The Buddy System: Rock/animation spectacle at WonderRoot
March 17, 2009 at 2:33 pm by Jeremy Abernathy
Horse Mountain from Lauren Gregg on Vimeo.
According to its MySpace page, the Buddy System snatches the audience “by the scruff of its collective neck and throws it into a strange, colorful world where cats can fly and bunnies divide asexually like amoebas.”
Rock bands are, of course, prone to hyperbolic self-aggrandizement, but in this case, the claim comes close to the truth. For each song produced, the band also creates an original animated short, which is then fully integrated into its live performance (and in some cases manipulated in real-time). The result isn’t so much a music video as it is a kind of performance tool for creating hybrid video soundscapes of cartoon psychedelia.
The foursome played a cozy but enthusiastic show at WonderRoot this Saturday, beginning with the curiously named “Rap Music” (a song without lyrics, whose animated counterpart features cutesy animal MCs) and climaxing with a live rendition of “Return to Horse Mountain,” the demented Western-fantasy-plus-synthesizers spectacle posted above. Wait for the two-minute mark: That chick gets supremely pissed.
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