Fulvue Drive-In.com
Current Reviews
In Stores Soon
 
In Stores Now
 
DVD Reviews, SACD Reviews Essays Interviews Contact Us Meet the Staff
An Explanation of Our Rating System Search  
Category:    Home > Reviews > Music Videos > Rock > Electronica > DJ > This Is Skint (PAL DVD format Music Videos set/Region Free/Zero)

This Is Skint   (PAL/Region-free/Zero Import)

 

Picture: B     Sound: B-     Extras: B     Main Videos: B+

 

 

There has been a general feeling in music these days that most of the product the record labels promote is of the poorest quality ever seen.  The latest “bubblegum pop” cycle is the most sickening, ruinous one yet to occur.  So what happened to the smart, fun music?

 

As Hip-Hop currently dominates the commercial music scene, despite its interesting slow decline, other listeners have gone to Country as a bad variant of 1970s Pop/Rock, Adult Contemporary or current Rock music that seems to have lost steam.  Between the Pop scene that used to be, and the death of New Wave, Electronic music and Dance seemed to have been pushed to the side.  The Electronica movement was short-lived, yet we still have electronic music out there somewhere that people are buying.  When New Wave and music videos arrived at the same time, Britain was in the forefront of both, resulting in yet another British Invasion of the US music scene.  England’s Skint Records seems to be the logical, fascinating melding of those sensibilities, but for today.

 

Their best-known artist is turntablist Fatboy Slim, thanks to his music videos, licensing of his music, and clever interpretations of current music in general.  While US DVD buyers get to enjoy his Big Beach Boutique II concert disc, his videos have been out of reach.  This Is Skint is a video collection from his home record label that offers 28 videos, including two of Fatboy Slim’s, which is only available in the PAL format.  Fortunately, the DVD is region-free, so more players in the US that can do PAL (versus the old US analog NTSC format all DVD players are usually set to) can access the material.

 

A few non-PAL capable machines might also be able to pick up the signal, though the picture might omit the color in some cases.   The trouble is worth it, since this is an exceptional DVD set that should be available in the US, for US DVD players, but is not at this time.  That’s a shame, because odds are that you have either seen or heard a few of the tracks offered on this set.

 

Usually, when you see a hard plastic Super Jewel Box (those thin, skinny kind) with a DVD, that means 99% of the time that you are holding a cheapie DVD in the US, but the packaging means something different in Japan and Europe.  A DVD-tall version of the packages used for the new DVD-Audio format, they sometimes are done in a fancy fashion, as the red prints on the front and back of this case offers.

 

Inside, the obligatory booklet is skipped, so the videos are as follows listed by number, artist, title and the video’s director(s):

 

1) Fatboy Slim - Right Here Right Now  (Hammer & Thongs)

2) Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentley’s Gonna Sort You Out  (Hammer & Thongs)

3) Lo Fidelity All-stars featuring Pigeonhead - Battleflag  (Jake Nava)

4) X-Press 2 featuring David (Talking Heads) Byrne - Lazy  (Howard Shur)

5) Space Raiders - Laid Back  (Matt Kirkby)

6) Midfield General - Midfielding  (Ste McGregor)

7) Super_Collider - It Won’t Be Long (Dawn Shadforth of Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”)

8) REQ - Subculture  (Wayne Tracey)

9) Phil Kieran - My House  (Ste McGregor/animated)

10) Lo Fidelity All-stars - Blisters On My Brain  (James Griffiths)

11) Sparky Lightbourne - Where You Goin’ Chicken?  (Local/animated)

12) Daniel San - Force Tan  (Ste McGregor/animated)

13) Cut La Roc - Freeze  (Jordan Scott, Ridley Scott’s daughter)

14) X-Press 2 - I Want You Back  (Howard Shur)

15) Fatboy Slim - Everybody Needs a 303 (PERV)   (Ashley Slater)

16) Space Raiders - Glam Raid  (Kate Aidley)

17) Dr. Bone - Coma Cop  (Ashley Slater)

18) Bentley Rhythm Ace - Midlander  (John Humphreys)

19) Lo Fidelity All-stars - Vision Incision  (Adrian Moat)

20) Cut La Rock - Fallen  (Jordan Scott)

21) Super_Collider - Darn Cold Way O Lovin’  (Milk)

22) Dr. Bone - I Came Here To Get Ripped  (Ashley Slater)

23) Midfield General featuring Linda Lewis - Reach Out  (James Griffiths)

 

Plus three bonus videos from the label’s Hall Of Shame in the supplement that are not THAT bad:

 

24) Lo Fidelity All-stars - Lo Fi’ In Ibiza (Scott Lyon)

25) Space Raiders - (I Need A) Disko Doktor (Barnaby + Scott)

26) Indian Rope Man - Sunshine Of Your Love (Arran)

 

 

The videos range from being shot on film, to various video formats, as well as in various aspect ratios.  In the PAL format, they are noticeably sharper than if they were on a US NTSC DVD, which is particularly noticed in the “Fallen” clip.  It is letterboxed and offers location beach footage, which has much detail to capture.  The result is detail that would require an anamorphic transfer on a US DVD to achieve; though there is still evidence this Jordan Scott video is not an anamorphic transfer.  There is still detail lacking in the finer points that give it away, but it looks good just the same.

 

Of the Fatboy Slim clips, “Right Here Right Now” has puppeteering, morphing and other animation tricks to show a humorous evolution of man, while “Everybody Needs a 303" is a gimmick clip that tries to bash videos, but being a very bad one does not help.  No matter what people say to bash videos, they have become an art form.  The better clips on this set try to be anti-videos, playing against the star-centered, even ego-obsessed clips that gave video a bad name in most cases.

 

The gem clip here is Super_Collider’s (the “official” spelling) “It Won’t Be Long” from 1998.  This is a case where the lead singer takes risks with his persona, while the video itself is both dark and bizarre.  While the singer comes across as demented, despite the lyrics not necessarily indicating this, the video takes place in a dark garage-like place with an attendant who also seems not to be playing with a full deck.  Add flies and the point-of-view camera shots from a particular fly’s perspective and this is different indeed.  This is also the kind of video that the video-haters cannot deal with.

 

Darn Cold Way O Lovin’” is the other Super_Collider clip, which is also interesting and is based on another good song, but “It Won’t Be Long” may well be an unsung classic.  Shadforth’s manipulation and satire of location is an interesting earmark of her work, while the ambiguous ‘Milk’ directed “Lovin’” one year later.

 

A few animated videos are here, even if this means cutouts are used.  Phil Kieran’s “My House” actually takes one-dimensional cutouts and has the flatness of the figures literally flipping and flapping all over the place.  This is another one of the strong songs on the set. Sparky Lightbourne’s “Where You Goin’ Chicken?” sticks to the cut-out theme, but seems to be sending up advertising of food in general as the lead chicken gets shipped to the food processing factory.  It is a fascinating clip for a bizarre song, which are both entertaining.  Daniel San’s “Force Tan” goes as far as to use well known icons that are either fictional (Kermit The Frog) or played by real people (Woody Allen from his film Sleeper in the hilarious “floating suit”) bounced around equally fake backgrounds.  The other twist here is that each character (including many unknowns) say things through comic strip word bubbles that have nothing to do with the content of the music, but are funny or just plain wacky.

 

Lazy” features the familiar lead vocal of former Talking Head David Byrne on X-Press 2's club favorite, one of the few tracks here that has definitely made it to the states.  If not a big Pop hit, it has surfaced all over in one form or another.  The video features a guy who has his entire house rigged so he never has to get up to do anything!  It is like the old Rube Goldberg situation where things are so overly engineered that the alignment of gadgets, to say the least, takes the long road to getting things done.  Many will also be reminded of many a Warner Bros. cartoon that featured the same over exaggerated ganglia.

 

The two Cut La Roc clips by Jordan Scott are not bad, as she finds a different tone for her videos than her brother Jake.  Fallen” seems to have a locale similar to Ridley Scott’s short film Boy & Bicycle at the beach.  This can be seen on Paramount’s DVD special edition of Ridley Scott’s first feature film, The Duelists

 

Finally among the videos to be discussed here, from the Hall Of Shame supplement, is the instrumental “Sunshine Of Your Love” by Indian Rope Man.  It may not be in step with the kinds of videos that made Skint what it is today, but it is a really great old school send-up of Star Wars.  The saga is on Chapter 23(!) and Luke Skywalker (more or less) now runs a coffee shop, since there is peace throughout the universe.  The problem is that he is bored to death.  A former Storm Trooper (played by an actor who actually was one of the original Storm Troopers, as Star Wars was shot in England) is now a milkman, and Leah (played by an actress who is hauntingly dead-on looking, despite NOT looking like the current Carrie Fisher) visits.  Also visiting for one last romp, on the road to the cafe, is a very Darth Vader-like fellow.  There are also many other in-jokes for a video worth showing off to friends, offering much rewatchability in either case.

 

So with all this alone, one can see why this is such a fine DVD set.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo is some of the best on DVD, especially on the songs.  Of course, it is too bad that at least the music was not in 5.1 remixes, nor has Skint committed to either of the high definition audio formats.  Whether they back SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc) or DVD-Audio, their music should be especially impressive, as the DTS on that Fatboy Slim Big Beach Boutique II DVD already demonstrates.

 

As for the remaining extras, David Byrne and X-Press 2 discuss how “Lazy” was brought together, there is a segment about the labels support of a local soccer team, an abstract-but-not-bad segment about the early days of Skint, a clip from the Invisible, Inc. documentary with music by REQ about graffiti that hopes to be thought of in the same breath as Style Wars, and audio commentaries on the main music videos by John Hassay & Damain Harris of Skint.  These are all good, but commentaries on music videos are too rare, so that is especially a strong point for this DVD.

 

So if you have a PAL-capable DVD player or want to take a chance your US player might be able to track a region-free PAL DVD, you can order This Is Skint from www.skint.net and wonder why we are being denied some of the best music going in the United States from the United Kingdom.  See how major record labels, radio stations, and MTV are failing us.  This is where some of the good music went!

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo


Marketplace


 
 Copyright © MMIII through MMX fulvuedrive-in.com