Neil Mulholland, 'We go round and round in the night and are consumed by fire' exhibition essay, Liverpool Biennial Independents, 2004. Dave Griffiths and Nick Jordan's music video Roused By My Epilepsy captures the kaleidoscopic rock ramblings of Manchester's masked musical usurper Lord Mongo. Lord Mongo prowls mad angry in a quarry, adopting various guises and railing his gob against a gyrating void. His universe is as thin as the newspapers from which his masks are constructed; a world that owes as much to the cardboard and sticky tape mise-en-scene of Doctor Who as it does to William Blake's interpretation of the parable of the conceited Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. Griffiths and Jordan ape the overlay techniques, gaudy colours and choreography found in early 80s New Wave videos by Kate Bush, Talking Heads and Devo. Directed by the acts themselves, such ticky-tacky videos harboured an intense energy, the result of exploiting the flaws and limitations of what was then new technology. The mega-budget videos shot by directors such as Hype Williams pale in comparison. Griffiths and Jordan's lo-fi work reinvigorates video's dirtiness, its lost sense of adventure. |
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