Music Videos Become Music Feature Films

posted in: FeaturesMusic News

Get pumped, Nine Inch Nails fans. Early last week, Trent Reznor announced that the upcoming HBO miniseries based on his concept album Year Zero will be penned by Fight Club screenwriter Jim Uhls. And if that isn’t the greatest thing you’ve ever heard, you obviously weren’t reading closely enough. It’s Trent Reznor! And Jim Uhls! Writing a sci-fi miniseries based on Year Zero! Sure, aside from that, there are essentially no details about the show at the moment. But if previous HBO miniseries like Band of Brothers or Generation Kill are any indication, there’s no way this won’t be awesome.

Year Zero was praised for taking the concept album to places it had never been before after Reznor and 42 Entertainment created an online alternate reality game to accompany its 2007 release, but a miniseries like this would be the first of its kind (although it’s probably just the next logical step in Reznor’s journey toward total media domination). And Reznor isn’t the only musician who’s using television and film to create a more immersive music experience, which has us wondering if long play movies”or miniseries or short films or video games”could be poised to eclipse the music video.

Arcade Fire are one of the other bands using multimedia components to compliment their work. In February, the Canadian indie rockers unveiled a half-hour, Spike Jonze directed film called Scenes From the Suburbs at SXSW. The film was inspired by their GRAMMY-winning album The Suburbs. (It was also supposed to be available for free online last week, but hosting site Mubi pulled the video down at the last minute for residents of the US, Canada, Australia and Germany. Womp Womp.) The heart wrenching film scored rave reviews and had many fans begging for a full-length movie.

Angels & Airwaves are jumping on the movie bandwagon as well, announcing last week that their upcoming album Love II will include a co py of the movie Love, which the band produced and scored. Even Icelandic singer-songwriter Bjí¶rk is getting in on the multimedia game for her forthcoming album Biophilia. Each song on the album will have its own iPad app, and all of those baby apps will reside in one “mother app”. Yeah… it’s about as confusing as it sounds. And sure, Bjí¶rk is exactly the type of artist we’d expect to include some sort of super outlandish component with her album. But with all the buzz that Biophilia is generating already, it can’t be too long before other artists try their hands at it.

Of course, There are plenty of critics who believe that movies and visual experiences accompanying the music are a scheme intended only to drum up interest and sell more albums. It’s an accusation Reznor was met with as he geared up to release the online experience for Year Zero, and he admitted that it was “frustrating” to hear the word “marketing” tossed around in conjunction with his work. “It’s not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record”it IS the art form,” he said. But frustrating as it may be, the success of albums like Year Zero and The Suburbs can only make multimedia releases more prevalent.

And even if these long playing music videos aren’t the wave of the future, plenty of standard vids have won us over this year as well. If you haven’t yet, check out the Foo FightersFalling Down-inspired video for “Walk,” watch Red Fang smash a car in the most fun way possible in their video for “Wires,” laugh as Matt and Kim beat the shit out of each other in “Cameras” and get creeped out by Tyler, the Creator‘s “Yonkers”.