Baseball And Folk Rock Collide In "The Closer"

Inspired by his small town upbringing in Alberta, including plenty of evenings spent watching baseball games with his dad and brother, Mike Edel created The Closer as a tribute to all those memories. As well as writing a lovely little song to represent his childhood nostalgia, Edel collaborated with a group of animators to accompany this song about those fleeting baseball moments. Incredibly relaxing.

I wrote a song called The Closer. It's a story about a pitcher in a small town, a lot like the one I grew up in, who is pitching a perfect game into the 9th inning. But his mom runs onto the mound and tells him that he needs to leave the game because his dad has had a farming accident. So the coach brings in the closer with a 2-0 lead in the 9th inning. He gives up a walk. Then a single. Then a home-run. They lose the game 3-2 in the 9th.

I think that sometimes we think that these small moments in small towns don't matter, but the truth is that they do.

"Outbreak" - A Musical Faceoff

Two music minded neighbors, a punk rocker and a DJ get embroiled in an intense face off in Outbreak. When the bassy vibrations seep into each others houses, the ante continues to get upped until genre barriers get literally broken down. The short kind of reminded me of the type of premise that would typically accompany Harmonix games back in the day.

Check out the making of after the break!

"In Lust III" - Get Hot And Bothered

We received an email with a link to a video and a small blurb: In Lust is available for rentals. And what we got is this rather amazing pseudo-music video starring the music of Health (Goth Star specifically). Featuring Eric Wareheim of Tim and Eric fame and Yasmine Kittles, Lust III is a hot and heavy face off starring the two doing their best to express their lust for each other.

The 8-Bit Game Of Thrones Remix

All caught up on the latest season of Game Of Thrones? Pretty brutal stuff huh? I'll never forget making the mistake of eating during the 3rd season's finale, probably the first (And last) time I've ever felt physically ill after watching a TV show. And this season's been no exception, offering us yet another helping of unexpected brutality that has kept the viewer base skyrocketing. It's just a matter of time, don't get too attached to any one character.

Obvious predictions aside, Youtube user Thereminhero crafted an amazing creation called the NESkeytar, a mixture of a Guitar hero controller, keyboard and an NES sound chip (With a still fully functional NES system). And Theremin used this awesome invention to knock out an awesome cover of the Game Of Thrones opening track, with a fantastic chip tune edge to it.

"Replay" - A 17 Minute Metal Tribute To Videogames

One intense week of work, 38 song covers of classic videogame tracks and a total of 17 minutes running time - This is Replay, an incredible videogame themed passion project created by FamilyJules7X. Spanning a total of 42 years worth of videogames starting with 1972's Pong and ending with this year's Dark Souls II, it's an absolutely amazing medley from start to finish. Enjoy!

Why would I do that, you may ask. Why would I give myself a week to produce a 17 minute medley with 38 songs and also incorporate techniques like green screening I've never even practiced for video before? Because if there's anything I've tried to do in these past 4 years of being on YouTube and not just with video game covers, it's push myself to my absolute potential. What you're watching is literally the best I can do given a week to put a video together and I'm not sure I can ever top this in that amount of time. I had a ridiculously fun time making this. 

Mother F***ing Dalle

While Mother F***ing Dalle starts off relatively straight forward enough, with a bunch of bandits traveling around the country side in their beat up car, things quickly go south and get quite surreal. It's what's implied in the short that's my favorite, with one of the bandits hunched up and holding his head- An indication of a job gone terribly wrong.

While I won't even bother reading into what a bovine stand off might mean, the stylish presentation and remixed French rap score came together to offer a pretty damn entertaining watch that left me wanting more. The short was created by a new Parisian animation collective called 'Souviens Zen-Tan,' who seem to have a ton of experience up their sleeves judging from the quality they managed to pull off. The collective also released another equally amazing short called Oh Sh**! about a dung beetle getting some mentoring by a true connoisseur of the craft. Check that out after the break.

The Opera Machine

Created as part of a series of shorts dedicated to London's Royal Opera House, The Opera Machine by Doug Hindson is a really cool little device that converts music into visual data. The end result looks like an imprint of a vinyl, but with thicker strokes for the more intense moments in the opera, and different colors for the separate vocal accompaniments. Whether it's real or not is anyone's guess, but it's presented in a convincing manner.

I was interested in finding a way to visually record an opera performance and so I began working on a machine that would be able to record audio information in a physical form.
The piece of music is 'O Soave Fanciulla' from La bohème

The Art Of Rythm

Our lives revolve around rythms and patterns. The rythm of our heartbeat, the routines that we follow on a daily basis, the rythm we take on during a work day. We all set and maintain a certain tempo in life, and any event that leads to a disruption of that rythm is immediately noticed. This video by Dark Rye goes into the art of rythm, as well as exploring the philosophies of rythms through the eyes of a DJ who crafts them on a daily basis.

DJ Spooky, a Washington, DC-born electronic and experimental hip-hop musician whose work is sometimes classified as illbient or trip-hop, as he is a DJ who keeps the party moving with infectious beats and mixes.

Tha Kool Kids

Animated by Shaz Lym as part of a possible series development (Check his other videos to see why I reached that conclusion), Tha Kool Kids is a fun showcase of various characters dancing to some classic 90's tracks. Boys II Men's Poison, the Nae Nae and the Carlton dance are all featured. Tons of personality in just a few frames! You can pretty much tell how these characters will carry themselves simply by their choice of music and signature dance.

Dysco

Simon Russel's Dysco is a strange but compelling hybrid short about a dystopian, surveillance society overrun with drones. We are given a glance at a gray world devoid of organic life, and ultimately the noises of these drones and a mysterious entity come together to form a rather unique dubstep style track. Wub Wub.

The shape language really takes me back to musical beat games like Rez and Audiosurf, which is not a bad thing to be reminded of at all. You can check out the making of Dysco after the break

Tape - "Ecosystem"

The beauty of vector: Infinite scalability, impeccably clean lines and music videos like this ambient electro piece by Tape. The Lithuanian based creative collective created Ecosystem to showcase their abilities with motion graphics, and I think it does that wonderfully.

We're initially presented with a simple shape that ultimately metamorphoses into intricate machinery and a plethora of different synchronized designs and patterns. Pretty hypnotizing. You can check out their full reel after the break.

Eclectic Method - A Brief History Of Sampling

Eclectic Method offers us a chronicle of noteworthy samples that have inexplicably been used by multiple artists over the years. Riffs that ended up layered into the background of dozens of different hit tracks used as a solid, oddly familiar foundation that you wouldn't notice unless it was explicitly pointed out via videos like this.

A video remix journey through the history of sampling taking in some of the most noted breaks and riffs of the decades. A chronological journey from the Beatles’ use of the Mellotron in the 60s to the sample dense hiphop and dance music of the 80s and 90s. Each break is represented by a vibrating vinyl soundwave exploding into various tracks that sampled it, each re-use another chapter in the modern narrative.

When I'm Scared

We all get the first time job interview jitters, and that feeling is the basis of Fernanda Frick's musical animated short, which follows a rabbit's journey to his first interview, including a brief showdown with the shadow of doubt. This charming short was created as a personal project, and while originally starting off as a much simpler premise it became a full fledged project following hearing a track by Ze Frank called Scared.

The Moose Knuckle Series

Directed by musician and animator Chris Harding, Moose Knuckle is an awesome pixel fueled journey into the fever dream of an anxious Moose, which go in a variety of strange directions, including the above's (Moose Knuckle 3) descent into a strange 8-bit rave mode. If you've been craving some retro visuals as of late this should absolutely do the trick.



Check out part 1 and 2 of this awesome series by Chris Harding after the break, featuring the unlucky moose getting himself into a variety of strange conundrums.

You Deserve More

In this short and not-so-sweet animated short by Lluis Fuzzhound, a disgruntled man is seen pouting on a bench.  The musical narrator asks him what's up, and is greeted with the typical shrug.  As he delves into the man's problems, we encounter something that I think everyone deals with at some point in our lives: We want more.  We think we deserve more, and maybe even become angry enough to finally stand up and go get it. Or maybe we go the immature understandable route and strike down others who have what we want, but whatever floats your boat, really.

Musicotherapie

Created by Clement Picon, Manu Javelle and Amael Isnard, Musicotherapie follows four animals in a mental institution creating improvised music while performing everyday activities and chores, much to the dismay of a monkey doctor. In his futile attempt to find some peace and quiet he ultimately loses it as much as his own patients. This would make an awesome beat game of sorts, especially with the amazing stylized aesthetic they captured. Created at the Supinfocom animation school.

Kutiman - "Through Tokyo"

Musician/video mixer Kutiman spent a few weeks capturing the eclectic sights and sounds of Tokyo prior to remixing the entire range of footage and sounds into an incredible performance piece. Channeling a variety of sounds from traditional instruments like wind flutes (Fue), string instruments (Koto), a lute (Biwa) and other distinct instruments, Through Tokyo offers the distinct aural contrast of the modern and traditional aspects iof Japan melding together. Fantastic stuff..One of the coolest audio/visual mashups I've seen all year.

Moses Of Prosthesis

Created by Japanese animator ががめ (Aquarius), this lovely little animation is a really awesome little animated interpretation of Moses Supposes, a performance made famous in 1952's Singing In The Rain.



This lovely version features a Japanese spirit finding a set of possessed shoes before taking them over and performing that same famous tap dance number. I found it hard not to smile as it was just that fun to watch, and amazingly animated too! Absolutely loved it from start to finish. Check out the original music number for reference after the break!

Turning Weapons Into Instruments - Pedro Reyes' "Disarm"

Pedro Reyes 'Disarm' project is a pretty interesting look at an artist using his ingenuity to turn weapons of destruction into those of expression. Reyes sourced his raw materials from seized cartel arms, which were later used to assemble his pretty sophisticated robotic band installation. As he put it best: It's the redemption of metal that could have taken your life or mine.

Disarm is actually the second generation of instruments built after his 2012 project Imagine, which also used remnants of the weapons that the Mexican army had collected and destroyed. This series however was made in collaboration with a team of musicians and Cocolab, and media studio in Mexico City. These new pieces can be programmed and operated via computers, making them capable of performing music concerts with compositions prepared beforehand.

Aardman Animation's Take On Pink Floyd's "Dark Side Of The Moon"

Director Darren Dubicki of Aardman Animation set out to create a striking tribute to Pink Floyd's now historic Dark Side Of The Moon album, creating this incredibly executed, surreal mixed media piece to accompany a radio drama based on the album that will air in the UK on BBC Radio 2 on August 26th. Quite an interesting departure for the director, but the end result is pretty striking, perfectly accompanying the incredible score. Aardman released an official press release to accompany the trailer:

Aardman director, Darren Dubicki saw the piece working as a film trailer and the team spent time absorbing the rich detail from both Pink Floyd’s music and Sir Tom Stoppard’s play. In doing so they developed a striking visual concept where images juxtapose with carefully considered lyrics and dialogue from the play encompassing the underlying themes of greed, conflict, consumption, humanity and the descent into madness…

Dubicki says, 'What was fundamentally important to us was that we retained a consistent visual tone that echoed the imagery created over the years for the band. The intensely surreal and powerful artwork created by Storm Thorgerson and Hipgnosis has always had a strong distortion on reality. Their sense of space and twisted context make for some uncomfortably beautiful art. This tone has been consistent for decades and we wanted to honor this with our contemporary digital (and analogue) slant on the style.'