Jean Rouch - Racketeer (Single Review)

Formerly known as Toby Simcock, but otherwise known as Jean Rouch, caught my eye with a rather political animated music video that he released on his Facebook page last night. The music and the story has all been written by the solo artist himself.

The video opens up with slow and intricate repetitive guitar riff, shortly followed by a tiring hit on the symbol of his drums. The music is correlated to the video as the guitar riff is repetitive to show the working class doing the same thing day in, day out. The drums are showing that the hard-work is tiring and progressively, throughout the video you see how they can't get out of the working class poverty-stricken trap that they are in.

Visually you see a builder in his overalls and hard cap at the beginning, going home to his upset wife; clearly they don't spend enough time with each-other, as he is too busy at work. As the video progresses you see the income of one man amounts to the income of many men who only ever fall in his pocket. The builders never make it to the top to meet the man either.

The animation makes you think about the distinction between social class in society and the unequal distribution of income all across the UK, as Richard Ashcroft once said - "You're a slave to money then you die."

The instrumental really builds tension to the animation; and it allows you to intensively watch the animation whilst simultaneously hear the music in sync with the video, as you're eagerly sitting there awaiting to see what is going to happen next. This is a short, yet effective two minute instrumental animated video showing you the life of a working class person just trying to earn a living, and I am so pleased that this has been created by someone from Stoke-On-Trent.

Please watch it on the link below, many thanks and enjoy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ievNrC7I5E