In which a guy old enough to know better talks about...stuff.
Including, but not necessarily limited to: Wrestling, Metal, Anime, Books, Comics, Cartoons, Stuff that pisses me off, AOR and songs with "Metal" in the title.
You ever click on a random thumbnail and find something awesome.
I have, frequently.
This is not one of those moments.
In truth I am still not entirely sure what i just watched and whether somebody is taking the piss or not.
Today's slice of oddness comes from Belgium and this came as a surprise a everything about the song jsut screams "German". Between the minimalist synth-disco, the marching beat and the Germanic vocals it sounds like Rammstein leaving the guitarists at home and making a dance record. The differnece being that with Rammstein you'd know they were being all Teutonically sardonic and humourous. With these guys I'm not sure...
What really pushes Tanzen into the realms of oddness is the video, starring as it does a quartet of blank-faced girls dancing in formation, 80s school-disco style, while the lead singer molests statues and mutters random oddness.
(Correction: I just noticed that one of the dancers is a bloke. Still odd though)
What do you think? Am I being trolled or are Belgians just like this normally?
I can't play an instruments and I've been reliably informed that I can't sing either. That doesn't matter.
I can't honestly say I appreciate music in any kind of intellectual sense. Talk of things like time signatures and key changes might as well be in French for all I know. I'm aware that something is being discussed but I can't seem to make the Concepts fit into what I'm listening to. That doesn't matter either.
To me music is a lot more basic, maybe even instinctive. Me hear, me like or me don't like.
I am convinced that if you're listening to a song and thinking "Hmm. Nice use of polyrthythms" then somebody is doing something wrong. Or to put it another way, a good song should hit you somewhere behind the eyes and go all the way down your spine to your toes.
Sometimes a song manages to make an impact that even manages to surprise me. It's not just making my toes tap but elbows its way into my brain and hogs the sofa. "Comfortably Numb" is a great example. I can't listen to those bass notes before the solo without feeling something soar inside me. "Send her my love" by Journey makes me well up. "Metal Gods" make me want to kick a wall over.
You get the idea.
The last year or so I've been broadening my musical horizons beyond Rock &Metal and dabbling in Synthwave, a music genre that gets misty eyed about a 1980s where the sun shone, everybody was beautiful and synths were the way forward. That's where I found this particular track.
The song itself is a synthy, atmospheric instrumental that would have sounded perfect on the soundtrack to a 1983 drama and somebody has paired it up with clips from the 1984 movie L'Annee Des Meduses, starring the magnetic Valerie Kaprisky as a sexually adventurous teenager looking for her next romance. It works so well, you'd think the song was created for the movie. And for some reason, the combination hit me hard.
I honestly can't explain it.
I am up at 4am making a blog post about the song though so you can tell I am impressed.
Anyway, enough rambling. Here's the video I've been wibbling on about.
Hopefully you don't mind the censored nipples. This was a 1980s French film after all.
