Speed Tribe

Starring:Frank Biela, John Nielsen
Studio: DVD International
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
Intended more as a home theater experience than a conventional racecar documentary, Speed Tribe plays like a dance rave on the racing circuit. It works more as a showcase for heavily processed digital imagery and rib-thumping electronica, combined with the inherent thrills of racing's most challenging annual endurance event, Le 24 Heures du Mans. The digital video of 2001's Le Mans race does not function as a historical record of the event; instead, filmmakers Rod Chong and Sharon Matarazzo create an impressionistic tapestry of the Le Mans experience, employing all varieties of image manipulation and multiangle viewing, while the rhythmic, pulsating soundtrack (by Front 242 cofounders Daniel Bressanuti and Patrick Codenys) keeps pace with the zooming Audis, Porsches, Corvettes, and Panoz competitors. Like Moby's Play the DVD, this techno-disc is perfect for pushing your home theater to the limit; an expanded soundtrack CD and audio-only race-driver interviews are icing on the highly stimulating cake. --Jeff Shannon

Speed Tribe
Average customer rating:

A most unusual look at Le Mans . . .

Excelent I want more

Great CD - DVD isn't special

A Benchmark in Experimental Electronic Music and Multimedia

FEAST FOR THE SENSES

Speed Tribe
Starring: Frank Biela , and John Nielsen
Manufacturer: DVD International
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B0000687CE
Release Date: 2002-08-06

Amazon.com

Intended more as a home theater experience than a conventional racecar documentary, Speed Tribe plays like a dance rave on the racing circuit. It works more as a showcase for heavily processed digital imagery and rib-thumping electronica, combined with the inherent thrills of racing's most challenging annual endurance event, Le 24 Heures du Mans. The digital video of 2001's Le Mans race does not function as a historical record of the event; instead, filmmakers Rod Chong and Sharon Matarazzo create an impressionistic tapestry of the Le Mans experience, employing all varieties of image manipulation and multiangle viewing, while the rhythmic, pulsating soundtrack (by Front 242 cofounders Daniel Bressanuti and Patrick Codenys) keeps pace with the zooming Audis, Porsches, Corvettes, and Panoz competitors. Like Moby's Play the DVD, this techno-disc is perfect for pushing your home theater to the limit; an expanded soundtrack CD and audio-only race-driver interviews are icing on the highly stimulating cake. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews:

A most unusual look at Le Mans . . ........2006-05-06

My main reason for getting this was the music, which was composed by Daniel Bresanutti and Patrick Codenys of Front 242, but I must say that the total audiovisual experience presented in Speed Tribe does not disappoint. Although it's a look at the Le Mans auto race, it's not really a documentary, so much as an impressionistic series of linked racing images. There are actually 2 versions on the DVD, each under 30 minutes in length. In both there's almost no dialogue, and the video is heavily processed. It runs the gamut from standard racing footage to shots of the crowds to views taken from the perspective of the drivers. The overall effect is pretty captivating, and it draws you in. As to the music, Daniel B and Patrick C don't disappoint. It's pretty damn cool, especially if you're a big Front 242 fan.

I must say however, Speed Tribe pales in comparison to the later DVD put out by Daniel B and Patrick C for their music project Male of Female, entitled Primitive Reflections From Twisted Sound. The visuals for that one were done by the same team that did Speed Tribe, but they're even more out there and unusual. There are 26 videos included. Sixteen are easy to find, and the remaining 10 are hidden throughout an interactive portion of the DVD. If you're a 242 fan and liked Speed Tribe, you'll LOVE Primitive Reflections. The DVD is accompanied by a CD with an additional 40 minutes of music, so there's a lot of material in the package. Unfortunately, I'm not sure if Amazon carries it. Another recommended AV project in the same vein is James Ray's 4080peru, but the audio there is much more quiet ambient.

Excelent I want more.......2004-03-03

While it is not the sounds of Sebring that I was looking for this is an excellent piece of artistry for the racing fan. Especially a retired punk who grew up on NASCAR CART F1 Nigel Mansel Front 242 The Cure and Bad Brains while watching Le Mans.

Great CD - DVD isn't special.......2003-06-20

I bought this as one of the starters into Front 242's music - along with Geography and to be honest this release gives me mixed feelings. While the music is superb - that in itself does give me visions of being a racing driver driving for his team at Le Mans.....the DVD is rather flimsy in comparison. Meandering and not half as interesting. And the interviews are boring. Listening to only the driver's voice without any pictures of the guy talking is really terrible and uninspiring. Perhaps they ran out of money on the budget they had in mind

As I said the music is faultless - it's a great industrial/techno hybrid.....it's just the shame the DVD couldn't be that bit better

A Benchmark in Experimental Electronic Music and Multimedia.......2003-06-13

I was drawn to this project from the audio side, as a longtime fan of Front 242. While I was thrilled with the audio CD, I was also impressed with the DVD. The style of the visuals involves heavy digital manipulation, which alternately exaggerates and renders surreal. The effect is a lot like representing a recalled memory of the race rather than the race itself, with all the arbitrary details and reified skews of the rememberer.

A simple auto race, the 24 hour Le Mans in France, is given mythological significance using the tools of abstract art multimedia. The cars themselves, though given some impressive screen time, are only one of many elements recreating the entire experience of being at Le Mans, including scenes from pulsing excitement to half-alert waiting, huddling to stay warm, the eventual drone experienced by the drivers; and finally, the thrill of the victory, in an award presentation that is portrayed on a TV screen off-track, a video within a video, emphasizing once again the transitory quality of the personal experience. The camera is as likely to dwell on odd details like a woman hopping through the rain and a single chair of mismatched color in the bleachers, as on the racecars. The overall effect makes the race almost an arbitrary choice as a window on a massively shared experience.

The music is the perfect complement to the visuals, with its corresponding experimental style of heavily manipulated electronics. The racecar subject matches the long-running 242 idiom of modern union between human and machine. The music by itself on the CD improves on the DVD; free of the distraction of visuals, it is an adventure in purely abstract motivs. Unlike so much lesser electronic music, it is constantly innovative and absorbing. Rhythms and themes, alternately ambient, driving, and chaotic, sway in and out unpredictably amid a greater canvass of sound, as if the music exists in many more dimensions than we can perceive and we can only experience small fragments of the whole at a time. As such, it ranks along with the greatest past works by the team of Daniel Bresanutti and Patrick Codenys as the successors to Edgard Varese in revealing entirely new possibilities in the craft of abstract electronic music.

FEAST FOR THE SENSES.......2003-02-05

Like a sonic boom that races across your mind's uncharted territory, delivering dose after dose of pleasure stimuli and pushing your neurons to capacity. This mind boggling work takes you to the extremes of tonal ecstasy.

This work is so far beyond the electronic frontier, I shudder. It seems to activate previously unexplored senses, expanding your nervous system into multiple directions...what a ride!

Dare I say it - it somewhat requires a refined pallet. It's delightfully less accessible than anything I've listened to in at least 1000 years. The rewards are just as endless. Synaesthetic connoisseurs welcome here. Others need not apply or at least be willing to enter at your own risk.

More like CNS architects than traditional musicians, the artists are shamans from the future, always heralding the next wave of music and delivering on contact with precision and great vision.

It's almost spooky that so many moods can be felt. Outstanding work...and that just describes the music!

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