* RECS OF THE MONTH *
* RECS OF THE MONTH *
JANUARY
AMNESIAC RADIOHEAD
2002
Some feel this album to be leftovers from Kid A, a half-assed release pieced together with cutting room floor material. It’s a fair opinion, given the double album idea that was scrapped deep into recording, but for all of the barren, cold finality of that record, none of it quite has the void qualities of Amnesiac. It’s a very fragmented listen, veering from the ode to death that is Pyramid Song, to something wacky and repetitive like Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors. The best way to describe the feeling of listening to this is akin to being in a museum deep in an abyss; pure darkness occasionally presented with contemporary paintings. The light only lasts long enough for you to understand what you’re seeing before you’re plunged back into the dark. Kid A was the anticipation for the arrival of death, and Amnesiac is the black around the white tunnel.
Like a late night drive around with the Grim Reaper, and he really fucks with jazz.
dir. Alejandro González Iñárritu BIUTIFUL
2010
I’ve been hearing a lot about death lately. Some personal, some distant. It all feels as if I am a leaf on some cosmic tree, and without warning a withered branch snaps off, fading into the dark below the roots.
This is an unpleasant watch. We follow our protagonist through the underbelly of Barcelona, witnessing societal pollution suffocate those who least deserve it, those who never stood a chance. It’s a horror movie wrapped in tragedy and melancholia, hoping that you come to peace with the idea of morality, just as much as the protagonist needs to by the end of film. It’s miserable, almost to a fault.
I recognize that we are born with an expiry date.
I accept it, but I am still afraid.
This film manages to capture the essence of a grief not yet felt, put off because we so desperately want to deny that the thing that is happening.
But it’s happening. It’s happened.
It is the sterility of a hospital, the unobstructed cascade of tears on the drive home, and the sensation of somebody saying goodbye,
far after they have gone.