What Does The Future of "Audio-Visual Mash-ups" Look Like?

If you happen to frequent this blog, you may have noticed that I've developed a fondness for London A/V geeks Eclectic Method, a.k.a. Jonny Wilson, Ian Edgar, and Geoff Gamlen. The trio first formed in 2002, re-splicing the videos for U2's "Mysterious Ways" and the Beastie Boy's "Intergalactic" together as an experiment, and have since released close to 50 official videos (though I'm sure that figure doesn't account for other unofficial offerings). They were recently featured in Wired magazine (where I first picked up on them) and their resumé includes events as diverse as Sundance and a forthcoming Twestival gig in NYC.

So what do they do exactly?

According to their website: "The trio’s audio-visual mash-ups feature television, film, music and video game footage sliced and diced into blistering, post-modern dance floor events. It’s a cyclone of music and images mashed together in a world where Kill Bill fight scenes and Dave Chappelle’s Rick James rants are ingeniously cut and looped over bootleg samples, DVD scratches and pumped-up dance anthems."

To get a better idea of what that means, let's take a peek at a clip from their 2005 mixtape "We Are Not VJs":



The "mash-up" component of Eclectic Method's aesthetic should be pretty evident from the sample above: "audio" and "visual" samples interpenetrating simultaneously to form their own, new entity -- or so it would seem. As much as I'm entertained and delighted by Eclectic Method's work, part of me feels like it's not quite as "post-modern" and/or groundbreaking as it's cracked up to be (and if you can stomach a long-winded digression, feel free to read on).

"Mash-up" may be be a modern term, but the concept of combining multiple sources to form a new composition is not new. American composer Charles Ives should very well be credited as the first proper "mash-up" artist given his manipulation of well-known hymns, parlor songs, and other traditional music into his work--and he died in 1954. In this part of "Piano Sonata No. 2", for example, you can hear him quoting Beethoven at 1:17.



If we were to focus on direct sampling, however, (and ignore the fact that most hip-hop songs are technically "mash-ups" of sorts) then the first authentic example of a mash-up probably belongs to Double Dee and Steinski. Their legendary "Lesson 1 -- The Payoff Mix"--which has been championed by the likes of Robert Christgau (his excellent essay about the collage can be viewed here), DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, and more--culls its material from an unprecedented set of sources (The Supremes, Herbie Hancock, Humphrey Bogart, et al), and its striking originality netted its creators top honors in the remix contest they crafted it for in 1983.

For your convenience:


Beyond that, Paul's Boutique and De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising have come to represent the pinnacle of unregulated sampling before the costs of clearing them became astronomical (both albums were released in 1989). Imagine the sense of collage that holds "The Payoff Mix" together, extend it across an entire album, and you get the gist.

My point here? That the practice of remixing songs together was pretty well entrenched before Girl Talk, The Hood Internet, and/or the Super Mash Bros. entered the picture, much less Eclectic Method.

But what about the video component of their work?

What strikes me most about their "mixes" is a reliance on audio to maintain a sense of coherence. When sampling snippets of recordings, for instance, a DJ will smudge melodies, rhythms, and even timbres together in ways that remain consonant. In theory, the same should be applicable to video, except instead of melodies or rhythms the artist should be blurring movement, color, and other themes together, so as to draw out the visual similarities between different sources.

Eclectic Method doesn't do that at all. Rather, they layer different visual clips on top of each other (or in boxes, etc.) in such a way that reveals the source of audio, but does not otherwise fuse the video together. The result--a product in which video is an auxiliary to audio--seems more of a way to "come clean" or otherwise draw attention to source material without actually creating something new visually.

I'm not aware of any sort of film movement that pulled this idea off successfully, but the types of videos Eclectic Method end up presenting have, in my mind, been done before.

2001's "Frontier Psychiatrist" from The Avalanches only album Since I Left You:



Clearly, the Eclectic Method videos are connected by individual themes (a Tarantino mixtape, a John Hughes mixtape, and so on), but the visuals only seem to do what they do in the clip above--draw attention to the samples themselves. To be fair, some videos meld images together abstractly (I've got their Temptations mix in mind here), but I find that they achieve a limited level of success.

So how could it be better?

Take a look at this video that draws similarities between Disney cartoons:



As far as "visual mash-ups" goes, this video relies on comparable movements of characters to make its point, i.e. it takes its cues from the images rather than the audio, giving it a very strong sense of visual coherence even if you mute the sound.

Additionally, this new video from Teenage Fantasy offers an interesting example:



Here the audio and video have very distinct connections (it's almost impressionistic in its execution), yet by mid-song the video component stands alone completely, offering fresh, stark eye-candy (sort of like another favorite of mine, "Begone Dull Care").

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure the sort of homologous mixture that's possible with audio is even translatable to video, but I do think Eclectic Method could be offering more holistic compositions--mixes that draw attention to visual continuities rather than aural ones.

All of that said (whew), their videos sure are fun to watch.



But will they lead us into the future of "Audio-Visual Mash-ups"? I'm doubtful.