Left Behind

I'm mostly here now BTW. Farewell post, in the form of a list of course, forthcoming.

Top ten: Lonely hunters

1. Alicia Keys, "Try Sleeping with a Broken Heart" Ewing
   
2. Florence + the Machine, "Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)" TSJ
   
3. Digital Primitives, "Love Truth" Derek Taylor
   
4. Royksopp ft. Robyn, "The Girl and the Robot" TSJ
   
5. Mini Viva, "I Wish" (Cahill remix) Pop Music Notes
   
6. Florence + the Machine, "Dog Days Are Over" Anna Pickard
   
7. Sonic Youth, "Antenna" SF/J
   
8. M.I.A., "Space Odyssey" Weiner vs Rosen
   
9. Dam-Funk, "Brookside Park" Jesse Serwer
   
10. Digital Primitives, "Walkabout" [see #3]
    

200 favourite albums, 2000-2009

1. M.I.A., Kala
2. Franco, Francophonic Vol. 2
3. King Sunny Ade, The Best of the Classic Years
4. James Carter, Chasin' the Gypsy
5. New York Dolls, One Day It Will Please Us to Remember Even This
6. Franco, Francophonic
7. Sleater-Kinney, One Beat
8. Kanye West, Late Registration
9. Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP
10. Taylor Swift, Fearless (Platinum Edition)
11. Bob Dylan, Love and Theft
12. Franco, The Very Best of the Rumba Giant of Zaire
13. PJ Harvey, Stories from the City
14. Mekons, OOOH!
15. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
16. Buck 65, Talkin' Honky Blues
17. Gogol Bordello, Super Taranta!
18. Ghostface Killah, Fishscale
19. Brian Wilson Presents Smile
20. M.I.A., Arular
21. Youssou N'Dour, Nothing's in Vain
22. The Coup, Party Music
23. DJ Shadow, The Private Press
24. Lucinda Williams, Essence
25. K'naan, The Dusty Foot Philosopher
26. Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar
27. Bob Dylan, Modern Times
28. OutKast, Stankonia
29. Mos Def, The Ecstatic
30. The Best Best of Fela Kuti
31. Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
32. Rilo Kiley, More Adventurous
33. Amy Rigby, Little Fugitive
34. The Best Bootlegs in the World Ever!
35. Manu Chao, La Radiolina
36. The Moldy Peaches
37. Tabu Ley Rochereau, The Voice of Lightness
38. OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below
39. Johnny Cash, American IV: The Man Comes Around
40. Art Brut, Bang Bang Rock and Roll
41. Irene Schweizer, Portrait
42. Daft Punk, Discovery
43. Kanye West, The College Dropout
44. Drive-By Truckers, Decoration Day
45. Orchestra Baobab, Specialist in All Styles
46. The Streets, Original Pirate Material
47. Golden Afrique Vol. 2
48. Mavis Staples, We'll Never Turn Back
49. Brad Paisley, American Saturday Night
50. Papa Wemba, 1977-1997
51. Liz Phair
52. The Avalanches, Since I Left You
53. Lily Allen, It's Not Me It's You
54. Radiohead, Kid A
55. Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane, At Carnegie Hall
56. Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 4
57. Nas, Untitled
58. Sonic Youth, NYC Ghosts & Flowers
59. Gogol Bordello, Gypsy Punks: Underdog World Strike
60. Manu Chao, Proxima Estacion: Esperanza
61. Leonard Cohen, Live in London
62. The Rough Guide to the Music of the Sahara
63. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, One Endless Night
64. Todd Snider, The Devil You Know
65. Le Tigre, This Island
66. Miranda Lambert, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
67. N*E*R*D, In Search of...
68. Kanye West, 808s & Heartbreak
69. Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
70. Loudon Wainwright III, High Wide & Handsome
71. William Parker, Raining on the Moon
72. Wussy
73. Wussy, Funeral Dress
74. Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark
75. Youssou N'Dour, Egypt
76. TV on the Radio, Dear Science
77. Lil Wayne, Da Drought 3
78. Sonic Youth, Rather Ripped
79. Sonny Rollins, This Is What I Do
80. William Parker Violin Trio, Scrapbook
81. William Parker, Double Sunrise over Neptune
82. Randy Newman, Harps and Angels
83. Pat Metheny & Ornette Coleman, Song X
84. Amy Rigby, Til the Wheels Fall Off
85. Sonic Youth, Murray Street
86. Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra, MTO Vol. 1
87. Tricky, Blowback
88. Imperial Teen, On
89. Steinski, What Does It All Mean?
90. Sonic Liberation Front, Ashe a Go-Go
91. Luomo, Vocalcity
92. Basement Jaxx, Rooty
93. Imperial Teen, The Hair the TV the Baby & the Band
94. Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentleman
95. Powerhouse Sound, Oslo/Chicago Breaks
96. Public Enemy, Rebirth of a Nation
97. Bjork, Vespertine
98. The Klezmatics, Wonder Wheel
99. Wu-Tang Clan, The W
100. William Parker Quartet, Sound Unity
101. Conor Oberst
102. Sleater-Kinney, The Woods
103. Warren Zevon, The Wind
104. Gothic Archies, The Tragic Treasury
105. Blackalicious, NIA
106. Lyrics Born, Later That Day
107. Atmosphere, Lucy Ford
108. Rachid Taha, Made in Medina
109. Orlando Cachaito Lopez, Cachaito
110. Basement Jaxx, Kish Kash
111. Fountains of Wayne, Welcome Interstate Managers
112. The Libertines, Up the Bracket
113. Serengeti, Dennehy (Lights, Camera, Action!)
114. Lupe Fiasco, Food and Liquor
115. New Order, Waiting for the Sirens' Call
116. The Coup, Pick a Bigger Weapon
117. Postal Service, Give Up
118. The Go! Team, Proof of Youth
119. Strictly Kev, Raiding the 20th Century
120. Aimee Mann, Bachelor No. 2
121. Kimya Dawson, I'm Sorry That Sometimes I'm Mean
122. Mastodon, Crack the Skye
123. Spoon, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
124. The Wrens, The Meadowlands
125. Lifter-Puller, Fiestas + Fiascos
126. David Murray, Like a Kiss That Never Ends
127. Kelis, Tasty
128. Art Pepper, Unreleased Art Vol. 1
129. Wide Right, Sleeping on the Couch
130. African Pearls
131. Cornershop, Handcream for a Generation
132. Jon Faddis, Teranga
133. Girl Talk, Feed the Animals
134. Jon Langford, All the Fame of Lofty Deeds
135. Jewels and Binoculars, Ships with Tattooed Sails
136. Willie and the Wheel
137. Northern State, Dying in Stereo
138. Old 97's, Satellite Rides
139. The Go-Betweens, Oceans Apart
140. The Go-Betweens, The Friends of Rachel Worth
141. Matthew Shipp, Harmony and Abyss
142. Les Amazones de Guinee, Wamato
143. Vijay Iyer, Reimagining
144. Nellie McKay, Obligatory Villagers
145. Todd Snider, East Nashville Skyline
146. Spaceways Inc., Version Soul
147. The Hives, Veni Vidi Vicious
148. Lily Allen, Alright Still
149. Lou Reed, Ecstasy
150. Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
151. Dirty Projectors, Bitte Orca
152. Pink, I'm Not Dead
153. King Kapisi, Savage Thoughts
154. The Apples in Stereo, New Magnetic Wonder
155. Missy Elliott, Miss E.. So Addictive
156. The Vandermark 5, Elements of Style, Exercises in Surprise
157. Tune-Yards, Bird-Brains
158. The White Stripes, White Blood Cells
159. Holy Modal Rounders, I Make a Wish for a Potato
160. Mos Def, The New Danger
161. Golden Afrique Vol. 1
162. Wussy, Left for Dead
163. Eminem, Encore
164. Amadou & Mariam, Dimanche a Bamako
165. Pink, Try This
166. Dizzee Rascal, Boy in Da Corner
167. Festival in the Desert
168. Marianne Faithfull, Easy Come Easy Go
169. Common, Finding Forever
170. Art Brut, Art Brut vs Satan
171. Primal Scream, XTRMNTR
172. Missy Elliott, Under Construction
173. Robyn
174. Billy Bragg & Wilco, Mermaid Avenue Vol. 2
175. Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs
176. Youssou N'Dour, Rokku Mi Rokka
177. 50,000 Fall Fans Can't Be Wrong
178. Craig Harris, Souls within the Veil
179. Jonatha Brooke, The Works
180. Rancid, Indestructible
181. Courtney Love, America's Sweetheart
182. Nellie McKay, Get Away from Me
183. The Mountain Goats, Tallahassee
184. Shelby Lynne, I Am Shelby Lynne
185. Rilo Kiley, Under the Blacklight
186. Joanna Newsom, Ys
187. Lil Wayne, The Carter 3: The Mixtape
188. Amadou & Mariam, Welcome to Mali
189. Buddy Guy, Sweet Tea
190. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Fever to Tell
191. Frank London Klezmer Brass Allstars, Carnival Conspiracy
192. Franco, Classic Titles
193. Buck 65, Square
194. Erykah Badu, Mama's Gun
195. Britney Spears, My Prerogative
196. Brakes, The Beatific Visions
197. The Strokes, Is This It?
198. Yo La Tengo, Summer Sun
199. Oumou Sangare, Seya
200. Barbershop 2: Back in Business

The decade in Claire Denis

It's obligatory to mention that the career of Denis is difficult to extricate from that of Agnès Godard, her regular cinematographer for two decades (though Godard has worked with other directors); indeed, Beau travail might have the most incisive shots of male bodies ever, and there seems no point in dividing credit between the two of them. But too little attention has been paid to Denis's relationship with the other senses besides sight. Music is part of this – not so much the scores, which are middling, but the use of pop, most famously Corona's "Rhythm of the Night" and Denis Lavant's aberrant dance to it. But Friday Night seems to me to be a pretty straight-up-and-down movie about touch, and this is achieved through sounds – the matching of effects to actions. When we hear masking tape coming off the roll near the beginning we can feel it. Over-amplifying not the background buzz but the personal sounds your brain’s trained to block out – simply being able to hear the characters chew – gives a solidity that’s most notable for allowing the most physical sex I’ve seen on camera. Not sure which sound guy to credit, so I’ll take a stab: Jean-Louis Ughetto, I salute you.

The Intruder is certainly beautiful: most movies don't give us images as warm as Michel Subor drinking with a Pusan local or as vivid as a flashback to a boat's arrival at a French Polynesian island. But from Denis, that's not enough. Subor's character, Louis, is an intruder; various people are intruders in Louis's life (notably Béatrice Dalle); Louis even has an intruder inside his body - his transplanted heart. The heightening of Louis's condition, at first achieved through long looks at his huge chest scar, becomes absurdly literal when we see a bloody organ lying in the snow. All this is meant to make some vague point about rejection, and how communities and their outsiders relate to each other, but except in the Korean section and parts of the Tahitian one, Denis's use of photogenic isolated locations defeats her theme by not giving Louis enough human life to interact with.

35 Shots of Rum is Denis's variation on Ozu's Late Spring, except Ozu never had a chance to hear Lionel Richie. It's approximately as good as Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Ozuist Cafe Lumiere, which is pretty brilliant. Denis has complete confidence in Alex Descas (playing Chishu Ryu), and those of us who hadn't previously noticed he was among the most attentive actors around now wonder how we missed him.

SPOILER AHOY

Brad vs classical music: Hits of the seventeen-aughts

Bach, Great Organ Favorites (performed by E. Power Biggs)

Early music is something qualitatively different, and the Baroque, aside from one-hit wonders like Pachelbel and Jeremiah Clarke, wasn't up to much before Bach, so 1700 is a convenient time to declare war on classical music (or art music, if you want to be a dick about it). The pieces on this album are believed to be composed by Bach in his twenties, except for the much later "Wachet Auf" and for the "Jig Fugue", which he probably didn't write and is kind of trite anyway. There's also some scholarship suggesting the horror movie staple "Toccata and Fugue in D minor" isn't his: the "Toccata" sounds pretty different from the rest of his organ work, but on the other hand, nobody over the following 250 years wrote organ music of this quality -- maybe besides Mozart's ditties for mechanical organ, but probably not. There's no shortage of recordings; here, Biggs is lively yet precise, without heaviness for its own sake. If you like this, the logical next step would be Bach's Trio Sonatas in an organ version, or in Biggs's pedal harpsichord version.

What would Brakhage have thought of YouTube?

Or DailyMotion? Or UbuWeb, for that matter?

Mothlight (1963):

What did he think of Kyle Cooper?

The only good part of Se7en:

(btw the Kael-Brakhage conversation doing the rounds is, like you might have expected, just them eloquently talking past each other: like the Kael-Godard except without the passive-aggressive sexual tension)

(BooTube edit: why you should host yr videos yrself)

The decade in Radiohead

It's as clear that Kid A is not the best album of its decade (or second, or third, or...) as it was that OK Computer was not the best album of its decade (or second, etc.), but shouldn't distract you from the band's achievement. It's difficult to recall how controversial Kid A was upon release: even before a decade of dubstep, its sonics seemed pleasant, not harsh, and the album was scarcely less tonal than their previous work ("What we're doing isn't that radical" -- T. Yorke). Having said that, "National Anthem" is a fun freakout and "Everything in Its Right Place" is a flicker of warmth amidst a freezing soundscape.

The soundscapes in Amnesiac, this time including a higher proportion of guitar, are uglier, and not always in a useful way. Colin Greenwood, as always, manages to hold the album together.

Hail to the Thief refocuses on writing, and Thom Yorke holds up his end of the job, even if his themes are limited (if not his concepts). "Sail to the Moon" is particularly simple and fetching.

The group rejuvenated themselves in public opinion by offering In Rainbows on a pay-what-you-wish download basis. In Rainbows is more of a band album, with Jonny Greenwood in especially fine form. And "I have no idea what you are talking about" is a definitive lyric one way or another.

New Weerasethakul

I mostly like this for the sound. And the Hello Kitty balloon.