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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Album Review: Led Zeppelin [1969] #39

Led Zeppelin's debut shows that the band had quite a ways to go before they reached the synergy that's apparent on their fourth record. They were still all talented musicians but they don't play of eachother as well as they would come to do in the future years ahead of them. Paige's voice still sounds like the shriek of a banshee, John Bonham's drums still sound epic and the blues influences are stronger than ever. It's a record that shows the roots of the band even better than their later records would do, the records where they settled into the style and feel that they would come to be known for, even 50 years after their prime.



I don't have a lot to say about this record outside of the fact that it ultimately left me disappointed. It's one of the few records from this list that I previously hadn't heard so I've given it a couple of chances but none of the tracks have really impressed me. It's not really a bad record, just a boring one that lacks the energy and force of their later records. No tracks really stands out as much as some of their most well known, despite tracks like Dazed And Confused, You Shook Me and Babe I'm Gonna Leave You are some of their most well known songs throughout their career.

Led Zeppelin's debut just isn't as impressive as it might have been when it was released in 69. It's a straightforward blues rock record that doesn't do much to differentiate itself from what was already a thing at the time, and only comes through with some melodic, slow rock music. If you're a big fan of Led Zeppelin then fine, this will most likely appeal to you aswell, but I can't fathom how anyone would consider this to be one of their strongest releases, when it's, in my opinion, weaker in every single aspect of their music and unfortunately, not even a good record. It doesn't deserve to be on this list and most likely is just on here because of it being the debut from an already popular band. Houses Of Holy deserves its spot on this top 100 a lot more than this does. Hell, I could probably name atleast two dozen albums that are amongst the top 100-199 that, in my opinion, outshines this by a mile. Sorry Zeppelin.

Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin [1969]
4/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Tago Mago [1971] #69

As you move further down this list we reach more and more of the less accessible albums on the top 100. Around the 60 slot you've got things like Zappa, Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, Spiderland, White Light/White Heat, and maybe the most experimental one of them all, Tago Mago, by the German krautrock band Can.

Now krautrock sounds like a silly term for someone who is new to German experimental rock acts and not already accustomed to Can and Faust's music. Krautrock is pretty much the term used to describe German Prog Rock fromt he 70's, where bands like Can and early Kraftwerk dominated with a funky style of 60's rock music infused with unorthodox and original elements.



Tago Mago is Can's most popular album and the most unique one of the often talked about holy trinity of Can, the three album stretch of Tago Mago (71), Ege Bamyasi (72) and Future Days (73), where Tago Mago is the combination of the rhytmic, funky, and tropical elements of Future Days with the more experimental stray from progressive rock that was Ege Bamyasi all mixed in one. While my personal favorite Can release is Future Days, I do believe that Tago Mago deserve the praise it often receives for its uniqueness and complexity. It's a record that I still don't think I fully grasp the intention of, and the second half of the record is still quite a mystery to me and something I'm not quite sure if I love or hate even though it's been almost a year since I first heard it and there's been many playthroughs in those days that have passed.

Tago Mago starts of with a simple A-Side that I believe that most fans of Anglo-Prog will enjoy. It is after all just a different, more alternative take on standard rock music even if it does a lot of things differently from a band like Pink Floyd. There's no grandiose feel, the focus of the music is on rhytm and melody, vocals are incoherent ramblings and the drumming takes a centrical role and almost being the forefront of the bands music.

I have a hard time putting words into how any kind of prog rock really sounds so I'll try to stay away from long descriptions of the musical notions of the four first tracks on Tago Mago and stick with calling them funky and groovy. Drumming is, as I mentioned before, a heavy role of Can's music, accompanying the guitar lines in a different fashion to other progressive rock. The band dances after Jaki Liebezeit's drumming.

Now the first side is much more easily approachable for someone with a background in progressive rock, but it is the second side of the record that makes the record the inaccessible mess it is. After the momentuous Halleluhwah we enter the second disc and the records B-Side with the track Aumgn, which is an experiment in music almost reminiscnent of modern day dark ambient where haunting, ghastly vocals move around a sonic airspace of random kinds of noises. There's no band playing anymore, there's no drumming, no guitars, just frightening noises that have no place next to the groovy side that opened the album.

Aumgn still remains an experimental rock masterpiece who's influence can be foind in so much to come, from the experimental side of post-punk that would emerge in a couple of years with bands like This Heat and The Pop Group, aswell as a being reminiscnent of free-jazz during the final minutes of the song as the drumming enters the fray to increase the chaos and uncertainty of the track.

It fades into Peking O, another experimental mess that might be even more frightening seeing to the screamed incoherent vocals that aren't too far from a track like Frankie Teardrop of Suicide's S/T, while Bring Me Coffe Or Tea ends the album with a circle around to more standardized sound which still feels quite the distance away from a track like Paperhouse or Oh Yeah.

So how did Tago Mago end up this far up this list? I'm not saying that the band and the album doesn't deserve its place on here, I'm just questioning how, on a list that features barely a single truly difficult album, you find a record like Tago Mago who's second half is far more inaccessible than anything you'll find on the next 200 spots on the list. 

The closest you'll find is most likely Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, a jazz fusion record that combines the ideas of free jazz with the rock music of the 60's, to create an almost two hours long opus that challenges a listeners attention and focus on a completely different level. While Bitches Brew might not be easily digestible, it doesn't challenge the listeneres perception of what is music as much as Tago Mago might do. 

Tago Mago might be the biggest challenge on the top 100 and one that I don't expect anyone who isn't familiar with a majority of the output on this chart will enjoy anytime soon after their first meeting with the record. Its a very different breed of progressive rock, as much of the German output is when compared to the biggest Brittish bands, but its most likely the most definite and essential of the biggest krautrock releases out there (next to Faust and Neu). 

Can

Tago Mago [1971]

8/10

Anton Öberg Sysojev

My Thoughts On "The Mirror" [1975]

I've been venturing further into the filmography of Tarkovsky after falling in love with Stalker, one of the best movies I've seen in a very long time, and I've decided to dive even deeper down the rabbit hole while I still have a lot of free time before I have to return to my studies in a couple of weeks. I saw Andrei Rublev, one of Tarkovsky's most well received films and chose to continue my journey with another one of his most praised, The Mirror.

The Mirror is far more impenetrable than Stalker and Andrei Rublev which both are quite straightforward even if there is a depth to them, barely having any narrative and staying in a dream like state in which a lot happens, but very little is explained.

The film follows a dying man's memories of his life and the different moments that came to shape who he had been during his life even if the viewers don't learn that he's just now dying until we reach the very end of the movie. Technically this would be me spoiling the ending of the film but I believe that the film becomes much less confusing when you know that the man is seeing his life flash before his eyes and the different events of the film aren't just random scenes with no connection whatsoever.

It is definitely a surrealistic film, reminiscent of a film like Mulholland Drive (or other surrealistic Lynch-works) for its dream like and abstract atmosphere. Scenes and characters actions make some sense and what's going on on screen is never completely abstract just a bit confusing when taking the film as a whole into question. It is a detached film, with many different layers, several of which I most likely haven't given a single thought from my first and only vieweing and with many themes that hopefully will reveal themselves as I revisit this film down the line.



The film follows two different kinds of storylines, one being the mans experiences growing up with his mother and the other one being the mans life as an adult, with his wife and his son. It sounds straightforward enough but it gets impossible to keep track of when the actor that plays the man's mother also plays his wife and the actor who plays the man as a child also plays his son, so you're never quite sure if what you're seeing is his own experiences or the experiences he's had through his son. This is only one of the few things that makes the film difficult to keep track of, another reason would be the lack of narrative. You've got scenes that have no connection to eachother and nothing that either creates or furthers any kind of plot, which leads to the viewer never being quite sure of exactly what is going on.

But The Mirror isn't a puzzle waiting for the viewer to finally solve, it was never intended to be a mystery like the aforementioned Mulholland Drive which has its clues laid out perfectly for the viewers. It is a grand spectacle that leaves its true meaning up to the viewer to decipher. It's a film that should be viewed and then thought about and discussed, where the real heavy stuff lies in the different themes that Tarkovsky bring up with this film. It's a work that's so massive and so complex, despite being Tarkovsky's shortest film and the one that's the least coherent.

I might not have loved it as much as I loved Stalker but I found this film to be immersive and incredibly thought provoking. It's one that I've waited to write about for a few days just so that I could contemplate the film in peace and quiet, not worrying about shitting out a bunch of sentences on whether it's good or not.

If I would score The Mirror it would probably land somewhere around an eight but I didn't feel like writing a review since I wasn't so sure on whether or not I could do the film its justice if I opted to write my thoughts on it after only having viewed it once when it definitely needs a lot of time to fully sink in.

I pretty much let this text become what I tried to avoid, a text about whether or not I thought The Mirror was good or not. I'll close of with saying that I definitely thought it was great but it's not an accessible film and not the kind of film you grab a bowl of popcorn and then go watch with your buddies on a Friday night.

The Mirror [1975]
dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: In Rainbows [2007] #59

Radiohead has a big part of their discography on this list and In Rainbows is, after The King Of Limbs, their most recent one. It is also the most recent addition to this top 100, seeing to release date being mere eight years old as I'm writing this blog post. In Rainbows is, in my opinion, their greatest release yet, despite the fact that its mostly OK Computer and Kid A that gets talked about when the question of Radiohead's best album.

What resonates with me on In Rainbows that I can't find in their other records is the gloomy and dark feel. There are very few energetic songs on this album and most of the tracks are cathartic pieces where Yorke's falsetto meets slow piano chords or bare acoustic guitars instead of groovy basslines or rougher electric guitars. It's a sparse and introspective album that feels lonesome and foreign. It's a combination of elements present throughout all of their previously released albums, with IDM-influenced tracks like 15 Step taking cues from Kid A and Amnesiac, slowcore-influenced songs like the The Bends-esque nude, the high-energy burts Bodysnatchers not sounding too far from the stuff on Hail To The Thief all while combining it with a more modern take on alt-rock in tracks like Reckoner and Weird Fishes/Arpeggi.



It might sound like the album is a mess to listen to but it all ties together so naturally under a similar underlying tone and the variation between the tracks never feel too far off which is what makes the whole album work so well as a whole.

In Rainbows starts with the already mentioned 15 Step, which might feel like a throwback to some of Thom Yorke's side projects or their Amnesiac-works. It's a track that features obviously virtual drums which give the song its alienated feel. 15 Step feels like an odd opener that doesn't really resemble anything else on the record and the following song, Bodysnatchers, also feel like an ill fit with its high energy riffs and and Yorke's frantic singing. It isn't until after these two that In Rainbows finally settle into the depressing groove that I've personally come to cherish it for.

Weird Fishes/Arpeggi is built around an arpeggiated guitar as Yorke sings about "getting eaten by the worms / and weird fishes" it's a sparse song that mainly focuses on Yorke's vocal performance under the arpeggio and some snappy drums. It's around this point that the album turns into the greatest Radiohead album but it isn't until it reaches the song Reckoner, the greatest song of their career so far and also one of the greatest single tracks ever created.

I'm honestly not sure what I want to say about Reckoner, but you have the song for yourself embedded a couple of rows up. It starts of so simplistically with the high-end crash and ride as the smooth guitar lines come in. I'm not sure if its the groove of the drums, the choir calling out "In Rainbows" or Thom Yorke's desperate voice sounding like its about to give in if it doesn't get a chance to perform this one song. It's a track that's packed to the brim with so much emotion that finally bursts once we reach the "Because we separate, like ripples on the shore"-part only to return as an even stronger force when the strings come in. It's the one song that got me into Radiohead's music after being lukewarm to the band for years and even returning to the band's music today, Reckoner and In Rainbows are the only two that truly do something that still resonates with me.

In Rainbows was released online allowing users to "pay what they want" for the record, something that we still see the effect of today in various bandcamp releases where bands allow fans to buy their albums for any price they want, be it 0$ or 100$.

However that is probably the only thing that In Rainbows actually started. Despite being a great album, it hasn't gone on to influence anything and has a quite awkward spot on the top 100. I'm not saying it's a bad album, becacuse it isn't, but it doesn't really quite fit alongside the other works on this chart and I personally would not say it deserves a spot on this list and I believe it mostly is on here for the same reason that tons of Pink Floyd is on here or tons of Led Zeppelin or tons of any band that did a couple of great things; a huge fanbase.

Still, give this album a go if you're curious about Radiohead. Skip stuff like OK Computer and Kid A. Those albums might be more interesting, but none of them really achieves what In Rainbow has.

Radiohead
In Rainbows [2007]
8/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Film Review: Andrei Rublev [1966]

After falling in love at first sight with Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker, I decided to venture further down the rabbit hole and try to experience more of Tarkovsky's films. The one I chose to follow Stalker up with was Tarkovsky's second feature film, Andrei Rublev, a film about the Russian icon painter by the same name.

I didn't have any expectations going into the film and I wasn't even sure of what the plot would be about but despite that I came out of the experience disappointed, which in itself was a bit of a bummer since I was hoping to atleast find it somewhat captivating. I want to say that I found Andrei Rublev to be boring but using that word to explain my experience with the film is cheap and worthless criticism even if it is the emotion that I mainly felt throughout the film. I do however believe that there are explanations for why I found the film to be boring and I also believe that there are many elements in the film that I actually can appreciate, despite not fully enjoying the whole package.



One of the biggest reasons to why I was unable to enjoy Andrei Rublev was the translated subtitles that I viewed the film with, which of course is one of my own faults. There are many times when the subtitles fell flat and disregarded big parts of the dialog in favor of the few important bits that would have hampered the storyline had they been removed. I felt that a lot of the beauty and thought that had went into the dialog and the screen play were lost due to a shoddy amateurish translation and I hope that the next time I watch this film or any other foreign film, I won't have the same problem.

It's a cheap complaint of course but it's one that I felt ruined the experience for me and which made me lose interest in a lot of the conversations that took place throughout the film, such as the scene of the early days of the painting of the church or the scene when Rublev and his followers. The unprofessional subtitles removed any kind of immersion that I was hoping to find and hampered my vieweing much more than I would otherwise have guessed possible.

My other complaint, and this one is actually regarding the movie at its whole, is how the film lacks a cohesive feel. The film follows Andrei Rublev around and is divided into two parts which both are divided into shorter chapters. The short chapters make it hard to give the film a cohesive storyline and mostly works as these little peeks into different times throughout the life that Andrei Rublev lived, be it that they are adaptions of the real history or fictional intepretations doesn't matter, they make it hard to stay focused and keep up with what's going on and makes the movie become even slower than it already is. Tarkovsky might be notorious for his slow films but it is a lot easier to stay with him when there are elements that immerse the viewer.

Overall, I didn't find this movie to be all that impressive. I didn't find the cinematography to be incredibly powerful and I didn't find the acting to be immersive enough. I do see the appeal of the film and I hope that my complaints only are a product of my inexperience with heavier, more artsy films and I believe that in a year I'll be able to appreciate the epic that this film actually is in a broader fashion.

I will not rate my experience with Andrei Rublev since I don't find it fair to place a number on a film that I don't think I fully grasped. I did however place a score on the film on my RateYourMusic account but it's not something I want to tarnish this blog with.

Andrei Rublev is a fine cinematic experience that does little wrong and which impresses when appreciated at a more neutral level but it's a film that I was incapable of enjoying at the time of viewing. My negative experience won't lead me to recommend it anytime soon unless it would be to someone who was curious about foreign art school films that dabble with religion.

Andrei Rublev [1966]
dir. Andrei Tarkovsky
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Album Review: Illmatic [1994] #51

I first came across Nas when I was quite young. My dad used to have a CD with lots of different 90's hiphop on, despite the fact that he wasn't the kind of guy you'd expect to be bumping Life's A Bitch while driving his sun to school. It wasn't an experience that led me into hiphop, it would take me many years to finally begin to sift through the classics, something I'm still not quite done with yet, but it's a fun moment that I still think about whenever The Genesis quietens down and Illmatic truly gets going.



I talk a lot about atmosphere in my reviews, about how a certain song or album can create a certain feeling or place your mind in a certain place, and it's a factor that's very important to me when I evaluate a piece of music for its merits. I often hear that Illmatic is an album that truly gets the idea of atmosphere, of putting the listener in the shoes of a kid growing up in Queens in New York, living in the parts of New York that we outsiders don't really see on TV. I personally would agree, even if I can't really picture how it would be to grow up in the time and place that Nas did. I'm a white kid from a middle class suburb who doesn't know a lot about violence and "the streets" but there's still something that resonates with me and the place that I grew up with during the moments of serenity on Illmatic, be it during the closing trumpets on Life's A Bitch, the thundering beat during the hook of Halftime or the piano interlude of The World Is Yours.

This is what makes Illmatic stand out to me, how Nas was able to incorporate the feeling of summertime in a nasty neighborhood in just the instrumentals and feeling of the record, being able to place the listener in his shoes even before spitting his first line. I think this is also what has made Illmatic live on as such a legendary record, and one of the most iconic hiphop records of all time, in my opinion surpassing Wu Tang's Enter The 36 Chamber's despite being lower on this particular list than the Wu.

While the feeling that's attributed to this record is what ties it into the legendary album that it actually is, its real strengths lies in other places. The beats are positive, and to recount the comparison I previously did, sounds like summertime in a nasty neighborhood when combined with Nas' lyrics about the violence and the street life. You've got tracks like Life's A Bitch which sounds almost West Coast production wise, with the laidback pads sounding not too far from something like Ice Cube's Today Was A Good Day but with Nas rapping about how shitty life can be, and then you've got a track the nostlagic Memory Lane, built around a few gleeful plinks and a repeated "whoo-oh". There's a child like feeling in most of the songs that faces the reality of the situation in Nas' lyrics that swap between street life story tellings and lines of poetry "behind the walls of intelligence, life is defined".

Nas' lyrics have always been an odd combination for their time and can often times be seen as quite mellow when compared to Nas' contemporaries who often dabbled in explicit horror core. People like Biggie, members of The Wu Tang Clan and guys like Mobb Deep weren't afraid to tell you their visceral stories (often times a bit spiced up) while Nas tries to present his story as realistically and truthfully as possible while painting a vivid picture for the listener to indulge in.

Lyrically, Nas also shines with a technicality that at many times can be considered some of the best as far as assonance goes, like on Life's A Bitch when Nas gives the iconic line of:

I switched my motto
instead of saying fuck tomorrow that buck that bought a bottle could have struck the lotto

Which definitely is up there as one of the greatest verses in hiphop to this day.

Illmatic is one of those records that I have a lot of praise to give and it's one of those hiphop records that I wouldn't hesitate a moment before recommending to someone, especially as an introduction to hiphop. I mean I often times play Life's A Bitch at parties with my closest friends and I guarantee you that noone only likes it ironically.

Despite my praise for the record, it's one that I personally am not too fond of. While it's a great record seeing to beats, lyricism and rapping, it's one of those records that I rarely find myself returning to, despite enjoying whenever I accidentaly come across it, be it through shuffle on my musicplayer or someone playing one of the hits on radio, but it's one that I'm not too fond of personally.

Still, there's very little that gets me as hyped up as hearing "Straight out the fucking dungeons of rap".

Nas
Illmatic [1994]
6.5/10
Anton Öberg Sysojev

Albums From The Year Of 2015

Half the year has passed and I've been busy with 2015-releases. At the start of the year I was hoping to listen to atleast one 2015-release every day for the entirety of the year. I abandoned the project sometime around June when I realized that I was listening to too much music that I just didn't enjoy at all and decided to ditch the projects some 200-hundred albums into it.

The upside to that though is that I've found a lot of good albums that I believe that people haven't heard and an even bigger amount of stand out tracks that even fewer have heard. Since I didn't want the time I spent to be complete in vain I decided to write about a couple of my favorite albums and tracks that seem to have flown under the radar during the year, starting with a piece on a couple of albums.

Black Cilice - Mysteries [Black Metal]



Black Cilice is a Portugese black metal band who's music reminds a lot of early black metal demo's. It's incredibly lo-fi and very harsh at the same time, bordering on noise in a similar fashion to a band like Gorguts but in a different fashion.

I spent ages looking for a stream of this album and it took me almost two months from hearing a single and reading a review to finally hearing the album in its entirety leading me to believe I would ultimately be disappointed because of the amount of expectations I had for this record. I did however not find myself disappointed and instead came to cherish this record as one of the best metal records I've heard so far this year.

Mysteries is not for the faint of heart and not for someone who can't stand the chaos and darkness of black metal, if this sounds like you then you're better of listening to Sunbather yet another time. Mysteries is raw and ferocious which is something I want more of in my black metal. Portugal might not be the country from where one would expect this kind of black metal but any fan of the genre owes it to themself to hear this phenomenal record.

Damien Dubrovnik - Vegas Fountain [Noise]



As someone who usually isn't a big fan of noise, Damien Dubrovnik's latest release Vegas Fountain was right up my alley. It isn't as harsh as many Japanese acts that often become the face of the genre to newcomers for the absurd nature and instead acts as a low-key, almost minimalistic record that focuses on textures and dissonance at an almost ambient level. Opener On Its Double revolves around a sharp piercing tone that gets increasingly louder as the track goes on, drenched in field recordings and a repeated knocking sound. It's something that captures the essence of noise without having to sound like Kazumoto Endo's While You Were Out or anything by The Gerogerigegege.

Vegas Fountain combines beauty with noise, ambience with distortion and it's not only a very good album but also a fantastic starting point for someone curious about noise with little to no idea of how to approach a genre so impenetrable. My biggest regret of this year was not taking the chance to see Dubrovnik perform here in Stockholm when I could.

Dawn Richard - Blackheart [RnB]



Blackheart might be the most well known and the most "mainstream" of the albums on this chart. This is an album that continues a planned trilogy that Dawn Richard has been working on where Blackheart sits as the second installment, the followup to Goldenheart.

Why this hasn't blown up completely confounds me. Richard makes contemporary RnB in a similar fashion to her peers such as Janelle Monae. She has the mainstream appeal in tracks like Phoenix which could be a radio banger on any RnB-station I know of while combining it with more eventful and unique tracks which with production signed Noise Castle really elevates her music to something unique and original. This album clocks in at over an hour and is one of the most diverse RnB records I've ever come across. The instrumentals shapeshift between breakbeat-influenced bangers into accessible radio hits and turns into deep introspective tracks on drug abuse and prostitution. If there were checklists of how to make a successful album, Blackheart would have been able to tick every single box.

Despite that, noone seems to have paid it any attention. Pitchfork gave it an 8 despite this seeming like it would be right up their alley as a product they would promote and sell to fans of Monae and similar artists, and I haven't seen any buzz for it anywhere else.

Do yourself a favor and listen to this record if you're any kind of fan of RnB and doesn't loathe the genre. Your bound to find atleast something enjoyable on this record.

Nicolas Jaar - Pomegranates [Electronic, OST]



Next up is one of my personal favorite artists that are still active today and the one I'm always the most eager to hear new works from. Earlier this year Nicolas Jaar released his own OST to the Armenian art-house film The Color Of Pomegranates with the context of the film in mind for the music. However the music stands tall on its own two feet and isn't too far from Nicolas Jaar's previous solo debut, Space Is Only Noise, only more ambient and a bit more abstract.

This release, just as many of Jaar's other releases, has a heavy focus on textures and the clash of sounds against eachother. The tracks are varied, ranging between drawn out drone segments with a couple of piano chords hiding in the mix like on Construction and more active electronic-heavy songs like the heavily side chained Three Windows.

The songs are simple ideas that aren't supposed to be fleshed out into something that's easily picked up and listened to and the songs may very well fit even better into the context of the film (I have unfortunately not had the pleasure of vieweing The Color Of Pomegranates myself so I can't speak of its value when compared to the already existing sounds of the film), but I do believe that they still stand strong on their own even if this release probably won't appeal to as big of a crowd as Jaar's previous works have done (Darkside's Psychich and Jaar's Space Is Only Noise). I do believe that many of the tracks on here show incredibly interesting directions and I hope we see Jaar evolve even more. The only thing I've come to expect from the man is the unexpected.

Graham Lambkin & Michael Pisaro - Schwarze Riesenfalter [Electro Acoustic]



I first came across Graham Lambkin's music when I began my first venture into avant-garde music. Someone suggested I try The Salmon Run and I found it appalling. I did however found my way back into electro acoustic music and to my surprise it was actually Lambkin's collaboration with Michael Pisaro that made me curious about the genre.

The two released a collaborative LP earlier this year titled Schwarze Riesenfalter and it's one that's often times closer to field recordings and ambient than it is to the depths of musique concrete that one may delve deeper into if one would so be inclined. It's an album that focuses heavily on the sounds and music created by the clash and dissonance between different kinds of recorded sounds and what truly makes this album shine is how incredibly tight it sounds. You've got a track like Auflattern Die Fledermäuse which starts with the vibrations and bleeps from a ringing phone sounding exquisite and intricate in a good pair of headphones, only to move into a more haunting second half which sounds like the night swallowing the lone piano player of the world.

It's an album that should be enjoyed with a good pair of headphones, because the amount of detail and how finely tuned every element on this record is, is an experience that one should see at its very best. One of the, to me, biggest surprises of the year.

Anton Öberg Sysojev