This reminds me to listen to more jazz. It’s a great album with inspiring and uplifting music.
The Lewis Express – Doo-Ha!
Ela Minus – Día
This woman has been keeping me mesmerized for about a month now. I stumbled upon Upwards randomly and can’t not listen to this album all the time.
Her music has a strong kinship with electropop classics that have this eerie vocal nature to them, like The Knife. However, her personal character, creativity, and connection to the hardware aspect of electronic music production gives me strong Björk vibes, too. And yet, she’s definitely her own thing: it’s not like I get reminded of these other performers and I get back to listen to those, but I stick with Ela’s album and keep listening this.
Beyond the fantastic music her lyrics are also so smart and interesting and artistic. There’s message to be told, layers of ideas to unfold. I don’t even know when was the last time I was looking up and reading lyrics for an electronic music record to understand properly all it has to say.
I do believe this is an album to mark and remember. I’d love to have it on vinyl and put it on display as one of the milestones of this year.
Suburban Architecture – Dancefloor Heritage Volume 2 (Mixed Version)
Liquid drum and bass, like the good old days. The mixed album gives an awesome continuous ride for 76 minutes.
Strange Darling (2023)
Right at the beginning I thought the non-linear structure either makes sense for the movie or it’s just a cheap gimmick. And it did make a lot of sense, served the whole tension and narrative amazingly well. It’s great writing and directing. There are a few cheesy elements that emit something like a Tarantino homage feeling, and it would be a better film without those, however, I don’t think those define this movie.
Those few extended shots with Fitzgerald keeping posture and acting out a long slow scene are just as hard to watch as they are wonderfully acted.
It took a while to see the twist coming. The greatest thing is that for a long period of time I was just not sure. I know there was something going on but didn’t quite know how it will play out exactly. And how that non-linearity converges me closer and closer to that solution is why this structure works wonders for this movie.
Music by John Williams (2024)
Beautiful documentary, it warmed my heart to see the friendship between Williams and Spielberg. We were humming every single tune, it’s such a nice trip. And it’s not just a journey through cinema history but also my soundtracks of my life, as I grew up with all this.
Dark Star (1974)
This movie was hilarious, I loved it. It’s old and shitty, well, it’s a university project that made it into a flick, but every second is just gold. All of its ideas and jokes are ones that I want to tell people about while remembering the scenes.
The more I learned about the background of this, the more it solidified for me that this is a movie history gem: first film by Carpenter (not a horror but a comedy), first writing by Dan O’Bannon (who then turned it into a serious tone and wrote Alien).
It is also a perfect film club flick: there’s a lot to talk about and must be a blast to watch with an interested crowd or a group of friends.
25th Hour (2002)
This move conveys feelings in an amazing way, it makes me feel stuff. I am so sorry for the guy, but then there’s the “actions and consequences” aspect, but somehow I’m still rooting for him so that maybe there’s some kind of hope… At the end, coming back from that fantasy of “what if” I so felt his pain and fear of what’s coming next. Fantastic direction by Spike Lee.
Dear Omen – The S Tapes
I went to see a science lecture and there was a band playing before, that was Dear Omens. It’s hard to describe the experience when a bunch of science nerds are waiting for a speech about brain functions and what they get is a stage lit with candles, faces painted white, and loud full-on goth rock in their faces.
Besides being extremely surprising, it was also an amazing performance and absolutely impressive music. Listening to the record brings back the memories and it’s a great album, even if a short one. I’m happy that I can remember Fay Ruza’s absolutely commanding stage presence while listening to the songs, that definitely gives the experience an extra edge.
Heartworms – Glutton For Punishment
I don’t know whether I’ve ever waited for a debut album so much like this one. I’ve been listening to the singles a ton and was checking the countdown regularly. By the end I knew the date by heart. Finally it’s here, and there’s zero disappointment. The songs that have not been out as singles are as brilliant as the rest, and the whole thing works amazingly well as an album. Coherent, beautiful, unique, fantastic sound, fantastic journey.
If there’s going to be something to take the album of the year title from this one, well, then this will have been a super strong year for good records.
Funniest thing, I haven’t even checked tour dates until a few days ago, when I realized she will be performing in town in two weeks. Could I be any more excited? No, I couldn’t. I feel the vibes of Zeal & Ardor when their debut dropped and I was there in a club concert on the tour, and now I cannot even get a ticket for their arena tour. I feel the same level of rising star here, although I secretly hope that she can be just successful enough to fit into a larger concert hall in a year or two, but without going to the stadium.
Btw, on the note of goth being on the rise, if that is a thing, we may see her leading that trend to a larger audience.
Touché Amoré – Spiral In A Straight Line
I saw these guys yesterday live and I previously hadn’t listened to a full album, just went on an invitation. It was a very powerful, high-energy gig, mostly dominated by Jeremy Bolm’s stage presence, and lots of stage diving (by people from the crowd, not Jeremy) and occasionally wall-to-wall mosh pit. Touché Amoré is one of those hardcore bands that are just dripping authenticity that I can’t resist.
Now, the day after I’m listening to their latest record and it’s pretty good. I assume as I go towards the previous ones they will get rawer. I’ll check that out.