Young Turks

Fantasy Faris and a Warped Mind18 August 2008by Caius Pawson

The Horrors got a mention on here a few days ago for their rather brilliant in-studio-webcam. Today their lead singer Faris Badwan gets another mention for an even more brilliant reason: fantasy football.

Faris isn’t just good at fantasy football, he’s a god. Here’s the proof:

If you take a peak down the table, you might spot Faris’ team Sour Face FC sitting pretty in 6th place. Thats 6th out of 1,274,118 teams. I’d place a fair bet that there haven’t been many more than 1,274,118 albums released commercially since 1900, which would make the album equivalent of Faris’ fantasy football team something like this, this, this or this.

This is how he did it:

(Fantasy football nerds please note that he’s not only notched up a huge score with a pretty left field side but he’s got £6.5 million to spare and two pretty great players on the bench.)

In news that will probably be of more interest to music fans, The Horrors seem to have nearly finished their album. Recording has ended on the webcam session and I presume that means, without rerecording of mishaps, the album is a mix and a master away from your ears. It’s been produced by Geoff Barrow which sounds like it could lead to some extremely interesting results. If Portishead’s last album Third and Geoff’s Invada record label are anything to go by this next record should be a lot heavier and rougher round the edges than Strange House. The webcam was without sound and there’s been no leaks on the internet yet, so I’ve no new music to judge it by but if Faris’ fantasy football form is anything to go by, I bet its amazing. This was a highlight off the last album:

The Horrors – Sheena is a Parasite

The video was directed by Chris Cunningham. I can’t really imagine Chris would be quite as good as Faris at fantasy football (PLEASE someone prove me wrong,) but he is an extremely talented director. A few of his great videos include Portishead’s Only You, Bjork’s All is Full of Love and for Warp records: Autechre’s Second Bad Villbel and Aphex Twin’s Come to Daddy. The two music videos that really stand out from the rest though (which also got released on Warp,) are:

Squarepusher – Come on My Selector

Aphex Twin – Windowlicker

Both videos are beautifully shot, with incredibly engaging story lines and ideas, are edited to the music with great, and often comedic, results and are completely deranged in every manner from concept to details. Quite specially, they are also both set to rather inaccessible (by a typical music video’s standard,) music. The quality of the videos alone gave both of these songs huge exposure, which, although they richly deserved, they would have had no chance of getting without.

Quite a few of Chris Cunningham’s videos include long segments without music and it often feels as if the music is a soundtrack to a short film rather than a stand alone track. This ideas was pushed to an extreme with, what is probably his most celebrated and demented work, Rubber Johnny.

Aphex Twin – Rubber Johnny

Outside of music videos, which except for Sheena is a Parasite there haven’t been a lot of lately, Chris Cunningham has worked as a special effects creator (Alien³), music artist/producer (including a rumored bit of work with The Horrors)
and VJ (video performance artist). His work as a VJ particularly impresses me, especially as a lot of it is highly prepared and sophisticated yet only ever seen performed live one or two times. Luckily, everywhere you go these days someone will be filming events for YouTube and some kind people in Japan captured this bit of VJing genius:

Chris Cunningham VJing live to music by Vitalic

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