One of those funny things...

Some time last year - I don't remember where or when - I caught a really cool music video on TV starring Mark Heap; you may have seen him as the curious artist Brian in Spaced or in Chris Morris' Jam or Green Wing. Anyway, this music video had a very simple conceit: Mark Heap getting out of bed, leaving his house, running for the bus, falling down the stairs of the bus when he gets off, turning up on the doorstep of a house, going away, playing in the park with some small children, returning them to the house, going back to his own home and taking a bath - but the whole thing is shot with one of those chest mounted steadicams pointing back at the actor's face that Darren Aronofsky is so fond of. The video is therefore dominated by Mark Heap's wonderfully hangdog, long-suffering face. Right at the end, as he submerges himself in the bath, he thinks back to the day out with (presumably) his children and, finally, a smile creeps across his face. It really is a lovely little video.

Unfortunately, at the time I saw this video, I didn't know who the band was or what the song was called. This annoyed me because the tune was really good.

So, fast forward to a couple of weeks ago; I am making good use of Last.fm's "similar artist" function to find something a bit like Red Snapper - one of my favourite bands who selfishly broke up a couple of years ago - and one of the bands that popped up was Four Tet. Ooh, I thought as I listened to Four Tet, this is good. I'll make a note of them and buy some of their stuff.

Today I popped into HMV after work to have a mooch around. I went over to the dance section to see if they had any Four Tet. They did. Hmm, which one to buy, I thought. I had done a bit of research and all of the albums had received good press. I spotted the latest one, Everything Ecstatic, and figured that it was as good a place to start as any. But then I noticed Everything Ecstatic Films & Part 2, a two disc package with a DVD of videos to accompany each album track and a CD of extra remixes. It was only £2.00 more than the regular album so I figured, what the hell?

I get home and I stick on the DVD. The first track, A Joy has a frenetic animation of hand-drawn abstract shapes. Very interesting. Track number two, Smile Around The Face, starts up - a man getting out of bed, leaving his house, running for the bus... I jumped out of my seat, yelped and pointed at the screen: "It's that Mark Heap video! It's that Mark Heap video!" By complete accident, I had procured the very video I had been wanting to find for nearly a year without knowing who the band was or what the song was called.

Don't you just love it when that happens?

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Oh yeah, the reason I was in HMV looking for music to buy is because today is my birthday. Thirty-one years old. Yay, etc.