algroth

Jim telling it like it is.

All hail King Shabaka!

Absolutely extraordinary band.

Pretty cool jazz-rock record with strong Canterbury/krautrock influences.

I had a roommate who lived with me around the time his father was suffering from a brain tumour. I'm sorry to hear this, it's really tough.

I suspect music and sound design are the things still being worked on at the moment. In film at least they tend to be amidst the final steps of post-production, and I wouldn't be surprised if similarly it's usually tackled later in the production of a game and so on. The Deadfire betas similarly relied on placeholder music from the first game plus a couple of new tracks "previewing" the new score - but the proper score was only in place in its release version.

And now they're beating on the "videogames cause violence" argument *again*, because of *course* playing violent videogames is the one difference between USA and just about every other country with a fraction of USA's mass shootings per year... 🤔

Pretty nice nu jazz jam that recalls a mellower Amon Tobin in a way. @injurai you might like this. 😛

Speaking of Espers...

Some pretty cool contemporary psych-folk in the style of Espers.

Was listening to Maha by Grim this morning, an industrial and power electronics act from Japan. The album is very good in places, but somewhat lacking in others and overall at 100 minutes it's somewhat baggy and confused, at times feeling more like a collection of random outtakes and experiments moreso than a full-fledged work. Possibly by design, as this is a sound often looked by acts like these, but yeah. This track, though, is pretty glorious:

Posted before Dayton btw, so that makes 250 mass shootings in the USA in just 216 days.

I feel this album went a little under the radar, at least in the circles I'm usually in, which is odd considering it's a Jonny Greenwood venture with a documentary accompaniment by Paul Thomas Anderson. Also it's very cool.

Though I'd argue the claim of Yes being one of the greatest prog bands ever (they wouldn't make my top 20 personally), they had a really good run in the early 70s and Chris Squire's part in their success was not at all small. An utterly fantastic player, truly the backbone of the band even in its direr epochs, and his tone is certainly up there with the likes of Jannick Top or John Wetton in Red for me. And then there's this wonderful piece from Robert Wyatt's Rock Bottom, courtesy of Hugh Hopper: A current day bassist that has really impressed me when I saw him live was Chris Pravdica from Swans. Usually when it comes to the band a lot of attention is directed towards Michael Gira, understandably so as he's truly the heart of the band, but in a live setting it was impressive to take note of how much of this most recent lineup of Swans and its sheer weight was up to Pravdica's work specifically. He was doing wonders throughout.

This album is superb, the best I've heard of the entire vapourwave movement thus far. Properly dada, just utterly strange and absurd, but with that same melancholic element the best albums of the genre capture.

New Richard Dawson album coming out this October! Rejoice!

Some neat Polish space rock right here.

Ah well, I hope you're not suffering it too badly. Though I would like at some point visit Belfast myself! 😄 Regarding 1917, I reckon it looks pretty good, and with Roger Deakins behind the lens I reckon it'll look pretty good too. But I'm not necessarily getting the impression it'll be a new war classic either. We'll see.

I recall you being Polish, which made the change of location to Belfast curious. Why the move, work-related I presume? Regarding Dunkirk, I see from a quick search that we've discussed it before, right here: I still abscribe to what I've written there, and really I think both Dunkirk and, funny enough, Interstellar have only solidified themselves as favorites from Nolan's output to my eyes over time, second maybe The Prestige. I do think part of it has to do with Hoyte van Hoytema's excellent photography as usual but also his influence on Nolan over time - Nolan's claimed in past interviews that he's watched films like Tarkovsky's The Mirror or Bresson's work through Hoytema's recommendation and both of these have served as influence to Interstellar and Dunkirk respectively. Looking forward to Tenet next year too, which should mark their third collaboration.

Well, I disagree with the notion that spectacle is all there is to Dunkirk for starters, but even taking it by those terms I think it's one of the most visually appealling and thrilling cinematic experiences we've had this side of Fury Road. By detatched do you mean a preference for something more fantastical? Or something else? If so, fair enough, though I think that Apocalypse Now stands as yet another example of how of a more grounded/realist approach can be incredible on a sheer spectacle level as well.

You say this like it's a bad thing. 😄

I don't know much about the real character, but based on a quick search I could see Shannon in the role for certain. It's funny how nicknames work too, sometimes you get one when you're a kid and it just sticks, regardless of incongruences. In my group of friends there's a "gordo" who got his nickname as a chubby 8-year-old but has been nothing but ripped since he was 15, and yet the name stuck. I suspect some "kids" always remain that way despite their age.