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

As well as using Summer Camp to explain how some artists can be called post-modern, I will use Gorillaz as the band of my choice to help explain how. The two bands are both considered to be postmodern and are stand out obvious choices of example simply because of the image they portray to the audience. They both create a hyper-reality world as the image to suit their music. Summer Camp present this by putting the audience into a world of the 1980s, so although Summer Camp are a modern band that create modern music they instantly put us as the audience into this created world. The band do this from their website, as when you enter the site, it is not set up to follow traditional conventions of what we would expect a website to look like. This immediately makes us interested as it stands out as different. The website also shows the audience a montage and collection of photographs from the 1980s era. We immediately know we what decade we are being placed in as the people in the photographs are stereotypical of that era with the clothing and the big hair cuts. We are also shown a clock that is placed in the corner of the web page, it constantly tells us a date that says we are in the 1980s, so we are immediately put into this created hyper-real world.

The Gorillaz do something similar with their image that works to the same effect. We are never sure of the actual appearance of the band as when we see them perform in music videos and in band images, we are shown animations of created animals and creatures and told that is the band. The idea of a completely animated band has never been done before but is interesting in this case as it means the audience never knows what the band actually look like. Even when the band play live, they would play behind the scenes and project the animated characters that we have become used to on a screen backdrop. The idea of hiding the image of the band could have been done to allow the audience to make their own mind on what they feel the band look like, and also to move you into a hyper-reality world. Damon Albarn is the front man of Gorillaz and we know him from his previous successful band ‘Blur’. Fans of ‘Blur’ would not necessarily like Gorillaz as Albarn has completely re-invented himself musically and is producing a much different style and genre to what we are used to and would expect to hear from him. The Gorillaz take the theory of bricolage and use it to effect showing classical acoustic guitars and giving them the animated characters to play, this gives the classical acoustic guitars a cool new twist as we would not normally associate them with the style of music we are hearing over the video. Also the animations we are shown to represent each band member are not what we expect from the appearance to the genre of music we are shown, as they are all different shapes and sizes and first seem creepy and look like they should not be put with this bands music.

The idea of postmodernism is music is not a new theory, as we can always track different bands from different genres of music taking parts of music that already exist which have been produced by a previous successful band. The two categories that taking music is split into are called ‘Homage’ and ‘Pastiche’. When an artist pays Homage to another artists work they are taking parts of the music to pay respect to them. The most extreme example of this would be a tribute act, such as ‘The Bootleg Beatles’ copying the same music and style of the ‘The Beatles’ to pay respect to the band. When a band creates a pastiche as their music they are copying/imitating another artists work. An example of this would be

Summer Camp are a male and female duo from England. They create alternate/indie music and what makes them interesting is the way they the present themselves. In their music videos and band photos we never actually see the image of the band, as the hide behind footages of films from the 1980s. They have used found footage by taking certain scenes from films and putting their created music behind it, this makes it look like they have filmed the footage themselves as the videos they created matches and suits the music. We are surprised when we do see what the band actually look like as they are nothing what we would have thought after hearing the music and building up an image in our minds. This could be because we are shown scenes from a film a film and the people that are being shown to the audience are what we would expect the band to look something similar to. This is because we are always shown these people from the film and we would expect the band to have a similar style. The band also show people that have nothing to do with the music but are only shown because they were part of the film that was used, this is to carry on the theme of using similar looking people to keep within the era of the 1980s. The hair styles and the clothing is instantly recognisable and it made sense to use the same actors from the film on the album covers and band shots to keep a level of continuity to make the created world seem more realistic.

Gorillaz are a four piece band that consist of Damon Albarn who was previously the front man of the successful 90s band ‘Blur’, and artist Jamie Hewlett who created the animations that would act as the faces of the band. By having animations and cartoons as the image of the band, the audience do not challenge this as we accept it as the normal with this band. We would be interested to find out what the band we enjoy listening to look like but we have to make our perceptive of the bands image and style. This is what the band and directors wanted as it creates a different interest to the band apart from the music. What strikes immediately as being postmodern is the fact that it is difficult to pin Gorillaz down to a specific genre. We see example of their work with songs such as ‘Feel good inc’ and ‘Clint Eastwood’ portraying a number of different genres in each song which include, alternative rock, dub, hip-hop, electronic and pop. This is interesting for a band to do because usually a the genre of music the band plays defines what style the band will be by the way they dress and act, but because Gorillaz don’t have a specific genre it will be hard to pcture them having a certain style that we would usually associate with a different genre. This idea of the animations not being what we would expect to see as the visuals of the band because of the music we hear over top backs up ‘Kramers’ theory of ‘embracing contradictions’. This is what makes the band interesting.