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"Tapeten" DVD (Limited and Regular Editions) by Akumu
"Tapeten" (Limited Edition) is only $30.00CAN plus $3 shipping anywhere in the world!
"Tapeten" (Standard Edition) is only $10.00CAN plus $3 shipping anywhere in the world!
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Akumu "Tapeten" DVD
I've been a fan of Deane Hughes' work as Akumu for some years now and during that time I've been lucky enough to have the opportunity to see him perform live on more than a few occasions. It's in the live forum that Hughes' artistry particularly comes to the fore, where all of his talents seem to come together. Blending Hughes' unique musical ideals with his excellent visual skills, Akumu performances are an immersive and impressive experience that I"ve always admired and enjoyed. And now I can admire and enjoy elements of his performances without even leaving my apartment! The DVD "Tapeten" collects Hughes' video work from 2005-2008 and pairs it with rerecorded music from 2009 to simultaneously create both a historical document and blueprint for the future. Divided into three distinct themes, "Tapeten" is a rich visual experience that inspires and engages. "Surboreal" opens the disc with a cold blue tint, haunting trees and moons, electrical towers, and landscapes all moving and shifting in irregular, unnatural ways. Eventually this imagery gives way into an array of alien constellations, or maybe it's just confetti, either way it's a disorienting swirl of perspective that envelops the viewer and leads us to new spaces. "Nebulus" follows with a blotchy, almost liquid feel, a shifting display of blues and whites that flow across the screen in an icy drift. A scraping musical tone brings to mind the sound of crunching snow underfoot, adding to the cold imagery. Track three, "Mutagen", shifts into a red space, the camera slowly panning across skeletons shown in x-rays. It's an unsettling experience, made even more so when you realize there's something... not ... quite... right... until you notice the third leg, or the second head, the six fingers or the protruding mandible. Paired sonically with the languid flow of sweeping pads and light percussion, "Mutagen" makes for a particularly uneasy yet engaging experience. "Microscopes" continues the organic theme from the last selection, finding cells, amoebas, circles floating in liquid, shortly giving way to crystalline forms and membranous materials. There are some really nice uses of perspective here, a skillful manipulation of the viewer's senses. "Tendrils" is up next using abrupt edits to shift flows and movement in irregular ways, red, white and black filters all competing for space, granular images floating and shifting across the screen. This visual is a particular favorite for me, a really beautiful use of colour and flow that I'm quite taken with. The third part of this organic quadrilogy, "Tohell", begins with a quote and then leads us to a shifting brick laid road, sewer grates and padlocked doors. A quietly wailing voice can be heard in the background, a pulse of sorts, the screen showing a trench coated stranger reaching for a hammer. It's creepy in all the best ways, and I haven't even noticed that the tone has shifted to a washed-out green tint until now. Crepy, disturbing, and once more thoroughly engaging. Scene seven, "Surgical", expands on the theme, staying in a green light, but adding a bit of brightness to the colour to make it more of an emerald green. Surgical instruments and organic materials fade in and out, and though many of them look familiar to me I'm hard pressed to identify them, an unusual cross between vintage tools and Cronenberg-based extrapolations with a particular cruelty about them. I half expect to see Jeremy Irons red-smocked arm reaching for them... Moving away from the surgical elements of the last scene, "Thermal" finds us in a bright blue and orange urban metropolis, suited commuters and pedestrians all part of a rush hour morning. Backgrounds shift from black to white light, creating a sense of urgency and hustle until the scene drifts into "Drones", a trip through the subway in dark blue tones, tunnels and stations all seen from the perspective of the train tracks. There's a more relaxed feeling to the motion now which parallels a more languid tone in the music, scenes flattening and shifting in unusual ways. "Bloodbath" is up next, an abstract piece that's very fluid in presentation, where choppy edits create a fast and suggestive motion, bizarre and strange but strikingly beautiful. "Dredged" opens with a thin flat line that eventually grows and stretches, panning out until it becomes apparent that we're looking at an ocean, populated by oil drilling stations. Red light and angry skies abound in this one, panning into an urban city scape, an urban linear landscape that flows directly into the closing video "Striations", an angular trip along lines and wires, particulate red, frozen in time and space. With "Tapeten", Hughes has gone beyond the traditional music DVD ideal and created a work that stands not just as a companion to his work, but as a new and vital part of it to be appreciated for it's own merits. It's an impressive artistic achievement and I wholeheartedly recommend it as a brilliant aural and visual spectacle. Surely "Tapeten" gets my vote for best release of 2009. rik - ping things
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