At this point, I’m of the camp that really digs the concept of pairing universally renown music artists with up-and-coming web video creators—especially in the mind altering worlds that machinima lets you play in. The profiles of the creators are certainly raised—lending some mainstream hooks to their otherwise niche style of filmmaking.
Last Monday The Crystal Method kicked off the new series with a music video collab from Kootra, notching a respectable 420,000 views. This week it’s another rising star on Machinima’s deep bench of young filmmakers, Myoelectric—Dustin Valcalda and Justin Loebel—known for dozens of graphic, high energy machinima vids like the Super Death Montage (below).
Trance DJ Paul Oakenfold (above), an artist emerged from the edge of pop culture himself, lends his track “Tokyo” off his to-be-released album Pop Killer to the series. Tokyo is a apt choice for this experiment with machinima, the track signals a return to Oakenfold’s mid-90’s Goa trance style that vaulted him to the plateau where Hollywood came courting. That meant producing pop acts from Madonna to U2, and scoring adrenaline films like The Bourne Identity, Collateral and Swordfish.
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In many ways the machinima subculture has already broke out of the basements and LAN parties, with Hollywood almost drooling over itself to play around in its worlds. We have yet to see a full transformation of machinima creator into mainstream director, but give it time.
“I have a serious respect for the power of audio in a presentation,” Loebel said about the video. “Finding the right track for a project can be a daunting task, but Paul Oakenfold’s track was awesome on the ears and a blast to edit with.”
Oakenfold’s newest studio album ‘Pop Killer’ is said to be slated for “imminent release,” though no firm date has been set. Like previous albums, this one is no slouch on guest acts—with spots from Cee-Lo, Ryan Tedder of One Republic, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Matt Goss, and B.O.B.
