The Ballad of Vincent Moon The Ballad of Vincent Moon In 2006, a disaffected film student old songs by removing the safety net No more clearly was the barrier called Mathieu Saura came up with of the choreographed studio shoot. broken than Moon’s now legendary the idea of filming a series of music His early experiences with the stuffy Arcade Fire Take-Away Show in 2007, videos that came to be known as Les structures of traditional Parisian high where he crammed 10 members The Ball ad of Concerts à Emporter or ‘Take-Away culture, infused the philosophy of of the band and a menagerie of Shows’ for a French music website xylophones, horns and violins into a called La Blogothèque. He called freight elevator to play ‘Neon Bible’. Vincent Moon himself Vincent Moon (after a One band member tearing pages villain in a Jorge Luis Borges novel) from a magazine for percussion By and started shooting indie bands completed its giddy, impromptu in intimate, lo-fi, one-shot takes quality. The video finished with the Joshua Bullock around the streets, cafes and haunts group moving from the lift into the of his native Paris. What happened waiting crowd and playing the first changed music videos forever. But song of the set shoulder-to-shoulder this isn’t that story. This is the greater with their fans. There was nothing story of the man himself – Vincent glamorous about the video; no Moon – who influenced the way clever framing, no cuts, just a single we watch music and then left it “ shot based on an original premise behind three years ago to follow his that offered a warming insight into new calling: recording and filming Moon makes a virtue Arcade Fire’s music and their life indigenous music around the world, out of not researching the on tour. The reality was that the from Indonesia to Colombia. idea came from their front man Win music he records, keeping Butler after some persuasion from Let’s call this curious creation by the Moon. It takes a unique talent to name he chose for himself. Moon his approach fresh and his make the most of the magic amid grew up in Paris and started life as a ecstatic style unpolished. the chaos and the internet to make it photographer, not that he ever truly a phenomenon. convinced himself. He first used His over-saturated shots his pseudonym exhibiting what he Moon is dismissive of just how considered shamefully bad photos, move hand-held and revolutionary his methods are: before taking up film studies and raw among the players, “Take-Away Shows are just street more particularly music videos. concerts with someone filming one following the movement of shot, one take. There’s nothing new Moon was enchanted by live music. the rhythms with the wonder in that. It’s the roots, in a way, of what “I never liked albums. I wasn’t – and cinema and music are and that’s am not now – really into perfect of a child, meshing sound what I was trying to explore. I didn’t things in their final form.” It was invent anything.” the vibrancy of live performance he and image together with the found lacking in an era defined by power he has always Original or not, the huge success MTV music videos. Something of of the Arcade Fire video made a a polymath, Moon was raised in a felt traditional music Take-Away Show a must-have for household that cherished beaux-arts all indie artists and led to mimicry painting, sculpture, architecture, videos lack. the world over. Moon went on music and poetry over relative to record over 120 music videos newcomers like photography and ” for the great and the good of the cinema. “Growing up, I had access to indie world, including Yeasayer, so many diverse domains of culture The National, Sufjan Stevens, Sigur – I would go to see two films every Rós and Caribou, not to mention day, different shows every night and an evergreen Tom Jones in his New it slowly became clear to me that York hotel room. In the UK alone, the hierarchy between art forms was Moon’s legacy has been cemented by Vincent Moon © Tijen Burultay completely misplaced.” YouTube channels like Watch, Listen, Tell and the Black Cab Sessions, Moon was influenced by avant-garde which film similarly intimate, one- filmmakers like the Austrian Peter take videos in everyday settings. “The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies Tscherkassky and Stan Brakhage, who used innovative techniques to Always interested in side-projects, and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are explore universal themes in lyrical, Moon was invited by Scottish rock non-narrative ways, experimenting band Mogwai to make Burning, a live those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, with light and sound along the way. the Take-Away Shows: “To me, having concert movie over three nights in are the 'gentlemen of the road'.” He reworked the music video’s tired, official places to exhibit art-forms felt Brooklyn. It captured in visceral black played-out format in his Take-Away so wrong. That was the initial idea and white the band’s gladiatorial pre- Shows, relying on the spontaneity with the Take-Away Shows; we had to show preparations and the strobe-lit Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines of the artists to breathe new life into break down the barriers.” fury of their onstage performance. 11 6 117 Vol. 1 Issue. 1 Vol. 1 Issue. 1 The Ballad of Vincent Moon The Ballad of Vincent Moon It was yet another milestone in jump cuts and cinéma vérité blurs the music filmmaking. distinction between what is composed and what has been found, drawing the Moon’s talents were in such viewer instinctively into the scene. It high demand that other offers might be the regal and sorrowful Elza poured in for longer-form Soares improvising samba-blues in her projects. Commissions to document Rio apartment or the Singaporean R.E.M and the All Tomorrow’s producer One Man Nation screaming Parties festival took him in new along to sonic distortions behind his creative directions. Most triumphant mixing desk in a park at dusk. The perhaps was his 2011 film An array of music is defiantly sprawling; a Island, that followed the eight- precocious ethnographic mixtape of a piece alt-pop group Efterklang in true visionary that delights, befuddles their native Denmark. It moved and enchants in equal measure. moodily through sumptuous forests, involving scores of local musicians in Moon drops like Phileas Fogg into an astonishing experimental piece a city, sometimes on invitation, of musical cinema. sometimes on a whim, taking time to meet locals and seek out his next With all Moon’s success came a project. So it was that Moon found nagging feeling that this part of his himself in Bogotá in early 2011. He life was drawing to a close. He had was following up on a plan made developed an itch he couldn’t stop the year before with Lulacruza – an scratching. It wasn’t disaffection with Argentinean/Colombian two-piece, the indie scene; he still insists he sees to make ‘a traveling visual album that no difference between musicians of lies in between music and cinema, all colours and creeds, but he felt documenting a series of travels it was time for a new challenge. In through Colombia to explore its 2009, Moon left his small apartment Seasick Steve © Vincent Moon musical diversity.’ As with so many in Paris and set off on a new of Moon’s longer-form projects, it mission: a three-year musical odyssey was funded by Kickstarter - an online around the world. He traveled platform where artists of all disciplines to Egypt, Japan, Chile, Brazil, float proposals to peers for finance. Iceland, Indonesia, Australia and The finished film would then follow countless other countries, recording Moon’s democratic distribution model indigenous folkloric sounds, forming by being released directly as a high- scores of collaborations along the res digital download to anyone who way. He created a ‘nomadic record could prove they were going to host label’ called Petites Planètes and a screening for at least five people. with his beloved Panasonic HPX- Such was the online appetite for more 171 set about where he left off. Vincent Moon films that he raised Making short music films, feature- $15,450. Everyone who contributed length documentaries and sound got a production credit, with Moon recordings, he fed his work to an essentially operating a small global ever-growing following via social film cooperative. media channels and free, unrestricted screenings. With the money in place, filming on the enchanting Esperando el Tsunami Moon’s approach to his ongoing began. Moon calls it his best picture Petites Planètes work is as eccentric yet and it carries on the mystical and spontaneous as his Take-Away musical cinema of his earlier work Shows. He makes a virtue out of not with Efterklang on An Island. In it, researching the music he records, he follows Lulacruza’s musicians keeping his approach fresh and his Alejandra Ortiz and Luis Maurette, ecstatic style unpolished. His over- as they immerse themselves in the saturated shots move hand-held and cornucopia of Colombian sounds and raw among the players, following the the peoples that play them: from the movement of the rhythms with the African infused rhythms of Cartagena wonder of a child, meshing sound on her Caribbean coast, to the reed and image together with the power flutes and high-pitched singing of the he has always felt traditional music Resguardos Indígenas (indigenous videos lack.