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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the relationship between music and the current economic climate. As the artistic world collectively looks towards community building and proactivity, music trends thus far in 2009 suggest the reverse.Unlike other art forms, we form a personal connection through music, searching for voices and instrumentation that echoes our own inner thoughts. In tough times we can surround ourselves with bright colors and optimistic exteriors, but in our own heads we remain unsure and unsettled. So far in 2009 we’ve seen DJs re-embrace the dark rhythms of dubstep and drum & bass and continue their affair with the pounding beats of hard electro. In torrent site Waffles’ free leech week, Antony & The Johnson’s morose, otherworldly The Crying Light was the top download. Much to the initial surprise of fans, Peter Bjorn and John’s Living Thing had a darkness many quoted as “goth-leaning”.

This is not to say optimism and fun is dead in music, but rather an observation that while other arts struggle to give a positive face to their product in tough economic times, music is an art form that transcends this struggle. When it comes to the personal message of music, the public doesn’t want to feel better, they just want to feel understood.

I recently received two videos which find the respective musicians embracing their inner darkness. British electronic indie rockers, Bloc Party premiered a dark and moody video for Armand Van Helden’s remix of Signs. The grinding, heavy bass of the remix finds a gritty counterpart in the subterranean visuals. While I feel this video is dated in look and feel, relying too heavily on the precedent Mark Romanek set with his groundbreaking work on NIN’s Closer, viewers will still be enraptured by the reflective rockers’ embrace of the darkside.

More successful is theatrical pop boy dandy Patrick Wolf’s journey into an S&M fantasy world in his new video for Vulture. Wolf has always possessed an unpredictable range and Vulture sees the addition of a new persona to his repertoire of characters. Wolf’s dramatic mannerisms and androgynous looks are the perfect messenger for the dark side of sexual fantasy. With each intense stare and tightening of the restraints he urges us to give, in, let go and be free.

(Editor’s Note: We were asked to remove the download link to the Patrick Wolf’s Vulture by his label.)

Bloc Party – Signs (Armand Van Helden Remix) (160 kbps)

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