peoples' creative processes, so finding Spike's original video treatment for the video at the Delicious Vinyl site was a goldmine for me. As you can see, it's an exercise of sheer simplicity and clear vision. It's amazing to see how something so bare-bones ended up with so much life and detail. It's like Spike was the Woody Allen of music video: he delivered what he promised on-time and on-budget.

Check out the video below. For extra geekiness, click here for the video unreversed (re-reversed?) to see how the shots looked as they were filmed. Looks like fun.

passengers.

Lou Reed's voice seems to get better as he ages. With this in mind, it was a major coup for Dutch composer, Stephen Emmer, to get Reed to participate in his upcoming album, Recitement. A breathtakingly fresh project, Emmer hand-picked a variety of literary material and basically composed a score of each. The kicker is that each track uses a reading of the text as a voiceover of sorts. As described on the official website for the album:

A kind of rap 2.0 but then created the other way around: first the text, then the music. You could also call it Spoken Word Goes Pop where poetry becomes a film- soundtrack, classic prose rap & rock and travelstories become jazz-noir or chamberpop.It's in fact the Music of Words.

This beautiful and melancholy video, directed by Paul Faas, is for the track, "Passengers". Lou Reed provides the voice for Paul Theroux's text and the results are nothing short of magical. The full album will include the work of Borges, Ginsberg, and Samuel Beckett. Sounds like a great pick-up for fans of literature, spoken word, music, and film.

Celebrate Originality.

Being silly is serious business. The third and final installment of Adidas' Celebrate Originality campaign is online and it completely speaks to my love for all things light and irreverent.

The video features skater and artist Michael Sieben, a recent collaborator with Adidas, enjoying a nice treasure hunt through San Francisco with a few with his pals, except in this case, his pals are the characters that the artist designed himself. We here at Whisper can't say no to short films instilled with a childlike wonderment, and this piece is no exception.

Sly Fox.

Watch what you watching...

You gotta love Nas for going for it. His new untitled album officially comes out in stores tomorrow amidst a wash of controversy regarding the original title and a week or so before the official release, he takes a shot across the bow of one of the world's biggest media outlets. My kind of rapper.

The video for "Sly Fox", Nas' diatribe against Fox News, directed by Rik Cordero (nice subtle director credit, Rik!) is a bit of a misfire as the climax brings to mind a certain scene involving a bat and a printer from Office Space when it really should have evoked visions of a hammer obliterating a giant screen broadcasting the propaganda of Big Brother.

The album itself is a success though. With Nas reestablishing his relevance and growing comfortable in his role as rap's old owl, he is given the freedom to send shotgun shells to the gut of what ails the game with no fear of reprisal. Recommended listening.

Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

Perennial Whisper Crush Zooey Deschanel just premiered the first music video from She & Him, her musical collaboration with indie crooner M. Ward on FNMTV. A decidedly charming low-budget affair, what the video lacks in polish, it makes up for in cuteness by way of faux cell animation and a number of dresses on Zooey. Swoonfest! The whole affair was directed by Ace Norton, who has been nominated by the MVPA for 2008 Director of the Year.

On a related note, the current issue of BlackBook magazine has a really good article on our favorite It Girl, accompanied by photos that are the print manifestation of summer heat.

P.S. Check out this throwback post if you missed it the first time for a duet of Zooey and Lavender Diamond's Becky Stark covering ABBA.

FNMTV: fugly frontman does good?

Much can be said about Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz, perhaps all pejorative, but you have to think that his heart was in the right place when he pushed MTV to make a show that actually showed music videos. And guess what? This show isn't buried somewhere in the middle of the night where it's only competition is that one show where two dudes sell knives, it's on a legitimate time slot.

So, what's got me all irked about it? Despite early hype about the show saving the long-comatose medium, it only bothers to show an average of three or four videos in their entirety. In an hour long show. Sure the vintage snippets and the live performances are a throwback to the medium's roots, but exactly how does devoting twenty or so minutes resurrect the music video back to its place as the pop cultural barometer it was, say, fifteen years ago? Does twenty minutes even make the show rise above celebrity vanity project towards something with a modicum of cultural relevance? Watch it and you tell me why a music television channel needs an excuse such as this one to air music-related television programming.

On a music video related note, hipster directing titan Michel Gondry was asked by Entertainment Weekly(!!!!!!!!) to list twenty-five classic music videos. There are some obvious ones that deserve their place in any music video list, but Gondry manages to surprise with a few new additions. Real talk.

Trapped In The Closet

Yes! Funny or Die.com has ALL 22 chapters of the R. Kelly movie [not the porno], Trapped In The Closet!



It's the WHOLE thing! Everyone needs to watch this! It's soooo great. Watch it. And call me.

Bjork -Wanderlust

Here's Bjork's new video, Wanderlust:




and the making of the video:




directed by
Encyclopedia Pictura.

I love their chart book on their site:



I recommend you clicking the image to enlarge it.

yeah.

bomb the bass.

it's no secret that music video is becoming an increasingly dead medium. the past decade has seen air time and budgets disappear, and it seems as if the creativity has gone away as well. it always cheers me up to discover good work coming out via youtube (does mtv even play videos anymore?), and i love how these things get passed around from person to person like we're on some juicy secret that we don't want the masses to know about but we just have to share out with our like-minded friends.

so, like-minded friends, i present you with the video for bomb the bass' "butterfingers". the clip was directed by the perish factory, who apparently have worked previously with the sea and cake and basement jaxx. good stuff.