Write Up On Postmodern Artists Presentations

Tom Parkin - 'The Blue Man Group'

The Blue Man group is an organisation which was formed in 1987. All members wear a blue skin and keep their identities hidden. The act perform many different types of talents but mainly create their pieces as pastiches. This is evident as their tour is named 'The Rock Concert Instruction Manual' and they use satire in their pieces of work regarding rock music. They use hyper-reality because they create other worldly characters with the blue skin which the audience see and keep their true identity hidden. This allows the audience to look into their strange world and when they think of 'The Blue Man Group' they won't think of human beings, they will think of these bald, blue characters which exaggerate their movements to create a mockery of the rock scene in today's society.

Jemma Reading - Mumford & Sons

Mumford & Sons are a British folk rock band which originated in 2007. The band pay great homage to folk style music with no hint of irony. They largely use the work of Shakespeare in their work such as: 'Sigh No More' using quotes from 'Much Ado About Nothing', showing their respect for British culture. They made quick success, as they have only been formed for five years and have headlined several festivals and I think that this may be down to the Niche market which Folk Rock appeals to and because they are so specialised within their genre, there are no other bands of our era which can compare to them.

Harry Tibbles - 2 Many DJs

2 Many DJs are a Bulgarian alternative rock/electronic band who originated in 1992. The duo produce many official and unofficial remixes of other people's music and have sets at festivals of non-stop remixing for hours on end. Their sets include a large television screen where the visuals amplify their remixing. In one case, the set showed two records being melted and then being remoulded as one, showing that a remix is literally combining two pieces of work, which is very postmodern. They are currently in the process of making 'Radio Soulwax' which will be a continuous mix lasting all day. It will feature 24 hour mixes with visuals similar to those in their live performances and will include music from many different decades, after this project, they have said they will start to work on their next studio recorded album.

Max Hallam - Hurts

Hurts are a British Synthpop duo formed in 2009. The duo pay homage to their predecessors by creating similar music to that of the 1980s sythpop era such as: Human League and Soft Cell. Hurts did not release their album in full, they released it in six singles so that they were not judged by their album as a whole, as 'The Horrors' did and only managed to release three from their album 'Skying'. Hurts embraces contradictions as the frontman Theo Hutchcraft says the song 'Wonderful Life' is "basically based on two extremes: the first being a man who wants to kill himself and the second being in love at first sight." This also shows how the band uses mulitple meanings.

Meg Rhodes - DJ Dangermouse

DJ Dangermouse is an American musician, songwriter and producer. He pays homage in his works as his first album he made when he was prominent was called 'The Grey Album' which was a mix of The Beatles' 'White Album' and Jay-Z's 'Black Album'. This had to go through courts as there were many issues with copyrighting and people claiming it was not entirely his works. In order to get around the problem, Dangermouse sold blank CDs in stores and told people they could download his songs from the internet, therefore they weren't purchasing his music, but his blank CD, creating a hyper-reality as people were buying nothing effectively.

George Hextall - Eminem

Eminem is an American rapper, record producer, songwriter and actor. His albums contain mockery of many kinds and are mainly works of pastiche. His first three albums he released when prominent were all about himself and his alter ego: 'The Slim Shady LP', 'The Marshall Mathers LP' and 'The Eminem Show' which shows mockery to society. He also uses many samples in his music in order to make his pastiche's sucessful but also to pay homage to other artists. For example, he creates remixes of Dr. Dre's songs to pay homage and re-release his track.

Jacob Boswell - Tenacious D

Tenacious D are an American rock duo who begun their works in 1994. The duo record parody songs with a linear narrative such as 'The Best Song In The World Tribute' which is a song dedicated to a song they claimed they made in the heat of the moment which was the best song in the world. But that song never existed, creating a hyper reality. The duo have even released a film which includes many of their songs and throughout the film they make satire of the society they live in and the over-exaggerate the importance of rock.

Jack Ludford - Gorillaz

Gorillaz are an English music and visual project created in 1998 who mainly feature in alternative hip hop and alternative rock. The band have created animated caricatures of themselves which they use to represent themselves on their music videos and on stage. Gorillaz play heavily on the postmodern feature of hyper-reality by using these animations of themselves. At their concerts they have large television screens which they project the miming animations on to as the band play live behind the screens so that the audience cannot see them. So, in theory, people are paying to watch television at the concert.

Eleanor Watson - Queen

Queen are an English rock band formed in 1971. The band were massively popular with their music, despite the fact it embraced many contradictions. For example, the song 'Bohemian Rhapsody' has, what seems to be, 3 completely different songs all in one song, but this song is one of the most successful songs of all time. Another contradiction was the fact that Mercury explicitly pointed out no synths were used in the early albums, but them used them later as the band developed. Bricolage was another feature of Postmodernism which Queen used massively as Freddy Mercury told the press: "My mission is to bring ballet to the masses" yet they were a rock band, therefore putting these two unconnected things together, but yet it somehow worked.

Ella Patrick - David Bowie

David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger who first began his works in 1964. He had a nickname 'The Thin White Duke' and dabbled in MANY areas of music to a point where none of his albums are in any way similar and they show no continuity. An example of this is his song 'Love you till Tuesday' which is very happy and then this is completely contrasted by his other single 'Future legend' which is really dark and mysterious, but this may be down to the influence of drugs. He also constantly changed his appearance. He helped Queen to record their album 'Under Pressure' and he lived and performed through the 70s, which were considered to be the breakthrough of Postmodern ideas.

Jess Pardoe - Devo

Devo is an American synth pop band formed in 1972. They performed a song called 'Whip It' and in the video they mocked American country people and they made their lyrics very basic to show to the world how easy it was to make a song and become famous and showing it requires no talent anymore. Another way in which they convey this message is in their video to the song 'Time out for fun' where they are all potatoes with the band's heads on - this shows how they all dress the same and practically are the same underneath - this is satirical of conventional boy bands.

Alex Wilson - Kanye West

Kanye West is an American rapper, singer and record producer who has been active since 1996. Kanye uses heavy amount of sampling within his work but not for a pastiche purpose - he pays complete homage to the artists he samples. Before he became an artist himself, his style of production was recognised for using pitched-up samples of soul songs. Examples of this in his own work are: 'Diamonds from Sierra Leone and 'All falls down'. Kanye's lyrics out to make a point such as "You can buy money, but you can't buy freedom". Kanye West also once  said on live television "George Bush doesn't care about black people".

Bank Chue - Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga is an American singer and songwriter who became active in 2005. Gaga is a very popular entertainer and wears outrageous clothing in order to meet the demands of her fans 'Little Monsters'. She uses very little sampling but mainly features in the pop genre. However, she did do some work with Tony Bennett in his latest album where they have recorded a swing record together - giving evidence how she can both be popular and niche. Gaga did not have many interviews until 2011 where she had her own Paul O'Grady show dedicated to just her. She performed many songs and told the British TV watchers all about her life and where she started. Her songs contain diverse meanings but the main feature throughout is to believe in yourself and love your neighbour as you love yourself.

Post-Modernism Essay

Using summer camp and a band of your choice, explain how some artists can be called post-modern [1500 words]

In this essay I am going to use both Summer Camp and Gorillaz to explain how some musical artists can be considered Post-modern. Postmodernism came about in the 1950s, before dominating literature, art and the intellectual scene in the 1960s. It came about as a rebellion or rejection to modernism, and so relies heavily upon past influences, unlike modernist ideas.

An idea that may make people believe that artists can be postmodernism is the idea of blending genres and destroying sonority. Summer Camp do this in their song ‘Better Off without You’ by combining the old style techno and bass rhythm with an upbeat guitar rhythm. In modernism, this kind of blending would not exist as there are strict boundaries with genre and this does not fit into one particular genre. Similarly, Gorillaz combine genres in order to create their own unique sound. They make use of synthesisers as well as guitars, drums and pianos as we see in their song ‘Clint Eastwood’. As well as rock and techno, Gorillaz use MCs and rappers to make their music more dynamic, fitting into yet another genre. This, then, rejects the idea of keeping within one genre and moving forward within that genre – making them postmodern.

Another idea that may make people believe that artists can be postmodern is the use of hyper-reality. Summer Camp use hyper-reality as with their website they create a page with a narrative about people who never really existed. They have paper articles on things that never happened and they use this to create a hyper-real world and try to re-create the past. Also, in their music video ‘Better Off Without You’ they use a split screen, half showing then use parts from old American films to create a narrative and then the other half is of themselves playing their instruments. However, because they have created such a hyper-real world with their website and other videos such as ‘Round The Moon’ where we do not get to see the band themselves,, when we finally do see them in the video they do not look how you’d expect them to look. So hyper-reality can have a negative effect on your band, but this does still make them post-modern as they are taking something which is not real and making it seem real to the audience. A great example of a band using hyper-reality is the Gorillaz. The Gorillaz each have an animated character of themselves which is massively used throughout their work and is assigned to them as part of their branding. They use it on their CD covers, such as ‘Demon Days’ and even throughout their videos, such as ‘Feel Good Inc.’ and ‘Clint Eastwood’. People from all over the world go to see them live in concert, when in actual fact they won’t see the band playing live, they will see the animated characters mime to the band playing behind large screens which have the animated characters projected onto them. So in actual fact, people are paying to see a band live and are going to watch a television production with live sounds. This shows how hyper-reality can capture an audience and people will pay to go and see characters which they can see and possibly even re-create on their own computers at home. This makes the Gorillaz very postmodern as hyper-reality is a key feature in postmodernism and they have done this perfectly, as they even won the ‘Most Successful Virtual Band’ record from The Guinness Book Of Records.

An idea put forward by Jonathan Kramer is that Postmodern artists avoid totalising forms and genres within their work. Summer Camp are a great example of this as they do not avoid totalising forms in their music, but with their website they avoid totalising forms as much as possible by having different captions all over the page and when you click on that particular caption, you heat a different sample of music and see a different section of a video. These samples of found footage are all different, but share two things: the American culture from the 1980s ‘synth pop’ era and the 1960s ‘girl group’ era. Also, Gorillaz massively avoid totalising forms as their tracks can have very different sounding music. Each album changes slightly and creates a slightly new sound. The creator of Gorillaz and former ‘Blur’ frontman Damon Albarn dabbles in many genres of music such as alternative rock, art rock, alternative hi-hop, electronic, trip hop, Britpop, dub and many more. This then, shows how he avoids totalising forms and using just one sound – he goes to pains to create something different and Gorillaz is a great example of this postmodern feature.

Another idea that Kramer came up with is the idea of considering technology not only as a way to preserve and transmit music but also as deeply implicated in the production and essence of music. I believe that Summer Camp use this to some extent as their website uses samples from the radio, old TV programmes and old adverts. However, they do not particularly emphasise their use of technology as this would contradict the look of the 1980s/1960s eras they aim to be part of. In complete contrast, Gorillaz use extensive amounts of technology in order to create their animated caricatures and their live shows involve huge amounts of money and time in order to sync the mouths of the artists with the live performance. They also spend thousands of pounds on creating other worldly imagery in their music videos such as ‘Feel Good Inc.’, which evidently uses technology in other ways than transmitting and producing music which suggests they are postmodern.

Postmodernism embraces contradictions. Summer Camp, however, do not encompass this idea, but this does not mean that because they do not follow this feature they are not postmodern, as they use many other aspects and features of Postmodernism too. On the other hand, Gorillaz embrace contradictions in their musical creations. Evidence of their contradictory work can be heard in the song ‘Dirty Harry’ as they use a techno base track, which then slowly fades into a violin solo and then harshly drops quite a heavy rock rhythm with the violin layered over the top. This not only crosses the boundaries of genres and blends them together, but also defeats the object of heavy rock by playing the soft violin sound. Gorillaz, then, use contradictions to their advantage, which allows them to pay homage to other genres and artists – and in doing so, makes them postmodern.

In order to be considered postmodern, a key feature you must conform to is to be, on some level or some way, ironic. Summer Camp, in my opinion, are unintentionally ironic as they are trying to recreate the past with their cultural references to the 1980s and the 1960s, and seeking originality, however, by doing this, they are conforming to conventions of the indie genre, which is to look to the past for influence and use many aspects of the 1980s and 1960s, which is not original at all if you are doing similar things to other bands in your genre. An example of another band using the 1980s and 1960s is Vampire Weekend. In contrast, Gorillaz are intentionally ironic. Damon Albarn said “It’s not like my old self – I’m not in character anymore, I’m me. I’m not hiding behind that anymore” after the split of Blur character and never directly performed in front of any audience. He also said “The Gorillaz cartoons seem more real to me than the actual people on TV. Because at least you know that there’s some intelligence behind the cartoons, and there’s a lot of work that’s gone into it, so it can’t all be just a lie.” However, the cartoons aren’t real, which makes what Albarn says ironic as well as hyper-real – making them postmodern.

Finally, Levi-Strauss argued that Postmodernists usually have four aspects to their work: addition, deletion, substitution and transposition. A lot of the time these four areas cross over. For example, Summer Camp use addition as they add the past to their work in order to make themselves more dynamic and interesting, but in doing so, they apply deletion as they lose their modern to the band. They use substitution in their videos by using found footage and replacing themselves with other characters not even related to the band and then they use transposition in their ‘Better Off Without You’ music video by placing a modern and a retro feel scene together. Similarly, Gorillaz use all four aspects of Strauss’ theory. They use addition by using the animated characters and adding another dimension to the band, but in doing so, they use deletion as they are deleting the human life from the band, making them a virtual band (but this could be seen as substitution) and they use transposition in their music by contrasting the likes of techno with classical music such as the violin – making them postmodern.

In conclusion, some bands may be considered postmodern because they defy so many traits of modernism. Although very different, both Summer Camp and Gorillaz use many aspects of postmodernism which various theorists have put forward. The modernist idea that we shouldn’t let the past affect the present is completely rebelled against in both cases of these bands, as Summer Camp use heavy referencing to the past and Gorillaz’s formation was due to the past. I think that bands can be seen as Postmodern as they so evidently reject modernism.


Word Count: 1583

And Another...

Apply theories of narrative to ONE of your coursework productions

I will apply theories to my advanced portfolio music video, as I believe it both supports and refutes many narrative theorists ideas and interpretations.

The music video uses Levi-Strauss' idea of binary oposites in narratives. It does this firstly by opposing day with the night. This opposition is clearly used to amplify the lyrics and title of the song 'one night in October'. Secondly, as part of the 'disjuncture' throughout the video, water has been used where the members of the band are seen to be having a good time, which fits the tempo of the music and the happy mood the song sets. This is then binary opposed with the dry land, and there is a strong use of irony in the fact that despite the band are on dry land, they are stood in a boat, and when they are in the water, they are all fully clothed. The third and final binary opposition I have pulled out of this particular video is the use of the girl member in the band which contrasts the name of the band: 'The Skeleton Boys'. This sort of binary opposition is quite conventional of postmodernism as it is a source of rebellion against modernist values.


The music video could be seen as using Todorov's theory of a three-part narrative structure. This is where the narrative of the video is split into: equilibrium, disruption of equilibrium and then new equilibrium. I believe that the music video uses the idea of this theory as at the beginning we see the band together in the barn area performing instruments together and having fun. This is then disrupted, mainly through the use of disjuncture with things such as the Benny Hill style banana and monkey chase. And then towards the end of the song we see the band all together for one last time before they all finish playing their instruments and leaving the room.


However, the music video refutes the idea of Laura Mulvey's male gaze theory. As the band are called 'The Skeleton Boys', the female character had to be dressed up as quite boy-like so to not stand out so much in a male band. This is significant as Laura Mulvey argues women are objectified in videos and films so that people see them in a voyeuristic manner and this is certainly not the case in this video as the female is made to wear clothes that are more suited to a male.


The music video could be seen as using Roland Barthes' theory of different codes in the text. In this instance, the video could be seen as using cultural codes, mainly through the use of disjuncture as this ensures there is no real narrative in the video. However, the video does use amplification in some scenes, such as the 'Carlisle' signage, but this is the minority of the video, the majority uses irrelevant and random scenes which do not link to the lyrics, like Andrew Goodwin suggests. The audience may see the cultural codes as not really having a plot, but merely showing them the indie culture, but some people may interpret this video as completely ignoring Barthes' theory as the video is too irrelevant to the lyrics.


In conclusion, I think that this music video could be interpreted to use many of the theories that theorists have suggested, but I believe the most apparent in this case is idea of binary opposites, as this seems to be specifically focused on to create an ironic, postmodern piece of work.

Post-Production Enhancements

• Uploading
• Editing
• Effects
• Music
• Transitions
• Sound
• Narrative
• Rendering

I think that I have progressed in using post production enhancements from AS to A2 as I have had an extra year in developing my skills. Obviously, looking back over these products, i can see where i could have improved and how to make the video's effects better and how i could of massively improved my magazine. I think by using Photoshop more regularly and facing tasks you wouldn't normally  expands your knowledge and ideas you could use, which is why they have improved over the past year.

Applying Narrative Theories To Our Music Video on Prezi

Postmodernism in relation to lady gaga

View more presentations from joechamberlain.