50 YMM MVs Day 8: Production

Today’s You’ll Melt More! video is a significant one for me as it marks Where I Came In.  This was less than a year into my wota-hood and I was still pretty much relying on whatever Youtube deigned to throw my way for discovering groups.  That day my attention was grabbed by an odd but compelling synth-y tune – Nemutai CITY vs Dokusho Nikki (Sleepy CITY vs Reading Diary) – and off I went down the rabbit hole.

Released in the dying days of 2014, this is the lead track from the SUImin CIty DEstroyer EP, and if you gather those capital letters together, you don’t reveal a hidden message of despair but a tribute to New York synth-art-punks Suicide, whose atmospheric minimalist sound acted as inspiration for the EP’s tracks.

Suicide

This was the first video to show the group as a six-piece after Yuizarasu and Yumikon had left over the previous few months.  Here the members are gathering for a MV shoot when a message comes through which I can’t read, but is either saying the entire production crew have mumps and can’t come or that no-one’s coming because this is YMM’s bosses’ idea of humour.  They are commanded to produce the entire video themselves and have the thing ready by tomorrow morning.  Rather than saying “sod this” and sloping off down the pub, they gamely examine the equipment and then film each other dancing about in space suits in front of a green screen.  That seems to have been the easy bit as they then stay up all night editing the video, taking turns to mouse around the screen in confused exasperation and at one point causing an error message to fill the display which makes me think that whichever device I’m watching the video on has crashed and it gets me EVERY DAMN TIME.

Still from You'll Melt More's "Nemutai CITY vs Dokusho Nikki" MV showing a computer error message.

AARGH NO WHAT THE – oh they got me again

Eventually, morning breaks and our tired heroes deem their work complete and presumably shuffle off to moan about their management over coffee or get some beauty sleep, much as I’m about to do.  Whose stupid idea was it to write all of these articles anyway?