This past winter was an eventful time for OK Go, between the release of third album Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky, disputes with EMI over its YouTube videos and an eventual split with the label and the creation of Paradacute Records. But even after all the dust settled, the music is still stuck in our heads—because OK Go definitely still has it. Of The Blue Colour Of The Sky brings us little nuggets of unbridled optimism set to catchy pop beats with Damian Kulash’s funky falsetto soaring overhead—and, in typical OK Go fashion, some of the most awesome videos ever made. OK Go is taking time between dates on its worldwide tour supporting the LP in order to guest edit magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our Q&A with Kulash.
Kulash: I know that CFLs are energy efficient and I know we all need to use them. And don’t worry, I do my part, all the while wondering about all the noxious crap inside them and where it’s all going and whether they’re really an environmental improvement, on balance. But I miss incandescent bulbs. Their light was prettier and they were dim-able and their shapes were nicer and they didn’t buzz that god awful buzz. And I liked staring at the filaments on the flame-shaped ones usually paired with cheap chandeliers, sort of like I do at real fire. For those who would share in my eulogizing, there’s an incredible exhibit of historical light bulbs at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif. I know this sounds like some seriously nerdy shit, and I suppose it kind of is, but really, the army of bulbs is very beautiful, and the variation in design ideas is astonishing. It’s like a whole squadron of dainty glass prototypes of animals that never existed.
Video after the jump.
One reply on “From The Desk Of OK Go’s Damian Kulash: Incandescent Bulbs”
This is so weird. I got up at 4:15 this morning, after a very strange dream involving a lot of Victorian-style theatrical feats disguised as mysticism, and I started writing down an idea I’d had the previous night for a video. You know, like ya do. 🙂 I was listening Bossanova (there was also something about actually digging for fire in my dream, that and mumbling about VU’s Loaded…I think). However, my carousel was on random shuffle.
So the video idea is just different lights and light sequences and patterns that I thought might make a good music video, but then the shuffle actually loaded “I Want You So Bad i Can’t Breathe”. And pattern I was trying to write began to synch with the song (much more clearly than in my initial idea), and then I envisioned the entire video for it, starting with flickering light bulbs, LED indicators on various objects, and EQ displays and such, and then moving outside to include streetlamps, car headlights, blinkers, traffic signals and neon signs and symbols. It might be a bit hard to coordinate at first, but fairly easy to shoot in a continuous shot if you put the camera in a car and “follow” the lights.
Yeah. Anyway, then “Velouria” came on and I had to go dance around my living room singing along. You know, like ya do.
Thanks for sharing your light(s).