Vincent Moon

The Take-Away Show: Arcade Fire

i first got to know about Vincent Moon from his projects with The National but never quite saw his work until recently, when i finally viewed some amazing clips from The Take-Away Shows. brainchild of the Parisian film-maker and armed with a sound engineer in tow, the project involves inviting a band to perform a song at the most natural of settings — on the streets, at a cafe, anywhere — with the film rolling to a most spontaneous rhythm, without any initial practice from the band or subsequent retakes from Moon. 

if the performance draws strange stares from people, it all becomes part of the film. a resistance to highly manufactured music videos, Moon’s project pays homage to independent music culture — free, experimental, organic, self-sufficient and cleverly attuned to technology, but ultimately producing what is at once a creed of intimacy and improvisation. his other works are often described as that, and he cites Michael Ackerman and Antoine D’Agata as heavy influences, both photographers who document intimacies with an aesthetic technique of blurriness that gives respect to motion and proximity, and most of all to their subjects. for these artists, extreme clarity and lucidity in images heighten certain perceptions in us that we eventually perceive to be real, but that may not always be the case, and so the photographers seek to destroy this hypothesization of reality. for Moon then, it is the overly-polished music videos on TV that insults reality and the musicians.

my favourites have got to be the Arcade Fire and The National take-aways, one, for reasons of bias-ness (both bands have become my favourites of all time), but also because the bands prove themselves to be authentic musicians who can play anywhere at anytime and still make good music (which the project pretty much proves for most of the performers).

the Arcade Fire take-away sees the group in the minutes riding up to a performance at a cafe and Win Butler suggests a take in an elevator. here, the most precious moments belong to the oft-neglected percussionists — one knocks against the metal of the elevator and another tears pages out of a magazine  rhythmically to produce beats — doesn’t take much to make some music. 

for The National, the band plays in an intimate setting among friends, and the small environment further draws Matt Berninger’s brooding vocals — this quality which affirms that his honest baritone is a versatile gift that works both in huge live performances and the former. if you watch “Start A War”, the little, banal part where Berninger lits a cigarette with the flick of a lighter lends the footage another glorious moment both aesthetically and aurally, and is rightfully observed by Moon’s quietly artful documentary style. that is also the essence of the project besides the bands — Moon’s eye is indispensable in producing the video. without his articulate insider view, the recording would be just that — a mere recording. but his knowledge in cinema brings the footage to the level of art that at times, supersedes the performers though never over-glorifying them into popstars. 

on another great note besides the discovery of Moon, is that news has it we’ve confirmed tickets to Stars (absolutely no pun intended about the elements of the universe). for some time i’ve been hanging on wondering whether it is fact or fiction, because Stars in Singapore sounds like a stretch. the rumours are officially nullified! now, that is one band i’ll definitely like to see on the take-away…