We've reached the end of the line. With only a few hours left to spare I've finally sat down, compiled and begun writing the final post of the year with a few of my favorite albums of the year. As with the previous charts, this one is also heavily influenced by records from the first half of the year with little room to spare for later releases. What I've heard from the past few months have honestly not quite been up to par with the best of this list but I've also missed out on a bunch.
Far shorter list this year than last, only 15 releases this time around but they are all worth your time if you haven't heard them already.
Favorite Albums Of 2015
15. Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
Sufjan Stevens only barely makes it onto my final list for 2015. Carrie & Lowell is undoubtedly an impressive record while also filling a void for an even more introspective look into Stevens life that was unavailable in his discography since before.
14. Blanck Mass - Dumb Flesh
I was previously only acquainted with the music of Fuck Buttons through their latest release Slow Focus which I didn't care for. Dumb Flesh however is more in tune with the building, progressive and harsh sound of Tarot Sport and while it mainly feels like a continuation of the ideas explored on Fuck Buttons' hailed 2009 album it never comes across as unable to stand on its own two feet.
13. Kendrick Lamar - To Pimp A Butterfly
I think this record is more important than I find it enjoyable. Following up Lamar's latest record, Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City seemed like an almost impossible task but To Pimp A Butterfly proves every doubter out there that Lamar has so much more to give and has quite a ways to go despite already having claimed the throne as the most important (and maybe even greatest) modern active rapper. I don't see how To Pimp A Butterfly won't go down as this generations Illmatic.
12. Black Cilice - Mysteries
This was released when I was caught up in a black metal binge. Mysteries doesn't do much new, its a record more in line with many of the early norwegian black metal demos but it does it enormously well. Like the black-metal counterpoint to a band like Gorguts, it often bridges on noise as the muddy, lo-fi recording blends the guitars into a a cacoponous mix.
11. Viet Cong - S/T
I like Women and hold their record Public Strain on quite a high pedestal. I wasn't expecting Viet Cong to rehash that sound but the bands debut feels like a solid continuation of the ideas at hand during the final years of Women. It doesn't ever feel like Women reborn either, making Viet Cong sound more like an original entity amongst the rise of post-punk revival that's popular in today's era.
10. Sicko Mobb - Super Saiyan Vol 2
Don't disregard this mixtape because of the shoddy DJ-samples and the ridiculous album art. Super Saiyan Vol 2 is a phenomenal take at a brigther kind of chicago drill-sound. It isn't actually that far from a rap version of the PC-Music movement that seemed to be gaining traction. It's heavily produced, auto-tuned to the max and focuses almost entirely on energy and melody. So much better than any of that Rae Sremmurd-type of rap that's been gaining a following.
9. Nicolas Jaar - The Color Of Pomegranates
Nicolas Jaar made this bootleg soundtrack to Parajanov's praised masterpiece with the same name as an alternative pick for the silent films music. I still haven't seen the film even though I've been curious about Parajanov for a while now. On it's own The Color Of Pomegranates might feel a bit stale after a while but it's nice to hear music from Jaar that again, feels as fresh and unique as his previous works with both guitarist Dave Harrington and a solo-artist have felt. The Color Of Pomegranates leaves me excited for what's to come (and the Nymphs 7'' have proven that Jaar is still at the top of his game).
8. Death Grips - Jenny Death
I've already written a fair bit about the circumstances regarding this "final" Death Grips album so there's no point in continuing that. Jenny Death feels closer to Exmilitary than any previous Death Grips album have done, where most have been moving into a more electronic territory with every release, culminating in last years Niggas On The Moon. Songs like I Break Mirrors With My Face In The United States and The Powers That B is two of the bands most energetic ones.
7. Graham Lambkin & Michael Pisaro - Schwarze Riesenfalter
Electroacoustic music that took me by surprise. I had previously dismissed Lambkin's music after not understanding the praise for The Salmon Run, a musique concrete record that I still find to be all kinds of weird. Schwarze Riesenfalter however feels far more natural and lies somewhere in between ambient, drone and field recordings. A highly meditative record that's well produced and deserves to be heard with a pair of good headphones.
6. Dawn Richard - Blackheart
Early favorite, released in January already. Great contemporary RnB that does its own thing and stands on some terrific production signed Noise Castle. Incredibly varied while combining introspective songs about drug abuse with empowering pop bangers like Phoenix that don't sound too far from what you might hear on the radio. This is a record that makes me wonder why Richard isn't seeing the same amount of praise as someone like Janelle Monae which do a similar thing, just not as interestingly.
5. Råd Kjetil Sanza Testa - Levande Död I Norra Norrland
Dark ambient record that springs to life through Mattias Alkberg's guest performance where he recites poetry over lonesome ambient pieces or acts as vocals over the terrifying darker songs. It's atmospheric and captures the grand and desolate feel of the barely populated wooden areas of Norrland. One of the best dark ambient records I've had the pleasure of listening to.
4. Girl Band - Holding Hands With Jamie
Melodic record that combines post-punk with noise rock while retaining an easy-going feel. Cynic songs about boredom and the average life is colorized by thundering but controlled bass lines and a climatic explosiveness. One of the strongest debuts of the year.
What surprised me the most is how effortlessly Girl Band pulls of their more chaotic and noisy elements. The buildups to the climax on a song like Paul never feels forced and when it finally hits it arrives just in time and always feels warranted.
Definitely a force to be reckoned with in the future.
3. Timbre - Sun And Moon
This record is the only one on this list that I'd consider a must hear for any fan of music reading this list. While the following records are stronger in my personal opinion, Sun & Moon is a tremendous record that hits almost every note correctly. It's a double album where the first side, the Sun side, features more traditional baroque folk songs not too far from Joanna Newsom even if they often loose the playful edge of Newsom's music for a more mature and evolved feel mostly owing to Timbre's root in classical music that we see more of on the second disc. The second side of the album, the Moon side, features a more classical take of the already established sound of the first side. Choirs, flutes and strings make a more prominent appearance which turns songs into something grander which feels both orchestral and symphonic.
2. Colin Steson & Sarah Neufeld - Never Were The Way She Was
I'm a huge fan of Stetson's music and his most recent collaboration with violinist Sarah Neufeld never fails to impress despite lacking some of the key elements that made an album like Judges the masterpiece that it is. Never Were The Way She Was is stripped down to its core where the only thing you'll find is the combination of violin and saxophone as they brutally step up toe to toe to face in destructive emotional battles over and over again for the span of eight heavy hitting tracks. Stetson's brutish saxophone play combines perfectly with Neufeld frantic, shrieking violin and while the finished product isn't on par with Stetson's greatest solo efforts it still stands as stronger than many of this years albums.
1. Liturgy - The Ark Work
Possibly this years most controversial album. Liturgy has always been seen as somewhat of a black sheep in the metal scene after front man Hunter Hunt Hendrix wrote a quite odd manifest. Black metal purists often look down on the band for attempting to make a pure form of "transcendental black metal" which is supposed to become the American black metal as opposed to the well known early Norwegian scene of the 90's.
The Ark Work might not be the best black metal album ever and at this point I wouldn't talk of Liturgy as a black metal band. They make an odd type of music which on this record conists of tremolo picking meeting computerized trumpets which sound like something you'd be taught to create in an FL-Studio tutorial. The artificial feel of the record is what makes it great. Nothing out there sounds like it and I don't think anyone will attempt to recreate it. It is far too much and it is far too crazy but it somehow works even though none of the elements on the record seem to work on its own (except for Greg Fox' drumming, which is of course outstanding).
The Ark Work takes the cake for shocking, provoking and inventing while also sounding good in my ears.
And that's it for this year! Now I'm off to eat a New Years dinner, head to a New Years party and I'll see you next year!
The Music Of 2015 - Albums
Anton Öberg Sysojev
A place where I can be the narcissist that I am and pretend that people are listening to my opinions.
Thursday, December 31, 2015
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
The Music Of 2015 - Singles
Last year I believe I had about 100 singles for this list but this year I've shortened it down to only 25. Again, it's heavily centered on artists and releases from the first half of the year and a very small amout is from the third quarter. There's definitely room for improvement and there's a lot of things missing from here that I might have enjoyed if I'd had the time to visit their music but this list as it is, will have to do. I'm hoping it still has a few unknown tracks on it.
Favorite Tracks of 2015
25. Sun Kil Moon - With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry [Universal Themes]
24. Father John Misty - Holy Shit [I Love You, Honeybear]
23. Makthaverskan - Witness [Witness]
22. Young Fathers - Still Running [White Men Are Black Men Too]
21. Lolina - Lolina [Relaxin']
20. Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld - The Sun Roars Into View [Never Were The Way She Was]
19. Open Mike Eagle - Dark Comedy Late Show [A Special Episode Of]
18. Chicklette - Predator [Unfaithful]
17. Young Thug - Check [Barter 6]
16. Nicolas Jaar - The Three Sides Of Audrey And Why She's All Alone Now [Nymphs II]
15. Fantasma - Shangrila [Free Love]
14. Råd Kjetil Sanza Testa - Dödligt Vapen [Levande Död I Norra Norrland]
13. Blanck Mass - Detritius [Dumb Flesh]
12. Tricot - Noradrenaline [A N D]
11. Marching Church - Your Father's Eyes [This World Is Not Enough]
10. Joanne Robertson - Hi Watt [Black Moon Days]
Dean Blunt is one of my favorite artists that are active today. I've already had a track from long time collaborator Inga Copeland (released under the name Lolina) on this list at spot 21 but on spot 10 we find a song from his most recent collaborator, Joanne Robertson who've worked with him on his last two albums. Black Moon Days is a decent record in a similar vein to artists like Grouper where atmospheric and lush folk run into a kind of ambient, lo-fi structure. It's an enjoyable record for someone who is into the kind of Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill but it isn't revolutionizing in any way. However, the song, Hi Watt separates itself from the rest, not only through the production by Dean Blunt but also by straying from the instropective, overplayed sensitivity of the other tracks and sounding more urban and modern than before, almost like a mixture of Robertson's solo stuff and Blunt's most recent, folk-ish songs from Black Metal.
9. Grimes - Realiti [Realiti]
An important distinction is that the Realiti in question is the demo one, released early on in the year as a thank you to fans and not the remade version that ended up on Art Angels. They are very similar songs but there's something less artificial about the demo version. It feels more lo-fi, not as cleanly mastered and the main melody feels far more prominent. The album version ended up sounding far more like a club banger, which a lot of Art Angels actually did, but the demo felt more intimate, while still staying true to the feel of a song like Genesis, which is one of my all time favorites.
8. Ghost Bath - The Golden Number [Moonlover]
The full album Moonlover is really nothing more than a cheap, watered down version of Sunbather, where Ghost Bath tries to capitalize on the success that Deafhaven had with fusing shoegaze, black metal and post-rock. Most of the tracks on here are weak imitations of post-rock which give their best at trying to build into some kind of climax but never achieve more than slowing down the pace of the record. The Golden Number is also an attempt at being Deafhaven, but this track is more in the vein of the phenomenal single Dream House. Maybe it doesn't reach exactly those heights that Dream House but it's god damn close. Powerful repetive guitar riffs, banshee-esque screams all culminating in an almost ridiculous heavy metal riff which shouldn't work in the slightest but which actually ends up holding the song together, making it more than just a Deafhaven knock off. Moonlover isn't even good enough to end up on my Honorable Mentions but The Golden Number deserves a top ten spot amongst best tracks.
7. Kendrick Lamar - i [To Pimp A Butterfly]
Hearing i for the first time, the single i, that is, made me very unsure about what Kendrick was aiming to do with his followup to the tremendous Good Kid M.A.A.D. City and when I first got a chance to hear To Pimp A Butterfly I was still unsure of how the penultimate track was to going to work in the context of the record but having drastically changed it, it ended up proving to be the albums highest point, not only as a climactic ending to the long, almost concept-like story that is To Pimp A Butterfly but also as a musical turning point, where Lamar's poem has ended and we move into the self-loving, excusably narcisistic cry for people to "love themselves". One of the most important on one of the most important records of the year.
6. Jamie XX - I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) [In Colour]
I Know There's Gonna Be is an all-purpose song, executed with regards to every little day and more or less a perfect pop song. The kind of song that I can see appeal to more or less every kind of crowd. It's easy going, it's fun, it doesn't try to be anything that it isn't and it also pulls likeminded artists from different backgrounds onto the same track, Thugger representing modern day pop-rap, Popacaan as a more alternative bridge and Jamie XX as someone loved by both Tumblr-crowds and the guys at Pitchfork. It hits every note right, it's the kind of song that I have no problem hearing over and over again; there's really no fault to it. The only reason it isn't higher is because it's not more than a pop song. It is simple, it doesn't challenge and it will be done in a similar fashion, in a different way in another year or two but today, I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) is a text book example of how to make good music.
5. Erik Lundin - Suedi [Suedi]
I was very excited to get to write about this. I normally don't care for what certain critics praise and seeing this claimed as the best new rapper in Sweden is something I seem to hear once every year from Swedish critics but Erik Lundin shines as something different and unique from a pool where there isn't all that much exciting. Suedi almost deserves a mention for the beat alone which is terrfic and unique, sounding not too far from the cloud-rap movement and challenging some of guys like ASAP Rocky and similar's beats but Lundin is also a very skilled lyricist, writing a cohesive song about the oppression and racism that you'll find in Sweden while also rapping about the Swedish political climate of today and retelling his story of coming to terms with an ethnical identity. Very excited for what else Lundin might make and I'd love to hear a full-length debut from this go, let's hope he doesn't go the same way as most "next big things" here in Sweden and drop mediocre EP's until he's forgotten about.
4. Timbre - St Cecilia: An Ode To Music [Sun & Moon]
Timbre is the new flavor of the month on RateYourMusic for this year but their praise is nothing but warranted. Combining the more exciting parts of baroque folk of today (comparisons to Joanna Newsom have been done a thousand times but can definitely be mentioned again) with a classical tinge. The second side of this enormous double album is titled Moon and features the mesmerizing St Cecilia: An Ode To Music, a 13-minute track consisting of flutes, harps and the most beautiful choir you'll hear this year. Timbre's Sun & Moon is an incredibly rewarding listen, one that led me on a long path down classical choral music and this track is the most powerful entity on the record, one I knew would be on this list when I first heard it.
3. Sherwood & Pinch - Stand Strong [Late Night Endless]
Early on in the year Brittish producers Adrian Sherwood and Rob Ellis (aka Pinch) released a collaborative album titled Late Night Endless which seems to have passed every critic who isn't centered on brittish electronic music by. Luckily, I came across it and enjoyed it immensely. The stand out track is the song Stand Strong a dub-techno with an african-influence which perfectly captures the late night mood and feel of a moving city. It's a song I've come back to a lot with very little similar stuff to find. It captures an atmosphere and it does it incredibly well, which is something the rest of the album unfortunately can't match.
2. Death Grips - On GP [Jenny Death]
I don't think I'll ever forget the hype and craze surrounding Death Grips' supposedly final album Jenny Death. It is a culmination of a carreer (maybe) and while the record unfortunately doesn't match up to their, in my opinion, greatest releases it still feels like a fitting end to a long and very important musical chapter.
I remember being at a party that was winding down as people were going to bed when I spotted a new release from Death Grips, a sign that Jenny Death was actually on the way which at the time was huge. On GP sounds like the final breaths of a short but important carreer and it is an uncomfortably close look on the mysterious rapper and front-man MC Ride's thoughts and life.
In the end I'm not quite sure of what I want. Ending the band Death Grips on a track like On GP would leave them at their best, but at the same time I'd always love to hear whatever the three guys would cook up next.
1. Sufjan Stevens - No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross [Carrie & Lowell]
Having to pick the number one spot for this year was quite hard. The list for best songs is usually my favorite even if they're the hardest to write about. There's a much bigger pool to pick from and it isn't hard to make a top 100 like I did last year. The final six or seven tracks were all in the run for the number one spot this year and I'm still not quite sure if Death Grips shouldn't have had it but when I think back on when I first heard No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross I realize that it needs to be number one.
Sufjan Stevens was the kind of artist that I had somewhat moved away from when this track was first released in February but it revitalized my love for his music through this introspective piece which shows us a Sufjan that we didn't know existed. It's a dark song, despite the somewhat longing instrumental about losing oneself. It is the kind of song that I'd never expected from Stevens and I guess that's what shocked me so much about it. It wasn't overly gleeful or melodramatic in any way, it was a naked, exposed Sufjan and it's an absolutely treffic song.
The Music Of 2015 - Singles
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Favorite Tracks of 2015
25. Sun Kil Moon - With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry [Universal Themes]
24. Father John Misty - Holy Shit [I Love You, Honeybear]
23. Makthaverskan - Witness [Witness]
22. Young Fathers - Still Running [White Men Are Black Men Too]
21. Lolina - Lolina [Relaxin']
20. Colin Stetson & Sarah Neufeld - The Sun Roars Into View [Never Were The Way She Was]
19. Open Mike Eagle - Dark Comedy Late Show [A Special Episode Of]
18. Chicklette - Predator [Unfaithful]
17. Young Thug - Check [Barter 6]
16. Nicolas Jaar - The Three Sides Of Audrey And Why She's All Alone Now [Nymphs II]
15. Fantasma - Shangrila [Free Love]
14. Råd Kjetil Sanza Testa - Dödligt Vapen [Levande Död I Norra Norrland]
13. Blanck Mass - Detritius [Dumb Flesh]
12. Tricot - Noradrenaline [A N D]
11. Marching Church - Your Father's Eyes [This World Is Not Enough]
10. Joanne Robertson - Hi Watt [Black Moon Days]
Dean Blunt is one of my favorite artists that are active today. I've already had a track from long time collaborator Inga Copeland (released under the name Lolina) on this list at spot 21 but on spot 10 we find a song from his most recent collaborator, Joanne Robertson who've worked with him on his last two albums. Black Moon Days is a decent record in a similar vein to artists like Grouper where atmospheric and lush folk run into a kind of ambient, lo-fi structure. It's an enjoyable record for someone who is into the kind of Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill but it isn't revolutionizing in any way. However, the song, Hi Watt separates itself from the rest, not only through the production by Dean Blunt but also by straying from the instropective, overplayed sensitivity of the other tracks and sounding more urban and modern than before, almost like a mixture of Robertson's solo stuff and Blunt's most recent, folk-ish songs from Black Metal.
9. Grimes - Realiti [Realiti]
An important distinction is that the Realiti in question is the demo one, released early on in the year as a thank you to fans and not the remade version that ended up on Art Angels. They are very similar songs but there's something less artificial about the demo version. It feels more lo-fi, not as cleanly mastered and the main melody feels far more prominent. The album version ended up sounding far more like a club banger, which a lot of Art Angels actually did, but the demo felt more intimate, while still staying true to the feel of a song like Genesis, which is one of my all time favorites.
8. Ghost Bath - The Golden Number [Moonlover]
The full album Moonlover is really nothing more than a cheap, watered down version of Sunbather, where Ghost Bath tries to capitalize on the success that Deafhaven had with fusing shoegaze, black metal and post-rock. Most of the tracks on here are weak imitations of post-rock which give their best at trying to build into some kind of climax but never achieve more than slowing down the pace of the record. The Golden Number is also an attempt at being Deafhaven, but this track is more in the vein of the phenomenal single Dream House. Maybe it doesn't reach exactly those heights that Dream House but it's god damn close. Powerful repetive guitar riffs, banshee-esque screams all culminating in an almost ridiculous heavy metal riff which shouldn't work in the slightest but which actually ends up holding the song together, making it more than just a Deafhaven knock off. Moonlover isn't even good enough to end up on my Honorable Mentions but The Golden Number deserves a top ten spot amongst best tracks.
7. Kendrick Lamar - i [To Pimp A Butterfly]
Hearing i for the first time, the single i, that is, made me very unsure about what Kendrick was aiming to do with his followup to the tremendous Good Kid M.A.A.D. City and when I first got a chance to hear To Pimp A Butterfly I was still unsure of how the penultimate track was to going to work in the context of the record but having drastically changed it, it ended up proving to be the albums highest point, not only as a climactic ending to the long, almost concept-like story that is To Pimp A Butterfly but also as a musical turning point, where Lamar's poem has ended and we move into the self-loving, excusably narcisistic cry for people to "love themselves". One of the most important on one of the most important records of the year.
6. Jamie XX - I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) [In Colour]
I Know There's Gonna Be is an all-purpose song, executed with regards to every little day and more or less a perfect pop song. The kind of song that I can see appeal to more or less every kind of crowd. It's easy going, it's fun, it doesn't try to be anything that it isn't and it also pulls likeminded artists from different backgrounds onto the same track, Thugger representing modern day pop-rap, Popacaan as a more alternative bridge and Jamie XX as someone loved by both Tumblr-crowds and the guys at Pitchfork. It hits every note right, it's the kind of song that I have no problem hearing over and over again; there's really no fault to it. The only reason it isn't higher is because it's not more than a pop song. It is simple, it doesn't challenge and it will be done in a similar fashion, in a different way in another year or two but today, I Know There's Gonna Be (Good Times) is a text book example of how to make good music.
5. Erik Lundin - Suedi [Suedi]
I was very excited to get to write about this. I normally don't care for what certain critics praise and seeing this claimed as the best new rapper in Sweden is something I seem to hear once every year from Swedish critics but Erik Lundin shines as something different and unique from a pool where there isn't all that much exciting. Suedi almost deserves a mention for the beat alone which is terrfic and unique, sounding not too far from the cloud-rap movement and challenging some of guys like ASAP Rocky and similar's beats but Lundin is also a very skilled lyricist, writing a cohesive song about the oppression and racism that you'll find in Sweden while also rapping about the Swedish political climate of today and retelling his story of coming to terms with an ethnical identity. Very excited for what else Lundin might make and I'd love to hear a full-length debut from this go, let's hope he doesn't go the same way as most "next big things" here in Sweden and drop mediocre EP's until he's forgotten about.
4. Timbre - St Cecilia: An Ode To Music [Sun & Moon]
Timbre is the new flavor of the month on RateYourMusic for this year but their praise is nothing but warranted. Combining the more exciting parts of baroque folk of today (comparisons to Joanna Newsom have been done a thousand times but can definitely be mentioned again) with a classical tinge. The second side of this enormous double album is titled Moon and features the mesmerizing St Cecilia: An Ode To Music, a 13-minute track consisting of flutes, harps and the most beautiful choir you'll hear this year. Timbre's Sun & Moon is an incredibly rewarding listen, one that led me on a long path down classical choral music and this track is the most powerful entity on the record, one I knew would be on this list when I first heard it.
3. Sherwood & Pinch - Stand Strong [Late Night Endless]
Early on in the year Brittish producers Adrian Sherwood and Rob Ellis (aka Pinch) released a collaborative album titled Late Night Endless which seems to have passed every critic who isn't centered on brittish electronic music by. Luckily, I came across it and enjoyed it immensely. The stand out track is the song Stand Strong a dub-techno with an african-influence which perfectly captures the late night mood and feel of a moving city. It's a song I've come back to a lot with very little similar stuff to find. It captures an atmosphere and it does it incredibly well, which is something the rest of the album unfortunately can't match.
2. Death Grips - On GP [Jenny Death]
I don't think I'll ever forget the hype and craze surrounding Death Grips' supposedly final album Jenny Death. It is a culmination of a carreer (maybe) and while the record unfortunately doesn't match up to their, in my opinion, greatest releases it still feels like a fitting end to a long and very important musical chapter.
I remember being at a party that was winding down as people were going to bed when I spotted a new release from Death Grips, a sign that Jenny Death was actually on the way which at the time was huge. On GP sounds like the final breaths of a short but important carreer and it is an uncomfortably close look on the mysterious rapper and front-man MC Ride's thoughts and life.
In the end I'm not quite sure of what I want. Ending the band Death Grips on a track like On GP would leave them at their best, but at the same time I'd always love to hear whatever the three guys would cook up next.
1. Sufjan Stevens - No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross [Carrie & Lowell]
Having to pick the number one spot for this year was quite hard. The list for best songs is usually my favorite even if they're the hardest to write about. There's a much bigger pool to pick from and it isn't hard to make a top 100 like I did last year. The final six or seven tracks were all in the run for the number one spot this year and I'm still not quite sure if Death Grips shouldn't have had it but when I think back on when I first heard No Shade In The Shadow Of The Cross I realize that it needs to be number one.
Sufjan Stevens was the kind of artist that I had somewhat moved away from when this track was first released in February but it revitalized my love for his music through this introspective piece which shows us a Sufjan that we didn't know existed. It's a dark song, despite the somewhat longing instrumental about losing oneself. It is the kind of song that I'd never expected from Stevens and I guess that's what shocked me so much about it. It wasn't overly gleeful or melodramatic in any way, it was a naked, exposed Sufjan and it's an absolutely treffic song.
The Music Of 2015 - Singles
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Monday, December 28, 2015
The Music Of 2015 - Honorable Mentions
Honorable Mentions
It's the 28th of December and it's about time that this list gets put up on my blog. I've felt more and more disinterested by music as of lately and I've been less inclined to seek out new and exciting music. My journey through the many albums of 2015 came to a halt around Summer when I had heard over 200 albums from this year alone which is also why my list almost exclusively features albums and songs from that time of the year.
There are of course a lot of things that I had wished I heard, and an equal amount which probably would have fit onto this list but I've completely zoned out when it comes to new music and for that my list will never feel as complete as I'd consider my previous lists to have been (even if I'd change a fair bit about them if I could). Sadly, making this list felt more in tune with paying respect to traditions and to not break a streak that's been going on for years by now than it actually felt like doing something fun and exciting for ones. I hope that next year, things will be better.
In this section I'm eager to mention a few records that I enjoyed a lot and believe deserve to be mentioned in a different light than the usual list that I end up writing every year. The records on here are ones that could have easily made the top 5 records if not for minor things. Many of these records deserve to be heard, more than several of the ones on the real "Best of the year"-list but they were ones that I personally didn't find a crazy amount of enjoyment from.
In this section I'm eager to mention a few records that I enjoyed a lot and believe deserve to be mentioned in a different light than the usual list that I end up writing every year. The records on here are ones that could have easily made the top 5 records if not for minor things. Many of these records deserve to be heard, more than several of the ones on the real "Best of the year"-list but they were ones that I personally didn't find a crazy amount of enjoyment from.
Father John Misty - I Love You Honeybear
I was initially not a fan of this record and I still believe that it is a quite weak one at many points but I've been coming back to it due to Joshua Tillman's lyricism. It's a record full of love songs, cheesy ones at that backed by baroque pop instrumentals that makes one roll their eyes at how plain and artificial they feel, as if they've followed a mold to create an indie love song. What saves the record, and what makes it fit on this list is Tillman's satirical, modernized love songs. He sings about love and hate as if they were mutual agreements when one agrees to partnership, about the modern values of love, all through a lens crafted by the modern Romeo. It's a record about Netflix and chill, about having a crush on someone from Tinder, about flirting through Snapchat and asking your friends advice on whether or not you should like the cute guy in Algebra's latest profile picture. Tillman does the cheeky satire and irony with finesse on an infitely quotable record which unfortunately could have been better, but is worth a decent amount of praise on here.
Lil Ugly Mane - Oblivion Access
Oblivion Access is the most recent, and most likely also final, release from rapper Lil Ugly Mane who only a few years back had his debut with Mista Thug Isolation, which breathed new life in the Memphis Rap-scene aswell as putting groups like Three 6 Mafia (and associated acts) on the map again. I haven't been able to take in all of Oblivion Access yet, it isn't a huge record but it differentiates massively from Millers' previous output and on its own two feet it stands as one of the most interesting and unique underground rap releases in atleast a few years.
As I see it, we weren't quite ready for a record like Oblivion Access and I don't think most people are appreciating it as much as it deserves at the moment but I don't doubt that it will one day reach a greater popularity, both amongst previous fans but also amongst newcomers to Millers' music. I wasn't ready to put it on my final list even if I believe it could have warranted a spot on there, had it seen release in the first quarter of the year, but it deserves mention just as much as it deserves to be heard by a bigger crowd. I don't doubt that its status will grow with time, as will its impact on Millers' legacy as a rapper.
Damien Dubrovnik - Vegas Fountain
I won't go in depth on Dubrovnik's Vegas Fountain since I know so little about noise. I found it to be extremely enjoyable in my amateur ears aswell as working both as a gateway and a certain sort of guidance for someone like me when it comes to noise and I wouldn't wait a second with recommending this to anyone unacquainted with noise or anyone who believes that the only kind of noise that is out there is the harshest versions of Merzbow and the likes.
Sun Kil Moon - Universal Themes
I had quite high hopes for Universal Themes and Mark Kozelek's record never really matched them. It doesn't reach the heights of Kozelek's strongest suites but it stands out in his discography as a quite odd one. It feels weird to call it folk because it strays very far from what we traditionally classify American folk music is and it tries to tackle various different styles on songs like Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blue and With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry.
It isn't an introspective record but it feels far more personal and intimate that even Benji achieved in sounding. Kozelek talks about his own thoughts in an almost masturbatory way, leaving lots of listeners complaining about how "it's just an old man and his rambling thoughts" which really isn't an incorrect description even if it kind of misses the point.
Universal Themes is not something I care to listen to often: it takes patience and the will to dive down into Kozlek's lyricism and the world he paints around you which is something I don't feel like doing too often. At its core however, it is a truly unique folk record that does many things differently from what most people are used to, which is why it ended up on this list.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma - We Know Each Other Somehow
Describing this is somewhat hard and I guess that's why it ended up here. We Know Each Other Somehow is a slowmoving ambient record. It's minimal but descriptive, painting a world and creating an immersive atmosphere that is hard not to get lost in. It strays from melodramatic ambient of artists like Stars Of The Lid and instead focuses on worldbuilding over emotion. I don't consider myself an experent on ambient and drone but We Know Each Other Somehow is some of the most unique I've heard in the genre and its a record that is mysteriously attractive. It is however far too slowmoving and long for me to revisit it more often than I have, but it's one that haven't left my mind since I initially heard it and one that I felt deserved atleast some recognition this year.
Honorable Mentions 2015
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Lil Ugly Mane - Oblivion Access
Oblivion Access is the most recent, and most likely also final, release from rapper Lil Ugly Mane who only a few years back had his debut with Mista Thug Isolation, which breathed new life in the Memphis Rap-scene aswell as putting groups like Three 6 Mafia (and associated acts) on the map again. I haven't been able to take in all of Oblivion Access yet, it isn't a huge record but it differentiates massively from Millers' previous output and on its own two feet it stands as one of the most interesting and unique underground rap releases in atleast a few years.
As I see it, we weren't quite ready for a record like Oblivion Access and I don't think most people are appreciating it as much as it deserves at the moment but I don't doubt that it will one day reach a greater popularity, both amongst previous fans but also amongst newcomers to Millers' music. I wasn't ready to put it on my final list even if I believe it could have warranted a spot on there, had it seen release in the first quarter of the year, but it deserves mention just as much as it deserves to be heard by a bigger crowd. I don't doubt that its status will grow with time, as will its impact on Millers' legacy as a rapper.
Damien Dubrovnik - Vegas Fountain
I won't go in depth on Dubrovnik's Vegas Fountain since I know so little about noise. I found it to be extremely enjoyable in my amateur ears aswell as working both as a gateway and a certain sort of guidance for someone like me when it comes to noise and I wouldn't wait a second with recommending this to anyone unacquainted with noise or anyone who believes that the only kind of noise that is out there is the harshest versions of Merzbow and the likes.
Sun Kil Moon - Universal Themes
I had quite high hopes for Universal Themes and Mark Kozelek's record never really matched them. It doesn't reach the heights of Kozelek's strongest suites but it stands out in his discography as a quite odd one. It feels weird to call it folk because it strays very far from what we traditionally classify American folk music is and it tries to tackle various different styles on songs like Cry Me A River Williamsburg Sleeve Tattoo Blue and With A Sort Of Grace I Walked To The Bathroom To Cry.
It isn't an introspective record but it feels far more personal and intimate that even Benji achieved in sounding. Kozelek talks about his own thoughts in an almost masturbatory way, leaving lots of listeners complaining about how "it's just an old man and his rambling thoughts" which really isn't an incorrect description even if it kind of misses the point.
Universal Themes is not something I care to listen to often: it takes patience and the will to dive down into Kozlek's lyricism and the world he paints around you which is something I don't feel like doing too often. At its core however, it is a truly unique folk record that does many things differently from what most people are used to, which is why it ended up on this list.
Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe & Ariel Kalma - We Know Each Other Somehow
Describing this is somewhat hard and I guess that's why it ended up here. We Know Each Other Somehow is a slowmoving ambient record. It's minimal but descriptive, painting a world and creating an immersive atmosphere that is hard not to get lost in. It strays from melodramatic ambient of artists like Stars Of The Lid and instead focuses on worldbuilding over emotion. I don't consider myself an experent on ambient and drone but We Know Each Other Somehow is some of the most unique I've heard in the genre and its a record that is mysteriously attractive. It is however far too slowmoving and long for me to revisit it more often than I have, but it's one that haven't left my mind since I initially heard it and one that I felt deserved atleast some recognition this year.
Honorable Mentions 2015
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Saturday, December 19, 2015
Film Review: Daisies [1966]
I've been wanting to pick up blogging for quite a while but it has never really got anywhere as you may see on the duration between this post and the one before it. I've been wanting to review both film and music but I got sick and my life came tumbling down alongside the infection in my mouth. As of now my life is turning around and hopefully I'll find the time to pick up the pace regarding the RateYourMusic Top 100 which I've got three fourths left of and hopefully start reviewing film alongside a couple of albums and similar when finals are over.
Daisies [1966]
Director Vera Chytilova and her film Daisies is probably the best known example of the movement that came to be remembered as Czech New Wave even if someone like Milos Forman probably is the best known director who came to be a part of the movement (even if his best known films are from a very different time and place). Daisies is a fun and easy-going experimental film which follows two odd females and their "spoiled" lifestyles which consist of sunbathing, eating dinners payed by elderly men and causing mischief to their surroundings.
It's hard to say how I personally feel about this film. I find it captivating, despite it saying so little and I have no problem with the more experimental nature of the film, something I thought would be an issue during the films first ten minutes but I quickly came to appreciate the quirky and unexplained nature of the two leads aswell as the clever and vivid editing and the fascinating use of color and their juxtapositioning. Seeing pictures of rows of butterflies flash along the screen as one of the girls' lovers proclaim his love for her "Life without you is miserable!" as a rapid piano is climbing up and down in the background is mesmerizing, entrancing and it's difficult to not get sucked in.
I can keep going about the films strong suites, the sets are done in a colorful and exciting fashion, especially the two girls' little room, but also the incoherent dialogue ("Your legs are crooked", "Don't you know that's just what I based my personality on?") and the monotone, otherwordly feel of the two leads' acting, delivering lines as if they were talking to kids below three on Disney Channel. All of these things add up to a very strong film but what will turn people of from Daisies is the experimental nature. This isn't weird in the sense that a David Lynch film is weird and it isn't avant-garde the way Bela Tarr or Tarkovsky might be considered to be. There's no nightmarish atmosphere that it atleast could be compared to but it just is an odd film that says a lot of things about things that I can't quite comprehend. The film was of course banned in Czechoslovakia back in the days but for "wanton" and not for its criticism's of society (that atleast I interpreted the lifestyles and the motives of the two leads as). It's hard to speak clearly on what deeper themes there is to Daisies and I can't quite express a strong opinion or personal interpretation of this film with only one vieweing in the trunk but I definitely believe that the two girls are intended to work as a criticism against the government or even the burgoise if one would be so inclined (the two girls' ignorance and their careless lifestyles, living without a personal care and always devouring food on someone else's expense), but again these are just brief thoughts that popped into my head barely thirty minutes after finishing up the film.
Daisies definitely made me curious for more of Chytilova's works and it saddens me that I missed the big retrospect that they did on her films earlier this Autumn at the film house here in Stockholm since I believe that finding more of her works outside of Daisies might be hard online. Daisies is a fascinating piece of cinema that takes some patience and understanding from the viewer. It isn't a demanding film but I'd classify it as a sort of "out there"- kind of film. If one can stand the lack of plot then I believe Daisies can easily be enjoyed as a feel good film about two irresponsible girls who go where life takes them and do what they enjoy, whether that is ruining a dinner party or bathing in milk is up to them.
Daisies [1966]
dir. V. Chytilova
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Daisies [1966]
Director Vera Chytilova and her film Daisies is probably the best known example of the movement that came to be remembered as Czech New Wave even if someone like Milos Forman probably is the best known director who came to be a part of the movement (even if his best known films are from a very different time and place). Daisies is a fun and easy-going experimental film which follows two odd females and their "spoiled" lifestyles which consist of sunbathing, eating dinners payed by elderly men and causing mischief to their surroundings.
It's hard to say how I personally feel about this film. I find it captivating, despite it saying so little and I have no problem with the more experimental nature of the film, something I thought would be an issue during the films first ten minutes but I quickly came to appreciate the quirky and unexplained nature of the two leads aswell as the clever and vivid editing and the fascinating use of color and their juxtapositioning. Seeing pictures of rows of butterflies flash along the screen as one of the girls' lovers proclaim his love for her "Life without you is miserable!" as a rapid piano is climbing up and down in the background is mesmerizing, entrancing and it's difficult to not get sucked in.
I can keep going about the films strong suites, the sets are done in a colorful and exciting fashion, especially the two girls' little room, but also the incoherent dialogue ("Your legs are crooked", "Don't you know that's just what I based my personality on?") and the monotone, otherwordly feel of the two leads' acting, delivering lines as if they were talking to kids below three on Disney Channel. All of these things add up to a very strong film but what will turn people of from Daisies is the experimental nature. This isn't weird in the sense that a David Lynch film is weird and it isn't avant-garde the way Bela Tarr or Tarkovsky might be considered to be. There's no nightmarish atmosphere that it atleast could be compared to but it just is an odd film that says a lot of things about things that I can't quite comprehend. The film was of course banned in Czechoslovakia back in the days but for "wanton" and not for its criticism's of society (that atleast I interpreted the lifestyles and the motives of the two leads as). It's hard to speak clearly on what deeper themes there is to Daisies and I can't quite express a strong opinion or personal interpretation of this film with only one vieweing in the trunk but I definitely believe that the two girls are intended to work as a criticism against the government or even the burgoise if one would be so inclined (the two girls' ignorance and their careless lifestyles, living without a personal care and always devouring food on someone else's expense), but again these are just brief thoughts that popped into my head barely thirty minutes after finishing up the film.
Daisies definitely made me curious for more of Chytilova's works and it saddens me that I missed the big retrospect that they did on her films earlier this Autumn at the film house here in Stockholm since I believe that finding more of her works outside of Daisies might be hard online. Daisies is a fascinating piece of cinema that takes some patience and understanding from the viewer. It isn't a demanding film but I'd classify it as a sort of "out there"- kind of film. If one can stand the lack of plot then I believe Daisies can easily be enjoyed as a feel good film about two irresponsible girls who go where life takes them and do what they enjoy, whether that is ruining a dinner party or bathing in milk is up to them.
Daisies [1966]
dir. V. Chytilova
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Friday, October 30, 2015
Film Review: Rashomon [1950]
My first dabble with Kurosawa is with his breakout film, Rashomon, the one that put him on the map after winning The Gold Lion in Venice back in 1951. Most people first come across Kurosawa through his most well known film, Seven Samurai from the late 50's but I'm at a hotel room in New York with about two hours to kill so I don't really have time for three and a half hours of samurai action.
Rashomon is a jidaigeki, crime and mystery story (jidaigeki refers to a japanese story taking place in the Edo era of japanese history which is set between 1603 and 1868) which tells the tale of three men discussing a recent murder and the testimonies surrounding it. A man has been murdered but the suspected murderer, the wife of the man, and the man himself (speaking through a medium) all tell different stories of what took place during that fateful day.
I'll have to admit I first watched fifteen minutes of the film only to turn it off to do something else since the different narratives and lack of leads during the films opening left me disinterested and detached from the story, but this time I stuck it through.
I won't say that Rashomon blew me away or made me incredibly eager to watch the rest of Kurosawa's films. I still feel that Kurosawa might not be the director for me even if I am able to appreciate his different strong suits which I found to be quite apparent in this film.
First, there's the "lead", Toshiro Mifune, who came to be a long-time collaborator with Kurosawa and who's one of Rashomon's strongest suits. He portrays the devious bandit Tajomaru but he displays him with charisma and a cunning intelligence. From his out-of-breath body movements during the fighting scenes, to the spontaneous slapping of insects during his introduction, Mifune breathes life into a film with stale characters, becoming the only one who seems viivd and real in a world where the others seem robotic and scripted. Despite staying out of tune with the rest of the ensemble, Mifune never seems overplayed and always stays true to a certain acting-norm of the time.
While Rashomon is a solid film, it doesn't quite reach the levels I was hoping for it do. Maybe the fault mainly lies with me hoping for richer character drama while watching a film about a crime mystery but I can't help but feel slightly disinterested in Rashomon throughout the film. The different narratives makes me unable to fully immerse myself in the film and the jumps between characters telling other characters stories gives for a couple of quite harsh cuts that fuck with the flow of the film. It's not hard to appreciate Rashomon for what it is, there are a couple of beautiful shots aswell as several intriguing scenes but down the line, this just doesn't feel like a film for me and the issue I have with films set in similar time frames in Western society seems to transfer over to jidaigeki aswell. I truly hope this isn't the case and that I'll be able to enjoy Kurosawa just as much as other people seem to do. I feel that either Seven Samurai or Ikiru might be better at winning me over.
Rashomon [1950]
dir. A. Kurosawa
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Rashomon is a jidaigeki, crime and mystery story (jidaigeki refers to a japanese story taking place in the Edo era of japanese history which is set between 1603 and 1868) which tells the tale of three men discussing a recent murder and the testimonies surrounding it. A man has been murdered but the suspected murderer, the wife of the man, and the man himself (speaking through a medium) all tell different stories of what took place during that fateful day.
I'll have to admit I first watched fifteen minutes of the film only to turn it off to do something else since the different narratives and lack of leads during the films opening left me disinterested and detached from the story, but this time I stuck it through.
I won't say that Rashomon blew me away or made me incredibly eager to watch the rest of Kurosawa's films. I still feel that Kurosawa might not be the director for me even if I am able to appreciate his different strong suits which I found to be quite apparent in this film.
First, there's the "lead", Toshiro Mifune, who came to be a long-time collaborator with Kurosawa and who's one of Rashomon's strongest suits. He portrays the devious bandit Tajomaru but he displays him with charisma and a cunning intelligence. From his out-of-breath body movements during the fighting scenes, to the spontaneous slapping of insects during his introduction, Mifune breathes life into a film with stale characters, becoming the only one who seems viivd and real in a world where the others seem robotic and scripted. Despite staying out of tune with the rest of the ensemble, Mifune never seems overplayed and always stays true to a certain acting-norm of the time.
While Rashomon is a solid film, it doesn't quite reach the levels I was hoping for it do. Maybe the fault mainly lies with me hoping for richer character drama while watching a film about a crime mystery but I can't help but feel slightly disinterested in Rashomon throughout the film. The different narratives makes me unable to fully immerse myself in the film and the jumps between characters telling other characters stories gives for a couple of quite harsh cuts that fuck with the flow of the film. It's not hard to appreciate Rashomon for what it is, there are a couple of beautiful shots aswell as several intriguing scenes but down the line, this just doesn't feel like a film for me and the issue I have with films set in similar time frames in Western society seems to transfer over to jidaigeki aswell. I truly hope this isn't the case and that I'll be able to enjoy Kurosawa just as much as other people seem to do. I feel that either Seven Samurai or Ikiru might be better at winning me over.
Rashomon [1950]
dir. A. Kurosawa
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Sunday, October 11, 2015
Film Review: The Thin Red Line [1998]
The Thin Red Line [1998]
Ever since seeing Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life I had been eager to see what else the man could do. What kind of films does someone who takes on such an ambitious film project do?
I've never been big on war films. The setting of war and battle, aswell as medeival times are probably my two least favorite settings for any kind of film and I tend to mostly be disappointed in the films as a whole. With The Thin Red Line, that wasn't the case. Mainly because this isn't quite a war film, it lacks action packed scenes and focus more on philosophy and the people that actually fight the war instead of the war itself. It doesn't feel right to call it a critical war movie either, but that doesn't automatically imply that it is glorifying the battle of Guadalcanal, it merely puts us in the shoes of soldiers, who do what's considered right while philosphically questioning their actions.
As with The Tree Of Life, there's a sense of beauty in the way Malick portrays humans. The characters feel complex and deep, their thoughts and ideas are bold, interesting and clever. Normally I'd call Malick's characters naive for how perfectly crafted they are. You have Sean Penn's character risking his life through a hail of bullets to administer morphine to the wounded and dying medic, only to berate his superior who tells him he will make sure that Penn's character gets a medal for his actions.
There's also the countless scenes where the American soldiers win a battle against the Japanese, and the rounding up of the defeated enemies after the battle. Wounded Japanese men are crying and screaming with blood soaking their torn rags, either in pain or in fear of what's to happen to them, but the message isn't the same as when Tom Berenger's Sgt Barnes murders innocent civilians in The Platoon where I can almost visualise Oliver Stone grabbing me by the shoulders and shouting "See! War is bad!". The Thin Red Line feels much more in a grey zone, there's a humanity in both sides and the way both sides are depicted makes me think of them more as pawns in a game of chess, expendable, miserable and worthless to the true players of the game. We see a wounded Japanese soldier weeping as he is holding his dead friend while the American victors are watching, he glares at them but not with a look of hate but with desperation.
The main weakness in the film, however, lies in the directionless nature that is easy to pick up on. It's a film that was intended to be far more expansive, with an original play time of about five hours. A lot of that material was cut unfortunately, leaving several A-list actors completely, or almost completely, outside of the film leaving actors like George Clooney and Adrien Brody in an almost cameo-like roll while Gary Oldman was completely cut from the film. This directionless comes in play almost immediately after the siege on the bunker on the hill which otherwise represents almost half the three hour long film. The segment about the bunker is the most action driven part of the film which actually does get quite tense at several moments despite the characters involved not being fully fleshed out yet and with very little names to easily put to the faces in the film.
After the bunker segment we reach the more philosphical part of the film. The different surivivng characters face the consequences of their actions and meet the nature of war through an entirely different lens which leads to lots of worried contemplation over what is right and what is wrong and many other deeper themes. While it definitely is interesting, it does get a bit hard to keep track of who says what when most of it comes from the characters voices dubbed over the silent action scenes. This also leads to an unsatisfying ending which doesn't quite pack the punch that I assume it was inteded to do.
The strongest suits of The Thin Red Line are its techincal achievements. It's a visual marvel and the filmed locations are stunning. The sound is infallable and especially the soundtrack adds another dimension to the film, perfectly complementing whatever is going on on screen aswell as closing the film of with a sense of frisson and on a high note as the film segues from the soldiers into credits. Usually I find that Hans Zimmer's scores are uneventful and merely acting as a note to the viewer on how they should feel regarding certain scenes but in the case of The Thin Red Line, it blends perfectly with Malick's intentions and puts the film in a completely different perspective.
The most gripping part throughout the film for myself wasn't the sad deaths of soldiers you'd come to enjoy, or seeing the suffering wounded soldiers not being able to stomach the hardships of a war that they had no reason to fight. For me the most beautiful part was the first fifteen minutes of the film, where we follow Jim Caviezel's character as he spends time with the native village people of some foreign, exotic place. They live in harmony, and there's a sheer beauty in seeing the army guys playing around with the kids who are wearing rags if they even own that much. I'm again filled with the same feelings that Jessica Chastain's character in The Tree Of Life gave me and there's a sense of beauty and hopefulness in how the people react and treat eachother. The idea of malicious actions is completely out of the window, it doesn't exist in the altruistic and caring world that Malick paints during these fifteen minutes, all accompanied by Zimmer's magical compositions. I guess I'm wishing The Thin Red Line to have been The Tree Of Life - War Edition but maybe I'm being ridiculous.
Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line shines in several aspects, but mostly I want to credit Hans Zimmer and Malick's eye for creating a humanity that I wish I could see more of which are the key forces to The Thin Red Line for it is yet another journey through places I didn't know I could visit through a computer screen. It's a shame we most likely will never see the 5-hour long uncut version, maybe it had been a far more realized film and maybe it could have reached the qualities of The Tree Of Life and placed The Thin Red Line on the pillar towering over other contemporary war films where it may deserve to reside.
The Thin Red Line [1998]
dir. T. Malick
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Ever since seeing Terrence Malick's The Tree Of Life I had been eager to see what else the man could do. What kind of films does someone who takes on such an ambitious film project do?
I've never been big on war films. The setting of war and battle, aswell as medeival times are probably my two least favorite settings for any kind of film and I tend to mostly be disappointed in the films as a whole. With The Thin Red Line, that wasn't the case. Mainly because this isn't quite a war film, it lacks action packed scenes and focus more on philosophy and the people that actually fight the war instead of the war itself. It doesn't feel right to call it a critical war movie either, but that doesn't automatically imply that it is glorifying the battle of Guadalcanal, it merely puts us in the shoes of soldiers, who do what's considered right while philosphically questioning their actions.
As with The Tree Of Life, there's a sense of beauty in the way Malick portrays humans. The characters feel complex and deep, their thoughts and ideas are bold, interesting and clever. Normally I'd call Malick's characters naive for how perfectly crafted they are. You have Sean Penn's character risking his life through a hail of bullets to administer morphine to the wounded and dying medic, only to berate his superior who tells him he will make sure that Penn's character gets a medal for his actions.
There's also the countless scenes where the American soldiers win a battle against the Japanese, and the rounding up of the defeated enemies after the battle. Wounded Japanese men are crying and screaming with blood soaking their torn rags, either in pain or in fear of what's to happen to them, but the message isn't the same as when Tom Berenger's Sgt Barnes murders innocent civilians in The Platoon where I can almost visualise Oliver Stone grabbing me by the shoulders and shouting "See! War is bad!". The Thin Red Line feels much more in a grey zone, there's a humanity in both sides and the way both sides are depicted makes me think of them more as pawns in a game of chess, expendable, miserable and worthless to the true players of the game. We see a wounded Japanese soldier weeping as he is holding his dead friend while the American victors are watching, he glares at them but not with a look of hate but with desperation.
The main weakness in the film, however, lies in the directionless nature that is easy to pick up on. It's a film that was intended to be far more expansive, with an original play time of about five hours. A lot of that material was cut unfortunately, leaving several A-list actors completely, or almost completely, outside of the film leaving actors like George Clooney and Adrien Brody in an almost cameo-like roll while Gary Oldman was completely cut from the film. This directionless comes in play almost immediately after the siege on the bunker on the hill which otherwise represents almost half the three hour long film. The segment about the bunker is the most action driven part of the film which actually does get quite tense at several moments despite the characters involved not being fully fleshed out yet and with very little names to easily put to the faces in the film.
After the bunker segment we reach the more philosphical part of the film. The different surivivng characters face the consequences of their actions and meet the nature of war through an entirely different lens which leads to lots of worried contemplation over what is right and what is wrong and many other deeper themes. While it definitely is interesting, it does get a bit hard to keep track of who says what when most of it comes from the characters voices dubbed over the silent action scenes. This also leads to an unsatisfying ending which doesn't quite pack the punch that I assume it was inteded to do.
The strongest suits of The Thin Red Line are its techincal achievements. It's a visual marvel and the filmed locations are stunning. The sound is infallable and especially the soundtrack adds another dimension to the film, perfectly complementing whatever is going on on screen aswell as closing the film of with a sense of frisson and on a high note as the film segues from the soldiers into credits. Usually I find that Hans Zimmer's scores are uneventful and merely acting as a note to the viewer on how they should feel regarding certain scenes but in the case of The Thin Red Line, it blends perfectly with Malick's intentions and puts the film in a completely different perspective.
The most gripping part throughout the film for myself wasn't the sad deaths of soldiers you'd come to enjoy, or seeing the suffering wounded soldiers not being able to stomach the hardships of a war that they had no reason to fight. For me the most beautiful part was the first fifteen minutes of the film, where we follow Jim Caviezel's character as he spends time with the native village people of some foreign, exotic place. They live in harmony, and there's a sheer beauty in seeing the army guys playing around with the kids who are wearing rags if they even own that much. I'm again filled with the same feelings that Jessica Chastain's character in The Tree Of Life gave me and there's a sense of beauty and hopefulness in how the people react and treat eachother. The idea of malicious actions is completely out of the window, it doesn't exist in the altruistic and caring world that Malick paints during these fifteen minutes, all accompanied by Zimmer's magical compositions. I guess I'm wishing The Thin Red Line to have been The Tree Of Life - War Edition but maybe I'm being ridiculous.
Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line shines in several aspects, but mostly I want to credit Hans Zimmer and Malick's eye for creating a humanity that I wish I could see more of which are the key forces to The Thin Red Line for it is yet another journey through places I didn't know I could visit through a computer screen. It's a shame we most likely will never see the 5-hour long uncut version, maybe it had been a far more realized film and maybe it could have reached the qualities of The Tree Of Life and placed The Thin Red Line on the pillar towering over other contemporary war films where it may deserve to reside.
The Thin Red Line [1998]
dir. T. Malick
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Film Review: Sátántangó [1994]
I've been meaning to write since I last posted here but I haven't been able to. My life isn't quite as busy as it was when I took the break back in August but despite having time and having things to write about I've never been able to fully get my thoughts out in words. It's something that has been troubling me and it's the main reason for the lack of updates on my progress through the RateYourMusic Top 100 albums aswell as my lack of reviews for films that I've watched (because believe me I've watched a bunch). I've got a bunch of drafts that we're finally scrapped after spending hours on them just lying around, mocking me, taunting my ability to actually write reviews but I decided to wait until it finally felt natural to write, when it finally felt good again. This was the film that brought my passion back and hopefully it will stay that way for many days to come.
Sátántangó [1994]
If you scroll down just a bit, you'll find my review for A Torinói Ló (The Turin Horse) which was my introduction to the films and the universe of director Béla Tarr. Now I didn't quite enjoy The Turin Horse as much as I expected to, but I came to be fascinated by the neat little world that Tarr explored in the film. The long takes, the repetitive almost drone-like pace, the misery and the bleak, emotionless world was something right up my alley despite being a bit hard to swallow.
The Turin Horse is probably the film where Tarr takes his style to an almost satirical level as if it was a parody of the what people already thought of his films. It was slower than ever before, even more repetitive, with less dialogue and a story which could be summarized in a sentance (Spoiler, the family horse gets sick and the father and his daughter starve to death) and frankly, it was quite boring. However despite being a slow and boring film, The Turin Horse still somehow fascinated me and I came to want more from Béla Tarr's films.
My next step was naturally to find a cinema that screened Sátántangó, Tarr's 7-hour long masterpiece, which didn't prove to be difficult since several of the Hungarian director's films where to be screened this Autumn at a cinema here in Stockholm. So I falled a bag with sandwhiches, brought a bottle of water and left to spend the day with the bleak, depressing life of a village of Hungarians.
Viewing Sátántangó is not only an enormous project due to its length but also because of how heavy the film is, through themes, characters, setting and overall atmosphere. The film has us following a pair of characters from some village somewhere in Hungary. We know very little of where and when it takes place which adds to the time less nature of the film. Is it taking place in 1994 or is it maybe not even in this decade? The film could even be futuristic, all we know is that the village is in some almost apocalyptical place where it constantly rains over the empty and torn houses.
The film begins with Futaki waking up to the sound of bells, which is explained to be odd since there are no place close by where the sound may have originated from. Futaki is later to be informed about the reapparance of a past villager who has presumed to be dead. The mysterious Irimiás is introduced by word as this mythical man that the villagers seem to fear. At one point Irimiás is referred to as The Wizard, leaving us to believe that this mythical man has some kind of power over the poor common people in the village.
Going on and digging through the plot almost feels redundat since this is a Béla Tarr film and the plot isn't really all that relevant as it is merely yet another tool in Tarr's repertoir where the more important elements of the film lies in the cinematography, the acting, the camera work, the atmosphere and maybe the most important one, the characters. The plot tells the story of how Irimiás returns to the village and tricks the population into giving away all their hard earned money to him throughout the course of seven hours, but if you came into this film hoping for an exciting plot then you've done wrong somewhere along the line.
The strong suits of this film lie in other places. You have the mesmerizing and immersive long takes which might seem pretentious when they're not really contributing anything other than a sense of immersion and atmosphere to the film instead of being relevant to the plot or story. One could argue that Sátántangó could probably be shortened by quite a lot by removing several of these long shots but the film would not be the masterpiece it is known to be if one where to gut it like a fish. Add to that an incredible sense for cinematography, which has created this world and even this universe if we want to take Tarr's other works into consideration of this run down village in the middle of nowhere where the sun never shines and the rain pours in excess.
Sátántangó is the ultimate Béla Tarr experience and I very well do believe that it is one of the greatest films of all time. It's a simple story which yet can be picked apart in many different ways in a discussion of deeper themes and symbolism in the film (does Irimiás represent Satan and the doctor God?) and its the most expansive work Tarr has done, with riveting, deep characters which add enough to depth to the film that a majority of them has a whole hour dedicated to their handling of Irmiás return. The atmosphere is as expected in any film of Tarr's, with bleak and dark landscapes with depressing run down houses, poor people who seem to survive despite barely owning the clothes on their bodies, and it is all realized through Mihály Vig's phenomenal soundtrack (if you even can call it that) or random assortment of compositions, from the tango at the bar, to the repetitive joyful accordion tune from the dance at the pub.
When I viewed Stalker I knew I had seen something phenomenal. A piece of film that, for me, stood above everything I had previously seen to that day. I have not felt that feeling regarding Sátántangó, but I instead know that what I've seen is so far above everything I've experienced that it feels wrong to lump it into the same category as Stalker, Persona or The Tree Of Life. Sátántangó is vast and expansive, it sucks the energy out of you and only leaves a certain emptiness, a void which you yourself have to fill with your own interpretation of what it is that you have viewed. It is a fully realized masterpiece which I don't think quite compares to anything previously created with similar intent.
Am I saying that Sátántangó is the greatest film of all time? Definitely not. What I am saying is that this is a work of art that can't be compared to other films out there, not even the other works of Béla Tarr. It's so different and so unique that it can't really be appreciated the same way you approach films but it does what it sets out to do in a phenomenal fashion.
You often hear people talk about having these check lists for things they want to see and visit before they die. Maybe they want to swim amongst the coral reefs, maybe they want to visit Times Square and see the lit up skyscrapers, or view The Grand Canyon. But amongst all those human experiences I definitely believe that seeing Sátántangó front-to-back with as few pauses as possible at a huge screen at a cinema somewhere, is one of those things that every human owe it to themself to experience.
Sátántangó [1994]
dir. B. Tarr
10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Sátántangó [1994]
If you scroll down just a bit, you'll find my review for A Torinói Ló (The Turin Horse) which was my introduction to the films and the universe of director Béla Tarr. Now I didn't quite enjoy The Turin Horse as much as I expected to, but I came to be fascinated by the neat little world that Tarr explored in the film. The long takes, the repetitive almost drone-like pace, the misery and the bleak, emotionless world was something right up my alley despite being a bit hard to swallow.
The Turin Horse is probably the film where Tarr takes his style to an almost satirical level as if it was a parody of the what people already thought of his films. It was slower than ever before, even more repetitive, with less dialogue and a story which could be summarized in a sentance (Spoiler, the family horse gets sick and the father and his daughter starve to death) and frankly, it was quite boring. However despite being a slow and boring film, The Turin Horse still somehow fascinated me and I came to want more from Béla Tarr's films.
My next step was naturally to find a cinema that screened Sátántangó, Tarr's 7-hour long masterpiece, which didn't prove to be difficult since several of the Hungarian director's films where to be screened this Autumn at a cinema here in Stockholm. So I falled a bag with sandwhiches, brought a bottle of water and left to spend the day with the bleak, depressing life of a village of Hungarians.
Viewing Sátántangó is not only an enormous project due to its length but also because of how heavy the film is, through themes, characters, setting and overall atmosphere. The film has us following a pair of characters from some village somewhere in Hungary. We know very little of where and when it takes place which adds to the time less nature of the film. Is it taking place in 1994 or is it maybe not even in this decade? The film could even be futuristic, all we know is that the village is in some almost apocalyptical place where it constantly rains over the empty and torn houses.
The film begins with Futaki waking up to the sound of bells, which is explained to be odd since there are no place close by where the sound may have originated from. Futaki is later to be informed about the reapparance of a past villager who has presumed to be dead. The mysterious Irimiás is introduced by word as this mythical man that the villagers seem to fear. At one point Irimiás is referred to as The Wizard, leaving us to believe that this mythical man has some kind of power over the poor common people in the village.
Going on and digging through the plot almost feels redundat since this is a Béla Tarr film and the plot isn't really all that relevant as it is merely yet another tool in Tarr's repertoir where the more important elements of the film lies in the cinematography, the acting, the camera work, the atmosphere and maybe the most important one, the characters. The plot tells the story of how Irimiás returns to the village and tricks the population into giving away all their hard earned money to him throughout the course of seven hours, but if you came into this film hoping for an exciting plot then you've done wrong somewhere along the line.
The strong suits of this film lie in other places. You have the mesmerizing and immersive long takes which might seem pretentious when they're not really contributing anything other than a sense of immersion and atmosphere to the film instead of being relevant to the plot or story. One could argue that Sátántangó could probably be shortened by quite a lot by removing several of these long shots but the film would not be the masterpiece it is known to be if one where to gut it like a fish. Add to that an incredible sense for cinematography, which has created this world and even this universe if we want to take Tarr's other works into consideration of this run down village in the middle of nowhere where the sun never shines and the rain pours in excess.
Sátántangó is the ultimate Béla Tarr experience and I very well do believe that it is one of the greatest films of all time. It's a simple story which yet can be picked apart in many different ways in a discussion of deeper themes and symbolism in the film (does Irimiás represent Satan and the doctor God?) and its the most expansive work Tarr has done, with riveting, deep characters which add enough to depth to the film that a majority of them has a whole hour dedicated to their handling of Irmiás return. The atmosphere is as expected in any film of Tarr's, with bleak and dark landscapes with depressing run down houses, poor people who seem to survive despite barely owning the clothes on their bodies, and it is all realized through Mihály Vig's phenomenal soundtrack (if you even can call it that) or random assortment of compositions, from the tango at the bar, to the repetitive joyful accordion tune from the dance at the pub.
When I viewed Stalker I knew I had seen something phenomenal. A piece of film that, for me, stood above everything I had previously seen to that day. I have not felt that feeling regarding Sátántangó, but I instead know that what I've seen is so far above everything I've experienced that it feels wrong to lump it into the same category as Stalker, Persona or The Tree Of Life. Sátántangó is vast and expansive, it sucks the energy out of you and only leaves a certain emptiness, a void which you yourself have to fill with your own interpretation of what it is that you have viewed. It is a fully realized masterpiece which I don't think quite compares to anything previously created with similar intent.
Am I saying that Sátántangó is the greatest film of all time? Definitely not. What I am saying is that this is a work of art that can't be compared to other films out there, not even the other works of Béla Tarr. It's so different and so unique that it can't really be appreciated the same way you approach films but it does what it sets out to do in a phenomenal fashion.
You often hear people talk about having these check lists for things they want to see and visit before they die. Maybe they want to swim amongst the coral reefs, maybe they want to visit Times Square and see the lit up skyscrapers, or view The Grand Canyon. But amongst all those human experiences I definitely believe that seeing Sátántangó front-to-back with as few pauses as possible at a huge screen at a cinema somewhere, is one of those things that every human owe it to themself to experience.
Sátántangó [1994]
dir. B. Tarr
10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Album Review: White Light/White Heat [1968] #72
Updates for my blog have been slow and they will continue getting slower as time goes by. I'm returning to uni in a week and the first students start at Monday already, meaning that I will be busy taking care of the students who decide to join in on the kick-off for the semester. After that I'll most likely be busy with school related stuff and the amount of updates will slow down by quite a margin even if I'll try to write as often as possible and whenever I feel it to be necessary.
However, the run down of the RYM Top 100 continues and next in line is The Velvet Underground's second LP, White Light/White Heat from 1968. This record is found a bit further down the list, around many of the other more experimental records that resides on the list. White Light/White Heat came out the year after the groups debut, after which the commercial failure of The Velvet Underground & Nico had led Andy Warhol to leave the band alone aswell as Nico deciding to part ways with the band. It was a troublesome time for the band where they weren't quite sure of what they wanted to do and internal conflicts between John Cale and Lou Reed were at hands, leaving Cale to finally leave the band after the album had been recorded.
White Light/White Heat is often considered the birthplace of noise rock and atleast one of the first noise rock records out there, marking the most experimental turning point for the band. The record has a pair of fairly orthodox songs that don't feel too far from what the band was doing on the debut, but it also experiments in tecnique and songwriting, having a 10-minute spoken word song as the second track, where panning is used to separate the vocals completely from the instrumentals. The Gift tells the silly story of Waldo Jeffers who decides to mail himself to his long distance girlfriend to avoid having to pay for travel. While neither spoken word or the use of panning is particulary experimental in todays alternative rock music, it was weird and unorthodox back in 68, when the radio played The Beatles and the alternative crowd listened to Progressive Rock.
White Light/White Heat is a staple in music history and a heavily influential record, maybe the most essential, when it comes to noise rock as a genre. It wasn't the record that gave the band the commercial success that the debut failed to find but it might be the band, and the members of the band's biggest mark upon musical history, shaping the direction and ideas of many bands and albums to come in the years after.
I definitely think its an essential when it comes to noise rock and music in general, one of the many records on this list that should be heard by anyone only to be able to appreciate its historical importance. While noise rock usually is seen as a notoriously "difficult" genre, White Light/White Heat combines simple experimentation with accessible songs and song structures, not too far from what you'd find on the self-titled debut making it a perfect entry point into a vast genre with huge differences from band to band and album to album.
White Light/White Heat closes of with one of the most well known songs of the bands career, the 17-minute Sister Ray which would come to be a staple and one of the biggest influence on many of the japanese noise rock bands that were to emerge during the 70's, bands like Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Denudes playing songs in a similar manner, with heavy use of improvisation and enormous amounts of guitar feedback. When you listen to modern noise rock, or even the successors to The Velvet Underground, you'll rarely find tracks like the albums title track or even Lady Godiva's Operation but instead sounding like the enormous Sister Ray which is what marks the most important part of the influence of White Light/White Heat.
I'm a huge fan of The Velvet Underground so I might be biased after all but this is one of the records you need to hear from this list. Not only is its historical influence important to know and have experienced for any fan of music but it's also a great record that doesn't take all that much to fully comprehend and can be, in my opinion, enjoyed by almost anyone with atleast a curiousty for experimentation.
White Light/White Heat [1968]
The Velvet Underground
8.5
Anton Öberg Sysojev
However, the run down of the RYM Top 100 continues and next in line is The Velvet Underground's second LP, White Light/White Heat from 1968. This record is found a bit further down the list, around many of the other more experimental records that resides on the list. White Light/White Heat came out the year after the groups debut, after which the commercial failure of The Velvet Underground & Nico had led Andy Warhol to leave the band alone aswell as Nico deciding to part ways with the band. It was a troublesome time for the band where they weren't quite sure of what they wanted to do and internal conflicts between John Cale and Lou Reed were at hands, leaving Cale to finally leave the band after the album had been recorded.
White Light/White Heat is often considered the birthplace of noise rock and atleast one of the first noise rock records out there, marking the most experimental turning point for the band. The record has a pair of fairly orthodox songs that don't feel too far from what the band was doing on the debut, but it also experiments in tecnique and songwriting, having a 10-minute spoken word song as the second track, where panning is used to separate the vocals completely from the instrumentals. The Gift tells the silly story of Waldo Jeffers who decides to mail himself to his long distance girlfriend to avoid having to pay for travel. While neither spoken word or the use of panning is particulary experimental in todays alternative rock music, it was weird and unorthodox back in 68, when the radio played The Beatles and the alternative crowd listened to Progressive Rock.
White Light/White Heat is a staple in music history and a heavily influential record, maybe the most essential, when it comes to noise rock as a genre. It wasn't the record that gave the band the commercial success that the debut failed to find but it might be the band, and the members of the band's biggest mark upon musical history, shaping the direction and ideas of many bands and albums to come in the years after.
I definitely think its an essential when it comes to noise rock and music in general, one of the many records on this list that should be heard by anyone only to be able to appreciate its historical importance. While noise rock usually is seen as a notoriously "difficult" genre, White Light/White Heat combines simple experimentation with accessible songs and song structures, not too far from what you'd find on the self-titled debut making it a perfect entry point into a vast genre with huge differences from band to band and album to album.
White Light/White Heat closes of with one of the most well known songs of the bands career, the 17-minute Sister Ray which would come to be a staple and one of the biggest influence on many of the japanese noise rock bands that were to emerge during the 70's, bands like Fushitsusha and Les Rallizes Denudes playing songs in a similar manner, with heavy use of improvisation and enormous amounts of guitar feedback. When you listen to modern noise rock, or even the successors to The Velvet Underground, you'll rarely find tracks like the albums title track or even Lady Godiva's Operation but instead sounding like the enormous Sister Ray which is what marks the most important part of the influence of White Light/White Heat.
I'm a huge fan of The Velvet Underground so I might be biased after all but this is one of the records you need to hear from this list. Not only is its historical influence important to know and have experienced for any fan of music but it's also a great record that doesn't take all that much to fully comprehend and can be, in my opinion, enjoyed by almost anyone with atleast a curiousty for experimentation.
White Light/White Heat [1968]
The Velvet Underground
8.5
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Film Review: A Torinói Ló (The Turin Horse) [2011]
Since I don't have any other experiences with Tarr's films outside of what I just witnessed from the comfort of my computer chair I'll try to not go into too much about Tarr as a director or his style or his works and mainly focus this text on my personal opinions of the recent experience with The Turin Horse and what I thought about that film. These are the opinions that I just wrote out through tired eyes at 1 AM from the darkness of my room so I'll apologize in advance for the many accounts of spelling and grammatical errors aswell as my ineducated opinions on the subject of Béla Tarr and art-house films in general.
A Torinói Ló [2011]
Maybe it's naive of me to venture into the world of Béla Tarr with his most recent, and also possibly final work, A Tornói Ló (or The Turin Horse as it is known as in English and also what I will refer to it in this post). IMDB describes this film as being about "A rural farmer is forced to confront the mortality of his faithful horse" something I didn't quite pick up from the film; there was something about Nietzsche and then there was a storm and there was also potatoes.
The Turin Horse is not the film you want to pick for date night. It's a bleak, drawn out and incredibly slow story of a father and his daugther's depressing lives in the middle of absolutely nowhere, where they spend their days doing nothing and then eating potatoes. The man returns home to his house as a devilish storm moves into the countryside to dominate the planes for several days to come. The ever apparent buzz of the storm never leaves the family and constantly sits as a reminder of the troubling situation they're in, like a blister on your tongue or an itch under your skin. The real issue however comes when the family horse gets sick and refuses to do anything other than standing around in the stable, refusing to take the father into town and refusing to eat, leaving the family stranded in their house as the storm continues to rage outside.
While the film isn't necessarily minimalistic, it does a good job of doing nothing for a majority of the film. We see the two characters going about their days in a similar manner, day after day, we see little to no dialogue outside of what the characters absolutely have to say to eachother and we barely see anything other than single, enduring shots of the mundane activities the characters do, such as long shots of them with the potatoes (which is far more perplexing than I'm making it sound).
I enjoyed the subtle details of the film aswell as the change of pace once the film reached its repetitive groove about halfway through. Hearing the neighbor come over and actually give a longer monologue was one of my favorite parts of the film and the only moment that I truly felt immersed in Tarr's world. Suddenly the world felt alive, and not as if the house and its two inhabitants were the last two people standing on earth, it gave a sense of realism to the world which only added to the heartbreak and bleakness of their situation as the movie progressed. I guess that this was mostly due to me being happy over a change of pace in the film, seeing something else than the repeated daily life of the family.
All in all I enjoyed the film. It will probably be a long while before I muster up the power to take myself through yet another of Tarr's enormous, soul sucking, bleak films and it will probably take even longer before I find myself sitting through the 400 minute long Santatango. For now, I'm happy with my experience with The Turin Horse. I might not have been able to appreciate all of its qualities and Tarr still remains a director who I believe is still quite a bit too difficult for someone like me, but I hope to grow fond of him later in my life.
A Torinói Ló [2011]
dir. B. Tarr
6
Anton Öberg Sysojev
A Torinói Ló [2011]
Maybe it's naive of me to venture into the world of Béla Tarr with his most recent, and also possibly final work, A Tornói Ló (or The Turin Horse as it is known as in English and also what I will refer to it in this post). IMDB describes this film as being about "A rural farmer is forced to confront the mortality of his faithful horse" something I didn't quite pick up from the film; there was something about Nietzsche and then there was a storm and there was also potatoes.
The Turin Horse is not the film you want to pick for date night. It's a bleak, drawn out and incredibly slow story of a father and his daugther's depressing lives in the middle of absolutely nowhere, where they spend their days doing nothing and then eating potatoes. The man returns home to his house as a devilish storm moves into the countryside to dominate the planes for several days to come. The ever apparent buzz of the storm never leaves the family and constantly sits as a reminder of the troubling situation they're in, like a blister on your tongue or an itch under your skin. The real issue however comes when the family horse gets sick and refuses to do anything other than standing around in the stable, refusing to take the father into town and refusing to eat, leaving the family stranded in their house as the storm continues to rage outside.
While the film isn't necessarily minimalistic, it does a good job of doing nothing for a majority of the film. We see the two characters going about their days in a similar manner, day after day, we see little to no dialogue outside of what the characters absolutely have to say to eachother and we barely see anything other than single, enduring shots of the mundane activities the characters do, such as long shots of them with the potatoes (which is far more perplexing than I'm making it sound).
I enjoyed the subtle details of the film aswell as the change of pace once the film reached its repetitive groove about halfway through. Hearing the neighbor come over and actually give a longer monologue was one of my favorite parts of the film and the only moment that I truly felt immersed in Tarr's world. Suddenly the world felt alive, and not as if the house and its two inhabitants were the last two people standing on earth, it gave a sense of realism to the world which only added to the heartbreak and bleakness of their situation as the movie progressed. I guess that this was mostly due to me being happy over a change of pace in the film, seeing something else than the repeated daily life of the family.
All in all I enjoyed the film. It will probably be a long while before I muster up the power to take myself through yet another of Tarr's enormous, soul sucking, bleak films and it will probably take even longer before I find myself sitting through the 400 minute long Santatango. For now, I'm happy with my experience with The Turin Horse. I might not have been able to appreciate all of its qualities and Tarr still remains a director who I believe is still quite a bit too difficult for someone like me, but I hope to grow fond of him later in my life.
A Torinói Ló [2011]
dir. B. Tarr
6
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Monday, August 17, 2015
Brief Opinions On Three Films By Ingmar Bergman
I've been trying to focus on watching films from certain directors these past few weeks, to get a greater idea of styles, reoccurring themes and similar. This week has been my venture into Ingmar Bergman, a director I feel that I owe it to myself to be acquainted with.
Smultronstället [1957]
My first dabble with Bergman was, as for many others, The Seventh Seal, which I saw a couple of months back at the start of the summer. I did not enjoy this film very much but I also saw this before getting an apetite for film makers like Tarkovsky and a lot was probably due to me not quite comprehending what I had seen.
However, my next venture would be with Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries), a movie I enjoyed far more than my previous meeting with Bergman. This is a film that tells the story of a man, at the end of his life, coming to terms with the life he's lived and the impact of his behavior towards others. Victor Sjöström plays the lead, the doctor Isak Borg who early on in the film is confronted with the nature of his persona. His daughter-in-law tells him about how his egoistical behavior has come to deeply hurt his friends and family and how his narcissistic nature has lead people to dislike him. Borg, who's reaching the end of his rope takes this to heart, and we see him attempt to change his ways throughout the film, often through dream sequences where his subconscious is telling him of how he needs to change.
While I did enjoy the film, I didn't find it to be as layered and dense as for instance The Seventh Seal which was released in the same year as Smultronstället. It's an enjoyable film that doesn't ever overstay its welcome with many fine qualities to itself such as the outstanding performances from Ingrid Thulin as the daugther in-law and Victor Sjöström as the remarkable Isak Borg, with such a finesse to even the smallest details such as how we moves and how he carries himself. The plot isn't one of the films strong points but the idea of a long car ride where the people who exit the car are not the same as the people who entered it a couple of hours before is a genius way of story telling. I also want to give some credit for the dream sequences, which most likely were one of the earliest ventures into surrealism for Bergman and which achieve the sense of modernist horror that films like Persona would later be known for in a spectacular fashion. Scenes like the opening nightmare and the horrible exam all feel like if someone had fused Kafka with Dali; it's a marvel of beauty and uncertain wonder at the same time.
Smultronstället [1957]
dir. I. Bergman
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Persona [1966]
I came into Persona with no prior knowledge of the film, maybe that's why it took me by surprise. Right at the interlude I knew I was going into something different, and even know, several days later, I can't quite get this film out of my head.
It's this surrealist film about two women, Liv Ullman playing the ill actor and Bibi Andersson playing her nurse is what we see on the outside of the film but different interpretations tell different stories. It's a modernist horror which feels like an enormous influence on a film like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which also features two women with an almost romantic relationship which at times hint at erotic emotions regarding the other person.
You're never quite sure what's going on during Persona and it doesn't really matter for the most part of the film. It's a thing of beauty and one of those moments when Sven Nykvist's cinematography pairs so incredibly well with what I assume is Bergman's vision creating something out of the ordinary and something that feels truly timeless.
Both Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman play off eachother very well, despite Ullman not having more than I believe two lines throughout the entirety of the film, her role stands as pivotal and her performance being as immersive as that of Bibi Andersson, who in the end steals the show.
It's a unique film, unlike anything I have previously seen and without a doubt the most impressive Bergman I've had the pleasure of seeing so far. Next time I'm watching a Bergman it will definitely be a continuation of his more experimental 60's films in a similar vein to Persona because this film without a doubt deserves its status amongst film buffs.
Persona [1966]
dir. I. Bergman
9
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Fanny & Alexander [1982]
I would have saved this post for tomorrow, or even a later day during the coming week, but I just finished Fanny & Alexander and I had to come here to write about it. I was initially not planning on doing a blog post but I feel that I have a considerate amount to say about this film and I might actually put in the effort to say it right here.
When I dislike a film that's considered by many to be great, a classic or even a masterpiece, I usually find that I'm able to, at the very least, enjoy a few of the films qualities, realize that it's not something I enjoy at this moment and time and assume that I'll be able to enjoy it at a different time of my life. This is not how I feel about Fanny & Alexander. Maybe it's wrong to judge Bergman, a director with a vast output of film, on a film that differs a lot from the previous works I've seen, but judging this movie on its own, I can't say that I enjoyed it a lot, or even found myself believing that I'll enjoy it later.
The story is not a very unique one, it's yet another tale of kids having to suffer through the bad choices of adults, and yet again another story where the kids have to suffer because the adults marries into a horrible relationship with an abusive partner. I do feel empathy for both Fanny & Alexander who are the innocent bystanders, caught in a crossfire of a war that they never belonged to, and I definitely sat on my edge during the scene when Alexander has to swear on the Bible in front of his awful step father but most of all I feel annoyed by the whole situation.
The films's greatest trait is that it plays like the Russian literature classics. It feels like the Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov of film: being almost excruciatingly long, with many characters all with their complex and individual personas, and with a story about the people themselves in a grandiose scope instead of dabbling with existential or philosphoical themes at an equally big level. The story however, is not very interesting and the first half of the film is slow and predictable and this predictability leaves me with a disliking for the characters which feel stupid and naive who constantly do the mistakes you know that they will do. I do believe that the closing part of the film, from when the kids finally leave the horrible stepfathers home to be the most interesting parts of the film. Alexander's meeting with Ismael and the closure to the bishops story arch comes unexpected and almost feels Tarkovvsky-an, where an otherwordly element suddenly finds its way into the otherwise naturalistic story leaving the viewer wondering if it was some kind of clever deception or if things aren't what they seem to be.
Aside from the fact that it feels like a filmatisation of the Russian greats, credit should definitely go to Sven Nykvist (would you have expected differently?) aswell as the terrific work on the sets and the costumes. The different houses that the film is set in have an incredibly rich environment, from the doll makers house to the Ekdahl estate and paired with Nykvist's phenomenal eye for a gorgeus shot leaves a fluidity and a living feel to the world that the film is set in. I do however believe that Nykvist has done far more impressive work with Bergman, but his talent is far from void in this film.
What I dislike the most about this film however, is how awful I find the characters. The burgeoise family that we follow is one that lives a life of luxuary, throwing an enormous christmas party in the beginning of the film for their whole family. It's something I can't relate to in the slightest and something I feel adds to the dumbed down nature of many of the characters, mostly the adults, who live like they've been fed with silver spoons their entire lifes. Maybe conflicts amongst the family members is featured more in the extended version but it's something I felt was lacking throughout the film. The family is there as something huge and important, as we can see in the first half hour of the film, aswell as during the films finale, when Gustav Adolf has his speech around the dinner table, but as it stands now I find that the characters are shallow, narcissistic and uninteresting but most of it may lie in the fact that they are, to me, incredibly unrelatable, aswell as the burgeoisie nature of their behavior being something I have bad experiences with and something I couple with a little drive and little room for development of an original nature. I honestly found the switch of scenes from the police man explaining the situation of the accident at the bishops house, a sad scene in which we see Alexander now realizing that he has been the catalyst for what came to be the end (somewhat) to the man he hated, into this joyous dinner party, where the family yet again is back to living in the excess that they're entitled to, as if nothing awful had happened during the past two hours, to be appalling, distasteful and honestly rude to the viewers; as if the movie had ended on a "and then everything was fine".
Maybe I misunderstood the film, maybe I didn't get the point, or maybe it's just a movie I'll never have any positive feelings around but right now I feel bummed that I didn't do something better with the past three and a half hours of my summer that I didn't spend at work. It is an impressive film, but I don't believe that Bergman has done a good job with this film. I dislike the plot aswell as a big part of what I assume lies in the script (I do believe that most of Alexander's dialogue, aswell as the parts where we see him interacting with characters outside of the Ekdahl family are impressive and actually great) and that is entirely on Bergman and possibly only annoying because I know that he otherwise is massively talented.
I'm not putting a rating on this film because I don't believe I'm sure enough about this film to slap a number on it and leave it at that, I still am curious to see what other people have to say about this film, aswell as maybe letting it sink in for a day or two, but if you've read this far, you can't possibly have any misconception about what my general opinion on this film is at the moment.
Fanny & Alexander [1982]
dir. I. Bergman
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Smultronstället [1957]
My first dabble with Bergman was, as for many others, The Seventh Seal, which I saw a couple of months back at the start of the summer. I did not enjoy this film very much but I also saw this before getting an apetite for film makers like Tarkovsky and a lot was probably due to me not quite comprehending what I had seen.
However, my next venture would be with Smultronstället (Wild Strawberries), a movie I enjoyed far more than my previous meeting with Bergman. This is a film that tells the story of a man, at the end of his life, coming to terms with the life he's lived and the impact of his behavior towards others. Victor Sjöström plays the lead, the doctor Isak Borg who early on in the film is confronted with the nature of his persona. His daughter-in-law tells him about how his egoistical behavior has come to deeply hurt his friends and family and how his narcissistic nature has lead people to dislike him. Borg, who's reaching the end of his rope takes this to heart, and we see him attempt to change his ways throughout the film, often through dream sequences where his subconscious is telling him of how he needs to change.
While I did enjoy the film, I didn't find it to be as layered and dense as for instance The Seventh Seal which was released in the same year as Smultronstället. It's an enjoyable film that doesn't ever overstay its welcome with many fine qualities to itself such as the outstanding performances from Ingrid Thulin as the daugther in-law and Victor Sjöström as the remarkable Isak Borg, with such a finesse to even the smallest details such as how we moves and how he carries himself. The plot isn't one of the films strong points but the idea of a long car ride where the people who exit the car are not the same as the people who entered it a couple of hours before is a genius way of story telling. I also want to give some credit for the dream sequences, which most likely were one of the earliest ventures into surrealism for Bergman and which achieve the sense of modernist horror that films like Persona would later be known for in a spectacular fashion. Scenes like the opening nightmare and the horrible exam all feel like if someone had fused Kafka with Dali; it's a marvel of beauty and uncertain wonder at the same time.
Smultronstället [1957]
dir. I. Bergman
7
Anton Öberg Sysojev
I came into Persona with no prior knowledge of the film, maybe that's why it took me by surprise. Right at the interlude I knew I was going into something different, and even know, several days later, I can't quite get this film out of my head.
It's this surrealist film about two women, Liv Ullman playing the ill actor and Bibi Andersson playing her nurse is what we see on the outside of the film but different interpretations tell different stories. It's a modernist horror which feels like an enormous influence on a film like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, which also features two women with an almost romantic relationship which at times hint at erotic emotions regarding the other person.
You're never quite sure what's going on during Persona and it doesn't really matter for the most part of the film. It's a thing of beauty and one of those moments when Sven Nykvist's cinematography pairs so incredibly well with what I assume is Bergman's vision creating something out of the ordinary and something that feels truly timeless.
Both Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman play off eachother very well, despite Ullman not having more than I believe two lines throughout the entirety of the film, her role stands as pivotal and her performance being as immersive as that of Bibi Andersson, who in the end steals the show.
It's a unique film, unlike anything I have previously seen and without a doubt the most impressive Bergman I've had the pleasure of seeing so far. Next time I'm watching a Bergman it will definitely be a continuation of his more experimental 60's films in a similar vein to Persona because this film without a doubt deserves its status amongst film buffs.
Persona [1966]
dir. I. Bergman
9
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Fanny & Alexander [1982]
I would have saved this post for tomorrow, or even a later day during the coming week, but I just finished Fanny & Alexander and I had to come here to write about it. I was initially not planning on doing a blog post but I feel that I have a considerate amount to say about this film and I might actually put in the effort to say it right here.
When I dislike a film that's considered by many to be great, a classic or even a masterpiece, I usually find that I'm able to, at the very least, enjoy a few of the films qualities, realize that it's not something I enjoy at this moment and time and assume that I'll be able to enjoy it at a different time of my life. This is not how I feel about Fanny & Alexander. Maybe it's wrong to judge Bergman, a director with a vast output of film, on a film that differs a lot from the previous works I've seen, but judging this movie on its own, I can't say that I enjoyed it a lot, or even found myself believing that I'll enjoy it later.
The story is not a very unique one, it's yet another tale of kids having to suffer through the bad choices of adults, and yet again another story where the kids have to suffer because the adults marries into a horrible relationship with an abusive partner. I do feel empathy for both Fanny & Alexander who are the innocent bystanders, caught in a crossfire of a war that they never belonged to, and I definitely sat on my edge during the scene when Alexander has to swear on the Bible in front of his awful step father but most of all I feel annoyed by the whole situation.
The films's greatest trait is that it plays like the Russian literature classics. It feels like the Anna Karenina or The Brothers Karamazov of film: being almost excruciatingly long, with many characters all with their complex and individual personas, and with a story about the people themselves in a grandiose scope instead of dabbling with existential or philosphoical themes at an equally big level. The story however, is not very interesting and the first half of the film is slow and predictable and this predictability leaves me with a disliking for the characters which feel stupid and naive who constantly do the mistakes you know that they will do. I do believe that the closing part of the film, from when the kids finally leave the horrible stepfathers home to be the most interesting parts of the film. Alexander's meeting with Ismael and the closure to the bishops story arch comes unexpected and almost feels Tarkovvsky-an, where an otherwordly element suddenly finds its way into the otherwise naturalistic story leaving the viewer wondering if it was some kind of clever deception or if things aren't what they seem to be.
Aside from the fact that it feels like a filmatisation of the Russian greats, credit should definitely go to Sven Nykvist (would you have expected differently?) aswell as the terrific work on the sets and the costumes. The different houses that the film is set in have an incredibly rich environment, from the doll makers house to the Ekdahl estate and paired with Nykvist's phenomenal eye for a gorgeus shot leaves a fluidity and a living feel to the world that the film is set in. I do however believe that Nykvist has done far more impressive work with Bergman, but his talent is far from void in this film.
What I dislike the most about this film however, is how awful I find the characters. The burgeoise family that we follow is one that lives a life of luxuary, throwing an enormous christmas party in the beginning of the film for their whole family. It's something I can't relate to in the slightest and something I feel adds to the dumbed down nature of many of the characters, mostly the adults, who live like they've been fed with silver spoons their entire lifes. Maybe conflicts amongst the family members is featured more in the extended version but it's something I felt was lacking throughout the film. The family is there as something huge and important, as we can see in the first half hour of the film, aswell as during the films finale, when Gustav Adolf has his speech around the dinner table, but as it stands now I find that the characters are shallow, narcissistic and uninteresting but most of it may lie in the fact that they are, to me, incredibly unrelatable, aswell as the burgeoisie nature of their behavior being something I have bad experiences with and something I couple with a little drive and little room for development of an original nature. I honestly found the switch of scenes from the police man explaining the situation of the accident at the bishops house, a sad scene in which we see Alexander now realizing that he has been the catalyst for what came to be the end (somewhat) to the man he hated, into this joyous dinner party, where the family yet again is back to living in the excess that they're entitled to, as if nothing awful had happened during the past two hours, to be appalling, distasteful and honestly rude to the viewers; as if the movie had ended on a "and then everything was fine".
Maybe I misunderstood the film, maybe I didn't get the point, or maybe it's just a movie I'll never have any positive feelings around but right now I feel bummed that I didn't do something better with the past three and a half hours of my summer that I didn't spend at work. It is an impressive film, but I don't believe that Bergman has done a good job with this film. I dislike the plot aswell as a big part of what I assume lies in the script (I do believe that most of Alexander's dialogue, aswell as the parts where we see him interacting with characters outside of the Ekdahl family are impressive and actually great) and that is entirely on Bergman and possibly only annoying because I know that he otherwise is massively talented.
I'm not putting a rating on this film because I don't believe I'm sure enough about this film to slap a number on it and leave it at that, I still am curious to see what other people have to say about this film, aswell as maybe letting it sink in for a day or two, but if you've read this far, you can't possibly have any misconception about what my general opinion on this film is at the moment.
Fanny & Alexander [1982]
dir. I. Bergman
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Sunday, August 16, 2015
Album Review: Liquid Swords [1995] #78
I've been listening to a bunch of Wu-Tang side projects this week so I thought I owed it to myself to revisit this terrific record which is on the top 100 list anyways.
Liquid Swords came out in 1995 (about a month after I had been born actually) two years after Enter The Wu-Tang had been released and placed the members on the map of hiphop. It's an album that quickly rose to fame and a record that still holds up, twenty years later, due to fantastic use of skits, shining beats and some of the most atmospheric hiphop of the time. Liquid Swords has somewhat of a narrative, which it carries due to its exceptional use of sampling, something that already was popular at the time but hadn't quite been used to the same success as Genius and GZA did on this record. The samples are mostly from the film Shogun Assassin (the film that's briefly featured in Kill Bill 2) and tell the story of a boy having to seek vengeance after the shogun murdered his father.
The narrative isn't incredibly important to the lyrics on the record since only a couple of tracks really rely on the themes of the sampled skits from Shogun Assassin, but they do give the record a certain cold, lifeless feel which would also come to make this record such an atmospheric one, and the one that's the reason behind why this record is almost always recommended as one of the essential hiphop records for the winter.
My first dabble with Liquid Swords was some time when I was first getting into hiphop and when I was mainly interested in the contemporary works of Kendrick Lamar and similar artists. 90's hiphop wasn't really my thing at the time and I had a hard time appreciating the beats on the record, which feels much stronger when paired with the rest of different Wu-Tang members solo output or even when compared to a record like Enter The Wu-Tang where several of the beats feel life less and stale when reassessed twenty years later.
However Liquid Swords came to grow on me and even if it isn't one of my favorite hiphop records, I do believe it's the strongest solo release from any of the different Wu-Tang members, or even Wu-Tang affiliated ones. I love a record that pulls of a certain atmosphere, that can paint these vivid pictures only through the use of words and sounds and it's something that Liquid Swords pulls of effortlessly, much like Illmatic which I wrote about earlier, even if the world that Liquid Swords paints is a very different one compared to the world of Illmatic.
I will not attempt to dissect the lyrics on this record because it's an element of rap that I have a hard time appreciating if I haven't spent a lot of time with the record and something I can't really speak with an educated opinion on when it comes to this record and many others in the genre. The strongest elements of Liquid Swords lies in the beats and the atmosphere. While the beats are a product of their time and can feel a bit stale and repetitive when compared to those of modern beat makers, they still shine when paired against boom bap beats of a similar or earlier era.
Liquid Swords did something original even if it isn't a long step from similar works of the era, and would later come to be recognized as one of the greats of the genre, and a hugely influential work for the hiphop that we would later see during the late 90's and early 00's.
Liquid Swords [1995]
Genius/GZA
7/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Liquid Swords came out in 1995 (about a month after I had been born actually) two years after Enter The Wu-Tang had been released and placed the members on the map of hiphop. It's an album that quickly rose to fame and a record that still holds up, twenty years later, due to fantastic use of skits, shining beats and some of the most atmospheric hiphop of the time. Liquid Swords has somewhat of a narrative, which it carries due to its exceptional use of sampling, something that already was popular at the time but hadn't quite been used to the same success as Genius and GZA did on this record. The samples are mostly from the film Shogun Assassin (the film that's briefly featured in Kill Bill 2) and tell the story of a boy having to seek vengeance after the shogun murdered his father.
The narrative isn't incredibly important to the lyrics on the record since only a couple of tracks really rely on the themes of the sampled skits from Shogun Assassin, but they do give the record a certain cold, lifeless feel which would also come to make this record such an atmospheric one, and the one that's the reason behind why this record is almost always recommended as one of the essential hiphop records for the winter.
My first dabble with Liquid Swords was some time when I was first getting into hiphop and when I was mainly interested in the contemporary works of Kendrick Lamar and similar artists. 90's hiphop wasn't really my thing at the time and I had a hard time appreciating the beats on the record, which feels much stronger when paired with the rest of different Wu-Tang members solo output or even when compared to a record like Enter The Wu-Tang where several of the beats feel life less and stale when reassessed twenty years later.
However Liquid Swords came to grow on me and even if it isn't one of my favorite hiphop records, I do believe it's the strongest solo release from any of the different Wu-Tang members, or even Wu-Tang affiliated ones. I love a record that pulls of a certain atmosphere, that can paint these vivid pictures only through the use of words and sounds and it's something that Liquid Swords pulls of effortlessly, much like Illmatic which I wrote about earlier, even if the world that Liquid Swords paints is a very different one compared to the world of Illmatic.
I will not attempt to dissect the lyrics on this record because it's an element of rap that I have a hard time appreciating if I haven't spent a lot of time with the record and something I can't really speak with an educated opinion on when it comes to this record and many others in the genre. The strongest elements of Liquid Swords lies in the beats and the atmosphere. While the beats are a product of their time and can feel a bit stale and repetitive when compared to those of modern beat makers, they still shine when paired against boom bap beats of a similar or earlier era.
Liquid Swords did something original even if it isn't a long step from similar works of the era, and would later come to be recognized as one of the greats of the genre, and a hugely influential work for the hiphop that we would later see during the late 90's and early 00's.
Liquid Swords [1995]
Genius/GZA
7/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Thursday, August 13, 2015
Film Review: The Tree Of Life [2011]
I saw this film a couple of days back and I really wanted to write something about it but I just haven't been able to channel my feelings and thougts for the film in a way that I felt pleased with sharing. The other night I tried to explain to my friends, what I found so enchanting about this film, but the only way I could describe The Tree Of Life was as "this movie about the universe and then this couple gets a baby and then two brothers and then one dies in the end but you already knew that and also the dad is Brad Pitt and the mom is Jessica Chastain and it's just super beautiful, do you know what I mean?" but it mostly sounds like the trailer for that Two Guys In A Van film from Rick & Morty.
I really don't know where to go after describing the plot of the film. I absolutely loved the film and it's one of the best cinematic experiences I've had this year. Like the afterglow of some drug, it has stayed on my mind almost constantly since I finished it, leaving a feeling I can't quite describe as anything other than joy and happiness. It saddens me to see so many negative opinions surrounding this movie with the word pretentious being tossed around in almost every criticism of it. Having people explicitly state that they hate a film is always odd to me, seeing how myself, and I believe many others, will often chalk their dislike of a piece of art onto something else than the art being bad. "Maybe I didn't get it? Maybe it'll grow on me? Maybe there's a time and place for it, and I'll come to appreciate it in a couple of years?". But with The Tree Of Life, people have already given up on it.
This is why I don't think I'll ever recommend this film to anyone. The Tree Of Life seems to be an incredibly personal experience for every person that decides to watch the film, be it an experience of anger, detesting the film, or an experience like mine, with nothing but positive opinions of the work.
Seeing the three boys growing up, seeing them play together, creating their memories and building the life that they were to live for the rest of their days in those small moments was incredible to me and achieved something that I believe Boyhood from last year attempted to do: bringing us back into a life that we might have forgotten that we had and loved, reviving those memories that now feel distant and almost foreign but which still remain in the back of our heads.
The Tree Of Life is ambitious, and I can't say that I believe Terrence Malick actually succeeded in making an all-encompassing film that captures the essence of life better than anyone has ever done before, or better than anyone ever will, but there's something here, something that grabs me so deep inside and invokes feelings I didn't know that film could invoke inside of me. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to hug the nearest family member I can see because I suddenly remembered all those times when I could have but never did.
Malick's most admirable feat with this film is, in my opinion, how it puts a perspective on how small we are. It makes you attached to this run-of-the-mill family only to end the film at this almost religious climax with a scene which I assume is meant to be a metaphor for reaching heaven and the after-life, but it suddenly feels so real and puts everything in such a perspective. Seeing the meteor crash into Earth and creating a shockwave that probably extinguished all kinds of life on the planet at the time and having it look like a drop in the ocean that is outer space, while it most likely was the biggest event of their lifes for everything sentient on Earth at the time, is a wake-up call.
The film ends and I see my face reflected in the dark computer screen. I'm not part of the family that I lived with for the past two hours, I'm me. Normal-guy Anton, who needs to go to bed because he has work in the morning. Everything feels so miniscule, so unimportant, life is much bigger than making enough money to go out to drink with your friends on the 25th. Life is more than writing good reviews about the coolest films out there and hearing the most obscure music.
Maybe I wasn't as mesmerized by everything that happened, maybe I wasn't completely locked in to everything that was going on or even incredibly invested in some of the scenes, but in the end I still felt like I've taken a huge kick in the gut and it's a feeling I can't shake. Maybe I'm overrating my experience for various reasons or maybe this film really touched me on a spiritual level, in a way that no other film ever has succeeded in doing? Who knows. It is after all just a film. A film about life, death, religion, God, the after life, Earth, space and the Universe, and I'll never be able to put into words, what this movie made me feel and think.
The Tree Of Life [2011]
dir. Terrence Malick
8.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
The Tree Of Life is an ambitious film about a lot of different things. It starts out with a quote from the book of Job, which for those unaware, is a part of The Bible which discusses God's punishment to those who don't deserve it. It continues with a short speech from Jessica Chastain on the two paths available to the people inahbiting Earth, the way of Nature, and the way of Grace, each to be resembled in the two parents of the family that we're about to follow.
After an opening scene in which the parents find out that one of their sons have died, we get sent into a flurry of images meant to resemble the creation of the Universe through big bang, followed by images depicting the first cellular life forms taking place and so forth. We see the Universe and Earth develop into the world we know it as today for about half an hour, and this is the part that usually pisses people of. It's honestly quite beautiful, and while it might not be part of the plot of the film, it isn't something uncommon in more artsy-films. About forty minutes into the film we return to the Texas family and we reach the main story of the film. The parents are having their first baby and from this point we literally follow the lifes of this family until finally seeing them move away from the house that the kids grew up in, all in the same car.
I really don't know where to go after describing the plot of the film. I absolutely loved the film and it's one of the best cinematic experiences I've had this year. Like the afterglow of some drug, it has stayed on my mind almost constantly since I finished it, leaving a feeling I can't quite describe as anything other than joy and happiness. It saddens me to see so many negative opinions surrounding this movie with the word pretentious being tossed around in almost every criticism of it. Having people explicitly state that they hate a film is always odd to me, seeing how myself, and I believe many others, will often chalk their dislike of a piece of art onto something else than the art being bad. "Maybe I didn't get it? Maybe it'll grow on me? Maybe there's a time and place for it, and I'll come to appreciate it in a couple of years?". But with The Tree Of Life, people have already given up on it.
This is why I don't think I'll ever recommend this film to anyone. The Tree Of Life seems to be an incredibly personal experience for every person that decides to watch the film, be it an experience of anger, detesting the film, or an experience like mine, with nothing but positive opinions of the work.
Seeing the three boys growing up, seeing them play together, creating their memories and building the life that they were to live for the rest of their days in those small moments was incredible to me and achieved something that I believe Boyhood from last year attempted to do: bringing us back into a life that we might have forgotten that we had and loved, reviving those memories that now feel distant and almost foreign but which still remain in the back of our heads.
The Tree Of Life is ambitious, and I can't say that I believe Terrence Malick actually succeeded in making an all-encompassing film that captures the essence of life better than anyone has ever done before, or better than anyone ever will, but there's something here, something that grabs me so deep inside and invokes feelings I didn't know that film could invoke inside of me. I want to cry, I want to scream, I want to hug the nearest family member I can see because I suddenly remembered all those times when I could have but never did.
Malick's most admirable feat with this film is, in my opinion, how it puts a perspective on how small we are. It makes you attached to this run-of-the-mill family only to end the film at this almost religious climax with a scene which I assume is meant to be a metaphor for reaching heaven and the after-life, but it suddenly feels so real and puts everything in such a perspective. Seeing the meteor crash into Earth and creating a shockwave that probably extinguished all kinds of life on the planet at the time and having it look like a drop in the ocean that is outer space, while it most likely was the biggest event of their lifes for everything sentient on Earth at the time, is a wake-up call.
The film ends and I see my face reflected in the dark computer screen. I'm not part of the family that I lived with for the past two hours, I'm me. Normal-guy Anton, who needs to go to bed because he has work in the morning. Everything feels so miniscule, so unimportant, life is much bigger than making enough money to go out to drink with your friends on the 25th. Life is more than writing good reviews about the coolest films out there and hearing the most obscure music.
Maybe I wasn't as mesmerized by everything that happened, maybe I wasn't completely locked in to everything that was going on or even incredibly invested in some of the scenes, but in the end I still felt like I've taken a huge kick in the gut and it's a feeling I can't shake. Maybe I'm overrating my experience for various reasons or maybe this film really touched me on a spiritual level, in a way that no other film ever has succeeded in doing? Who knows. It is after all just a film. A film about life, death, religion, God, the after life, Earth, space and the Universe, and I'll never be able to put into words, what this movie made me feel and think.
The Tree Of Life [2011]
dir. Terrence Malick
8.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
Wednesday, August 12, 2015
Album Review: Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven [2000] #31
Decided to write about this one since I just bought tickets to see them a couple of minutes ago.
This is the second and final Godspeed You! Black Emperor record that you'll find on this list. It is the followup to F#A#infinity which I previously wrote about on this blog a few days prior and an album that lands a lot higher than its predecessor. Lift Your Skinny Fists came out in 2000 and is a monumental release for post-rock as a genre, inspiring many followers and being a staple amongst what is often known as the "second-wave" of post-rock which consisted of tracks around 15-minutes in length with a big lineup of musicians creating rock music that owes its influences to classical compositions in structure, while being straightforward rock muisc seeing to instrumentalisation and performance.
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven would later go on to be the defining factor in how post-rock as a genre would develop in today's decade where most would consider us to be in a the "third-wave" of post-rock where bands like Explosions In The Sky and This Will Destroy You copy what Godspeed You! were doing, not only thematically, but also musically. While post-rock might be considered a niche genre, and lots of people probably have a different favorite when it comes to the post-rock of the last decade, you can't really take away the influential status that this record has on the modern day music of the genre.
The album consists of four tracks, all reaching around 20-minutes of playtime, making the album almost 90 minutes long. The tracks evolve and shapeshift during their duration, always closing of as something completely different from how it started of. It's crescendo based compositions, with glimpses of field recordings, sampled vocals, and spoken word being a big element of what would come to create the atmosphere and feeling of the record without there having to be any need for vocals on the album.
Godspeed You! is often cited as a very political band which might be a funny thing to say considering that none of their records (not counting All Lights Fucked) are completely void of any kind of sung vocals. There's the spoken word section of the opening track on F#A#infinity, aswell as the spoken word on Blaise Bailey Finnegan on the 1999 EP Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada which are what contributes to the fact of Godspeed's members being somewhat anarchistic and anti-government.
On Lift Your Skinny Fists, the only spoken word you'll really find is the recording of a man speaking about Coney Island, in the opening minutes of the track Sleep, the behemoth of the record. Sleep starts of with the man being nostalgic about growing up around Coney Island, closing of with retelling of how him and his friends used to sleep on the beach: "We used to sleep on the beach! Sleep overnight! They don't do it anymore though, things change you know. They don't sleep anymore on the beach." The story ends with the melancholic string section coming in and slowly, with the help of a few guitars the track takes of into a haunting chaos of frantic drumming as the track sets of into static about ten minutes in. The second half of the song has us reaching building towards yet another crescendo as the track sets of into something minimal and sad, as the mans story of Sleep comes to a final end.
This is how most songs on Lift Your Skinny Fists are built. They are made around the crescendos that would come to be the main factor of the bands that were inspired by Godspeed! but they're always built and orchestrated with a ton of emotion. I don't need the man from Sleep to tell me his sad story to feel affected by Godspeed's music on this record, there's enough emotion loaded into the intro on Storm or the climax with the singing children on Antennas To Heaven. It's an album full of different kinds of emotion and the way its portrayed, through a singular rock bands long performances is a beauty in itself.
I first came across this record during my last semester of what I'd assume is the Swedish equivalent of high school. At the time I wasn't sure of what to think of it. It was so incredibly long and with so little to hold onto for someone who wasn't able to completely engulf myself in the music and not use it as background music but with time I grew to appreciate greatly.
Even today I'm not sure if I can think of any record in the genre that truly compares and outshines it in what Godspeed was doing on this record. There's no instrumental record in the genre of rock music that really grabs me emotionally as much as this one does. Maybe it's some kind of nostalgia, maybe I'm just infatuated with this record. It's one of the most unique experiences on this list and alongside its darker counterpart F#A#infinity, one that I can not recommend enough. I'd suggest putting on some headphones and just lying down on your bed, couch, in the sun or wherever and just completely immersing yourself in the music. In a track like Antennas To Heaven or Sleep and just treating yourself to the experience of listening closely to all the tiny little details that this record has in store for you. It is one of the most unique experiences in post-rock alongside Spiderland, Soundtracks For The Blind and Telegraphs In Negative/Mouths Trapped In Static and something I wish more people out there had heard.
Do yourself a favor and listen to this record, if only to get an idea of how the second-wave of post-rock came to be and how Godspeed You! Black Emperor came to be the legendary band that they are today.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven [2000]
9/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
This is the second and final Godspeed You! Black Emperor record that you'll find on this list. It is the followup to F#A#infinity which I previously wrote about on this blog a few days prior and an album that lands a lot higher than its predecessor. Lift Your Skinny Fists came out in 2000 and is a monumental release for post-rock as a genre, inspiring many followers and being a staple amongst what is often known as the "second-wave" of post-rock which consisted of tracks around 15-minutes in length with a big lineup of musicians creating rock music that owes its influences to classical compositions in structure, while being straightforward rock muisc seeing to instrumentalisation and performance.
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven would later go on to be the defining factor in how post-rock as a genre would develop in today's decade where most would consider us to be in a the "third-wave" of post-rock where bands like Explosions In The Sky and This Will Destroy You copy what Godspeed You! were doing, not only thematically, but also musically. While post-rock might be considered a niche genre, and lots of people probably have a different favorite when it comes to the post-rock of the last decade, you can't really take away the influential status that this record has on the modern day music of the genre.
The album consists of four tracks, all reaching around 20-minutes of playtime, making the album almost 90 minutes long. The tracks evolve and shapeshift during their duration, always closing of as something completely different from how it started of. It's crescendo based compositions, with glimpses of field recordings, sampled vocals, and spoken word being a big element of what would come to create the atmosphere and feeling of the record without there having to be any need for vocals on the album.
Godspeed You! is often cited as a very political band which might be a funny thing to say considering that none of their records (not counting All Lights Fucked) are completely void of any kind of sung vocals. There's the spoken word section of the opening track on F#A#infinity, aswell as the spoken word on Blaise Bailey Finnegan on the 1999 EP Slow Riot For New Zero Kanada which are what contributes to the fact of Godspeed's members being somewhat anarchistic and anti-government.
On Lift Your Skinny Fists, the only spoken word you'll really find is the recording of a man speaking about Coney Island, in the opening minutes of the track Sleep, the behemoth of the record. Sleep starts of with the man being nostalgic about growing up around Coney Island, closing of with retelling of how him and his friends used to sleep on the beach: "We used to sleep on the beach! Sleep overnight! They don't do it anymore though, things change you know. They don't sleep anymore on the beach." The story ends with the melancholic string section coming in and slowly, with the help of a few guitars the track takes of into a haunting chaos of frantic drumming as the track sets of into static about ten minutes in. The second half of the song has us reaching building towards yet another crescendo as the track sets of into something minimal and sad, as the mans story of Sleep comes to a final end.
This is how most songs on Lift Your Skinny Fists are built. They are made around the crescendos that would come to be the main factor of the bands that were inspired by Godspeed! but they're always built and orchestrated with a ton of emotion. I don't need the man from Sleep to tell me his sad story to feel affected by Godspeed's music on this record, there's enough emotion loaded into the intro on Storm or the climax with the singing children on Antennas To Heaven. It's an album full of different kinds of emotion and the way its portrayed, through a singular rock bands long performances is a beauty in itself.
I first came across this record during my last semester of what I'd assume is the Swedish equivalent of high school. At the time I wasn't sure of what to think of it. It was so incredibly long and with so little to hold onto for someone who wasn't able to completely engulf myself in the music and not use it as background music but with time I grew to appreciate greatly.
Even today I'm not sure if I can think of any record in the genre that truly compares and outshines it in what Godspeed was doing on this record. There's no instrumental record in the genre of rock music that really grabs me emotionally as much as this one does. Maybe it's some kind of nostalgia, maybe I'm just infatuated with this record. It's one of the most unique experiences on this list and alongside its darker counterpart F#A#infinity, one that I can not recommend enough. I'd suggest putting on some headphones and just lying down on your bed, couch, in the sun or wherever and just completely immersing yourself in the music. In a track like Antennas To Heaven or Sleep and just treating yourself to the experience of listening closely to all the tiny little details that this record has in store for you. It is one of the most unique experiences in post-rock alongside Spiderland, Soundtracks For The Blind and Telegraphs In Negative/Mouths Trapped In Static and something I wish more people out there had heard.
Do yourself a favor and listen to this record, if only to get an idea of how the second-wave of post-rock came to be and how Godspeed You! Black Emperor came to be the legendary band that they are today.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven [2000]
9/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev
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