Various Artists – Assemblage Vol. 1 [DVD]

This DVD immediately started off on the wrong foot for me and had a lot of preconceptions to surpass in order for me to give it a good review, and I mean a lot. None of them were that big, but there were enough little negatives thoughts and feelings towards the compilation to make it so that Assemblage Vol.1 had a lot to make up for right off the bat. First off all, the bio for the DVD happily proclaimed that it featured “stunning art direction” and “eye-catching artwork” and as I looked at the artwork I was searching hard to find anything remotely eye-catching. But oh well, I flipped the disc over and looked at the track listing – it didn’t look promising. Half the bands on there I either didn’t like or didn’t know so the videos would have to look pretty good to make up for it. So I wondered downstairs and threw it in my XBOX only to find it wasn’t compatible. This meant I had to find a time when I had the upstairs TV to myself to watch oh. So by the time I finally had the chance to give it a spin, I wasn’t looking forward to it that much.

Nevertheless, the videos on here aren’t half bad if you like the bands. Videos by bands like Poison The Well, Name Taken, Ultimate Fatebook, Open Hand, The Waking Hours, Weakerthans,Glasseater, Beautiful Mistake, Rainer Maria and Sunday Driver are all solid videos that are well done. None of them are huge budgets or extremely intricate, but they get the job done and are, for the most part, able to get the viewer’s interest for the entire three minutes – even if some of them are only live performances. Sure enough, the most technically sound video comes from Edmonton’s ownChoke and their song Every Word. It’s very computer oriented and full of special effects, in fact, the entire video is one giant special effect. The background looks fake, but its supposed to and it just works really well. Thursday and Copeland also end the compilation off well with their videos for Cross Out The Eyes and Walking Downtown.

Oddly enough, the standout video comes from the very low budget video of Smile by Onelinedrawing. The video, which was directed by Jonah Matranga himself, is simple but effective. For the most part, it is just him playing – half in a park and half at a concert. The rest of the video has him with a video camera on a street trying to get random people to smile. It is just great to watch people walk by and see how many people actually give him a smile.

Assemblage Vol. 1 isn’t a bad release for the label’s debut, just the fact that I don’t like most of the bands seem to hurt the DVD quite a lot and the videos just aren’t quite good enough to keep non-fans entertained.