This Is Skint (PAL/Region-free/Zero
Import)
Picture:
B Sound: B- Extras: B Main Videos: B+
There has
been a general feeling in music these days that most of the product the record
labels promote is of the poorest quality ever seen. The latest “bubblegum pop” cycle is the most sickening, ruinous
one yet to occur. So what happened to
the smart, fun music?
As
Hip-Hop currently dominates the commercial music scene, despite its interesting
slow decline, other listeners have gone to Country as a bad variant of 1970s
Pop/Rock, Adult Contemporary or current Rock music that seems to have lost
steam. Between the Pop scene that used
to be, and the death of New Wave, Electronic music and Dance seemed to have been
pushed to the side. The Electronica
movement was short-lived, yet we still have electronic music out there
somewhere that people are buying. When
New Wave and music videos arrived at the same time, Britain was in the
forefront of both, resulting in yet another British Invasion of the US music
scene. England’s Skint Records seems to
be the logical, fascinating melding of those sensibilities, but for today.
Their
best-known artist is turntablist Fatboy Slim, thanks to his music videos,
licensing of his music, and clever interpretations of current music in
general. While US DVD buyers get to
enjoy his Big Beach Boutique II concert disc, his videos have been out
of reach. This Is Skint is a
video collection from his home record label that offers 28 videos, including
two of Fatboy Slim’s, which is only available in the PAL format. Fortunately, the DVD is region-free, so more
players in the US that can do PAL (versus the old US analog NTSC format all DVD
players are usually set to) can access the material.
A few
non-PAL capable machines might also be able to pick up the signal, though the
picture might omit the color in some cases.
The trouble is worth it, since this is an exceptional DVD set that
should be available in the US, for US DVD players, but is not at this
time. That’s a shame, because odds are
that you have either seen or heard a few of the tracks offered on this set.
Usually,
when you see a hard plastic Super Jewel Box (those thin, skinny kind) with a
DVD, that means 99% of the time that you are holding a cheapie DVD in the US, but
the packaging means something different in Japan and Europe. A DVD-tall version of the packages used for
the new DVD-Audio format, they sometimes are done in a fancy fashion, as the
red prints on the front and back of this case offers.
Inside,
the obligatory booklet is skipped, so the videos are as follows listed by
number, artist, title and the video’s director(s):
1) Fatboy
Slim - Right Here Right Now
(Hammer & Thongs)
2)
Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out (Hammer & Thongs)
3) Lo Fidelity
All-stars featuring Pigeonhead - Battleflag (Jake Nava)
4)
X-Press 2 featuring David (Talking Heads) Byrne - Lazy (Howard Shur)
5) Space
Raiders - Laid Back (Matt
Kirkby)
6)
Midfield General - Midfielding (Ste McGregor)
7)
Super_Collider - It Won’t Be Long (Dawn Shadforth of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t
Get You Out Of My Head”)
8) REQ - Subculture (Wayne Tracey)
9) Phil
Kieran - My House (Ste
McGregor/animated)
10) Lo
Fidelity All-stars - Blisters On My Brain (James Griffiths)
11)
Sparky Lightbourne - Where You Goin’ Chicken? (Local/animated)
12)
Daniel San - Force Tan (Ste
McGregor/animated)
13) Cut
La Roc - Freeze (Jordan Scott,
Ridley Scott’s daughter)
14)
X-Press 2 - I Want You Back
(Howard Shur)
15)
Fatboy Slim - Everybody Needs a 303 (PERV) (Ashley Slater)
16) Space
Raiders - Glam Raid (Kate
Aidley)
17) Dr.
Bone - Coma Cop (Ashley Slater)
18)
Bentley Rhythm Ace - Midlander (John Humphreys)
19) Lo
Fidelity All-stars - Vision Incision
(Adrian Moat)
20) Cut
La Rock - Fallen (Jordan Scott)
21)
Super_Collider - Darn Cold Way O Lovin’
(Milk)
22) Dr.
Bone - I Came Here To Get Ripped
(Ashley Slater)
23)
Midfield General featuring Linda Lewis - Reach Out (James Griffiths)
Plus
three bonus videos from the label’s Hall Of Shame in the supplement that are
not THAT bad:
24) Lo
Fidelity All-stars - Lo Fi’ In Ibiza (Scott Lyon)
25) Space
Raiders - (I Need A) Disko Doktor (Barnaby + Scott)
26)
Indian Rope Man - Sunshine Of Your Love (Arran)
The
videos range from being shot on film, to various video formats, as well as in
various aspect ratios. In the PAL
format, they are noticeably sharper than if they were on a US NTSC DVD, which
is particularly noticed in the “Fallen” clip. It is letterboxed and offers location beach footage, which has
much detail to capture. The result is
detail that would require an anamorphic transfer on a US DVD to achieve; though
there is still evidence this Jordan Scott video is not an anamorphic transfer. There is still detail lacking in the finer
points that give it away, but it looks good just the same.
Of the
Fatboy Slim clips, “Right Here Right Now” has puppeteering, morphing and
other animation tricks to show a humorous evolution of man, while “Everybody
Needs a 303" is a gimmick clip that tries to bash videos, but being a
very bad one does not help. No matter
what people say to bash videos, they have become an art form. The better clips on this set try to be
anti-videos, playing against the star-centered, even ego-obsessed clips that
gave video a bad name in most cases.
The gem
clip here is Super_Collider’s (the “official” spelling) “It Won’t Be Long”
from 1998. This is a case where the
lead singer takes risks with his persona, while the video itself is both dark
and bizarre. While the singer comes
across as demented, despite the lyrics not necessarily indicating this, the
video takes place in a dark garage-like place with an attendant who also seems
not to be playing with a full deck. Add
flies and the point-of-view camera shots from a particular fly’s perspective
and this is different indeed. This is
also the kind of video that the video-haters cannot deal with.
“Darn
Cold Way O Lovin’” is the other Super_Collider clip, which is also
interesting and is based on another good song, but “It Won’t Be Long” may
well be an unsung classic. Shadforth’s
manipulation and satire of location is an interesting earmark of her work,
while the ambiguous ‘Milk’ directed “Lovin’” one year later.
A few
animated videos are here, even if this means cutouts are used. Phil Kieran’s “My House” actually
takes one-dimensional cutouts and has the flatness of the figures literally
flipping and flapping all over the place.
This is another one of the strong songs on the set. Sparky Lightbourne’s
“Where You Goin’ Chicken?” sticks to the cut-out theme, but seems to be
sending up advertising of food in general as the lead chicken gets shipped to
the food processing factory. It is a
fascinating clip for a bizarre song, which are both entertaining. Daniel San’s “Force Tan” goes as far
as to use well known icons that are either fictional (Kermit The Frog) or
played by real people (Woody Allen from his film Sleeper in the
hilarious “floating suit”) bounced around equally fake backgrounds. The other twist here is that each character
(including many unknowns) say things through comic strip word bubbles that have
nothing to do with the content of the music, but are funny or just plain wacky.
“Lazy”
features the familiar lead vocal of former Talking Head David Byrne on X-Press
2's club favorite, one of the few tracks here that has definitely made it to
the states. If not a big Pop hit, it
has surfaced all over in one form or another.
The video features a guy who has his entire house rigged so he never has
to get up to do anything! It is like
the old Rube Goldberg situation where things are so overly engineered that the
alignment of gadgets, to say the least, takes the long road to getting things
done. Many will also be reminded of
many a Warner Bros. cartoon that featured the same over exaggerated ganglia.
The two
Cut La Roc clips by Jordan Scott are not bad, as she finds a different tone for
her videos than her brother Jake. “Fallen”
seems to have a locale similar to Ridley Scott’s short film Boy &
Bicycle at the beach. This can be
seen on Paramount’s DVD special edition of Ridley Scott’s first feature film, The
Duelists
Finally
among the videos to be discussed here, from the Hall Of Shame supplement, is
the instrumental “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Indian Rope Man. It may not be in step with the kinds of
videos that made Skint what it is today, but it is a really great old school
send-up of Star Wars. The saga
is on Chapter 23(!) and Luke Skywalker (more or less) now runs a coffee shop,
since there is peace throughout the universe.
The problem is that he is bored to death. A former Storm Trooper (played by an actor who actually was one
of the original Storm Troopers, as Star Wars was shot in England) is now
a milkman, and Leah (played by an actress who is hauntingly dead-on looking,
despite NOT looking like the current Carrie Fisher) visits. Also visiting for one last romp, on the road
to the cafe, is a very Darth Vader-like fellow. There are also many other in-jokes for a video worth showing off
to friends, offering much rewatchability in either case.
So with
all this alone, one can see why this is such a fine DVD set. The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo is some of the
best on DVD, especially on the songs.
Of course, it is too bad that at least the music was not in 5.1 remixes,
nor has Skint committed to either of the high definition audio formats. Whether they back SACD (Super Audio Compact
Disc) or DVD-Audio, their music should be especially impressive, as the DTS on
that Fatboy Slim Big Beach Boutique II DVD already demonstrates.
As for
the remaining extras, David Byrne and X-Press 2 discuss how “Lazy” was brought
together, there is a segment about the labels support of a local soccer team,
an abstract-but-not-bad segment about the early days of Skint, a clip from the Invisible,
Inc. documentary with music by REQ about graffiti that hopes to be thought
of in the same breath as Style Wars, and audio commentaries on the main
music videos by John Hassay & Damain Harris of Skint. These are all good, but commentaries on
music videos are too rare, so that is especially a strong point for this DVD.
So if you
have a PAL-capable DVD player or want to take a chance your US player might be
able to track a region-free PAL DVD, you can order This Is Skint from www.skint.net
and wonder why we are being denied some of the best music going in the United
States from the United Kingdom. See how
major record labels, radio stations, and MTV are failing us. This is where some of the good music went!
- Nicholas Sheffo
