Massive Attack film: Saturday Come Slow

“Saturday Comes Slowly” is fifth in a series of seven films commissioned by Massive Attack to accompany their latest album ‘Heligoland’. The video explores the effects of sound on the human body. The song (sung by Damon Albarn) includes stunning visuals alongside the first-person testimony of a Guantanamo prisoner, subjected to sound torture and scientific talk about the implications of this kind of interrogation.

The short film was made by renowned photographers Adam Broomberg of Colors magazine, Guardian newspaper and Oliver Chanarin. It’s a poignant, powerful, timely and emotive piece of work.

Massive Attack have always visually pushed their music from album covers to their live acts. The film is hosted on twitter feed site Tweatre, which allows users to view comments and feel the audience.

As album covers fade into art history, it’s great to see musicians take on the challenge and exploiting other visual mediums and new technologies. I can’t really think of any bands embracing this apart from the Gorillaz and Radiohead. More of this please.

Saving Face

This past weekend is the first time in a longtime when I did not twitter, facebook, email, touch a computer, or even use my cell phone. I did things like go to dinner with friends, venture into a dueling piano bar, ice skating, in other words; being social without social media.

Don’t get me wrong I’m all for social media. Its helped me to stay connected in ways I didn’t think possible, as well as gather information quickly without the legwork. However, without it, I felt more inspired, observant, and attentive. Maybe it life was better before we had useful distractions like twitter and facebook. Luckily, there’s actually a device to cure you of social media. Within an hour the web 2.0 suicide machine disconnects you from all your social media avatars. So far 3,109 people have used the machine, totaling 229,651 friends unfriended and 391,125 tweets untweeted. Maybe this is a bit extreme but there is something to be said about becoming “anti-social”.