Hexstatic have always been the AV force at Ninja Tune – and often working in the shadow of Coldcut at the label – at least as far as public awareness goes. Master View is their latest album and it comes, unsurprisingly, as CD/DVD double pack. Not to be outdone in the gimmick stakes, Hexstatic have added a 3D track to the DVD which, using the provided 3D glasses, lets you experience their videos in that blue/red extradimensional mode. Hexstatic’s visual works tends to be very literal – each audio sample is matched to a corresponding visual image, generally the source of the sound such as a 1960s TV commercial – and this doesn’t leave a lot of room for the viewer to move. At the same time this literal-ness places substantial constraints of the music as well – and consequently a lot of Hexstatic’s work sounds dated, locked into early 90s sample-mania. Visually, there is not a lot on Master View that wasn’t done ten years earlier by crews like Emergency Broadcast Network (EBN) who worked on U2’s Zooropa live video shows. Musically, Master View is better than previous Hexstatic releases but really the best thing about this release is the accompanying separately release promo whitelabel 12” of their favourite bootlegs (look for Exact Shit).
Sebastian Chan
|
