Tag: 2024

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Vakhtang – Parallax 20xx

It’s a long record (2+ hours), varied electronic music, from techno to trance to bass music, from mid to high tempo. It’s like someone emptied the drawer and poured it into an album.

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Fat Dog – WOOF.

Industrial electro-punk, eclectic as it should be. This vibe and zest brings me joy, makes me smile. I’d love to see this band live.

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Zeal & Ardor – Greif

Just a couple of months ago I wrote I hope Zeal & Ardor doesn’t sleep on their signature style of “soul metal” and keeps evolving, growing, exploring further. And here it is. The new record has dropped and it’s nothing in line with their previous albums, and that is absolutely the best thing that could have happened to this band. It’s also a great feeling to read the same sentiment echoed over this record’s Bandcamp page from other people, too. It’s rare that a band can innovate and keep innovating so much, and their fan base taking the course with them and supporting their journey.

As for the record itself, I honestly don’t really know what to write or how to articulate my thoughts, rather. It’s fourteen tracks, which is a lot, and there’s an immense diversity. From calm but creepy lullaby, through massive metal road rage, to their usual beats and pulse but with bits of electronics now, ambient outtake with synths, and hard rock banger hits—it is a lot. I will need many more listening of this to digest properly, but I know I love it. Now I kinda feel like I’ll like the individual songs better than the album as a cohesive unit, just because it’s so non-cohesive and not in a conceptual way. Anyways, let’s try and articulate these feelings again in a few months’ time. Until then, I’ll just keep listening.

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The Black Dog – Other, Like Me

These guys are churning out new albums like a factory, and what’s socking is that none of these records feel like coming from a conveyor belt. This one’s on the darker side, introvert slow to mid tempo techno, some fine IDM noises, some industrial touch, some nice synths. It’s very well crafted electronic music.

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Alien: Romulus (2024)

There are pros and cons, but it’s easily the best Alien movie in a decade. In my ranking Alien and Aliens are on the high pedestal of 10/10, and then Alien 3 and Resurrection are both 6/10 movies. Romulus fits somewhere on the benchmark of the latter two, perhaps a half mark upwards, and definitely way ahead of any of the prequels or Predator crossovers.

What’s going for it:

  • I really appreciated ground time, showcasing what a mining colony looks like, streets, a slice of society, struggles outside of the scope of a single mission.
  • We got glimpse of a new part of alien life: we’ve never before seen them between bursting out as an alien baby and reappearing as a big black monster, and now we saw that there’s an in-between cocoon phase.
  • The whole movie was beautifully shot: colors, atmosphere, consistency of the retro-futuristic setting. As for props, the scenes were built amazingly well, and the aliens looked bad-ass.
  • Acting was fairly good, and the writing had no painful “why would you do that?!” moments.

What felt hmm:

  • The whole cast felt very young, had a bit of a Children of the Corn vibe to it. Although I could think that miners die young, working class has children early, so this is just what this society’s reality looks like.
  • Sometimes I felt that the retro-futuristic technology to be kinda gimmicky. Like I’d see today’s youngsters playing with old props, well, which is the case. Maybe it’s just a hiccup of my suspension of disbelief.
  • The alien-human hybrid was creepy but rather in an odd-weirdo than a frightening way. I liked the Newborn version better in Resurrection.
  • CGI recreation of Ian Holm looked underproduced.
  • There were a lot of plot vehicles that felt exactly like plot vehicles and not embedded well enough so that I don’t see behind the scenes. For example, “you have 36 hours to pull it off”, so there’s a time pressure; “now you have rather 20 minutes”, so the time pressure is elevated; “there’s no air in there”, so you have some limiting factor to overcome; “the gravity switches on and off every X minutes”, so we can use this later as a physical stunt; etc. I know elements like this are part of a story as it is, but still, I can hear the conversation in the brainstorming session how these ideas came about and what plot needs they answered. It’s just too on the nose, like an exercise at a creative writing class.
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Alva Noto – HYbr:ID III

I don’t want to belittle Alva Noto’s amazing art to “work music” but his albums are definitely my best aid in focusing recently. Other than that, this one is yet another fantastic ambient record. Part meditative drone, part nuanced and finessed rhythmic noise.

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Peggy Gou – I Hear You

This is such an amazing, carefree, summer breeze of an album. House for the most part, with hints of other electronic stuff.

It’s interesting that if I think of Gou I have this up-and-coming talent in mind who’s at the peak of her rising but still connects more with the underground scene than the mainstream. But in reality she’s the only current female DJ on the DJ Mag Top 100, appeared on cover of a whole bunch of fashion magazines, plays sold-out stadiums, runs her own festival, etc. She’s nowhere near being an underground name but a massive global sensation, I’ve just missed to follow the news. Although whenever she played in town in the past two years it was always sold out and I couldn’t get to see her live, so that should have been a hint.

Anyways, and still, this album doesn’t show any signs of self-imposed pressure. It’s very impressive how she seems to dictate and follow her on rhythm instead of trying to fit herself into boxes where I’m sure people would like to see her. She’s truly a star.