Tuesday, May 22, 2018

VHS Review: Slow Normals "realmagic666FM" [PART 3]

$15 //
Edition of 13 //
https://slownormals.bandcamp.com/album/realmagic666fm //


The music sort of grows into this electronic looping and we're looking at a watch now which is not moving-- you can see up to the second and it's stuck at 4:58 10.   The music kind of sounds like a jumbled version of Elvis to me.   After some time, it has moved to 4:58 11 now.   Then we go into black and white static.   Loud distorted crashes now as we are rewinding.  It's mostly blue.   Images slowly start to creep in and airplanes are back.   Back to the black and white static and then this woman who was telling us about fast food is back.   And now a warning about a video, which I feel is not for this one directly.

Oh good, Lorraine Day is an M.D.    She glitches from talking about MS into Oriental tones and someone doing something medical but I'm not sure what.   Part of movie and then I see 9/11 again for a moment.   And we briefly cut back to a movie before the word "FACESWAP" comes out in weird text.  Not sure what's going on here but I am looking at the time.  "Wow, you really need new laces" comes through like a bad LSD trip.   Oh.  I think it's graduating.  This mullet is graduating.

This is the type of music/audio I like though where you can see the visual right now and know what's going on.  At one point, this person pulls up their pants and I'm assuming the mom goes "Oh, that's really classy to have on the video camera- pulling up your drawers" and if this was taken as audio only it might be confusing and I kind of like that about it.   It's nice that it isn't confusing here but to hear it as just audio would also be nice even if it was confusing because sometimes music should be meant to confuse people.

And now we're watching the graduation.   There was this band on an Equal Vision Records sampler once who sang a song about graduation and now I'm singing that song: "Graduation's here / And I'm nowhere to be found" [The song is called "Graduation" and is by the band Prema]  The music becomes slightly sharper now, as the kids fill into their seats to graduate.   It builds in this magical way and I'm just really tripping out to this music right now.  It feels like I want to ask how you find something so random as someone's graduation on VHS but, trust me, it's not as difficult as one might think (Libraries love giving away videos like this for free, sometimes they're even on the side of the road, you just have to know where to look)

Increasingly louder, I can hear this "Woo!" and I'm not sure if it's coming from the music added into this or the graduation scene itself.  I feel like I can barely hear the audio track for the graduation itself back there, but I do feel like I can.   The music has faded and the person talking about the graduation has taken over now.   This is just a trippy graduation now.   People are cheering for the kid graduating who was shown getting dressed before and the music has taken on this industrial grinding tone where it feels like something bad will happen but we're still under that "FACESWAP" banner and this has shifted into a video of people up high somewhere looking down, their words coming out all warbly.

We're on the beach now and it's 2003.  The wind is blowing and you can see it in their hair, but now this makes me wonder whether or not people would take the audio from something such as this video and use it for their music.   I also wonder who still had these kids of video cameras back in 2003 because it still feels like that type you load the tape into and, I mean, we were digital by then, right?   Within the last five years or so though I did see one of the camcorders where you load the tape in at Savers- case and all, looked to be in great shape- and I almost bought it but then realized I didn't need to start and never finish any other art projects.

This "FACESWAP" scene seems to have been going on for a while, especially since it was all throughout graduation.  It is 4:45 PM on December 14, 2003.  We are in a hotel room now and we have also shifted to black and white.   Words come out in a loop which makes them sound like some kind of Satanic chant.   These kids (Well, teens?) are in what I believe to be NYC now, for Christmas, as there is a tree and iceskating outside like a Ryan Reynolds movie.   Wouldn't it be weird if someone in this video saw themselves and was like, "Hey, that's me"?

Church now because why not.  Big oil barge horns come blasting through.    The music is really picking up now-- it feels haunted, like someone is speaking us from the other side of death.   We're also getting a nice tour of the city no one ever asked for.   It sounds like someone is saying "Okay".   For some reason I feel like we're seeing the towers that fell on 9/11 now, but that was in 2001 so that can't be right.    Now I can see why this is so trippy.  I imagine someone at 4 am watching this and wondering what I am.

Static wind, that "FACESWAP" logo and the tour of NYC continues.   I can see the Statue of Liberty and remember thinking the other day of what a terrible present that was from the French.  I mean, she's giant for one thing, and then she's also made of copper so she has that weird rusted penny green going on now.  For as big a monument as it is (and I mean in terms of actual measurements) it seems like something we should have decided on as Americans and not got as a gift from the French, but I digress.

We have left NYC now and are in eerie tones with screams coming through while we see what seems to be some kind of student study club... I have no idea.   Feedback comes in sharply now, as if on the edge of something.   As the feedback fades, we are at JAN. 24, 2004 now and I have no idea what's going on in this trippy room.  Someone is on the phone, seemingly yelling, while two other people are sitting way too close together on a couch.   Someone is playing an acoustic guitar now and he probably has underwear on at the very least but he looks like he's only wearing socks.  Loud feedback comes through wavy-like and I can hear the singing and strums of this guy on the screen.  Holy shit, this is on my birthday now from 2004.   Wow.   It is also at 5:02 AM so wouldn't you say it's a bit early in the morning for this?


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