At some point there were those of us who grew up with public access, clunky video tape recorders with "effects" settings, and scrambled premium cable channels who became mawkishly sentimental for the begone era. The video recorder effects, looking back, could serve no function when filming your little league game or Christmas morning. It was as though they were intentially placed there for a generation unborn to master.
E.S.P. TV sends an homage to the format with its video for Young Boys' "High Tide". The live performance without the tracers would probably look as though it was plucked from the recesses of local morning show performances with those signature extreme closeups and puzzling emphasis on foreheads. With plenty of blank coolness to go around, Young Boys sound like artifacts of the same era. The "High Tide" video sounds as though it was a performance recorded the morning before their debut at CBGBs, opening for Richard Hell. But unlike those late 80s/early 90s video effects, E.S.P. TV is of the generation who have the technological advances to be masters of the tracer effect and the blown out fuzz of blocked channels. The icing comes in those glitchy freeze-ups that made Max Headroom a digital boogey-man.
Young Boys' New York Sun is out now on Holloweyed.
