Home Video
New York City, New York, United States | INDIE
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Maybe you've heard of them, maybe you haven't. Just in case you're of the latter camp, it's time you got to know the electronic-rock dream team Home Video. Comprising New Orleans-raised, Brooklyn-based music savants Collin Ruffino and David Gross, this twosome (with the intermittent contribution of a third, drummer Jim Orso) is so much more than your average collab.
I'll admit that, despite the fact that these Southern transplants been breaking it down since 2003, it took the second season of hit TV show Gossip Girl to unite my ears with their utter talent. Episode 20, "The Grandfather," featured the song "I Can Make You Feel It," a pulsating number characterized by solid drumbeats, killer keyboard, tambourine accents, haunting harmonies and an eerie electro current. Peep the frenetic, white on black, mixed medium music video here to help wrap your head around this stellar song. Props to GG for once again knocking one out of the park with their tailored track selection.
Beyond their prime time appearance, Home Video released a new EP earlier in January, It Will Be OK (a nod to optimism perhaps suggesting departure from their more morose music) in advance to their second full-length, which is due to drop by the end of 2009. A recent gig at the 92YTribeca featured a set list of seven fan favorites and a brand spankin' new song known as "Business Transaction." The last-minute show attracted a modest-sized but discerning audience, a group that should grow in time for their Northside Festival appearance at Public Assembly on June 12th. The threesome commanded the room, encouraging drunken dancing and concentrated captivation. The former distraction occurred rarely, but goes to show Home Video's stylistic reach from dark to danceable. It didn’t hurt that their concert included multimedia: projected on the rear wall of the stage was extensive footage showcasing everything from IMAX-like nature-panning to buildings being demolished, collapsing in a cloud of dust and debris. The group's energy, complete with intermittent pogoing, was encouraging and the general momentum, textured with maracas and tambourines, was something to behold. So catch them live if you can. For real, if you’ve not yet checked out their oft-Radiohead-esque-other-times-Pinback-ish sound, it’s time to navigate away from this page.
MySpace isn’t a bad place to start. Bask in their intoxicating tunes, which range in personality from somber and minimalist to hopeful and sublime; beyond their original work, they lay down some sick remixes. Listening to their debut disc, No Certain Night or Morning, I'm sure of one thing: their aesthetic, though still developing, is timeless, perpetually modern. Every single track is capable of molding moods, taking a rainy May morning and transforming it into a downright depressing but unequivocally beautiful flourish of sick synth and ambient tones. Home Video may not be America's funniest, but they are among New York’s finest. - Paper Magazine
"Moody, provocative songs...superb album" - Flavorpill
Blending the charming guitar stylings of Pulp and the like, Home Video's minimal electro Brit-pop is infectious, to say the least. At times reminiscent of really poppy new wave, No Certain Night Or Morning is destined to stick in our heads for some time to come. - XLR8R
Electronic duo breathes new life into the Nineties trip-hop sound.
WHO: Brooklyn duo Collin Ruffino and David Gross layer moody vocals over skittering, bass-heavy beats.
SOUND: "We describe out sound as emotional and cinematic," says Ruffino. "Massive Attack is a big influence." Though Ruffino's vocals have a distinct New Wave flavor, he doesn't hear it: "New Wave doesn't have the emotional impact that I think we go for," he says.
- Rolling Stone
Perhaps the only Home Video left in the world that doesn't star Abi Titmuss, "That You Might," is the debut release from New Orleans natives Colin and David, now living and working in Brooklyn. Home Video start off with the kind of bassline Snap! wouldn't turned down on grounds of it being too infectious before snaking sophisticatedly into "Blue Monday" -era New Order. - NME
[Home Video's] got the ability to be at the forefront of where electronic music is steadily venturing: rock hybrids. - BPM
"Plaintive fragile vocals and guitars wrap their way around pulsing electro that recalls M/A/R/R/S, early Electribe 101 and the icy atmospherics of Boards of Canada from this shady NY duo. It is beautiful, haunting and original." - Music Week
As NYC music lovers prep for the onslaught of music mania/insomnia otherwise known as CMJ – planning out party-hopping schedules, taking Echinacea and getting one last night of solid sleep, RCRD LBL is revving up for a week of CMJ featured artist posts.
Last week, we gave you a taste of Brooklyn indie electro act, Home Video, a crew who have played around since 2004 (after being originally discovered by Warp) and performed with the likes of Yeasayer, Flying Lotus, Pinback, and His Name Is Alive. This week, we bring you an exclusive sleek, electro jam to help put you in the CMJ mood. Glitchy and dark, it's as though Ladytron did a remix of Cut Copy after reading
Edgar Allen Poe.
- Rcrdlbl
What do you get when you combine a classical pianist and a self-professed fan of “dark rock”? Apparently, if it’s the right two people, a pretty sweet band. Home Video is that band. According to Obscure Sound, the seeds of Home Video were planted when David Gross and Collin Ruffino met in a high school art class and bonded over similar tastes in art. With that as a building block, it did not take the classical music fan (who did not listen to modern music at all) and the ’90s rock fan long to start talking about other things, music included. Through mutual open-mindedness, both began to develop a respect for the other’s particular interests, and Gross particularly began to take an interest in modern music as a creative outlet (thank God he was introduced to Radiohead and not Nickleback). 10 years and (probably) a lot of interesting practices later, Gross and Ruffino formed Home Video. If this doesn’t have you at least mildly interested, I am almost sure that you have no soul.
Home Video have settled upon an interesting blend of electro-rock/synth-pop that manages to be minimal yet grandiose at the same time. This is likely due to the arrangements of their songs, which are composed to not be overly elaborate, but are lush and rewarding. Perhaps due to Gross’s experience in crafting classical music, not a sound or note is wasted. Every crescendo, keyboard riff, and drum beat feels perfectly placed, and Home Video’s melodic transitions are damn near pristine. All of these elements are displayed fully on It Will Be OK, a 4 song EP that is Home Video’s latest release.
Although It Will Be OK is brief even by EP standards, I have a physical copy of the album in my car. It’s pretty good, and it hasn’t grown stale on me yet. Each of the 4 tracks brings something to the table, and they each showcase a different aspect of Home Video’s sound. As far as EP’s go, this is about as good as an EP can be in terms of displaying all of a band’s strengths in a very brief time period.
While I do thoroughly enjoy all 4 tracks, I had trouble picking between “I Can Make You Feel It” and “Every Love That Ever Was” as the song to feature in this article. I ended up going with “Every Love That Ever Was” for a couple reasons. First, “I Can Make You Feel It” is the opening track, and writing about the opening track and nothing else seems unfair to the band. Second, “Every Love That Ever Was” gives the listener a better idea of whom Home Video is. Upon listening to “I Can Make You Feel It”, one may get the impression that Home Video is just another "wannabe-Radiohead" band. This is largely due to the similarities between Ruffino’s vocals and Thom Yorke’s, which are largely noticeable on “I Can Make You Feel It”. In fact, that track may have fit quite nicely on Thom Yorke’s solo album “The Eraser”, released in 2006. The similarities to Yorke may distract the listener from the song itself, which is really quite good. The similarities aren’t nearly as present on “Every Love That Ever Was”, which has a unique Home Video feel.
Finally, I decided to feature “Every Love That Ever Was” because…it’s probably my favorite track on the EP. Featuring an intro and verses that can only be described as soothing (from the instrumentation to the vocals), the song builds immensely and Home Video’s immaculate transitions are shown as all of a sudden the listener arrives into a full-blown majestic chorus. Upon hearing it, you just may make you shake your head in disbelief that nothing like this has been written before. Though the song is about 5 minutes long, it will be over before you want it to be. I personally remember playing it again immediately after I first heard it, and I suggest you do the same. Check it out. - Buzz News
Home Video is a band so good that it drives me absolutely crazy they've released music so sparingly over the last five years (two singles, one album). Returning after a three-year break with It Will Be OK, it's evident they've been saving their best work for now. Moody and ambitious, the four songs on this EP recall a less art-damaged Radiohead. It's cinematic electro-rock balladeering with a live pulse; walking, breathing, human music from the future. - 75 or Less
Discography
That You Might (Single - Warp Records)
Citizen EP (EP - Warp Records)
Penguin (Single - Defend Music)
No Certain Night or Morning (Album - Defend Music)
Live Session EP (EP - Defend Music)
It Will Be Ok EP (EP - Self Released)
Photos
Bio
Home Video are Collin Ruffino and David Gross, transplants from the misunderstood landscape of New Orleans, now living in the brooding brownstones of Brooklyn, New York. Here they revel in a self-created world of references to Edward Gorey, Massive Attack, The Brothers Quay, Smashing Pumpkins, and a dusting of Chopin, references that they have been collecting for nearly ten years.
They connected in high school art class in 1997. Under the instruction of an eccentric painter, who claimed to have been raised in a Louisiana chateau where servants peeled grapes for him to eat, they spent hours drawing still lives of twisted vegetables and rendering the chiaroscuro of adolescent self portraits. Outside of art class, they made a short narrative video starring David, and directed by Collin, a collaborative set up that continues still and perhaps an influence for their band name.
At the time Collin wore all black, listened to Nine Inch Nails and Smashing Pumpkins, and was in a band called The Great and Secret Show. David, a classical pianist in training and the son of two classical musicians, had been sheltered from the Top 40, or anything composed after 1900. It wasn’t until Collin played him a cassette tape of The Great and Secret Show that David realized pop music had the potential to be as emotionally impacting as classical. Collin continued pulling him into the 20th century, introducing him to albums like Mezzanine, Dummy, and OK Computer. David started playing keyboards for the band.
College scattered the members of the Great and Secret Show, David in Boston studying music and philosophy, Collin in New York studying film, but they remained in touch and created music together during summer breaks. Once the distraction of higher education was out of the way, they reconvened with New York as home and soon discovered a new sound as their latest incarnation, Home Video.
The first Home Video song came to them in the dead of winter, the blizzard of 2003. As the piling snow erased the landscape outside his window, David huddled over the warm vibrations of an analog synthesizer creating the simple loop that first inspired their minimalist sound. The fear and anxiety of New York’s atmosphere at the time had eaten its way onto the pages of Collin’s tattered notebooks and became their confessional style of lyrics. Underlined by a thumping, bass-rich beat, the pairing of the two worked well and the song evolved into “Melon,” the first Home Video song created and the closing track on the album. Inspired by their new philosophy, other songs quickly followed and the band sent out demos.
Originally discovered by Warp Records, the label released Home Video’s first two EPs in 2004, both packaged in sleeves illustrated by Collin’s dark, Gorey-esque drawings. That You Might, a 10” single, immediately picked up considerable attention in Britain from BBC Radio 1 and the NME, while the five song Citizen EP earned the band a feature in Rolling Stone. In 2006, New York based Defend Music released their debut full length, No Certain Night Or Morning. Grammy-nominated DJ Sasha picked two of the songs from this album to remix for his recently released Involver 2, which also included reworked songs from Thom Yorke, Ladytron, M83, and Apparat.
As electronic-rock producers and performers, they record everything themselves, then adapt it live into a full on rock show with live drums and hypnotic visual projections. After sharing a bill in London at the start of Home Video’s first European tour, Blonde Redhead were so impressed that they invited the band to support them for three weeks of shows in North America. Since then they have opened for such diverse acts as Justice, Yeasayer, Flying Lotus, Pinback, Colder, Radio 4, and His Name is Alive.
Surrounded by the trend-infested-quick-high of the New York music scene, Home Video are slow-burning pop that will invade your dreams and memories.
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