Remember that “When you shut your phone off does it dream?” commercial they used to show at the movies? Imagine for a moment, if you will, that your phone is dreaming right now, except it ain’t wasting bits scanning your family photos like that Sprint campaign would have you believe it does. Nah, it’s focused on the things that really matter to it — namely, sloths and video games. And because after all it’s a fucking phone, its visions are mainly displayed through that filter that was used in the Beastie Boys’ “So What Cha Want” video … you know the one.
But I digress. We’re not here today to talk about the Beasties. We’re here to talk about DOS4GW and his new video for “909,” to which label Smokers Cough was kind enough to offer TMT readers the first look. The video, featuring video game screens imposed over sloth footage with the “So What Cha Want” filter, calls to mind a phone’s dream, I think, not just because of the visual similarities but because the “909” song and Suiside B album from which it is taken both seem to be, at least in a way, about a synthetic’s doomed attempt to mimic the organic. That’s what Roland’s TR-909 drum machine, by most accounts, tried and felicitously failed to do, and even the Suiside B Bandcamp page concedes, “This is what computers listen to when they have sex.”
Phones have us all walking around in a dream state, but they can’t dream; computers are used chiefly for streaming porn, but they can’t make fuck; and video games sometimes inspire our ugliest slothfulness, but they can’t be sloths … so what else is there to do but follow your shirtless attorney’s instructions to “sit back, grab a tinny, set the video to full screen, turn the volume up, and enjoy.”
• DOS4GW: http://www.dos4gw.com
• Artistieke Oorlog: http://www.artistiekeoorlog.nl
• Smokers Cough: http://smokerscough.net
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