dvd video – I.M.C.C. / Metropolis Records
‘Making the revolution sexy’ is the catching slogan that David Trussell, songwriter from Melbourne, has followed for twenty years with his band, the Snog, a unique example of a political activism which is not showed off and is applied through the pop music channels. The mix of different subcultures and media-activism attitudes (detournements, cuttings, amplifications of the seriousness of corporate communication, overloading of ambiguous slogans) apply to the work of this artist in an excellent way. Without regard for how much Thrussell tries to avoid the label of political band, his stated goal is to be ‘in’ the media proposing destabilizing and subversive contents with music, at the same time succeeding in not being pretentious. The paintings by Chris Woods, systematically used for the covers, are perfect in this sense, and they melt naturally with the spectacular counter-propaganda of the band. The ones belonging to the McTopia series, particularly, express the ‘holyness’ of american fast foods reduced to parody, representing a sort of marriage between ketchup and polystyrene.The cultural umbrella covering it all is I.M.C.C. (International Mind Control Corporation), where electronics and ballads catch the attention of the listener. The listener is hit by the printed texts, always shown in the videos, and, thanks to the rich editing made possible by digital technology, recontextualizes him and his forced anonymous nature in a freeing sarcasm, sung in rhymes and cut in sequences that open your eyes on really radical visions.