The Duke On "The Work Of Chris Cunningham"

Written by Duke De Mondo
Published April 26, 2004
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The point of all this is that somehow these chancers what do the music adverts have had a load of respectability slapped onto them, possibly on account of the motherfucker and the robot fondling. Now, we can buy pristinely packaged DVD sets what are called things like The Work Of Chris Cunningham or The Work Of Michael Gondry or The Work Of Spike Jonze. This intrigued The Duke no end, this series of the old digital versatile discs, but this Cunningham mofo was the only one I felt like shelling out for, by which I mean I bought it on sale.

Now, first off, I couldn't care less about most of the music in these things, unless I tried really really hard, and to be honest, I can't be bothered even thinking about it. But the visuals this Cunningham fella utilises are nothing short of inspired, possibly by some malevolent demon who lives at the centre of the universe. He's got a Fincher kinda thing going on, being fond of the bleached-out look and the rain and the disturbing imagery. And he's got an imagination like Bosch after a night of absinthe fuelled hooker devouring coke-snorting mayhem. Some of these are truly disturbing, some of them are kinda funny, but all of them are at least interesting. The weakest one here, for Squarepusher's Come On My Selector, manages to do the unthinkable by making scarily intelligent children and dogs having their brains swapped with humans and big fucking guns seem terribly dull. But it's still worth a watch, even if you're unlikely to wanna play it too many times. Bit like the song, in fact.

Thankfully, though, there are at least five here that anyone sane of skull would want to throw into the fires of Hades and never see again, whilst the rest of us have the good sense to put them on eternal loop on monitors fixed around our sofas. Windowlicker and Come To Daddy by Aphex Twin, that Frozen carry on with Madonna, All Is Full Of Love with Bjork and the sexing AI's, and Afrika Shox by Leftfield, what has a zombie falling in pieces around New York. These are simply masterful short films.

The disc also features a couple of Cunningham's ad-works, including a bizarre mixture of body-fascism and homo-eroticism which turns out to be a car advert, and that Playstation one with the weird eyes. There's also an unused one for Levi's, which advertises jeans by having a truck run into a photocopier.

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The Duke (Aaron McMullan to his parents and the clergy) is a Northern Irish writer, performer and insomniac currently residing in London. He is the creator of Mondo Irlando, wherein his scribblings and hollerings can be found. He is currently working towards the completion of his first novel, and his debut "punk / country / folk / whatever" album has recently been released by Ex Libris Records . You can also pop by His MySpace Page and maybe have a coffee and a biscuit.
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The Duke On "The Work Of Chris Cunningham"
Published: April 26, 2004
Type:
Section: Video
Filed Under: Music: DJ, Music: Electronica, Music: Pop, Video: Animation, Video: Art House, Video: Fantasy, Video: Horror, Video: Music, Video: SF, Video: Urban
Writer: Duke De Mondo
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