Nervous Heartbeat: a homemade pop video

[imomus]

Back in February I offered you the first taste of the forthcoming Momus album Ocky Milk in the form of Frilly Military: a homemade pop video. Today I'm delighted to offer you another -- my own video for the song "Nervous Heartbeat". Click the picture to watch it on YouTube.



The song's lyrics are based on Japanese onomatopoeia, the colourful Japanese phrases which express something like an emotion by copying its "sound" -- even if it doesn't technically have one. (What's the sound of a painful condition? Zuki zuki. A glittering spakle? Why, pika pika of course!). You could see the song as an ultra-emotional way of learning a language.

The video shows a sequence of people I happened to meet in New York in April. I asked them to look sad, but the atmosphere of the song is perhaps best described as sensual, full of mono no aware (the "sigh-ness" of things) and natsukashii, nostalgia, or the longing for that which has never been. Nostalgia for an absent person, perhaps, or one you haven't met yet.

Speaking of love and couples, the article you helped me with last week, The Kinsey of Clicking, is now up on Wired News. Thanks to everyone who participated!

Comments

[wingedwhale.livejournal.com]

懐かしがりや

[antonskarp.livejournal.com]

It just dawned on me that pikachu is called pika because of the sound of electricity (pika pika) and the sound of mice. (chu chu)

[reggie-c-king.livejournal.com]

A decent effort altogether, Nick, but I wonder from whence were those lovely strings untimely ripped?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A pirate never reveals his samples, sir! 'Tis an old superstition; to utter their names might bring the Chinese session musicians of 1952 back from their peaceful rest, demanding Hell Bank Notes.

[222b.livejournal.com]

I like it. Can't wait for the album.

I give it 5oive

[(Anonymous)]

Best track i've heard from you in a looongg time. Timelordish in places. Is it reperesentitive of the album? I do hope so.

Re: I give it 5oive

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's representative of the album's torchy, Enka feel, yes. Everything on this record is warm and sentimental. Other tracks get more "absurdist torch", like "Pleasantness", based entirely on extracts from Google-translated Japanese blogs; crooned grammatical errors and oddities. I tried to catch an atmosphere both experimental and warm, familiar and strange.

[(Anonymous)]

I like it. Good song (return to form, if I may say patronisingly), nice video. You should post a link to videos.antville.org .

der.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks, have done.

[happyat2pm.livejournal.com]

at first, the strings sound like they are from the christmas song " i saw mommy kissing santa claus"

[a-tagide.livejournal.com]

natsukashii is maybe the same feeling as "saudade" (portuguese)

[(Anonymous)]

beautifull video.
i really like the other people.maybe if you would just used you.or trees or something it would have been pathetic.but you made it beautifull and the whole emotion expresion real.
like it.
the open id thing doesn't work
so the url identifing me is:http://felipov.this.ro
funny to have an url identifing you

[markii187.livejournal.com]

Wonderful piece.. I love the Japanese obsession with creating a sound for every emotion/feeling/visual possible.. You captured that brilliantly and expressively. Well done!

Awesome video too - the trees! mm~ very natsukashii..

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

Beutiful song.

loved the searchlights on the trees.

was somewhat dissapointed at first when one shot revealed that they actually were searchlights.

but then I came to like that shot.

seems like a "searching" video

Great Work.

[inwards.livejournal.com]

I took a visit to Berlin this weekend and had Frilly Military in my head the whole time because of the "puffing on a spliff on Alexanderplatz" line.. but it was at least fairly pleasant to have in my head ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Great music. Great video.

Reminds me of Kazumasa Hashimoto's (http://home.att.ne.jp/star/bd/) song: "gllia"

niko niko

[cityramica.livejournal.com]

brian's shirt looks nice.

i'd say more but i'm being attacked by zombies.

apologies.

[thetemplekeeper.livejournal.com]

Very enjoyable, and I'm not even drunk.

Thank you!

[hans-lucas.livejournal.com]

I try not to listen to songs before I can hear it in context of the whole album, but I broke my own rule here. I am glad I did. I was able to draw some of my own personal experiences to the video as well.

Thank you for sharing.

[penguinkeggard.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the article, bravo!

[designsbykarl.livejournal.com]

great video and nice song

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

That is a real piece of beauty there, momus, especially the searchlights and that giant tree. Where is it from anyway?

By the way, if you like you can check my own musicvideo for the song Micke Hatar Stellan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DwfayaxK8dE).

(What program do you use for your homemade movies anyway? Quicktime?)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The lit tree was just something I saw on Lafayette Street, NY one evening. I filmed it with the video in mind, because I immediately recognized some quality of searching in the scene, of searing beauty.

Your video certainly woke up my rabbit! It must have been all the high-pitched noises. I know you were deliberately going for a block, pixelated look, but if you want your videos to look smoother on YouTube you should upload them at 320x240 pixels.

I use iMovie, then I resample with ReelBean to get the right dimensions and file format.

[uberdionysus.livejournal.com]

Wonderful! Looking forward to the album.

BTW, I don't know if I ever told you, but thanks for the link to The Economist's article on wealth disparity in the U.S. I somehow missed it, and it's one of my favorite topics.

Natsukashii

[(Anonymous)]

Nice song (concept) and ditto video, but I have to point out that, almost all Japanese-English dictionaries notwithstanding, "natsukashii" does NOT mean "nostalgic"! This is one of those irritating errors that just get repeated endlessly, without ever being corrected. "Natsukashii" is an adjective that refers to the OBJECT of longing, the longee, as it were, and not the longer. A "natsukashii hito" is NOT a "nostalgic person" but a dear old friend. A "natsukashii uta" is NOT a "nostalgic song" but an old favourite.

As is so often the case, the Japanese language views the world from a different angle than English.

Re: Natsukashii

[imomus.livejournal.com]

"Nostalgia-evoking", perhaps?

[auto-nalle.livejournal.com]

o.

[ex-chellovec979.livejournal.com]

There is so much latent energy in those "sad" people. They are my natsukashii, even though I don't know them.

[insomnia.livejournal.com]

It's always easiest remembering the Japanese onomatopoeia, certainly... and their use is extremely kawaii. I can't think of the word "doki doki" without thinking of cute young anime girls with fast-beating hearts.

That was Shazna in the video there, wasn't it? Looks like she merited a special sparkle! Pika pika!

Running a performance poetry workshop at a school tomorrow... would love to show this vid. Can do?

[(Anonymous)]

Yo Momus...

Roy Blumenthal here. I've been reading your blog for a month or so now, and am loving it. Thanks for the incredibly illuminating things you tackle. I dig it.

I'm delivering a workshop tomorrow for schoolkids on performance poetry, and I'd love to show them this video. It really illustrates tons about performance, prosody, emotionality, and how what's happening along with the words affects the meaning.

Would ya have any hassle with me showing them?

All of my details are in the sig file below.

Blue skies
love
Roy

------------------------------------------------
ROY BLUMENTHAL
Corporate Facilitator, Coach, Creative Thinking Specialist, & Artist-at-Large

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lovely!

[(Anonymous)]

A lovely song, video and concept. I've always found the pervasive nature of onomatopoeic phrases in the Japanese language to be fascinating. Is there any other language in which onomatopoeia is so important? One of my ex-wives was Japanese but raised in America and vitually all of the Japanese words and phrases that persisted in her vocabulary were the onomatopoeic ones.

gomad361@yahoo.com

nice one

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is really good. How about adding some karaoke style subtitles for even more effect/affect?

It's like New Order's 'Round & Round' video on valium.

Sample

[(Anonymous)]

That's from an old 鄧麗君 song, I think. Do I win a Momus doll or something if I get the song title correctly?

Luis C.