Search - Isis: Clearing the Eye - Visual/Aural Fragments and Excerpts 2001-2005 on DVD

Everything I hoped it would be.

The Dilettante | 09/28/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Goddamn they have done a good job with this DVD!

A performance video is its own beast, and not every great band has a sense of what should be included on a video like this. Too often, underground bands think someone will actually be interested in their one-angle, head-on, color-bled Handy-cam footage.

Not so here. The video quality varies a lot, but they have composed the whole package in such a way that the low-quality video looks intentional - or at least atmospheric. Some of it looks absolutely spectacular, though, and the 70 minute Oceanic-era show from Sydney is on par with anything on MTV. The sound quality is uniformly excellent and the Celestial-era material, recorded at CBGB's in NYC in 2001, actually sounds better here than it does on that record. (It helps that there is this awesome bald guy in the audience absolutely flipping out to it. He's more into it than the band. He almost makes me uncomfortable.)

This captures everything that makes ISIS so fantastic live. The audio production is impressive, the live material is different from the original versions, the band is very tight. The only thing that suffers a bit in performance are Aaron Turner's vocals, which are frequently buried in the mix. Of course, his schizophrenic voice sets a ridiculously high bar for the sound engineer, and it probably couldn't have been done better.

The music video for In Fiction doesn't do justice to the song, but it makes the best out of what must have been a pretty shoe-string budget.

The graphic design is gorgeous - both packaging and the the DVD titles are top-notch and fit the material perfectly. Best of all, there is enough other material here to fill a coffee table book: lots of pretty photography, a discography (which irritates me since they have such a penchant for releasing rare records that I can't find) and -amazingly- the lyrics (but I don't want to know them, so I haven't checked that out).

The only thing that is conspicuously absent from this record is any material from the new album. I'm not sure why, since they have been performing these songs for some time and I don't guess they will get around to releasing another DVD any time soon...

Ripping.


"

Can't beat 'em!

A. Olmos | Somewhere, Japan | 10/03/2006

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I think this is an awesome DVD. Capturing ISIS they way they were meant to be seen. The live performances are usually filmed from pretty good vantage points (expecially the full performance) although there may be one or two songs that show the band from just one view. As I said before the full performance on the DVD is awesome. Great shots of the band playing maybe 7 or 8 songs. The audio is also great quality. The DVD as a whole seems to be a pretty good representation of ISIS. The overall layout of the DVD and packaging are right on with what you'd expect from the band. But I give it four stars due to the lack (or mediocrity) of the extras on the DVD. Pick this up if you're an ISIS fan."

Isis heals

Kiran Shetty | India,Mumbai | 01/11/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This is a classic DVD with no new material in it.So its suggested that only if you have heard the older albums should you buy this DVD.However its more of experimenting with their own songs rather than playing them originally.The twists in the songs are enjoyable and the quality does not let you down.I was a little dissapinted as there was no backstage footage or Interviews of the artistes included but I guess thats what the band is all about..."

Good dvd

Jason R. Hood | 01/06/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I was wating a long time for Clearing the Eye. I have been a Isis fan since the Celestial days. I was a fan Neurosis before and stumbled onto Isis via a Neurosis search one day online. This dvd is good not great. I say that because there is always going to be room for improvement. Isis did a very good job on production of the inbetween graphics and menu details. Audio in it is good not great. The dvd is a lot better than what most bands put out in my opinoun. I really enjoyed the full set of Panopticon towards the end of the dvd. If you are a Isis fan then you should enjoy the shows that they have collected and put together. Solid music dvd, I hope this helped."