Sound And Vision: John Maclean

In the article series Sound and Vision we take a look at music videos from notable directors. This week we discuss a few music videos made by John Maclean.

Recently I wrote two Sound and Visions where the director had a weird claim to fame: John Carney was the rare director who himself was a band member of a famed band (The Frames) who he has directed music videos for; and Yoshihiro Nishimura was the sole director in the Sound and Visions who remade one of his music videos as a feature length film. That is, till this Sound and Vision, cause John Maclean combines the two outliers into one person: he is a band member for both The Beta Band and The Aliens, who he has directed music videos for, AND he expanded one of his music videos into a recent feature length film.

John Maclean started out as a director when making music video for The Beta Band, mostly as a bit of a lark. The best of these have a ramshackle quality, playing like dress-up parties with a bunch of friends. Like the small album film for Los Amigos Del Beta Bandidos E.P. (see below), that even ends with a role-call in a party-setting, and has each of the cast members credited for the (sometimes many) roles they play. That the slight story is full of stereotypical and iconographic characters from all kind of pulp stories, is what partly gives it the Spirit of Halloween-vibes it is aiming for, for instance having a scene early on in which an aerobics instructor in glittery jeggings and with big hair, teaches a group of stereotypically dressed older women (clearly people of all kinds of genders in aged drag) an exercise, before a barbarian warrior shows up.

It is all deeply unserious, even in the more elaborate animated music videos like for The Aliens'