February 2008: Delanis, Elemeno P, False Start, Falter, Gin Wigmore

A prelude to body paint, dancing in the rain, the shaky outdoors, dyed black hair, and the rock life.

Delanis featuring Monsta Ganjah “Butterflies”

This track sounds really dated. Even for 2008, it was an old sound, the sort of thing that would have been cool and new in the early 2000s. Delanis is a good singer, Monsta G adds a cool rap, but the song itself is very repetitive and it uses really cheap sounding synth strings. The video goes super dark and edgy, showing cool hip hop dancers doing some moves on rain-soaked streets at night. There are lots of good ideas in there, but nothing comes together comfortably.

Director: Carl Robertson
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

Elemeno P “Take the High Road”

Appearing as a band again, Elemeno P can be found in the woods, by a substation, by a river, under a bridge, and in front of a blue wall. They’re filmed using four cameras, simultaneously shooting in four vertical stripes. It’s all going well until the shots starts lurching up and down and, waaah, I feel motion sick. So I can’t watch a video like this, but not everyone will have that problem.

Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

False Start “Get Your Feelings Out”

Just a warning: this song has a key change. The video is so emo. It’s like they’d bought a job lot of black hair dye and wanted to use it before it expired. There’s the band playing on a CGI stage, with what looks like black and white vaginas in the background. There’s a CGI audience, which seems to be all teenage boys dressed in black and white, looking like the weirdest school assembly concert ever.

Director: Tim van Dammen
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

Falter “I Will Never Know”

“I Will Never Know” is an ode to friendship, and the video takes the form of a scrapbook. It looks back at Falter’s life as a band, from their first music video to crazy antics on the road. There’s plenty of mugging to the camera and so many gross moments (keywords: armpit, hairy thighs, arse massage). I feel that a video like this is more special to Falter than it is to an average listener, but it’s still interesting as a document of a New Zealand punk-pop band in the ’00s.

Gin Wigmore “Under My Skin”

This was Gin Wigmore’s first big single, only months away from becoming the theme tune for Air New Zealand’s body paint safety videos. (You know what’s gross? The Air NZ video has many comments from dudes complaining that they can’t see the women’s painted boobs.) Gin Wigmore uses more traditional clothes. It’s a really simple video, with Gin shot against a green screen blackboard background. As she sings, various chalk patterns swirl around. It seems like a low budget production but it doesn’t look cheap.

Director: Special Problems
Nga Taonga Sound & Vision

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