LOL Boys - Blockz
Latest LOL boys, which is solid but perhaps not quite as good 123. The ramping up of the production values, whilst welcome in purely visual terms, has the tendency to distract the viewer from the ideas. These ideas were delivered plainly and explicitly through a less visually self-assured strategy in 123.
In a general Blockz seeks to establish a similar set of ideas. Through the evocation of lofi web aesthetics there is a whiff in their output of net.art and more recent developments such as dump.fm. In addition we’re clearly also dealing with the issues surrounding virtual worlds – particularly their social implications. It all comes to together with the tantalizing proposition that the LOL boys are in some sense political.
From Wikipedia -
net.art developed in a context of cultural crisis in Eastern Europe in the beginning of the 1990s after the end of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. The artists involved in net.art experiments are associated with the idea of a “social responsibility” that would answer the idea of democracy as a modern capitalist myth.
Permit a bit of imagination and you can rework this description into an argument for LOL boys.
LOL Boys developed in a context of cultural crisis in the United States in the beginning of the 2010s after the fall of the banking system. The LOL boys are associated with the idea of a “social responsibility” that would answer the idea of democracy as a modern capitalist myth.
So what have we got with Blockz? Really it presents us a with alternate reality - a reality powered by the internet. It is world based loosely on African landscapes but certainly the emphasis is nature or at least the state of being ‘natural’. Animals are set free to run in Technicolor splendor. We have sense of harmony – an idea of digital unity.
There seems to be a strong idea of harmony running though much of the LOL boys. This is presented most vividly though synchronized movement of digital avatars. In the last section of 123 a collection of individually dressed characters dance in perfect harmony. In Blockz it is the animals that move as one. The implication is clear and utopian. The specific feature of all this is precision. Through computer code humanity and nature can move EXACTLY as one.
In Blockz from mins 1.27 - 1.31 there is an interior scene with human avatars moving asynchronously in some kind of interior scene. They appear possessed - forced into a stupor by the trappings of contemporary urban existence - strobe lights (that most inhuman of effects) illuminate the scene. This is also the only part of song where the sound becomes weird, aggressive and spooky. The dog looks on in utter bemusement.
So basically what we have here is a couple of videos which seem at least in some part and probably unwittingly to present a reaction to the tyranny of our current economic and social structures. The solution they propose is a return to things more elemental (123 123 123 123) – a reconnection with nature and ourselves - but also to hint at the possibility that real world culture is now so bankrupted that the internet, or more specifically a global network peers, is currently the only realistic environment in which a better world can grow and hopefully spill over into non-digital space.
It’s easy to laugh at the LOL boys, not take them seriously - after all it all looks pretty amusing. Indeed humour is undoubtedly part of an internet based social future. But it’s not just funny for sake of being silly - I would reckon there are some pretty serious ideas at stake in all this.
So next time you put on some Mount Kimbie and marvel at the collection of a certain amount of more or less meaningless sounds ask yourself if it actually tells you anything of use?
Its not that I hate Mount Kimbie but rather I’m infuriated by the overpowering sense of smugness that plinky plonky noises are in some way the correct expression of contemporary culture. But then again perhaps they are. I imagine it to be the kind of music more discerning 25-35 year old investment bankers listen to in the hope that everything will just continue as it always has done.
