1) Portishead, Third. Portishead loses some of the spaced-out dreaminess of Dummy for a more deliberate sound, but retains their darkly erotic and self-reflective quality. The effect is marvelous: the enticing vocals seem intentional this time around, rather than apparitional, and are all the more delicious for it.
2) Magnetic Fields, Distortion. Magnetic Fields in general were my musical pasta this year: the eternal comfort food that goes with anything, capable of satiating diverse musical desires without demanding exacting effort or undue attention. Distortion isn’t as great as some of their previous albums, but there are still some great tracks, i.e. “The Nun’s Litany,” for its cheerfully raunchy run down of all the sex work-related professions a woman of the cloth could dream about, and “Till the Bitter End” which sounds like what might result if an adult Punky Brewster began writing slightly stalker-ish love songs in the style of a funeral dirge. Also I dig “Drive On, Driver” because the line “take me to the airport, I need to be extremely far away” has essentially become the catch phrase to my life.
3) Thievery Corporation, Radio Retaliation. Trancey lounge music with influences ranging from Bollywood to jazz to Brazilian funk and an allover tinge of social righteousness that reminds me of when I used to believe the Revolution was just around the corner. Catchy without being annoying or over-poppy. Good sounds for dancing with fire, sticking it to the man. Trivia: got a speeding ticket in a tunnel under a mountain between Switzerland and Italy while listening to this band.
Also—honorary mention goes to Girl Talk, whose Feed The Animals I didn’t buy, but appreciate for being a catchy take on old favourite songs, and a cheeky take on the fair use doctrine of copyright law [yeah, I'm an IP nerd now].
And—honorary mention two goes to Matt, for creating the best music video of the year, as well as the dance of the decade:
If I watched movies this year I don't remember them. It's either the senility kicking in or they weren't very good. But this 16 minute short, Validation, about the magic of free parking and decent passport photos, is absolutely fantastic and 100% guaranteed to chase the blues away. It's about 10 times the strength of Prozac and corn syrup combined, though, so handle with care, lest you start running around grinning at random strangers and telling them they're AMAZING, which might freak them out:
Also, while generally lacking in exposure to culture, I have had some decent exposure to cultures, which is to say foreigners. Thus follows three and a half of my favourite moments from this year's various and sundry cross-cultural experiences. Yeah, it's self-indulgent, apologies-- but hopefully at least some of the randomness of Europe is objectively funny. You can click on the pictures for full size, should you feel so inclined.
1) PARTYING TILL THE COWS COME HOME, LITERALLY: I live in Switzerland. The Swiss are famous for a) cheese fondue and b) chocolate. Also, watches and army knives useful for stabbing people don't keep time accurately enough, but we'll leave that be for now. Anyway, the aforementioned food products require cows. The Swiss really seem to dig their cows. They also have mountains, upon which there are pastures. In the spring, the cows go up the mountains, and in the fall the cows come down the mountains. The latter is called "Désalpe" which I'm pretty sure means de-Alping, and involves a day long party while the cows are coming back from the Alps. They get all dolled up for the occasion, too, as you can see:
1.5) ON SWISS PASSION REGARDING SOUP, INDEPENDENCE: This only gets a half point because it's still in Switzerland. One of the biggest Genevan celebrations involves the anniversary of an attempted invasion, which was apparently thwarted when an enterprising chef chucked her hot vegetable soup on the would-be colonizers. To commemorate, everyone marches around in period costumes and eats chocolate cauldrons with marzipan vegetables in them, and occasionally real soup too. It's a very solemn occasion, for some reason. There is also a fire:
2) TURKISH BAZAARS: They have some weird stuff there in amongst the Turkish delight, belly dancer costumes (my friend bought a lovely magenta one “for her boyfriend,” she told the shopkeeper, while searching for sizes. “Lucky guy,” he says—we don’t think he understood she intended for the boyfriend to fit into it), exotic spices, and shisha tobacco. Also, attempts at one-up-manship between retailers can lead to unintentional humour-- to whit, these two signs, which we found facing each other on opposite sides of the bazaar hallway. I hate to think where further competition took them:
Okay, cool.
YIKES!!!3) SLOVENIA: Ljubljana reminded me why I travel: getting lost on my way back from a castle on a hill to find a narrow, steep stone staircase overrun with vines, rusted metal railings, backlit driftwood doors with green visible in the cracks between, an old pepsi bottle resting in the space left by a loosened piece of an old stone wall: the feeling of a secret held between me and all others who’d taken one wrong turn and tripped on something beautiful. Also for those ladies whose tastes run to the slightly bohemian, the Ljub is full of gloriously hot people who look like they are simultaneously off to create great art and also hike through the wilderness. But really it’s awesome because the city symbol is dragons. Dragons!
Bonus Slovenia picture... explaining that there are many ways one can move beyond mental confusion: the traditional lightbulb, the old school/electricity's out candle, or... a rainbow:
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