Cyberpunk Cyberstream

errant bodies - records, #05, 2009
"I wish the medium would be inside me" says Leif Elggren in an interview with the label owner Brandon LaBelle. The uneasiness that characterizes Elggren's work is unfolded quickly and nervously during the interview, as a sort of performance, revealing important personal details in every answer about his own human and artistic condition. The insufficiency of media (even the real-time digital ones) to shape ideas quickly and effectively is stigmatized by Elggren who constantly narrates the hidden secrets and spectral enigmas he faces everyday. So his traumatic, life and art are inextricable, and serve his own requests to be expressively combined. The selected videos cover a decade (1999-2009) and have a few shared elements: fixed cameras, repetition (not in loop), almost no cutting, solo (isolated, old) objects, gestures. Sounds are sometimes real, vocal, ambient sounds, or can be amplified or pure (alternate) silence. Sometimes there's a tension between the voice and the image, which results in the viewer becoming extremely uneasy. Elggren in a liner note on his first CD album fostered the idea of putting the cd on play and then leaving the house ("it's not necessary to listen to this cd"). His radical incoherent consistency, a sort of channeled and understandable schizophrenia, generates oneiric and mysteriously compelling narratives. There's no happiness nor irony in his work, but the way of dealing with sound, material objects and "immaterial" bodies is definitely converting fear into gestures, energy and light.

cd+dvd Volvox, VOL0902, France, 2010
This is a collection of music and video (on cd and dvd) tracking artists that are altering or simply using codes from what has been known as the "Weimar Cabaret." This Cabaret included burlesque, darkness and comedy, and while its practices ended decades ago, its legacy can be found here in the form of modern music video artifacts. Culturally this is an environment that pushes on a theatrical and satirical anti-spectacle, including moments of self-derision (something currently unusual). It's a micro-world, but one that nevertheless joyfully and theatrically plays with the audience. And that makes a clear point against the current overproduction of spectacle. Besides that, a compilation like this makes a very strong case: in the global mess of the millions of videos available on YouTube, or any online or TV digital music channel, connecting what seems to be a common cultural reference point for twenty-odd quite well known artists is a valuable effort. In the intoxicating abundance of moving images there's a reconstruction of cultural archetypes used in alternative music without caring for the respective musical styles. Among the bands selected there are a couple of electronic music icons (the Residents and the Legendary Pink Dots) and there's a clear effort to make the video section distinct from the audio section. This product seems more of a form of archiving, even a form of curating, more than just compiling. And having all the artifacts offline, in this case, seems valuable for preservation rather than just for limiting access.

Les Films d'un Jour, 2009, France, Francaise, English
Prélude au sommeil (Prelude to sleep) is a documentary film catching the spirit of Jean-Jacques Perrey, an eclectic electronic music pioneer who began his impressive career in the fifties. The film reconstructs the trajectory of a free spirit who flew to the USA with his early Ondioline electronic instrument (sponsored by Edith Piaf and Jean Cocteau). Perrey is often briefly interviewed, but the documentary is also letting him speak through his colleagues and friends. His approach is light-hearted and funny, yet technically innovative and extremely accurate. And he's an artist who possesses, as Badalamenti notes in his interview, a strong "young exuberance", while simultaneously having an endless curiosity for research. He can be considered a hero more than a myth for different contemporary communities of electronic musicians, as is largely acknowledged through different tributes and collaborations. And this film, named after his first album, also describes Perrey's research into music as a means to cure insomnia. Directed by Gilles Weinzaepflen, the film features Gershon Kingsley (half of the Perrey-Kingsley duo and author of the world famous Moog anthem "Popcorn"), Angelo Badalamenti (David Lynch's buddy soundtracker), Michel Gondry (the cult music video maker), Air (the famous French pop group), Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe and Joel Chadabe (another pioneer in interactive music systems).