Heartbreaking Bravery

@heartbreaking_bravery | heartbreakingbraveryllc@gmail.com | @hbreakbravery

Tag: Melvin

Radioactivity – Intro/Battered/Slipped Away (Music Video)

rdctvty

The past handful of days have been keeping 2015’s embarrassment of riches trend alive via outstanding releases in all of this site’s regularly covered categories: single streams, full streams, and music videos. For the sake of brevity, these streams (and the following items) will be listed solely by the artists involved- though all of these links are well worth clicking and reflect strongly on the state of contemporary music.

In the full songs department we received great new items from a handful of artists that included: Reservations, Monogold, Total Makeover, Foals, Hinds, Cowtown, Lithuania, Drinks, Pearl Charles, Connor La Mue, and Museum Mouth. Full stream found strong representation through upcoming releases from Philadelphia Collins, Vundabar, Rat Boy, Ducktails, Feeling Feelings, and Dark Thoughts. Music videos, much like the preceding two categories, had an excessively strong haul with outstanding new clips from Screaming Females, Krill, S, Findlay Brown, Laura Marling, Aaron Taos, Dum Dum Girls, and Kurt Vile. The same feat holds true for today’s featured piece; Radioactivity’s minimal three-track music video that unifies Silent Kill tracks “Intro”, “Battered”, and “Slipped Away” as one visual presentation.

The entire affair, as noted above, is extremely minimal and the premise is incredibly simplistic: Radioactivity plays three songs in a garage warehouse. How its executed is what gives this clip its life; each song brings the cameras progressively closer to the band as they perform before finally drawing in so close that the frame starts incorporating the technicolor exterior tubes to divide the shot in a barebones special effect trick that provides a surprising amount of visual punch. Of course, this being Radioactivity, the songs don’t need a lot of visual finesse to carry through or offer some sort of elevation; they’re already just about perfect. A compact blast teeming with the band’s characteristically snarling energy, this is a video that embraces their no-frills attitude and emphasizes what makes the band truly great.

Watch “Intro/Battered/Slipped Away” below and order the band’s excellent Silent Kill from Dirtnap here. For those of you in the Brooklyn area, you can catch the band at Baby’s All Right on July 30. Tickets for the show can be ordered here.

First Quarter Clips, Pt. 2 (Video Mixtape)

static

We’re not even three months into 2015 and it’s already yielded a sprawling treasure trove of the kind of music-related items that are worth cherishing. It’s been a particularly strong year for music videos, with some titles from last year’s best releases getting their just treatment balanced out by some tantalizing clips sending expectations for the forthcoming releases that they’re attached to rocketing up to stratospheric heights. Animation, lyric videos, puppetry, seductively slow cinematography, static shots, dancing corpses, subtitled documentary footage, blood, more puppets (it’s been a great time for puppets in music videos), and self-shot footage are just some of the traits that define this two-part collection of 50 of the year’s most engaging clips. All of them, from the folk-leaning lilt of the second collection and the largely DIY punch of its predecessor, deserve praise. Don’t allow the fact they haven’t received any accompanying text beyond this introductory paragraph to do them a disservice; a few of theses videos rank as the best thing the attached band’s ever done and several others continue stunning individual stylistic penchants. More than anything, though, this is a collection that’s intended to represent the diversity and strength of 2015’s earliest offerings in the visual medium. Whether the video comes from an established act or a relatively unknown band, as always, is largely besides the point: this is art worth celebrating. Set aside an hour or two and dive into the madness- and keep an eye on this site for a continuation of this series that should be appearing in the coming days.

COLLECTION II

1. Mitski – Townie
2. Hailey Wojcik – XO Skeleton 
3. Doomtree – Final Boss
4. Hundred Waters – Innocent
5. Palma Violets – Danger in the Club
6. Girl Band – Why They Hide Their Bodies Under My Garage?
7. Jawbreaker Reunion – My Own
8. Screaming Females – Hopeless
9. Museum Mouth – Sacred
10. Celestial Shore – Now I Know
11. Chastity Belt – Time To Go Home 
12. Cloakroom – Starchild Skull
13. Modest Mouse – Coyotes
14. Girlpool – Chinatown
15. Sweet John Bloom – Blood Moon
16. Bass Drum of Death – Better Days
17. Colleen Green – TV
18. Turbo Fruits – The Way I Want You
19. Young Widows – King Sol
20. Evans the Death – Enabler
21. Green Dreams – Rich Man/Poor Man
22. Japanese Breakfast – The Woman That Loves You
23. Michael Rault – Still Not Sad
24. A Place to Bury Strangers – We’ve Come So Far
25. Karen O – Day Go By

+

COLLECTION III

1. Gothic Tropic – Underwater Games
2. Laura Marling – False Hope
3. Beech Creeps – Son of Sud
4. Ultimate Painting – Riverside
5. Elvis Perkins – Hogus Pogus
6. Trust Fund – Essay to Write 
7. Mount Eerie – This
8. Kevin Morby – Dancer
9. Seagulls – You and Me
10. Bay Uno – Wait For Your Love
11. Jose Gonzalez – Leaf Off / The Cave
12. The Staves – Black & White
13. Big Noble – Ocean Picture
14. Inventions – Springworlds
15. S. Carey – Neverending Fountain
16. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – Boundlessness
17. Ava Luna – Coat of Shellac
18. Novella – Land Gone
19. Young Buffalo – No Idea
20. Avi Buffalo – Think It’s Gonna Happen Again
21. HUMANS – Tell Me
22. Kathryn Calder – Take A Little Time
23. Sondre Lerche – Lucky Guy
24. Doe Paoro – Traveling
25. Asaf Avidan – Over My Head