AWmusic

5. Old Prince Still Lives At Home by Shad

What more can I say about this video? Instead of Fresh Prince of Bel Air, you have the Old Prince of London, Ontario. It’s a funny parody that comes from a simple idea yet highly effective.
The Old Prince Still Lives At Home by Shad

4. Stress by Justice

This video some people like, some people hate. Yes, it does glorify violence but it does capture the volatile nature of the song as well as capture the true nature of youth violence. Youth gangs, don’t usually have a motive, they just want to wreck havoc and from my point of view, it’s power in numbers where only a select few who do object to their violent and douchebag ways get their ass kicked. It feels like a real video in that sense is that the video glorifies this group of boys while they seem to be playing up to the camera.
Stress by Justice

#3 House of Cards by Radiohead

In Radiohead’s new video for “House of Cards”, no cameras or lights were used. Instead, 3D plotting technologies collected information about the shapes and relative distances of objects. The video was created entirely with visualizations of that data

Two words: Freakin’ cool.

#2 New Violence by White Williams vs TV Carnage

This video is fun to watch and to try to figure out which clips come from which movie. Probably my favorite track off White Williams’ Smoke, this video is fun to follow along
New Violence by White Williams

#1 Toe Jam by The Brighton Port Authority

What better way to start a music video with people taking off their clothes? You don’t really have an answer for that. While it’s not all about naked people, it’s really just a collaboration of using the censored section of the human body to create some pretty cool art, from various letters of the alphabet, to a recreation of the game pong. Can you tell me that this video is not worthy? Pretty cool stuff.
Toe Jam by the Brighton Port Authority

I’m a big fan of these two music videos and while I normally hate music videos and would very much rather listen to the song itself…these two videos do have something to offer as it’s not the band simply playing the song.

The first music video is Justice‘s Stress which involves a camera and a sound guy following youth gang in jackets with Justice’s album cover or the Cross (a controversial figure). They walk around the streets of France on a violent tear doing as many as illegal crimes from assault, sexual assault, aggravated assault, vandalism to grand theft auto. The action is set perfectly to the music and there’s more to this video that meets the eye. This is definitely a controversial music video with many hating it and citing racism and being offended due to the graphic violence. However, I must say there are a few things this video captures perfectly around the “youth gang culture”. First off, they are just putting on a show trying to be cool by smoking, walking the walk and overall doing anything that will piss someone off usually without reason. A lot of the time you see people not reacting at all and just standing there and taking it where once inawhile you find an individually standing up to challenge the gang to only be outnumbered and beat up. You see a lot of people standing around doing nothing and watching while this happens (this is EXACTLY what happens in real life…people just watch these people do a number of asshole things). I really like this video not because of my experience with “youth gangs” in Jane and Finch of Toronto but a lot of children do want to just do things without a purpose and painting them in a poor light seems like the exact purpose of the video. The ending where the youths turn on the camera man and the sound guy may be what they deserve as gangs are glorified these days.

A great great video for one of my favorite singles off Cross. In the end its just violence but there’s much more that meets the eye and I’m sure it would be a hot topic if this was a more “mainstream” artist.

Download: Stress by Justice

Speaking of violence. White William’s New Violence is more of a less controversial nature and just rounds up random clips of guns and other various things. It’s supposed to a shot at the USA for their fascination with guns but I just like looking at the random clips. Props for including my man Steven Segal (not really my man but I do like him for his horrible acting). Why no Arnold though?

Download: New Violence by White Williams

I don’t talk much about sports these days but the Superbowl is always fun to watch. I’m a Patriots hater so this season has been tough to stomach. The Patriots are going after the illustrious 18-0 season, already surpassing everyone’s expectation that they would’ve had one loss this year. They do have a great team all around but my favorite teams are the Chargers, Colts and Bills so you have to understand why I hate the Pats. I really hope the Giants win but the Patriots are on a different level then the Packers (the upset didn’t surprise me).

Without any further rambling and talk they you may or may not care about here’s my playlist dedicated to this fun weekend:
1. The Underdog by Spoon
2. Perfect by The Smashing Pumpkins
3. I Am History by The Bell
4. The Shadow by White Williams (dedicated to Eli Manning who will be out of the shadow of Peyton if he can pull this off)
5. Ready For The Floor by Hot Chip (Lesnar vs Mir will likely be on the ground with a wrestler vs a BJJ guy)
6. Lucky by Radiohead (who will get lucky this weekend?)
7. The Comeback by The Shout Out Louds (can Frank Mir comeback from his motorcycle accident?)
8. Different Names For The Same Thing By Death Cab For Cutie (dedicated to Brock Lesnar’s butchering of Mir’s name, apparently he thinks it’s like Murr instead of Meer)
9. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger (all the talk is about who’s better, faster, stronger in Football and in MMA and I just want to enjoy the action and stop all the talk)
10. You Talk Too Much by Run D.M.C. (media kind of annoys me revolving around the super bowl)
11. The Kids Don’t Stand A Chance by Vampire Weekend (I’m going to be having a vampire weekend so I just wanted to include them )

I found myself extremely addicted to White William’s style of music, it feels more like pop music but with the complexity of electronic music and at times gives off a psychedelic vibe. I found myself liking 90% of the albums on here a lot, lyrically it doesn’t seem challenging but it’s compliments the music very well (or takes a backburner). This is probably the first experimental album I seem to “get” as it is very random at times with the sounds but I find every sound just as soothing.

This album is getting a 4.5 out of 5 from me. Some great tracks on here though there were a few I would omit (Lice in The Rainbow). Overall, Smoke is a fantastic album to listen to. It’s sung very simply but I take more stock in music rather then Williams’ vocal range and lyrical content. The theme of the album seems to have something to do with drugs (or made me think of drugs) so I wonder what kind of impression this album would give under the influence. If anyone wishes to see White Williams in Toronto at on Jan 16th let me know.

Fleetwood Crack by White Williams

New Violence by White Williams

Buy White William’s Smoke @ Amazon
Buy White Williams Smoke (mp3) from Insound