Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		2.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.0

Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Sir Terrence December 21, 2008

Incubus is a Grammy-nominated alternative rock band based out of Calabasas, California. Formed in 1991 by vocalist Bandon Boyd, lead guitarist Mike Einziger, and drummer Jose Antonio Pasillas while in high school. They have a huge world wide audience (me included) and have sold over 13 million albums world wide. Incubus is known for their unusual mixing of experimental and progressive styles along with pop, jazz fusion, funk metal and rap rock.

Look Alive is a compilation of concert footage from Incubus 2007 Light Grenades World Tour, and includes personal footage inserted between each song. We are even treated to watching Mike Einziger get an operation for carpal tunnel. These guys seem easy and laid back when around each other, which is key to a successful group. Their talents are clear here, as they mix and weave several different genres of music together, switch tempos in mid song, and add unique percussive instruments, utilize the pipa (the Chinese Lute that is plucked), integrate turntable scratch, and with the vocal power of lead vocalist Brandon Boyd leads to a great concert, and a tight band in general. At the end of the Light Grendades Tour the group decided to go on hiatus until 2009, releasing a new album in 2010. I say good luck to these guys, they are worthy of whatever hype they receive.

Here are the order of songs as presented in the concert.

Quicksand
Kiss to Send Us Off
Anna Molly
Redefine
Pistola
Love Hurts
Paper Shoes
Megalomaniac
Nebula
Earth to Bella, Part 1
Sick Sad Little World
Oil and Water
Dig
Punch-Drunk
Aqueous Transmission
Look Alive

All of the songs here were pretty darn good, but I had a tough time getting into them because of the quality of the recording.

Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Look Alive rocks on to Bluray in a 1080p/AVC encode, framed at a revealing 1:78:1 aspect ratio that looks so highly stylized, it really hard to judge the picture quality. This appears to be sourced from a digital cameras, so no film related issues. Blacks were inky deep, but occasionally crushed to murky brown with some camera angles. Colors were difficult to ascertain, as the stage was bathed in colored stage lights which also killed the look of any natural skin tones of each of the performers. Other times the color was desaturated to black and white only, vacillating between these two places throughout the concert. Detail was fair, and shadow detail was very poor, often drowned in a black void. Images never looked film like, but had that digital "haze" and often unnatural quality to them. Once again, images look up converted from a lower resolution source, but I cannot confirm this.

Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two flavors of audio on this release; a 5.1 Dolby Digital TrueHD track encoded at 16/48 kHz, and a two channel PCM track at 16/48 kHz. There are some real issues with the audio on this disc. First, the mix is skewed towards the left channel, and therefore the sound is pulled pretty prominently in that direction. Vocals are also pushed towards the left channel, often coming discretely from that speaker position, but sound fattened as if out of phase. Bass is always tight, articulate, and really shows off the clean playing skills of Ben Kenney. Sound field positioning seemed a little far back, never giving a real in room presence. This mix is really a 4.1 mix, as the center channel remains silent throughout the concert footage, but dialog eminates from it during the documentary footage in between sets. The surrounds were used only for crowd noises, and was quickly clamped down once the music started to play. This mix sounds like it came directly from the board, without a lot of post work done on it. It does not sound refined, balanced soundstage wise, nor does it reach into the room like the best concert videos I have reviewed. The two channel PCM track sounded a little more full and clear across the front than the 5.1 lossless track, but it sounds like the same mix, weighted towards the left much like the multichannel mix.

Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

There are no suppliments on this disc. I would assume that what would be considered supplimental material would be the in between concert footage of the band while on tour.

Incubus: Look Alive Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Incubus is a terrific group, no doubt about that. However the quality of both the video and audio here are lacking big time. I saw Incubus Live at Red Rocks Bluray a while back, and this does not in any way approach the quality of that releases. However there is enough here for fans to get a dose, and for non fans to get an introduction to the group. These are truly exemplary musicians, and that is apparent in the arrangements of their material, the rhythmic complexity, tempo changes, and tempo within tempo changes, all of which they handle effortlessly. I grudgingly recommend this, not for the concerts themselves, but for the quality of the release. Most fans won't care one bit about the quality, but non fans should look at the Live at Red Rocks Bluray to give them a better idea of what this great band can do.