How important is video art to music? Is music felt more and perceived as better when it soundtracks a quality visual concept? Can video and projection art impact the swelling digital music landscape? -and do these musical communities alter the discipline itself?

I’m happy to announce we have a new midweek column which tackles all things video art, by someone steeped in it’s culture;      Logan Owlbeemoth.

You have most likely heard of Owlbeemoth, either from the psychedelic nu-pop sounds of band OS OVNI or from his insightful posts in Vice Magazine. Perhaps you are aware of his own contributions to moving image through his project TACHYONS+ where he makes video art machines, video synths and music videos using old video gear modified via VCRs TVs and old video mixers. Sounds interesting huh? (I’d love to hear comments from anyone who can actually say they own a video synth).

He told Video Circuits blog “Mostly everything I have done or been a part of is definitely based in the idea of what are the perceptions of reality. Changing reality, creating new realities through sound and art, colors and tones. Shaping new dimensional worlds based off the influence of science fiction and psychedelic art.” (Full interview here) So already you can tell, Owlbeemoth is vibing on a pretty unique frequency.

His new tech heavy, visually savvy column TACHYONS+ TRANSMITS will hit Bloglin every Wednesday. It will showcase ahead of the curve video artists from around the globe and their technical appliqués of wonder. Check some of Owlbeemoth’s own below:

DYLAN ETTINGER – The Pale Mare from TACHYONS+ on Vimeo.

Since making the groundbreaking banger ‘Wut’, immediately going viral among white sorority girls, Le1f has somewhat fallen off the map of the general polulace. That isn’t to say that his music has declined; I found Fly Zone to be a solid tape. It just seems like the people that got interested in Le1f solely off the single aren’t interested in exploring his entire catalog, maybe seeing him as a gimmick.

‘Spa Day’ is a single from Fly Zone, the video was shot at the real spa Body by Brooklyn, which looks like a pretty ill place to get your relaxation on. Heems, Lakutis, and others all make cameos to get turnt in the hot tub, as the steam adds a hazy, surreal vibe to all the shots. The track features all the things that made ‘Wut’ so good, aside from its viral nature: Le1f’s extremely fast, articulate rapping, semi-taboo subject matter, and booming, grimy beats. Here, the production is supplied by HarryB, a synthy, EDM/trap-inspired joint. Even though Le1f raps ‘This that laid back music,’ its hard to believe over the ridiculously menacing beat. The hook, ‘This a spa day’ sounds more like a threat than what could be a flamboyant assertion. Le1f takes the gung-ho masculine energy of trap, fucking bitches and getting money, and diverts it into fucking your man (at one point your pastor?) and getting facials, in the coolest way possible.

One of the most bizarre (and well designed) fighting game franchises ever created, Guilty Gear, is finally getting a proper sequel after nearly a decade of remixes.

Mainstays will be here, including bitter rivals Ky Kiske and Sol Badguy, who show off the game’s graphical features in the above teaser trailer. New 3D environments bring a different level of gameplay to the franchise’s traditionally 2D, sprite-based style.

Now, the best part of a new fighting game announcement, especially one that holds such a cult status amongst fans, is the introduction of new characters. Unfortunately, no new ones have been confirmed yet.

Damn.

Disclaimer: There’s a whole lotta dadbutt-rock in the trailer. You’ve been warned

The burgeoning synthwave scene exploded within the past year and a half, or so. Thanks to films like Drive, the Internet is now crawling with retro-future Kavinsky-clones. And that makes for the difficult task of sifting through a lot of unoriginal, boring, and just plain bad projects.

In such an overcrowded scene, Lazerhawk shines as an example of every single correct thing to do. And he’s not a one-trick producer, either. Both of his LPs, Redline and Visitors differ wildly in sound, ranging from the outrun-electro that Lazerhawk helped popularize, all the way to outer-space disco soundtracks.

For those of you wondering, the movie is the 1989 anime classic Riding Bean. Appropriately and seedily enough, it’s about a team of for-hire thieves who drive around in sports cars.

If you have even a passing interest in omnipresent beat wizard Diplo, you’re probably already familiar with Nicky Da B via the the magnum opus of moombah-trap, “Express Yourself”. And if you aren’t, how’s that rock you’ve been living under?

“Loko” is a lot more frantically paced than “Express Yourself”, and while it’s true that Nicky raps in his latest vid, even calling it that is a stretch. There’s a lot of vocal overlay, phrase repetition, slogan shouting, and even straight copying of well-known melodies from other artists (Lady Gaga? the Spiderman theme???). Beat-wise, think equal parts “Stupid Hoe” by Nicki Minaj and “Start the Riot” by Atari Teenage Riot. “Loko” pretty much forces you off your lazy ass and into full-on twerk mode.

I liked the strobing visual style of the vid, too. Nicky’s image constantly dissolves in and out of a video comprised of twerkin’ girls, police sirens, contortionists, and literally the most ass I’ve ever seen in a music video. Not exaggerating.

The. Most. Ass.

Paula Temple crafts these frightening, semi-glitched beats that are perfect for going way too far into the web. The soundtrack to old BBS servers still clutching to their last shreds of bandwidth; junked Ethernet cards littering the sidewalks; dead social media accounts; online murders; scary teenagers; subtweets about heartbreak, alienation, and fear sent to nobody in particular.

Wait for those icey synths to start soaring at about the 1:00 mark. Slow it down just a little, and I think MC Ride could definitely shout some verses over a track like this.

I looked at your ex-girlfriend’s Instagram today. She changed it from public to private. How am I supposed to see all the latest fashions her and her malnourished nouveau bohemian rocker friends are wearing or how her European dream vacation is going? I just don’t think I’ll be able to relax until I see another picture of her side profile smoking a cigarette on some Parisian balcony. Let’s take a look at yours. Let me scroll down a couple hundred pictures until I find some from when it was just you two versus the world and we were still pretending we were just friends. AAARRRGH! As I sit here stewing in my sweltering apartment trying to write, I find the availability to your past lives to be fiercely distracting. This got me thinking: With access to all we ever wanted to know (or didn’t for that matter) about anyone and anything, are we being overly saturated with unnecessary and perhaps–dare I say, detrimental information?

Let’s face it, we come from an excessively informed generation. My household has had the internet since Prodigy and I got my own computer when I was like eight or nine years old. Needless to say, it’s been difficult to delete myself from Google images. I’ve always questioned the idea that just because we can see it all, we should. I mean that’s what stopped me from watching 2 Girls 1 Cup, yet regrettably did not stop me from watching a series of cyst extraction videos on YouTube for like ten minutes one day. I love that I can Google search my ex boyfriend and have his mugshot come up with “BUSTED” written in bubble letters over it, but I don’t love that he can Google search me and find out my current address or see pictures of me 25 pounds ago on a giant trampoline with my baby niece from someone’s old MySpace account. Really, I’m torn.

The adventure and mystery of getting to know someone are quickly dissipating and I find myself becoming a bit more cautious when signing up for the latest social media bullshit or geo-tagging myself having a frozen yogurt on a hot Tuesday afternoon. I deleted my Facebook almost two years ago and I still think it was one of the better decisions I’ve made in my adult life. How did the internet turn us all into creeps? Don’t leave me hangin’ here, guys. I know I ain’t the only one wasting time lurking people I used to know, or worse, people I don’t even know! My iphone is the master of time-suckage and I think it needs to turn back into just a phone…and a GPS, and a camera…and a mobile Netflix. Fuck.

In the movie Breakin‘, when Turbo’s moon walk sweeps the sidewalk to Kraftwerk’s “Tour de France”, cinematic history was made. That scene will be noted in the annals of time as the greatest two minutes in cinema ever, forever, until the end of time.

Greatest two minutes of cinematic history, AKA Turbo broom scene:

Breakin‘ has everything a good movie should have; leather gloves, moon walking, nice butts in tights, electro music, a guy with no legs doing the windmill and Ice mutha fuckin T. Breakin’ literally broke the mold when they came up with that insanely awesome movie formula.

This is real break dancing -not this bullshit “so you think you can dance” kinda break dancing that we see so much of in today’s society. This is breakin’ back when it was more punk rock than punk rock, with ripped T-shirts, leather, studs, spray paint and took place in the streets. To sum it up I will quote the illustrious Bar-Kays it was a “Freak show, baby, baby on the dance floor… They’re wearin’ miniskirts and camisoles, tight leather pants or nothing at all… Guys with guys, chicks with chicks, it really doesn’t matter they just do it for the kicks”. Those are words to live by my friends.

Which brings me to my last point of proof that this is one of, if not thee best movie of all time. The sound track is insanely good. I had this 12′ growing up and it largely inspired my entire music making process. The music in the movie is proper Electro, back when that term was used to describe artist who made people dance to their unique brand of electronic funk, not this new bastardization of that term by EDM dicks with mouse masks; seriously, fuck those guys.

The soundtrack features amazing bands like the Bar-Kays, Kraftwerk, The Art of Noise and Hot Streak. The jewel of the sound-track and the movie is Ice-T and the Glove’s amazing 808 and 303 acid bass line, hip-hop monster “Reckless”.

Grab your leather gloves, fasten your head band, tighten your sneakers and watch the full movie here: