If you've got a fancy computer – and don't mind being reminded of your childhood home – chances are you have spent the morning mucking about with thewildernessdowntown.com. It's described as a "musical experience made specifically for Google Chrome" that takes the Arcade Fire song We Used to Wait and pits it against scenes of your childhood home, rendered by Google maps. It's got techy types in a tizz – not least because it's a neat demonstration of some of the cooler tricks offered by html5, the next evolution in coding.
It's an equally impressive piece of viral marketing too. I can't stand Arcade Fire, but I've already shared it with hundreds of my friends. Thanks to making the website's animated hoodie run around the grounds of Doncaster Rovers Football Club, my old school, and (don't ask me why) Battersea power station, it's forced a tune I would otherwise have little desire to hear into the recesses of my brain.
Admittedly the experience is a little buggy – if your screen isn't big enough you might find certain pop-up windows lost in the depths of what you're looking at. But if you look at the idea as a sketch of what might come next, it certainly suggests an evolution is on the cards for music videos. It also poses the question: why watch when you can play?
Arcade Fire have previous history with this sort of thing. Earlier this month their live-streamed YouTube concert directed by Terry Gilliam was watched by 3.7 million viewers. In putting The Wilderness Downtown online this weekend, they have once again proved they are a band willing to embrace the internet and the possibilities it brings (rather than moaning about lost revenue sales like pretty much everyone else). Better still, they've made someone who can't stand their music genuinely excited about what they might do next.
