Week of July 31

 Week of July 31

Music 

Travis Scott-UTOPIA (2023)

UTOPIA by Travis Scott is an album in the same light as Kanye West's DONDA. With images of a dark, drugged-out often soulless twisted paradise. Utopia is diverse, bloated, and some of the songs stick. Though many songs have superfluous segways and the gimmick of beat switching can be tiresome, and Travis Scott is not the most interesting rapper, the album has some decent tracks, most notably, the jittery boom bap hellscape HYAENA, the dreamlike soothing ballad MY EYES whose additional crooning by Justin Vernon and Sampha weave more subtle beauty than any Travis Scott song has ever done. MELTDOWN, is a decent song that involves one of the many beat switches in the album. FE!N is a psychotic nocturnal nightmare appropriate for a cemetery rave.

Aphex Twin-Blackbox Life Recorder 21f (2023)

The song and video to this is quite the cerebral experience. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_Ue_P7vcRE&pp=ygUKYXBoZXggdHdpbg%3D%3D

Film and Television

Alfred Hitchcock-Psycho (1960)

What a marvelous feat in suspense.

Songs I like

 Songs I like 

The Nightcrawlers - Transsonic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzFfCJyusmc&pp=ygUXdHJhbnNvbmljIG5pZ2h0Y3Jhd2xlcnM%3D

Mamane Sani -Salamatu 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzKGFm30SEo&ab_channel=NigerMixChannel

Forest Swords- Ljoss 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5JEd4KWW5M&pp=ygUGTGpvc3Mg

Week of July 24

 Week of July 24

Music 

Daliborovo Granje - Hainin (2020)This band is Croatian, they play psychadelic and prog rock. Sometimes it verges on the heavy. Their tunes have been in my ear this week.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neh4ZAGBdUs&pp=ygURZGFsaWJvcm92byBncmFuamU%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odmYh_68sHg&t=326s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JC4XpHEd35M&pp=ygUIbmF4YXRyYXM%3D

Aphex Twin-Alberto Balsalm (1995)

I have recently become aware of this song by Aphex Twin. It's a great piece of IDM and electronic music. The percussion and the synths steal the show, they are really the only things going on but the simple melodies and drum patterns that he uses blend in and out and warp into a hypnotic yet complex song. The song is nocturnal and subtly industrial like much of his work.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZVZgCrHy5E&ab_channel=AphexTwin-Topic

Literature

The Queen of Spades-Pushkin (1833)

This short story is a wonderful tale of the seemingly rigid and principled engineer Hermann who becomes enticed to gamble only after attaining knowledge of the predestined winning hand. He attains this knowledge by infiltrating into the life of an old woman who later shares the winning hand with the young man in a dream. As the man becomes enamored with the prospect of winning, he disregards love and becomes enveloped in greed only to lose his fortune. Magic Realism is employed in this narrative through the blending of the supernatural and the real.

Film and Television

Barbie-Greta Gerwig (2023)

The Barbie movie is a bright, occasionally funny, confused mash of feminism and existentialism. Was it about motherhood? The issues with patriarchy? About existentialism? You can interpret however you want, but in its most apparent purpose, the film was a 2 hour long attempted rebranding of Barbie as enforced by the movie's Mattell meta-narrative and the extensive self-referential humor, which can only be zoomed out and interpreted as a real-life marketing ploy. Feminism and existentialism are useful ornaments to give this story a sense of emotion. The performances and the visuals are well done and cartoonish for the most part but can become cloying. In the end, the Barbie movie feels like watching Mattell pull its pants down and act a fool in an act of bombastic marketing only to realize at the end of the movie that all while you have been laughing you yourself have been pantsed and 15$. poorer.

5/10.

Blue Velvet-David Lynch (1986)

Blue Velvet is an often terrifying dreamscape of Oedipal surrealism. Not as demanding of the viewer from an interpretive point as some of Lynch's other work, Blue Velvet is still chock-full of absurd scenes that are equally frightening, and oddly humorous. The movie consists of many triads of relationships, the most evident the Oedipal triad of Son (Jeffery; Kyle Maclachlan), Mother (Dorothy Vallens; Isabella Rossellini), and Father (Frank Booth; Denis Hooper)

Laura Derne's character can also be seen in a romantic Triad with Jeffrey and Dorothy as well as Jeffrey and her Boyfriend Mike, furthermore, Dorothy's actual family triad between her husband and her son is rendered fractured in the story. 

8/10

 

Week of July 17

Week of July 17

Music 

The Doors-Changeling and L.A. Woman 

Rock/Blues

Jim Morrison's later material is almost indistinguishable from his early clean-cut crooning. He fully embraces the blues and the uncouth, like a monstrous hairy troll. He and The Doors were a generational act. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtN8UPjN5WU&pp=ygUKY2hhbmdlbGluZw%3D%3D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHXjcdNIN-Q&pp=ygUSbGEgd29tYW4gdGhlIGRvb3Jz

Rings of Power Soundtrack-Khazad-dûm, Durin IV

I really like the Dwarves in Rings of Power, their soundtracks are amusing and epic as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gJBqV0Ect4&ab_channel=BearMcCreary-Topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU8NWgthmvE

Lou Reed-Your Love,Merry-Go-Round

I came upon these early Doo-wop tracks by Mr.Lewis Reed. He already had that punk energy seeping through his Doo-woop crooning. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UI2UfCk6oGw&ab_channel=LouReed-Topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KO2MnTnd98&ab_channel=LouReed-Topic

Literature 

Mikhail Lermontov 

The Fatalist was re-read this week. Its nocturnal atmosphere still sticks. This foreboding feeling is something that I wish to expose myself to more often in art.

“I prefer to doubt everything… as far as I am concerned, I always advance more boldly when I do not know what is awaiting me. After all, nothing worse than death can happen — and death you cannot escape!”

Film and Television

Amazon's Rings of Power

This show is not as bad as most make it out to be. It can be a bit ridiculous but it is fantasy. The Dwarves are the best part, the elves perhaps the worst. 

Funny things #1

 

This is a very funny series of YouTube videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtshATI3ELg&ab_channel=tonyhemphill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya73TZtt88E&pp=ygUSd2hhdCdzIHRoZSBnb2FsaWUg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rydu3XHSB3Q