Here's Five: Finn Scholes (of Carnivorous Plant Society)

This weekend multi-instrumentalist Finn Scholes will be leading his band Carnivorous Plant Society into the belly of Tapapakanga Regional Park to take part in the three-day arts and music festival known as Splore. Then, when the dust has settled on that adventure, Scholes will also be hitting the road with fellow brass blowers Hopetoun Brown (with whom he collaborated on recent single 'I Hate Don't Love You') for an early April jaunt around the country. So ahead of all that, we wanted to pick the brains of Finn, and so asked him to choose five favourite songs for us. Here's what he came up with:

"I've chosen five tunes that have animated music videos. Mainly because I am some what a budding animator myself. Through my dabbling I've come to realise how bloody this is. It takes ages! So when watching these I like to think of the poor animator slaving away... It makes the whole experience even more entertaining." 

Check out his excellent selections, and see all the tour details below....

1. Chad VanGaalen - 'Molten Light'
Chad VanGaalen is my favourite musician/animator combo. Every one of his videos is awesome. I think it's because he makes both the music and animations so everything is highly synchronised. Not many music videos are like that. It's almost hard to tell which came first - the music or the animations. 'Molten Light 'is about two old men who kill a girl and get hunted to death by her spirit. So it's a lesson in morality as well as being highly entertaining .

2. Blur - 'Good Song'
One thing I like is animations that are a little crappy, or have a slightly home made feel to them. 'Good Song' is exactly that. It's got no colour, lots of pen lines, etc. It tells the tale of a creepy flying creature who falls in love with a squirrel. Unfortunately the squirrel ends up eating the flying creature while dreaming about eating acorns. So no moral lesson there, apart from one that discourages different species from falling in love.

3. Sun Ra - 'Pink Elephants on Parade'
This is from one of my most watched movies as a kid - Dumbo. I can't remember exactly what's happening here - but Dumbo appears to be tripping pretty hard. Sun Ra's band is an interesting choice for a children's movie, but it definitely works. Lots of elephant trumpeting mixing with trumpets trumpeting. The whole clip is super psychedelic with buzzy colours and elephants morphing into things, all in time to one of my favourite bands.

4. Len Lye - 'Tusalava'
I think 'Tusalava' is about the origin of life. It appears involve various microbes either fighting each other or having sex. All over the top of highly experimental music. It's very old so the whole thing must have taken a long time to put together. You can really feel the slavery involved in making it... Len Lye is a Kiwi kinetic artist who has made heaps of cool animations and sculptures (now dead).

5. Radiohead - 'Burn the Witch'
I had to choose one video that involves claymation. I think this must be one of the most painfully time consuming forms of film-making. 'Burn the Witch' is based on the film The Wicker Man only with the guy somehow surviving in the end. The whole thing is super slick, perhaps a little too slick. But I guess Radiohead paid big bucks to get the multiple frame per second movement. I especially like the fabric of everyone's clothes. I'm not sure why... they just look so smooth.

You can catch Carnivorous Plant Society this weekend at Splore Festival, head over here for more information.

Then in April, Finn Scholes will be touring with the stomping duo of Hopetoun Brown. Head over here to see dates and pick up tickets. 

Photo by Connor Crawford from The Other's Way Festival