Rob Masters

Last weekend was Eurovision, that wonderfully  insane and over the top celebration of music. 36 countries joining together to throw a huge party. It is silly, and bright, and a perfect antidote to the current times. All the tracks performed have to be sung live on stage, with strict time limits, and all sorts of rules. So how does Eurovision turn up here? Well, it is not the first time.  This time it is the fabulously geeky Daði og Gagnamagnið who make the grade with their #4 ranking entry "10 Years", from 2021. Enjoy your adventure in Icelandic daikaiju super sentai land!

  Shot from May Drive, using an Olympus TG-4 with an external battery. 1:20:00 exposure, starting at totality, and continuing to 3/4 disk.  Either that, or a comet impacted on Perth and we're all blown to bits. 

I'm rather conflicted about this one. I mean we have a sort of post-apocalyptic western vibe going on, but on the other hand we've got a bunch of white guys (plus Slash) beating up on a demonised ethnic group.  Now within the context of the story, it is not nice people that get laid into, but did the producers have to make them all Mexican?   No. And that is where I have a problem with this clip. They could have just as easily cast another bunch of white guys as the villains. Instead they took an easy stereotype and used it exclusively. I know they are playing to a trope in doing so, but it is lazy and very out of touch - even for 14 years ago. In any event, from 2007, here is "She Builds Quick Machines" by Velvet Revolver. 

I'm always on the lookout for something a little different, and the Scandinavians never fail to deliver on that front. Iceland, in particular, can produce some wonderfully off-beat creations. This is one of them. Synchronised swimming, old-school musical theatre-style film-making, and a twist. One that fits perfectly with the rest of the genre, but takes it all into a magical place. And then twists it again to leave you wondering. Enjoy 2017's "Stardust", by Ásgeir, from the album Afterglow.

We have visited the work of Canadian band Delerium before. With rich musical influences and samples from all over, they are one of the great EDM/EA groups. They also tend towards amazingly great genre videos. This is another of them. We've got an ice demon, a beautiful lady, and a brave warrior mage intent on releasing her. But is it all as it seems? Maybe, maybe not. One of the wonderful things about this video is the ambiguity that it contains. We are left with a fragment of a story that we arrived to late to see the start of, and have left too soon to see the end.  Enjoy the mystery of "Incantation" from the 1994 album Semantic Spaces, by Derlerium.