Laokoongruppe: King of the Waltz
Perfect stop-motion animation, "location", the desk. The singer Karl Schwamberger (Laokoongruppe) performs as an animated figure on a stack of post-its, as the lyrics to Walzerkönig roll past on a till roll. Alongside there is a video within a video, a train journey drawn with a highlighter, and from time to time the director reveals himself – grabbing his coffee cup, or remodeling the film set as a miniature home disco. (production note)
The music of Laokoongruppe, alias Karl Schwamberger, unites a wide variety of musical references in an extremely original way. The bass drum hammers out a techno beat suitable for a beer tent while the almost irritatingly emotional singer, Schwamberger, combines his fragments of a pop grammar with samples of Schubert, Bruckner and free jazz.
In a manner that fits the appropriation philosophy of Laokoongruppe´s do-it-yourself video perfectly, Popovic chose as the setting a desk with paperclips, a coffee cup, Post-its, markers, toy figurines and a cash register, with the song´s lyrics scrolling across the scene. This modest, doll-size stage is occasionally rearranged by the director´s arm, and the resulting animation video comprises about 5000 individual shots taken with a digital camera in stop motion.
These images refer primarily to the classic pop-culture motif of being on the road, here in the form of a racing trip through King of the Waltz country, drawn on small pieces of paper with markers and psychedelically intensified by means of a closeup. Secondly, they also reference the customary representation of music in the aesthetic of music videos, altered charmingly by the finely drawn movement of the singer´s animated figure on yellow Post-its. Thirdly, reference is made to the places where music is produced and listened to, illustrated by the pulsing lights of an imaginary amplifier´s volume indicator, a recording studio made of paperclips and a miniature model of a disco at the video´s conclusion. (Thomas Edlinger)
Laokoongruppe: Walzerkönig
2009
Austria
5 min