Off the Beaten Tracks: Reinventing the music video

It's fun to mess with the formula. For music videos, that means forgetting the two tired modes that have dominated our screens for years: the live concert film and the MTV-style promo.

And for one new Edinburgh-based project, that means using the city around them to its fullest extent.

Off the Beaten Tracks, "a musical project in unusual surroundings", was devised by locals Andy and Alex last year, and has become an inspired collaboration between the city's many nooks, crannies and vistas, and its buzzing music scene.

There were precedents for this concept though: "We were both fans of websites like La Blogotheque in France, and the Black Cab Sessions, and we'd both separately been looking for something fun to do, and over a fairly chance conversation it turned out we were already thinking on the same lines. Truth be told, there was also beer involved, but uncharacteristically, we actually followed through on it."



To date, those unusual surroundings have centred on medieval Royal Mile closes and a trip to the Homegame festival in Anstruther, and the duo say that the decisions aren't always easy: "Usually we just have a row, and it depends on who gives in first. It's not like we're stuck for choice, though. Edinburgh's full of amazing looking spots. We'll tend to have a couple of locations in mind, and the bands usually chip in too, so it's usually fairly straightforward."

There have been five OtBT sessions so far, so I'm interested to know how the bands have responded to the project. "The gear we use is all uniformly tiny - both cameras are about the size of a mobile phone - so they usually look at us like we're mental, but once they see it's all done in decent HD, with digital sound and some half-decent editing and so on, then they're really positive. They've all seemed to really like the results, and we like to think that our occasional technical incompetence - Alex repeatedly standing in front of the camera, Andy falling in rivers - is part of our charm, so hopefully they enjoy the day too. Most of the bands we've filmed so far have never done any kind of recording outside a studio, so they normally get really into the spirit of the odd locations."



There is currently an abundance of quality bands around the Central Belt and beyond, so they must be busy compiling their wishlist? "We're musical tarts, we'll do almost any kind of band. The nice thing about doing this is that it's really been a leveller - every band who's played has been on equal terms with the others, irrespective of size or success. Each one, be it a local unsigned act, or an international signed band, has been a similarly cool experience to watch. Once we get past a couple of niggling little technical details, we do really want to work out a way of getting some electronic or hip-hop acts done. We've already recorded soon-to-be-realeased sessions with Randan Discotheque, Jesus H. Foxx, Honeytrap, FOUND and have a couple of others lined up this month including The Thermals. But if either The Hold Steady (says Andy) or Aretha Franklin (says Alex) are reading, we'd be happy to hear from them."

And in the future they're keen to branch out: "Aside from squeezing bigger and bigger bands into smaller and smaller places, we'd really like to do some events, hosting really small live shows in oddball one-off locations. We've got some ideas for that for the summer, so we'll see. We'd also like to get other people involved in other spots - it doesn't cost a huge amount to get set up with the gear, and we'd love to see other people doing it in other cities."

Words: Nick Mitchell

Under the Radar will keep you up-to-date with future OtBT sessions, and you can browse their archives at offthebeatentracks.tv

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