Ratatat – “Falcon Jab” music video review

27 August 2009, nancy @ 9:06 pm Ratatat’s third studio album (the appropriately named LP3) was completed in only a few weeks but still retains the integrity and sharpness of Ratatat and Classics. The video for the album’s second track, “Falcon Jab” was released recently and contains some interesting movie footage of the 60s film Jason and the Argonauts.

Lyricless music is always a bit of a doozy to make a video for. On one hand, there is much more artistic freedom on the director’s part since there aren’t any verbal indicators as to what the song is about. I always find it disdaining when the video is obviously a different story from the lyrics. But on the flip side, there is really no starting point or basic idea so there is a lot more work to be done. I’m sure there is some temptation to just create some sort of trance-y screensaver-like animation and be done with the whole thing but that’s not very inspiring.

I like this video because it’s a quirky contrast between the modernness of the music and antiquity of the footage (the movie is 45 years older than the song). The colours remind me of the aforementioned screensaver animations but work well with the music.

Jason and the Argonauts tells the story of a mythical Greek hero who is on the quest to obtain the Golden Fleece (fleece of the winged ram Chrysomallos). In typical Greek mythical fashion, Jason is the son of a slain father and lives out a prophecy. His father was overthrown and murdered by Pelias who later sends his son as a mole on Jason’s journey to sabotage him. In the end (spoilers!) everything works out and Jason finds the Golden Fleece and regains the throne. The characters in the footage seem to be mostly of Jason and Hercules (one of men who join Jason on his quest).

The wincing facial expressions are a bit of an oddity and caught me offguard at first. It looks like my 11-year-old brother playing with a video by fastforwarding and rewinding interchangeably. This part would have been just plain silly had there not been some sort of synchronization between the facial movements and the music.

AWmusic