Friday, February 29, 2008

Friday Video - Betamax Format, 'The Knife'



"Betamax Format are the video dead"


www.myspace.com/betamaxformat


"...with a name that suggests both the 80s and a taste for the alternative, [Betamax Format] played a great set from beginning to end"


hardcorefornerds.blogspot.com/fight-like-apes-live-village


You might have seen me writing about this band in my piece about the Village on New Year's Eve, where they were one of the support bands. Apparently they also played support for the Liars in 2005, which as good as FLA are, probably makes it a step down. Anyway, on the night that I saw them, they were very impressive. Not least, for their visual show.

Somewhere between 'Electro/New Wave' (their Myspace description), 'electro-emo' (Unarocks in the Tribune) and "Sallynoggin Psych" (again from their Myspace), Betamax Format play moody, downtuned electronic rock with actually quite a nice line in melody. The song from the video below, 'The Knife', isn't as strong in my opinion as 'You Are Welcome in My House' which you can hear on their Myspace as well. In fact, Betamax Format I don't think have put out anything physical yet, although I think they are in the process of recording an EP.

They have released their T-shirts, though, the design of which you can see at the top of the post, by Artur Arbit (http://www.twistedrobot.com/) a NYC artist who also does work in Berlin and Dublin. (The actual shirt, which I haven't got, only comes in black... naturally)


Random atmospheric photograph...



(Sallynoggin Church, Dublin, March 2007)


Killian Broderick who edited the footage (from Quentin Tarantino's Deathproof) for this video, also directed and edited the videos for Ham Sandwich's 'Keepsake' and 'St. Christopher' (see end of the post here). Not that there's much musical similarity between the two bands, but it's nice to see some semblance of a 'scene' in Ireland.

Finally, it is mostly for the purpose of self-indulgence that I post about local/national bands, but it would be interesting to know what the readers of my other posts think about this stuff:



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