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best albums of 2013
Quick list this year... Ambient / drone (alpha by album) Aquarelle, August Undone Mountains, Centralia RAUM (Liz Harris, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma), Event Of Your Leaving Olan Mill, Hiraeth Stephan Mathieu, Un Cœur simple Andrew Weathers Ensemble, What Happens When We Stop Seaworthy / Taylor Deupree, Wood, Winter, Hollow
The Andrew Weathers Ensemble album—my album of the year this year—is a really interesting blend of drone and folk: it slows down traditional American music until gloriously deep trance-spaces open up in its interstices. Check it out!
Other (alpha by album) Vampire Weekend, Modern Vampires of the City Lorde, Pure Heroine Kanye West, Yeezus Labels: lists, music_commentary
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
the year in music: 2011
Whoops, hey, it's getting a little bit on the late side to be posting my "best albums of 2011," but what the heck. I found it tough to rank these, as each of them covers very different sonic ground, and so I'm opting for a straight alpha-by-artist list. But honestly I thought it a very fine year for music. Julianna Barwick, The Magic Place. I tweeted something mid-year about how when I open my secular megachurch I will invite Julianna Barwick to sing there every week. Her looped constructions are impossibly lovely, some of the most consoling and comforting sounds I've yet heard humans make. I loved her 2009 album Florine but had my doubts about whether she'd be able to expand her sound meaningfully on a new, longer album: never have I been so pleased to be proven wrong. James Blake, James Blake. One of two albums this year that aggressively disassembled and reassembled the popular song. (Blake's is the one that is wintry, quiet, introspective, narcissistic, and quintessentially British.) Required listening if you want to affirm that there's still life in the Song. The Field, Looping State of Mind. Bliss-out repetitive dance music. The weird wordless vocals, new to this album, add an important level of emotional resonance that I'm not sure the Field has ever reached before. And thus Axel Willner gets ever closer to producing music that's as crucial to the heart as, say, this. Not quite there yet, but it's within reach. Tim Hecker, Ravedeath, 1972. For around ten years now, abstract electronic musician Tim Hecker has been making music that skirted close to being excellent but never quite broke into that upper tier. But then this album came along, and I'm not alone in calling it Hecker's masterpiece. I'm not sure if it was the unusual circumstances of the recording (the base tracks for the album were captured from a pipe organ in an Icelandic church) or the help from producer Ben Frost (a quality abstract electronic musician in his own right). But it doesn't matter. This is the one. Bon Iver, Bon Iver. It took me a while to figure out what this album was doing, and I'm still not sure I endorse all its choices. But the key, for me, was to stop trying to figure out what Bon Iver was saying, or what he was singing about, and appreciate his voice as a textural element, in the same way that, say, one appreciates Liz Fraser's voice on those 1980s Cocteau Twins albums. This makes all the care and detail lavished on the album's other textural elements suddenly leap into focus, and you begin to think that maybe he's developing these little soundworlds as an attempt to establish himself as the true heir to 4AD-style art rock, instead of as a contemporary folk-inflected songwriter like, say, Sam Beam from Iron and Wine. Jacaszek, Glimmer. I once wrote that Treny, Jacaszek's 2008 album, sounded like "what house music would sound like if house music emerged from a pre-industrial Eastern European castle instead of from the dance floors of post-industrial Detroit." Needless to say, I was a big fan, and I worried that this follow-up wouldn't scratch the same itch. But it totally does. A fantastically crepuscular record. It uses a harpsichord. Plus it has the best cover art of the year. Minamo, Documental. Minamo albums have made my best-of-year roundups as long ago as 2002 and as recently as 2010; once I said that they made music that was in"maximum accordance with a very fine-grained model of my aesthetic tastes." With each new album they continue to modify their sound, and by now they've emerged as some of the most mature and confident practitioners of the gentle (and occasionally incredibly harsh) electroacoustic improvisational music I've loved for a decade now. (Honorable mention: Fourcolor's As Pleat, the 2010 solo release by Minamo's Keiichi Sugimoto, which has many of the same strengths.) Oneohtrix Point Never, Replica. Garbled constructions made from nostalgia-inducing shards; a great, stuttering, broken vision of the future. Difficult to take in large doses, but undeniably the work of either a visionary talent or a defective robotic anthropologist. tUnE-yArDs, W H O K I L L. One of two albums this year that aggressively disassembled and reassembled the popular song. (Garbus' is the one that is summery, loud, other-directed, political, and quintessentially American.) Required listening if you want to affirm that there's still life in the Song. Tuusanuuskat, Nääksää Nää Mun Kyyneleet. I don't know what's in the water over there, but for the last decade or so Finland's experimental music scene, loosely grouped around the influential Fonal label, has been producing some of the most uncharacterizable inventions, a kind of demented blend of noise, tribal rock, children's percussion, sing-along song, and whatever else they can jam into the mix. This album represents a collaboration between two of the key figures from that scene, Fonal label head Sami Sänpäkkilä (who records under the name Es) and Jan Anderzen, one of the art-damaged Kemialliset Ystävät crew. Difficult listening, yet every second is a clear manifestation of genius. Or maybe madness. Criminally overlooked. Labels: lists, music_commentary
Monday, January 09, 2012
the year in reading: the new yorker
In addition to those forty books, I also read nearly every issue of the year's New Yorker crop. I made some notes about articles that I found particularly enjoyable or insightful; here are Atul Gawande, "The Hot Spotters" (on an alternate approach to health care) January 24, 2011 Lawrence Wright, "The Apostate" (in which film director Paul Haggis breaks from Scientology) Feb 14 & 21, 2011 Raffi Khatchadourian, "The Gulf War" (on the logistics of the response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster) March 14, 2011 Anthony Lane, "The Fun Factory" (on the workplace climate at Pixar) May 16, 2011 Kelefa Sanneh, "Where's Earl?" (on the mysterious disappearance of Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt) May 23, 2011 John Colapinto, "Strange Fruit" (on how the acai berry became a craze) May 30, 2011 Rachel Aviv, "God Knows Where I Am" (on the difficulties encountered when schizophrenics reject their diagnoses) May 30, 2011 Seymour Hersh, "Iran and the Bomb" (in which doubt is cast about whether Iran was ever, in fact, trying to develop nuclear weapons) June 6, 2011 Aleksandar Hemon, "The Aquarium" (about the illness and death of his daughter) June 13 & 20, 2011 (subscribers or pay-for-access only) John Cassidy, "Mastering the Machine" (on a mysteriously successful hedge fund) July 25, 2011 Adam Gopnik, "Dog Story" (part personal essay about dogs, part survey of the current theories about how dogs became domesticated) Aug 8, 2011 Atul Gawande, "Personal Best" (on whether all professionals would benefit from coaching) October 3, 2011 Most of these aren't paywalled, so enjoy! Labels: lists
Thursday, January 05, 2012
the year in reading: 2011
New Year's Day! Time for list-making fun! One of the things I like to do each year is make a list reflecting back on my reading log, which I maintain through LibraryThing. (Previous years: 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004.) So! This year I read 40 books, my best run since 2008. The big shift of the year was that I read novels in full force, clocking in with what looks like 23 novels. (I haven't read 23 novels in a single year since I started keeping this book log!) I think part of my revivified interest in fiction came from working on a novel myself—when you're deeply concentrated on the million little problem-sets of a novel, everybody else's novels begin to look like different approaches to the same challenges, and thus are not only entertaining, but also pedagogically instructive. One other thing that helped: working on Instafiction.org, a "fiction curation" project which forced me to pay attention to good fiction from both the past and the present. Anyway, here are the novels, and here's what I thought. Masterpiece Beloved, by Toni Morrison Great Light In August by William Faulkner Very Good We Don't Live Here Anymore: Novellas by Andre Dubus Then We Came To The End by Joshua Ferris Spook Country by William Gibson How To Live Safely In A Science Fictional Universe by Charles Yu Good With Reservations The Sense of An Ending by Julian Barnes Parable of The Sower by Octavia Butler Open City by Teju Cole Point Omega by Don DeLillo The Magicians by Lev Grossman The Friends Of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins Pym by Mat Johnson The Trial by Franz Kafka Eeeee Eee Eeee by Tao Lin The Ask by Sam Lipsyte Skippy Dies by Paul Murray Freedomland by Richard Price The Pale King by David Foster Wallace What else did I read in 2011? Nine works of nonfiction, including memoirs and polemics. Two of those were books about gaming—Jane McGonigal's Reality Is Broken and Tom Bissell's Extra Lives (which I also taught to my WR 150 students). Both are worth reading, although McGonigal's contained more food for thought. Two were chef memoirs—Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential and Gabrielle Hamilton's Blood, Bones, and Butter—neither one is a masterpiece for the ages, but both were fun to read. Gertrude Stein's Narration: Four Lectures and Zadie Smith's Changing My Mind both warrant mention here as well. Two books of poems: Juliana Spahr's Well Then There Now and Sawako Nakayasu's Texture Notes, both recommended. I also read five graphic novels or books of comics, of which Kate Beaton's Hark! A Vagrant was the clear standout. And finally, unclassifiable elsewhere is Mountain Man Dance Moves: The McSweeney's Book of Lists, which made me chuckle here and there but is noteworthy mainly as an example of how a bad book design can kill good content. Labels: book_commentary, lists
Sunday, January 01, 2012
best films of the 1980s
So in my spare time lately (I'm underemployed at the moment) I've been tinkering a lot with my Film Viewing database. Basically what this means is "doing data entry"—entering and rating more and more films. It's fairly tedious work but somehow it's also engaging and engrossing. And the database as a whole is starting to get "robust"—it's starting to reach that sweet spot where I can command it to produce certain types of output, and get results that I feel are reasonably accurate. For instance, just as a test, I asked it to show me all the movies from the 1980s that I've given a rating of 8 or higher to (out of ten). I'm pretty pleased with the results, a list of 30 films which I think I could defend as the "best films of the 1980s." Anyone want to have a good-natured argument about it? Anything I've left out? Anything I've wildly over-rated? I chose the 80s more-or-less at random, and will happily present the results of a different decade upon request. Labels: filmographies, lists, media commentary, personal
Monday, March 02, 2009
the dreaded "25 things" virus
Those of you who have logged into Facebook in the last few weeks have very likely witnessed the wildfire spread of the "25 Random Things" meme / virus. I wasn't going to do it, and then last night I abruptly caved in and did it. I was fairly happy with the results so I thought I'd post them here as well. 1) In general, I like people and I like the world. 2) I enjoy making lists, and I spend more time than I probably should tracking data about my own life. For instance, I maintain a database of all the films I've ever seen (you can see the last 20 here) 3) I like having conversations, but I don't really like talking on the telephone. 4) I do, however, like text messaging, and I send several hundred text messages a month. 5) I like "experimental" music, film, writing, comics, and games, but really that just comes from liking music, film, writing, comics, and games so much that I want to experience them in the full variety of their forms. Put another way: I try not to be a snob. 6) I like collecting music, thinking about my music, and organizing and arranging my music. For a period I was buying at least one new CD a week. I've slowed down a bit lately, in part because I'm now involved in trading a lot of music with friends. 7) I am cripplingly dependent on iTunes, especially because of its rating feature, and the way it tracks Play Count and Date Last Played. My music listening is increasingly dictated by the interplay of these particular data-sets. 8) I like to dance, and I like almost anything that qualifies as dance music, from Beyonce to Mouse on Mars. 9) In the mid-1990s, I taught myself how to rap, and I still have a few fairly lengthy raps committed to memory. I intended it to be tongue-in-cheek, but I have actually come to believe that it is one of my more impressive talents. 10) I've been in two bands, and performed music live on stage somewhere around 30 times, although I have no musical training and generally consider myself to have no actual musical talent. 11) I use humor as a sort of social lubricant, and don't believe I could really be friends with someone who didn't think I was funny. 12) I would rather be thought of as attractive than be thought of as smart, although I put WAY more energy into being smart than I do into being attractive. 13) I enjoy flirting, sexual tension, and sexual confusion. If I'm not experiencing two out of three in any given week I will begin to make ill-advised decisions. 14) I think of sex as only one form of a larger category of intimacy, and I think that people who think sex is a particularly unique or special form of intimacy are engaged in a conceptual error. I am not immune to making this error myself, at times, although I try to catch myself. 15) I detest money, and I detest the things people must do to get money. The fact that I care as much as I do about money is one of the things I dislike about myself. 16) I do, however, enjoy teaching, and I believe that I am good at it. 17) I am fascinated by violence, and representations of violence. I don't ENJOY movies that depict torture and violence but I am unquenchably curious about them and will eventually end up seeing them all. (They're always worse in my imagination, just FYI.) 18) From roughly age 12 to age 18, I participated in a program called "Cinekyd," which taught young people the basics of film and television production. I spent most of my Cinekyd time in the "Graphics and Minatures" department, learning about special effects. This is undoubtedly part of where my love of science fiction and horror films comes from. 19) My immediate family has an endearing interest in grotesque stories about things like bodily functions. Hearing a story of this sort around the dinner table is one of the ways that I can tell that I am "home." 20) I don't believe in the afterlife, but I do believe that places can be haunted. I make no real effort to reconcile this apparent discontinuity. 21) I don't really believe in magic, but in the spirit of experiential knowledge I performed a few "spells" just to see what would happen. The results were... interesting? 22) I have many fond memories of playing Dungeons and Dragons, and I still have my polyhedral dice nearby should someone drop by and want to fire up a game. 23) I spent many hours as a young child playing the Atari 2600, and will still occasionally load up a Web-based replica of the old 2600 game "Adventure," a game in which your "character" is simply an unadorned rectangle. 24) I am one of those people who has Opinions About Fonts. 25) I am seldom bored, and am usually at my happiest when engaged in mutiple projects. An old friend once told me he wished that I could have 36 hours in every day, and I still count that as one of the nicest things anyone ever said about me.
Monday, January 26, 2009
10 albums from 2008 (#1)
1. Fuck Buttons, Street Horsssing In my imagination, the story goes like this: a couple of kids from the Bristol noise scene sagely decide to try to use structure and rhythm to harness some of the energy and intensity of noise music, in the interest of getting it to yield something amazing. And the amazing yield in question proves to be nothing less than—ecstatic beauty! Wild success. Interestingly, substitute "punk music" for "noise music" and you can see that acts like the Boredoms and Black Dice have also attempted a version of this experiment and attained identical results—indeed, look at Street Horsssing next to the Boredoms' Vision Creation New Sun and Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons.and it looks like nothing less than the disc that completes this decade's most awesome trilogy. Thanks to Nancy P. and Steve F., who both correctly intuited that I would like this album. Listen: Fuck Buttons, "Bright Tomorrow" And that concludes this year's top ten. Want them all in a single post for easier linking purposes? Try here. The MP3s should remain up for at least another few weeks. Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Sunday, December 28, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#2)
2. The Dodos, Visiter Two dudes, one on guitar and one on drums, one of them singing, and a female vocalist who occasionally joins in—sounds like an indie-pop formula that's pretty much been done to death. But the Dodos approach it with a zeal and urgency that make it seem brand new. Part of it is the emphasis on percussion: drummer Logan Kroeber works overtime to provide unusual timing for each song, providing sonic interest without devolving into wank, and guitarist Meric Long follows suit, exploring the potential of the guitar as a rhythmic device. The end result is little indie gems that also provide amazement and pleasure simply as kinetic or propulsive constructions. Endlessly listenable. Listen: The Dodos, "The Season" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Saturday, December 27, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#3)
3. Rameses III, Basilica Last year, Rameses III released Honey Rose, an modest yet perfect little driftwork which ended up slipping onto my Best of 2007 list. This year’s Basilica shows them growing both more assured and more ambitious, releasing a suite of astral-plane drones that evokes majesty without sacrificing their characteristic gentle lull. Imagine the broadest dawn you’ve ever seen and you’ve got the recommended visual. Includes a second disc of "remixes" by drone-underground stars like Robert Horton and Neal Campbell as a bonus. On Important. Listen: Rameses III, "Origins V" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Friday, December 26, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#4)
4. Jamie Lidell, Jim There's an appropriative aspect to the whole "blue-eyed soul" thing that often makes me a little squeamish, so I'm a little embarrassed that I enjoy pasty-white geek Jamie Lidell's barn-burners as much as I do. On this album, Lidell's third, he strips away some of the electronic frippery and analog burble that he used to ornament his earlier albums with and plays it instead as a straight-up revivalist act. And why shouldn't he?: he's got the charisma, pipes, and songwriting chops of any one of the greats. (If you're really feeling guilty about the appropriative element and want something a little more authentic, round out your purchase of this record with a purchase of this year's fine compliation Conquer the World: The Lost Soul of Philadelphia.) Listen: Jamie Lidell, "Another Day" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Thursday, December 25, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#5)
5. Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, Glistening Pleasure Earlier this year, I described these guys as "hipsters who have learned that dance music is fun and sexy, but who feel just enough doubt about the enterprise that they're forced to add generous helpings of irony and absurdity lest anyone think that they're going about it straight-faced." That sounds like something that might wear thin after a few listens, but this album became one that I found myself returning to again and again, and growing more enamored of, not less. Listen: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, "Slow Motion Tag Team" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#6)
6. Brightblack Morning Light, Motion to Rejoin As a guy who loves his Internet, I find Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes' back-to-nature / get-off-the-grid / Native-Americans-had-it-right trip a little hard to swallow at times, but listen to the music and you have to admit that they might be on to something: this bit of laid-back, smoked-out, electric psychedelic desert blues is a pretty mesmerizing piece of work. The best album Matador has put out since Matmos' The Civil War (2003). Listen: Brightblack Morning Light, "Hologram Buffalo" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#8)
8. Pocahaunted, Island Diamonds The best way to imagine Bethany and Amanda, the two women who comprise Pocahaunted, is to imagine them calling to you, in their wordless sirenlike style, as you are descending deeper and deeper into a drug-induced coma. (It might even be worth waking up in the hospital just to hear these sounds.) They've been releasing a fairly steady stream of releases in obscuro formats; this one gets the nod because it benefits from its (comparatively) high-profile release on the Not Not Fun label, and because the presence of drummer Bob[b?] Bruno gives it a dose of extra structure and urgency. Listen: Pocahaunted, "Riddim Queen" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Sunday, December 21, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#9)
9. Cloudland Canyon, Lie In Light A lot of bands lately have returned to drink from the well of 70s-era German progressive music, but Cloudland Canyon stands out from the pack. They approach the ecstatic, psychedelic pastoralism of that era less as a source to be emulated and more as an open-ended experiment that they have made it their mission to complete. Their 2004 album Requiems der Natur was an intriguing curiosity; this year's Lie In Light is a minor masterpiece. Thanks to Chris P. for tipping me off to these guys. On Kranky. Listen: Cloudland Canyon, "Krautwerk" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Saturday, December 20, 2008
top ten 10 albums from 2008
10. Juana Molina, Un Dia Is Juana Molina the Latin American Bjork? Er, probably not, but fans of exotic elf-women might will find a lot to like in Molina's vaguely alien song-constructions. (Plus, check out this album cover, my favorite of the year.) And, at the risk of essentializing, Molina's palette is distinctly sub-equatorial: it's sometimes classified as electronica, but it's driven at least as much by its Rioplatense vocals, Argentinian rhythmic elements, and loops of acoustic guitar. Warm, weird, and lovely. On Domino. Listen: Juana Molina, "Vive Solo" 9. Cloudland Canyon, Lie In Light A lot of bands lately have returned to drink from the well of 70s-era German progressive music, but Cloudland Canyon stands out from the pack. They approach the ecstatic, psychedelic pastoralism of that era less as a source to be emulated and more as an open-ended experiment that they have made it their mission to complete. Their 2004 album Requiems der Natur was an intriguing curiosity; this year's Lie In Light is a minor masterpiece. Thanks to Chris P. for tipping me off to these guys. On Kranky. Listen: Cloudland Canyon, "Krautwerk" 8. Pocahaunted, Island Diamonds The best way to imagine Bethany and Amanda, the two women who comprise Pocahaunted, is to imagine them calling to you, in their wordless sirenlike style, as you are descending deeper and deeper into a drug-induced coma. (It might even be worth waking up in the hospital just to hear these sounds.) They've been releasing a fairly steady stream of releases in obscuro formats; this one gets the nod because it benefits from its (comparatively) high-profile release on the Not Not Fun label, and because the presence of drummer Bob[b?] Bruno gives it a dose of extra structure and urgency. Listen: Pocahaunted, "Riddim Queen" 7. Scott Tuma, Not For Nobody Back when I lived in Chicago, I saw Scott Tuma perform a bunch of times as part of the exemplary Good Stuff House trio, so I knew he was one of the more interesting experimental guitarists out there. But that didn't adequately prepare me to expect him to release this beautiful and curiously moving album of Americana folk guitar. It retains its "experimental" status by including a few left-of-center gestures, but it's more heartfelt than it is cerebral. Thanks to Chris M. for sending this along. Listen: Scott Tuma, "Fishen" 6. Brightblack Morning Light, Motion to Rejoin As a guy who loves his Internet, I find Nathan Shineywater and Rachael Hughes' back-to-nature / get-off-the-grid / Native-Americans-had-it-right trip a little hard to swallow at times, but listen to the music and you have to admit that they might be on to something: this bit of laid-back, smoked-out, electric psychedelic desert blues is a pretty mesmerizing piece of work. The best album Matador has put out since Matmos' The Civil War (2003). Listen: Brightblack Morning Light, "Hologram Buffalo" 5. Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, Glistening Pleasure Earlier this year, I described these guys as "hipsters who have learned that dance music is fun and sexy, but who feel just enough doubt about the enterprise that they're forced to add generous helpings of irony and absurdity lest anyone think that they're going about it straight-faced." That sounds like something that might wear thin after a few listens, but this album became one that I found myself returning to again and again, and growing more enamored of, not less. Listen: Natalie Portman's Shaved Head, "Slow Motion Tag Team" 4. Jamie Lidell, Jim There's an appropriative aspect to the whole "blue-eyed soul" thing that often makes me a little squeamish, so I'm a little embarrassed that I enjoy pasty-white geek Jamie Lidell's barn-burners as much as I do. On this album, Lidell's third, he strips away some of the electronic frippery and analog burble that he used to ornament his earlier albums with and plays it instead as a straight-up revivalist act. And why shouldn't he?: he's got the charisma, pipes, and songwriting chops of any one of the greats. (If you're really feeling guilty about the appropriative element and want something a little more authentic, round out your purchase of this record with a purchase of this year's fine compliation Conquer the World: The Lost Soul of Philadelphia.) Listen: Jamie Lidell, "Another Day" 3. Rameses III, Basilica Last year, Rameses III released Honey Rose, an modest yet perfect little driftwork which ended up slipping onto my Best of 2007 list. This year's Basilica shows them growing both more assured and more ambitious, releasing a suite of astral-plane drones that evokes majesty without sacrificing their characteristic gentle lull. Imagine the broadest dawn you’ve ever seen and you’ve got the recommended visual. Includes a second disc of "remixes" by drone-underground stars like Robert Horton and Neal Campbell as a bonus. On Important. Listen: Rameses III, "Origins V" 2. The Dodos, Visiter Two dudes, one on guitar and one on drums, one of them singing, and a female vocalist who occasionally joins in—sounds like an indie-pop formula that's pretty much been done to death. But the Dodos approach it with a zeal and urgency that make it seem brand new. Part of it is the emphasis on percussion: drummer Logan Kroeber works overtime to provide unusual timing for each song, providing sonic interest without devolving into wank, and guitarist Meric Long follows suit, exploring the potential of the guitar as a rhythmic device. The end result is little indie gems that also provide amazement and pleasure simply as kinetic or propulsive constructions. Endlessly listenable. Listen: The Dodos, "The Season" 1. Fuck Buttons, Street Horsssing In my imagination, the story goes like this: a couple of kids from the Bristol noise scene sagely decide to try to use structure and rhythm to harness some of the energy and intensity of noise music, in the interest of getting it to yield something amazing. And the amazing yield in question proves to be nothing less than—ecstatic beauty! Wild success. Interestingly, substitute "punk music" for "noise music" and you can see that acts like the Boredoms and Black Dice have also attempted a version of this experiment and attained identical results—indeed, look at Street Horsssing next to the Boredoms' Vision Creation New Sun and Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons.and it looks like nothing less than the disc that completes this decade's most awesome trilogy. Thanks to Nancy P. and Steve F., who both correctly intuited that I would like this album. Listen: Fuck Buttons, "Bright Tomorrow" 1. Fuck Buttons, Street Horsssing In my imagination, the story goes like this: a couple of kids from the Brixton noise scene decide, and rightfully so, that the energy and intensity of noise music could yield something amazing if it were harnessed by structure and rhythm. So they give it a try. And the amazing yield in question proves to be nothing less than—ecstatic beauty! Interestingly, substitute “punk music” for “noise music” and you can see that acts like the Boredoms and Black Dice have also attempted a version of this experiment and attained identical results—indeed, look at Street Horsssing next to the Boredoms’ Vision Creation New Sun and Black Dice’s Beaches and Canyons.and it looks like nothing less than the disc that completes this decade’s most awesome trilogy. Listen: Fuck Buttons, “Bright Tomorrow“ Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
Friday, December 19, 2008
10 albums from 2008 (#10)
Yes, we're in the final throes of 2008, which means that once again I come to you with my top ten albums of the year (with MP3s!), stretched out over ten posts to "build suspense." Without further ado, then, I bring you... 10. Juana Molina, Un Dia Is Juana Molina the Latin American Bjork? Er, probably not, but fans of exotic elf-women might will find a lot to like in Molina's vaguely alien song-constructions. (Plus, check out this album cover, my favorite of the year.) And, at the risk of essentializing, Molina's palette is distinctly sub-equatorial: it's sometimes classified as electronica, but it's driven at least as much by its Rioplatense vocals, Argentinian rhythmic elements, and loops of acoustic guitar. Warm, weird, and lovely. On Domino. Listen: Juana Molina, "Vive Solo" Labels: audio_commentary, lists, mp3s, music_commentary
my 100 favorite films
As some of you might know, I've been maintaining a complicated Film Viewing database which contains an incomplete (but growing) list of basically every film I've ever seen. One of the fun aspects of doing this is that I've set up a filtered view of this database which selects the films that I've given a rating of 9 or 10 to... thus auto-deriving a list of my "favorite" films. As of today, when I added Jane Campion's The Piano (1993) to the database, the number of films on the "favorites" page hit exactly 100. Check it out. It's organized chronologically, and you'll notice that it skews a bit towards recent films, in part because the 2000s have been a pretty good decade for film and in part because this database primarily (although not exclusively) reflects films I've watched or re-watched in the past two years. That said, there are definitely some blind spots: I'm sure there were some masterpieces produced between 1944 and 1954, but I'm not sure I've seen them. This list reflects my personal favorites, and not necessarily the films I'd consider "canonical," although there is some overlap. (The 100 canonical films list, which could use some revision around now, can be found here.) Comments and suggestions are welcome... Labels: lists, media commentary
Friday, October 24, 2008
my movie life
This post is part of Culture Snob's "Self-Involvement" Blog-A-Thon, running July 9-13th. For this Blog-A-Thon, Jeff's asked film bloggers to blog not so much about movies, but about oneself, as seen through the lens of movies. As an example, he linked to an old piece of his writing, "My Movie Life," sharing some key personal details about, well, his life and the movies. That proved too irresistible a model not to 1. The first movie I remember seeing was Star Wars (1977), which I saw with my parents at the local drive-in theatre. I remember items in the car (in particular, a Styrofoam cooler) more than I remember anything about that particular viewing of the movie. 2. I feel fortunate to have had that drive-in theatre as a place to hang out in my adolescence, an experience that nothing else really substitutes for. Movies I can remember seeing there: Jurassic Park (1993), Total Recall (1990), Mom and Dad Save the World (1992). The site of the drive-in is now a Target. 3. I can remember having to leave the theatre early during a viewing of Superman (1978), because I was sniveling and crying. (I think the reason for this was because the non-Superman parts were too slow and boring, but I cannot really recall the incident.) 4. The first cinematic nudity I ever saw was on videotape; a friend showed me Risky Business (1983) and the nearly-forgotten My Tutor (1983). 5. The first cinematic nudity I saw in the theatre was Revenge of the Nerds (1984). (I was with a group of young men who went for a friend's birthday party; we were accompanied by his father.) 6. The only R-rated movie I can recall being turned away from at the box office was David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986); it is still one of my favorite movies. 7. I can remember seeing a videotaped copy of Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) in around sixth grade, and I remember the first murder in that film made an astonishing impact on me. I still can't watch that movie without feeling a mix of anticipation and genuine dread as that scene approaches. 8. In the wake of this, I spent maybe five years watching as many different 80s slasher or monster movies as I could get my hands on, most of them not very good. 9. The films that mark the end of this phase, for me, are Bloodsucking Freaks (1976) and I Spit on Your Grave (1978), both of which I saw in 1990 or 1991, and both of which left me feeling depressed and more than a little unclean. My relationship to horror has been love-hate ever since. 10. Around 1988-1990 I saw videotaped copies of Blue Velvet (1986) and Pink Flamingos (1979), both of which, in their own ways, provided the same visceral shock that Nightmare on Elm Street had provided, but both clearly had agendas that were more complicated than mere shock. Each of these dramatically expanded my sense of what cinema could legitimately try to do. 11. I saw Wild at Heart (1990) three times in the theatre. Its prurient mix of sex, violence, and Americana really was pretty ideal for me at age 17. (As an adult, I've come to think of it as one of Lynch's weaker films.) A few years later I saw Pulp Fiction (1994) in the theatre three times. I believe the most recent film I've done that with was The Incredibles (2004). 12. Eraserhead (1977) was a David Lynch film that was legendary in my suburban neighborhood (this was in the wake of Twin Peaks, when David Lynch was getting cover-story profiles in Time) but copies of it were hard to find—there was only one video store in the area that carried it (Southampton Video). That was the first movie that I went substantially out of my way to see. (It is still one of my favorite movies.) 13. Delicatessen (1991) was the first film that I read reviews of when it was still in theaters, and travelled into Philly from my suburban home to see at an art house theatre (the Ritz, where I would later work for a short stint). The second film I did this for was Naked Lunch (1991). (Both of these are still among my favorite movies.) 14. The first film I ever saw that I wanted to watch again the second I finished it was Terry Gilliam's Brazil (1985). 15. Movies I owned, early on: I recorded Yellow Submarine (1968) off of television; I bought a copy of Pink Floyd: The Wall (1982) when the video store was liquidating their Betamax stock; I purchased a copy of Heathers (1989) in 1990 and began to wear a black trench coat almost immediately thereafter. I've probably seen each of these films at least ten times, and I don't think I've seen any of them in the last ten years, although I still own a copy of Yellow Submarine. 16. The first foreign-language film I ever saw was probably Fellini's Amarcord (1973). 17. The first foreign-language film I ever counted as one of my favorite films was Fellini's 8 1/2 (1963). 18. I owe a lot of my film literacy to my years at La Salle University, in Philadelphia, which had a private screening room in the basement of the library that students could use, and a fairly good stock of freely-available films. This was a great resource at a time when I had little money, and I saw an incredible number of important films in that little room. 19. One of the things I watched down there was Fantasia (1940), which also marks the first time I ever took acid. 20. I took a few great film seminars at La Salle, including one on Hitchcock and one on Coppola, Scorsese, and Woody Allen (a course inspired, I believe, by their pairing in the relatively weak New York Stories (1989)). 21. The first film writing I can ever remember doing I did for these seminars: I remember doing a "close reading" on a scene from Taxi Driver (1976) and one on the dream sequence from Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945). 22. Also at LaSalle, some other film geek students and I formed a film club. We were allowed to use one of the screening classrooms as long as we could make the argument that we were using it for educational purposes; to this end, we were required to have a student give an informative lecture about whatever film we'd screened. I can recall personally giving lectures on A Clockwork Orange (1971) and Barton Fink (1991). 23. Also at La Salle, in someone's dorm room, I watched my first pornographic video. The name eludes me but I did not find it especially erotic. (I am pretty sure that on the same day and in the same dorm room, I saw Blade Runner (1982) for the first time.) 24. I am seldom aroused by film (including porn); that may be a side effect of being in my mid-thirties, but I can't remember being especially aroused by any earlier films, either. Perhaps it's the mediating effect of cinema, but movies make sex or nudity seem weirdly abstract or stylized somehow (I think it may do the same thing with violence, only to a net positive effect instead of a net negative effect). In any case, film ranks a distant fourth in terms of its erotic impact on me (behind interpersonal interaction, imagination, and language (either written or spoken)). 25. Along these lines, I mostly don't get crushes on actresses, although there are at least a few who have done a scene here or there that is stored somewhere in my erotic memory. I will confess, however, that in early adolescence I found Wendy Schall's character in The 'Burbs (1989) to be the paragon of female beauty. And there was a period where I probably wanted a girlfriend like Beetlejuice / Heathers-era Winona Ryder. More recently, I wanted a girlfriend like Patricia Arquette in True Romance (1993), and I appreciate every moment of her smokin'-hot presence in Lost Highway (1997). 26. The last movie I can remember feeling aroused by while viewing was Sex and Lucia (2001). If anyone's got a more recent recommendation of something that Worked For You, well, that's what the comments box is for. Bring it on. 27. The last movie that made me squirm in my seat with discomfort was Oldboy (2003), and the one before that was Audition (1999). I found the first Saw (2004) to be laughably tame by comparison. Again I'll ask for recommendations. 28. I went through a period where I didn't watch many movies, roughly 2004-2006. 29. I got re-interested in them through a project where I tried to come up with a "canon" of 100 important films for a friend. The final version, as I came up with it, is here, and the set of posts that documents the entire long process of brainstorming it can be found here. This made me realize how much I liked film, and how many important films I still hadn't seen. 30. I keep track of everything I see nowadays, and export the results to a webpage which can be viewed here. I try to do at least a short write-up of nearly everything I see and many of these get cross-posted to Netflix. My reviewer rank at Netflix, as of this writing, is 36,928, and if there's anything more self-involved than monitoring your Netflix reviewer rank, I don't know what it might be. Labels: lists, media commentary, personal
Thursday, July 10, 2008
100 book challenge: part six: miscellany
Down to the final fifteen of the 100 Book Challenge! As long as we're coming out of the graphic design shelf, we might as well move into Beautiful Evidence, by design critic Edward Tufte Re-Search #11: Pranks! Mondo 2000: A User's Guide to the New Edge Along these same "formative" lines, I'm not sure I can part with any of what I consider to be the three key Advanced Dungeons and Dragons texts: the Dungeon Master's Guide, the Player's Handbook, and Monster Manual. Continuing with games, I'd bring the Redstone Editions Surrealist Games book-in-a-box... ...and the Oulipo Compendium, which defines a mind-boggling number of literary constraints to play around with... ...and Jeff Noon's Cobralingus, which takes the idea of literary constraints and fascinatingly updates it by mashing it up with the kind of gate/filter/patch mechanism familiar from real-time sound synthesis programs like AudioMulch. And ultimately, for when I was through with the wacky wordplay and wanted to get back to writing normal English-language sentences, I'd bring a copy of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style. I'd cram in a few more great works of fiction... Cathedral, by Raymond Carver Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson my version of Moby Dick, by Herman Melville ...and one excellent work of humor: Our Dumb Century: 100 Years of Headlines from America's Finest News Source ...and maybe one exemplary picture book for children: The Mysteries of Harris Burdick, by Chris Van Allsburg And that'd be 100 (OK, closer to 115, given the various cheats and bundles I stuck in there.) Could I live with this 100? Maybe, although there's a lot of good writing in the piles left that remain. I find myself already wanting to make a list of a second hundred... the "honorable mentions," perhaps... Labels: book_commentary, lists, projects
Monday, July 07, 2008
100 book challenge part five: comics, art books, graphic design
Thirty books left to go in the 100 Book Challenge! Last time I left off on the cusp of "comics," so let's proceed into that realm. I'm fortunate that a lot of the comics I want to bring are actually in comics form, in long-boxes under my bed, and are thus exempt from the purge. But in terms of "trade paperbacks," let's see. Watchmen, by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons From Hell by Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell Read Yourself Raw, edited by Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend, by Windsor McCay Rabid Eye: The Dream Art of Rick Veitch, by Rick Veitch Cheating: I have most of the run of G. B. Trudeau's Doonesbury in a series of volumes: The Portable Doonesbury, The People's Doonesbury, The Doonesbury Chronicles, etc. Any of the individual volumes might not be that valuable, but together they make a form of the Great American Novel. Another cheat: volumes 4, 5, and 6 of the book-sized comics anthology Kramer's Ergot And another cheat: volumes 1-4 of Joss Whedon / John Cassaday's Astonishing X-Men American Splendor Presents: Bob and Harv's Comics, by Robert Crumb and Harvey Pekar Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth, by Chris Ware Monkey Vs. Robot, by James Kochalka The Frank Book, by Jim Woodring The Frank Book is a big coffee-table style book, so let's transition and throw a few more of those into here: Robert Rauschenberg: A Retrospective Paul Klee I'll bundle two graphic design books here as a final cheat: Sonic: Visuals for Music and 1 + 2 Color Designs, Vol. 2. Neither one is a masterpiece, which is part of how I can justify bundling them, but I do flip through them fairly frequently when needing ideas for graphic design projects, and books of this sort are expensive, and thus a pain to replace.] Fifteen books left to go, and what's left in the collection? Mostly just miscellany. Stay tuned! Labels: book_commentary, lists, projects
Sunday, July 06, 2008
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