Shapeshifters

For their debut DVD, L.A.'s Shapeshifters crew have compiled a collection of their music videos, live concert footage, behind the scenes snippets worthy of America's Funniest Home Videos and a short cartoon. The overall project would have been more impressive if the live footage wasn't edited so abruptly and if the videos were better synched, but that's the Shapeshifters: you have to take the good with the bad. The live performances present two highlights: Awol One dropping a verse from the D.O.C.'s "Funky Enough" and an acoustic live set of "Farmer's Market of the Beast." The videos are often conceptual and thick with parody. Circus's "Mos Eisley" spoofs Planet of the Apes and Star Wars while postulating a future with Circus as the last man on the "Planet of the Shapes." "Mos Eisley" is one of the best videos, along with the crew cut "Presence," which takes the West Coast gangsta video into the realm of the weird, Asmar's instrumental "Cave-Bot," with a caveman engaging a robot-dancing cave-bot in a post-apocalyptic Hollywood, and "The Start of the Finish," a mini-zombie flick that ends with rappers Awol, Circus and 2Mex joining the legions of flesh-eaters. If that all seems too strange there's 2Mex's down-to-earth dating spoof, "Blinder Date." And thanks to the inclusion of 3-D glasses, the Shapeshifters go one step further in making the "Planet of the Shapes" a virtual reality. Extras: 3-D glasses. (Artificial Army, www.artificalarmy.com)