Boredoms 77 Boa Drum (DVD)

(My Rating: 3/5)

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On July 7th, 2007 at 7:07 PM, Japanese group Boredoms, orchestrated a performance by 77 drummers at the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park in Brooklyn, NY. The drummers included Andrew W.K., Brian Chippendale from Lightning Bolt, Lizzi Bougatsos from Gang Gang Dance, and many other leading lights of avant garde rock. The performance is recorded as this documentary movie DVD.

This 80 plus minutes documentary in fact is quite boring stuffs. Although there were some great drummers from legendary No Neck Blue Band, Gang Gang Damce, Lighting Bolt, etc. and also Bordoms of course to be part of the show, they were only eventually becoming some stars in a galaxy. You will never notice them anyway in the show. As also the performance was so organized, well-prepared and structured, there would be no individuality for each drummer, even amongst those big names…..at last, the show is just becoming something like a secondary school music society’s student show fair if you are not an indie fan and by chance walk through the Brooklyn Bridge and see the performance….even worse is that directing and editing of the show is also not too cool while picture resolution is not good enough…..makes this a really flat and boring film watching experience!!        

The Necks - Silverwater

(My Rating: 4/5)
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After wait and wait, I finally get this The Necks latest album which was originally released in 2009. After the very first listen, I am just stunned in a blissfully pleasant way and the wait is all deserved…..

The Necks are experimental jazz trio from Sydney, Australia, comprising Chris Abrahams on piano and Hammond organ, Tony Buck on drums, percussion and electric guitar and Lloyd Swanton on bass guitar and double bass.The band was formed in 80s and has been featuring 15 albums since then. “Silverwater” is the latest album since their 2007 release of “Townsville”  

Compared to rather so-so Townsville, Silverwater is obviously back to their peak form.….there’s only one long piece of 67 minutes music, but you will not feel bored and the ever-changing music will bring you to the music world of The Necks from the initially more static meditative and minimal xylophone-like percussion and organ-synth……..to the mid-way of free rock free jazz jam……..and reach the end of more slow quitar drone, improv session…….You will only feel being sucked into The Neck’s highly-textured ever-changing, evolving and progressing music…….just like the cover art of something like water and ameba with the form keep changing, flowing…..really awesome stuffs!!!     



Ultralyd - Inertiadrome

(My Rating: 4.3/5)
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Ultralyd is Kjetil Møster (The Core) on sax, Anders Hana (MoHa!) on guitar, Kjetil D. Brandsdal (Noxagt) on bass and Morten J. Olsen (MoHa!) on drums and vibraphone. This is their forth album since the band was formed in 2004 and the second album in so-cool Rune Grammofon label since their debut Conditions For A Piece Of Music.

For me, Ultralyd is one of coolest bands in Rune Grammofon amongst other exciting units like Moha, Supersilent, Elephant 9, etc. Their avant rock music are full of cool and exciting mixture of experimental industrial noise, progressive rock, electronica, post punk, improvisation. Their last debut is more introvert approach to explore the sound of dark deep black hole, and this new one is more open and out-going for more stylish and accessible approach…...reminds me of Sonic Youth or mature version of Moha…….this time is even blended with some kraut rock element that makes this album is just so rich too excellent!! ……must be one of best albums of 2010 if I listen it a bit earlier….  

CocoRosie, Live in HITEC Hong Kong, 21 January 2011

knowing them playing freak folk stuffs, but can't imagine the sisters play live in such a freaky way.......like watch a freak show with elder sister as innocent angel  and younger sister as freaky monster kid......together with the excellent jazzy keyboard player and cool beatboxer, the show was really awesome and mind-blowing!! you can see how freaky and magnificent they were in the below videos:

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Goldmund - Famous Places

(My Rating: 4/5)
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Famous Places must be included in my list of 2010 best albums if I listen this album earlier…..

Goldmund aka Keith Kenniff is a Portland-based ambient indie electronic artist who also works under the moniker, Helios. While Helios produces more acoustic electronic ambient works, Goldmund focuses more on solo piano stuffs…..I like “Famous Places” even more than his previous solo piano works as each of 15 beautiful solo piano works, that represents a specific place, are not only having his unique elegant, contemporary and thoughtful vibe of modern composition works as past, but also being more mature, brighter and presentable this time compared to his previous more hazy subtle pieces…..the recording way is also very gorgeously intimate as you can hear some interesting close recording of pedal pressing and string hitting sound, something like prepared piano works….a really gorgeous album!!

Drivan - Disko

(Rating: 3.7/5)
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Drivan is a new band by the multi-talented Kim Hiorthøy, who is well-known with his background as graphic designer for album cover art of the great Rune Grammofon and Smalltown Supersound and a cool electronica musician, consisting of Kim, Lisa Ostberg and Louise Peterhoff of Sweden, and Kristiina Viiala of Finland. The group met in Stockholm in the fall of 2007 while working together on a multi-faceted dance piece by choreographer and performance artist Gunilla Heilborn, entitled The Potato Country according to the band's web site.

If you have heard Kim Hiorthøy’s previous albums, you know how good he is to produce groovy, organic, neat, loop-leaning cool electronica music with hip-hop rhythm and acoustic folk influence…..listening his music something like a cool fashionable people relaxingly walking on Sunday main street with both hands rested in trouser’s pockets and whistling his favourite melodies…….with a new band and new members, honestly, the music is still his trademark electronica sound and vibe, seems only with adding a female vocal with personality something like Stereolab's vocal and cool electric guitar riffs….make the album more rich, accessible and poppy!!       

R.I.P Trish Keenan of Broadcast

Warp Records has announced that Trish Keenan, singer for the British electronic pop duo Broadcast, has died from complications of pneumonia.....what a pity to hear such sad news for such a young and talented people.....

Benoit Pioulard - Lasted

(Rating: 3.7/5)
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I still remember I described Benoit Pioulard’s electro-acoustic folk music in his major indie label Kranky’s  debut “Precis” in 2006 something as “like driving on a quiet highway with heavy rain in the night and you can see everything outside is so hazy and unclear through widescreen, but you do still feel comfortable, relaxed and warm in the car compartment…...”.

After the rather subdue and less well-known 2^nd album “Temper” in 2008, Portland based singer songwriter Benoit Pioulard aka Thomas Meluch comes back with this new album with refined and matured music of his own style…..still those contemporary acoustic guitar chord flicking folk integrated with electronic ambient sound/noise layer plus his deep off-tone soft voice…….what a dream-like hazy soundscape it is!!      

Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP

(Rating: 4/5)
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It’s misleading to call it as EP while the album is in fact 58 mins in length….it’s also misleading to make people thinking that it would be some more inferior unreleased stuffs while this album was released in a close period with the more well-known “The Age of Adz” in 2010 (al least for me is as I just bought it recently due to its discounted price)…..Conversely, this one is a very long play album and this one is an album with music superior than “The Age of Adz”….More importantly, this album is the one to convince his fans including me that the Michigan singer-songwriter is still having so much to create and offer after the previous too-exceptional albums “Michigan”, “Seven Swans” and “Illinois” as well as the not-so-successful experimental minimal electronic concept album “The BQE” with theme regarding New York City's Brooklyn-Queens Expressway". ”All Delighted People” surprises me is that Sufjan Stevens has successfully evolved his famous intimate, warm-hearted social-activist-like and thoughtful poetry lo-fi acoustic folk/indie pop ballet music to another more mature level!! An excellent album!!

Norwegian Wood 挪威的森林

(Rating: 3.7/5)
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It’s always hard to make a great movie from a great novel like the sort of classical novel - Norwegian Woods….Vietnamese director, Ahn Hung Tran 陳英雄, is taking this huge challenge this time and the result is fortunately not bad though not a great one!! With the art house abstract & stream of consciousness意識流 approach (sometime plays quite like a theater drama during their dialogue), cool music score from Johnny Greenwood of Radiohead with few Can classic Krautrock songs and stylish & moody photography from Lee Ping Bin 李屏賓, you can imagine the movie is going to be eye catching. Nevertheless, I just think the director just made the movie too heavy and self-contained within a thematic boundary resulting the missing of that most valuable and explosive youthful restlessness 躁動 (that we all longing for) in love and sex curiosity in the no-regret twenty-something's age!!

I have bought the soundtrack CD also as the music score is very cool indeed!!

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Best Albums 2010

Not too many exceptional albums this year, but there are still some good stuffs worth to mention.....

Cripped Black Phoenix - I, Vigilante
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Liars - Sisterworld
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Elephant 9 - Walk The Nile
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Hildur Gudnadottir - Mount A
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Midlake - The Courage of Others
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Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People
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Jaga Jazzist - One-Armed Bandit
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Sylvain Chauveau - Singular Forms (Sometimes Repeated)
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Yann Tiersen - Dust Lane 
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Supersilent - 10
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Owen Pallett - Heartland
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On - Something That Has Form And Something That Does Not
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Belle and Sebastian - Write about love
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Olafur Arnalds - ....and they have escaped the weight of darkness
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Oval - O
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Max Richter - Infra
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Peter Broderick - How They Are
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Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky

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Max Richter - Infra

(Rating: 4/5)
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Infra is originally conceived as a Royal Ballet-commissioned collaboration between composer Max Richter, choreographer Wayne McGregor and artist Julian Opie per Max Richter’s web site. If didn’t check the album's background, you will think it’s another gorgeous music score for another painful historical-lesson-telling epic movie just like the extraordinary “Waltz With Bashir”. Max Richter is amongst the best modern composer nowadays with his insighhtful composition and arrangement skill that perfectly weave classical music with comtemporary electronic/noise sound like this album with piano & strings with electronic and radio interference noise........generating the cinematic vibe of sadly longings, painful loss, memorable sorrow and unbearable regret that we all have been experienced in our life time......what a passionate stuffs!!

Last Stuffs of 2010

my last dessert (banana cake) in the last night of 2010......and also the last movie (Norwegian Wood)....That's it for 2010!