Good Concept, Well Executed & Really Tricky. Chouchou My New Favourite Imaginary Band.
Hello,
A while back I was investigating Secondlife for what it had on offer in the way of music. Crap was what I found with very little success in the way of live performances. Everytime I attended an arranged performance it was always dogged with technical problems and never a good musical experience.
After attending a couple of lame concerts and witnessing bedroom songwriting at it's worst I gave up for a while.
Now I've come accross Chouchou. This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping to come accross in the SL community. An act which exists only within SL and the entire product, promo etc exists only in this user generated world. Take a look at one of their videos, 'shot' in secondlife (wonder what camera they used? :-)
I find some of the piano work on there a bit reminscent of Stan Tracey's Under Milk Wood in it's very minimalist yet quite progressive nature. Generally a quite emmersive sound, epic in scale but not overpowering with the various layers of reverbarating piano and processed digital hisses. (What?!?!?! I'll settle down in a min, bear with me)
I guess rather than seeing this as involving records/albums/units/whatever you want to call them, I think Chouchou's approach is more focused on how people consume and interact with their music. For me I find their videos and music all part and parcel of the same thing, like an AV art installation. I will get back onto the whole SL thing just to get a look at what they are doing on line.
Be sure to take a look at their blog and have a listen to their stuff. Possibly lacking a place in today's commercial music market but definitely good to listen to at the right moment. I'll be sticking some of this on my MP3 for those quiet moments when I need some musical mescaline.
Comments
Thank you so much for writing an article about us. That was a big surprise. :)
We think our technology is always headed to new possibilities of music and arts, and SecondLife is one of the leading platform for future music and art scenes. Off course, it depends on how you use it, but it certainly has a lot of potential for us. What we're doing in SL is closer to exhibitions or installations of music than live concerts people usually go on the weekend. And we think presenting music in that way is more suitable for SL and for our music. We want to do something we can never do in real world rather than imitating it because we will never be able to exceed it in that way. We're always try to present our music with spaces, atmospheres and scenes for people not only to listen to the music, but also touch the music and soak into the music. And getting people's straight reaction to it is fun too.
Second Life is kinda fun, ain't it?
-A Florida friend of mine nagged me about it for MONTHS before I finally caved in and checked it out. -I made a short post about it, a short while back...
-Could you tell me which room you found them in, so I can look for them, and check them out there?