The Essential Lonard Cohen

Dear Mr. Cohen,

Here I am taking a gander at a compilation of songs mostly picked by you. I have to admit I like your earlier higher baritone on your earlier songs. On your lower monotone voice, the only songs that work is when every single element comes together, then it is almighty arresting, like "Hallelujah" and "Tower of Song". And when you deliberately make the song structures Dylanish, you don't really set out to imitate him but to overdo him but I don't find it particularly interesting as on "So Long Marianne". I also like your interpretation of synth-pop, as on "First We Take Manhattan", with its quirky charms. I also forgive you for clunkers like "Night Comes On" and "Anthem", which had me going for the "skip" function on the player. All in all, good show, Mr. Cohen.

Yours,
Dukey

Michael Jackson - Off The Wall

Had heard this on 8-track a long time ago and didn't find it interesting enough. On a relisten, this one is mostly a precursor to Thriller, and the arrangements sound like they're going to evolve into another "Wanna Be Startin' Something" or something. I feel the tracks screaming for crossover like another "Beat It" but it's mostly disco and funk here. As it is, it's not bad. The ballads like "She's Out of My Life" are quite effective. Even the fillers are listenable, such as "I Can't Help It" (despite being written by Stevie Wonder) and "Burn this Disco Out". I singularly like the slapbass on "Get on the Floor" the most. Good.

The Essential Jacksons

Starts off with some lesser Gamble and Huff songs. Gets better when they are writing their own songs but not by much. Despite having halcyon love for "Blame it on the Boogie", hearing it again ain't as fuzzy warm as the memories. So's "State of Shock", which now sounds brittle with the twee distortion of the guitar riff. They go some way towards evolving funk on some tracks but not so much so. Can do lar.

The Essential Herbie Hancock

A panorama of his career, although it is not very disparate, as there are similarities in feel throughout the songs, due to his familiar use of chromatics, passing notes, chordal voicings, tonal palettes and scale colours. Only two songs break out of the mold, the mostly disco "Stars in My Eyes" bereft of any keyboard solo with some nice guitar fills by Wah Wah Watson, and the deliberately dumbed down "Rockit" just accentuating the hook. Not bad at all. As with the Miles Davis collection, there's a unitary vision, unlike the John McLaughlin collection, which sounds like 7 or 8 different guitarists.

Herbie Hancock - Headhunters

Sounds a bit dated. Might be adventurous for its time, but sounds like a relic for its time now, due to the electronic instruments. Still, the clavinet sounds good, and it's something like a clippier sharper guitar tone. I liked the pygmy music intro to "Sly" and the busy middle section of "Vein Melter" but so much of it sounds like a soundtrack to some 70s cop movie. And "Chameleon" sounds too much like Mahavishnu Orchestra's "Pastoral Funk" for its own good. Not as spacey as Bitches Brew or futuristic as On the Corner, both by Miles Davis.

Miles Davis - Platinum

A collection of songs from the "Birth of the Cool" era. Competent. The legedermain with whomever sax player he's playing with is interesting. Otherwise, I'm much too familiar with the style, having bought BOTC at an early age and played it to death.

Charles Mingus - Cumbia and Jazz Fusion

Here's a track-by-track breakdown:-

Cumbia And Jazz Fusion - A Latin American percussive piece with two chords interspersed with big band jazz segments. I'd wish he just built upon the basic two-chord structure.

Music for "Todo Mondo" - A solo funereal dirge solo interspersed with big band jazz segments. As again, I'd wish the solo bits, especially the free jazz parts, were elongated.

Comes with some outtakes which are disposable. In some ways, I like this album more than his "classic" recordings, being structurally denser.

Wilco - Being There

Hard to follow up after the excellent opener "Misunderstood". But otherwise an engaging collection of alt country tracks that leaves others of its ilk (e.g. Ryan Adams and the Cardinals) in the dust, with its unpredictability and strong grasp of melody. My first taste of Jeff Tweedy and it's good.

Stereolab - Chemical Chords

Don't like this much. Retro electro-pop that sounds pretty mundane, with only one actual post-rock song.

The Special AKA - In The Studio

Excellent! Best Specials album.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Caught this over the weekend. This one doesn't really move the story along much, with the two biggest plot developments reduced to pretty much an afterthought. It's nice seeing the young creepy Tom Riddle (Voldemort) but that's about it.

The intro is pretty good, though, with the Death Eaters destroying the Wand Shop and a bridge in London (forgot which one). After that, it turns into a teenage romance fantasy, probably due to pressure from the similar teenage snogfest Twilight.

Jim Broadbent has a supporting role but he's mostly wasted as the bumbling professor with a dark secret.

This works best as a teaser to the coming end but that's it really. Also has a homage to North by Northwest and this is the second movie to quote that cornfield sequence, after the first X-Files movie.

Jethro Tull - Thick as a Brick

Part 1 is solid prog-folk. Part 2 is a bit boring. Also has a live performance which is adequate.

Kate Bush - Aerial

Has a wide collection of wonky prog ballads which are generally enthralling.

Kate Bush - Hounds of Love and Prince - Around the World in a Day

Both to replace my destroyed cassettes. Love 'em both and both are overplayed to death.

Link Wray - Rumble! Best of Link Wray

Very violent-sounding instrumentals. Is this surf-guitar rock, BTW? Nice take on the Batman theme, also.

Love - Forever Changes

Sounded quite boring upon first listen but growing on me.

Metallica - Kill 'Em All

Pretty serviceable debut although it lacks the ferocity of the next two albums.

Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk at Cubist's Castle

Generally not that interesting until we reach the various Green Typewriters songs.

Steely Dan - Katy Lied

Toe-tapping jazzy pieces of ornate pop. Nice!

Stevie Wonder - Songs in the Key of Life

Good enough collection of songs. Sir Duke makes me so happy!

The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin

Nothing like "At War with the Mystics" at all. Mostly soothing tunes.

The Pixies - Doolittle

Rather eclectic bunch of songs, despite their limited musicianship. Not bad either.

The Zombies - Odessey & Oracle

Awesome! Where has this album been all my life?

Todd Rundgren - A Wizard A True Star

Picks a fine balance between pop and prog. Never liked Utopia all that much so it's strange hearing the Utopia band playing such accessible stuff.

Ween - The Mollusk

Too eclectic for me. I wish they stayed with a single genre.

Devo - Q: Are we not Men? A: We Are Devo

Generally disappointed with this. The other songs are not as mind-bending as the singles or the cover of "Satisfaction". Just generic New Wave songs. Lacks the elasticky rhythms of "Jocko Homo" or the sparse ass rock of "Mongoloid". Ho hum!

The English Beat - Special Beat Service

One of their later albums. Not as engaging as songs such as "Mirror in the Bathroom" on one of their earlier albums but generally okay. I pretty much like the "toasting" songs. But their engine is running low by now.

Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

Quite noisy electro-pop. Makes me more fucked-up if I am in a fucked-up mood already. Quite okay, although I would have wanted more innovation than just a wall of sound of synths.

Cocteau Twins - Head Over Heels and Treasure

Both very engrossing early recordings. I quite like the bits of dissonance they put in, although I have to admit the melodies aren't as pretty as on "Milk & Kisses". Towering sepulchral sounds indeed.

Bon Iver - For Emma, Wherever She May Go

Quite boring this. Expecting another Fleet Foxes but no such luck.

Funkadelic - Maggot Brain

Eschewing the funk for the psychedelic, the title track really blows me away, totally Hendrix-worthy. Not much in the way of interesting funk, though, as it is pretty much a rock album.

Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand

Generally not as immediate as an indie rock album should be but still enraptures my attention.

Saw these few over the weekend:-

Santa Sangre

Have seen this before yoinks ago. Loved it absolutely last time. Now that I have the hindsight of watching other Jodorowsky films, perhaps some comparisons can be made. Santa Sangre is probably the most straightforward Jodorowsky movie, with a linear plot and bereft of overkill surrealism and has few Christian images. As it's a collab with Claudio Argento, Dario's brother, it also uses similar motifs from Dario's work, making it into a kinda splatterhouse arthouse mix. Jodorowosky still has a fixation with the gruesome and the deformed, and some images here are still pretty baroque. It has lovely salsa music also, although the entire film is not as feverish as The Holy Mountain or as rife with Christian symbolism as El Topo. Contains an amusing interview with the Man also.

Jubilee

Got this in a two-fer with Sebastiane. Thought might just as well give Jarman a try but this is a pretty limp-wristed portrayal of the punk explosion, probably due to the effette acts featured, more than anything. The characters are mostly shot verite. The time travel portions with Queen Elizabeth 1 has some pretentious goobledygook which sounds poetic sometimes (but only sometimes). The performances are vacuous, with early Adam and the Ants (before the burundi beats), Toyah Willcox (boring) and Wayne County (ok-ish but performed karaoke). The only bit interesting musically is the synth-poppish "Rule Brittania" by Jordan which mocks the vulgarity of nationalism. An anarchic future where there's not much anarchy. And the open T-Shirt by Vivienne Westwood (mocking this film) just shows that despite what punk is about, it was still rife with homophobia and racism.

Sebastiane

A bloody gay movie. Supposed to be factual and free of hagiography, this is just a romp of well-oiled male bodies and homo desires under the hot sun. Shows nothing of the epiphany that made Sebastian a Catholic Saint, but instead just concentrates on rebuked lust and repressed longing. Thought it was gonna be full of the striking images as in the first few minutes but non.....

Dracula (1931)

Surprisingly entertaining. There's a constant eerie silence in most of the scenes, which gives an unsettling creepy feel to the entire movie. Bela Lugosi plays it straight and gives off an intense and effective performance. I'd still wager it is outshined by Nosferatu, as this neither had its vibes or atmosphere. Tod Browning's Freaks is the better movie, I would think. Contains the Spanish version as well, which is generally regarded as technically superior, with its tracking shots and better special effects.

The Ten Commandments (CGI animated movie)

About identical to the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille epic, trimmed down and simplified. Contains similar dialogue in some scenes. The graphics aren't that good, looking rather blocky and not very life-like. In fact, they looks like cutscenes from a PSX game. And this was done in 2007. Way way behind the times. If you can't up the ante on that epic movie, why bother anyway? I had more fun with the more traditionally animated "Prince of Egypt". Still, Exodus is one of the most interesting Biblical stories.

Transformers : Revenge of the Fallen

Caught this yesternight. Not as hellish as some critics make it out to be, but still pretty disappointing.

Despite being a multi-million production, there are still two big flaws:-

1. The giant robots' limbs are ill-defined, lacking shadow, and all the giant robot fighting sequences are a massive blur of CGI metal and you can't be sure of what is exactly going on.

2. The cel-shading and colouration is really bad making the robots look like cartoon cardboard cut-outs, especially in the forest scene.

Otherwise, the movie pilfers from Aeon Flux, Species and The Matrix. And despite being quite a lot of Decepticons in the movie, they all look the same due to the same colour scheme.

And what's with constant bombardment of explosions? Is the audience really getting bored that fast?

The robot Twins, despite what the fans say, merely spout out juvenilistic and puerile crap.

There's some yellow humour as well, with dogs fucking and the mini Decepticon humping Megan Fox's leg. I like the senile old robot, though.

3.5 out of 10. Overly long as well. I enjoyed the first one.