Considering their connection to music and all of its passion, fashion and bass drum bash'n (I know), it's taken a while for high end speaker manufacturers Bose to properly enter the content game. Yes, they've had plenty of online how to videos, but this week's highlight sees Bose take a crucial step forward in content.
Here Bose have made their marketing a conduit to musical appreciation, thereby replicating the role of their product, but through a visual rather than audio experience. Bose have kicked off what we hope will be a series with two short documentaries about distinctive musical movements rooted in time and place. One is rich in storytelling recollection, the other richer in novelty value. The former is Episode 1 of Scene+Heard, exploring the influences surrounding and permeating from The Strokes and their rapid rise from the New York guitar scene in the early 2000s. The latter, Scene Unseen, is more of collage piece presenting the surprising cult of Jamaican Dancehall music currently captivating a large slice of Japan's youth. The two approaches knit together well, one reminiscing on a familiar musical moment and the other exposing us to something new. This offer of a burst of nostalgia with a delicate dab of the next underground trend shows a great understanding of what a late 20s / early 30s avid music fan with high disposable income would want to watch. Coincidentally, that audience profile matches that of a Bose target customer. Funny that. Of the two films, with my guitar bias objectively set aside, The Strokes one is better. It could sit happily in BBC Four's music slot on a Friday night because it offers proper stories and an explanation of the scene's context. The Japanese Dancehall one, though artfully shot, offers fewer structured personal stories, and though it covers off who, where and when, it forgets to tell us exactly what and why. Like me before watching, if you think Dancehall is a building, then you've only got part of the definition. But unfortunately you won't be much clearer on the rest by the end of the film either.
And with that sire, I'll get me lute.