Stuart Bury directed a video for Justus' "Ctrl_Alt_Dance" that also has a simple warmth to it, matching the glassy beauty of the track. It's little more than animated drawings of cute robots dancing. Sometimes the robots get a little nasty, but that's about it. And I love it. Lately, I've found videos of this nature much more artistically successful than the overwrought and often absurdist "story videos" of many indie bands out there, to say nothing of slick, noisy mainstream videos that say a lot but signify nothing. Maybe it's the old R.E.M. video fan in me, but I'd rather watch a simple, direct artistic vision that syncs with the material than another execrable attempt at humor or insipid performance video.

Of course, it could just be the robots.

The track below, "Seven", is from his new album, Five Leaping Lizards, and it's just rad. It sounds like an alternate take on the Knight Rider theme that was rejected for being too cool.

Max Justus, "Seven" [MP3; thanks to The Record Machine]
Max Justus [MySpace—free full-length downloads within!]

As they say on The Wire: "Sheeeeeeiiiiittt." Late yesterday, Universal Music Group filed lawsuits against video-sharing websites Grouper and Bolt (the latter of which, judging by accompanying photo, is staffed by the doorman at Delta Phi):

[The suits] mark the first time a major media company has tried to use the courts to narrowly interpret "safe harbor" protections provided by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998 so it would exclude video-sharing sites. The DMCA provides protection from liability for copyright infringement to Internet companies if they meet certain criteria and follow so-called takedown procedures. Under the procedures outlined in the DMCA, sites have to remove any infringing copyright when notified specifically by the copyright holder.

So maybe this is an extremely ill-informed view, but it seems like Universal wants to bust people who are breakin' the rules...by kinda sorta pretending that other rules don't exist. These guys are brilliant! Imagine what would have happened if they had put even half of this kind of effort behind that last Hoobastank album.

Vivendi's Universal Sues Two Web Sites Over Video Sharing [WSJ]