Friday, February 5, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 36

I wish I could say something more interesting right now than the fact that I'm not nervous. I have my binder, I have my schedule, I have my shots, I have my gear, and I have enough of a crew to get it done. I'll worry about next Saturday next week.

I never really delude myself with the scope of what I'm doing, namely because of the following, which is a list of my greatest concerns for tomorrow:
  • Making sure to calm down and/or cordon off the three (three!) dogs at my sister's house so I don't get audio of dogs scampering overhead during the basement scenes
  • Hoping I'm not too imposing on my sister and brother-in-law by politely demanding to turn the television down or to get the hell out of the rooms we're shooting in
  • Wondering if we might do the whole thing in like an hour and end up waiting around for the post-lunch plan of the special-effects make-up person coming to do their thing for a whopping one shot in the film
  • Figuring out a place to go for lunch
  • Having my dad drive twenty-four miles round-trip for two shots that will, in all likelihood, take fifteen minutes
  • Hoping it's not illegal to remove the license plates of my parked car for like half an hour
  • Not drawing a very-unlikely crowd of spectators shooting outside, given I'll be wearing short basketball shorts and a t-shirt and have a very unflattering bald head
  • Feeling too bossy composing all the shots and running the sound check before I hand the camera over to my AD/operator
Yeah, that's about it. I should have enough material for a trailer sometime in early April, so maybe I'll have some stills shot with my crappy camera in the interim.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Mux045: February 2010

Download or stream at drop.io.

Oh, and the tracks? Total mystery. The usual mix of old favorites, new favorites, and stuff the shuffle dredged up.

1. The Thermals - Here's Your Future
2. The Hold Steady - Your Little Hoodrat Friend
3. Beach House - Norway
4. Broken Social Scene - Almost Crimes
5. Pavement - Date With Ikea
6. Los Campesinos! - Straight In At 101
7. Tapes 'n Tapes - Insistor
8. Surfer Blood - Floating Vibes
9. The National - All The Wine
10. Four Tet - She Just Likes To Fight
11. Spoon - Written In Reverse

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Obligatory Oscar player-hating post

The ten nominees for Best Picture are, surprisingly, not all fucking terrible. Except, well, District 9, which was a silly summer movie; Inglorious Basterds, which was egregious; and Up, which lost focus after the first ten minutes.

Oh yeah, and Avatar, which will win every single category it's nominated for. Kind of like how Lord of the Rings and, last year, Slumdog Millionaire just brushed everything else under the rug and instantly made those movies forgotten.

The Hurt Locker is the worst-off victim here. Hopefully people remember that movie exists when it wins Best Original Screenplay, which is the award they usually hand off to a deserving film that doesn't win anything else.

Monday, February 1, 2010

The Year in Music: January 2010

Pointless, but everybody loves lists. Pitchfork's Best New Music My favorites of this fledgling year, thus far:


1. Four Tet - There Is Love In You


2. Spoon - Transference


3. Beach House - Teen Dream


4. Surfer Blood - Astro Coast


5. Vampire Weekend Contra

Saturday, January 30, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 30

Obligatory repeat of a tweet: The prospective Day -2 has been scrubbed because the actress involved is sick. And, for once in the history of Arc-related delays, I'm not worried. I am still shooting tomorrow, and I'll try to reschedule today (which probably will/would've only take[n] two hours or less) for a weekday before Day 1 proper on February 6. It's also for some footage that doesn't happen until later in the film. I planned it only because I wanted to wade out of the paperwork swamp. But I've already shot two shots, and tomorrow I'll shoot more.

I feel like an athlete in training. It's almost a sort of fear to spend a day without doing something related to the film. Given I overprepared, I'm spacing out what little I have to do over the next week. But I'm afraid of getting soft; of losing focus; of losing drive. I've talked about the tunnel vision of filmmaking before, and I need to keep it and not look back.

I've probably also mentioned the surreality of it all. Archetype will probably be made. This comes after six months of it being just an idea rattling around in my head, and a shot list, and some logistics to pin down, and something abstract to explain at auditions. And, like most majors things in my life - changing schools, moving to Chicago, graduating college - I always think I'm supposed to feel hugely different, and I never do. It's like the feeling when you're somewhere far away on vacation, just doing something normal, just walking around, and forcing yourself to attach some false gravity to it.

If I made Arc, mentally, into being as huge as its own ambition, I wouldn't be able to make it. Like how - like any film - I had to break it down from a boulder into pebbles to simply get a grasp of things I could do every day that, over time, would reconstitute a whole.

So yes, I'm not shooting today, and I'm fine with that. I'm shooting tomorrow, anyway, and a week from today is Day 1 of the shoot proper.

Thursday, January 28, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 28 / Shooting Day -3

I joke about how the process is equal parts film-aching and filmmaking. If there was as much film-aching as filmmaking, I wouldn't be doing what I do. Sure, I piss and moan about little things, but in the end, I have what I can only describe as a voracious zeal for the whole ordeal, about telling a story in a method that's complicated in process to make cohere in the end.

I've been trying to avoid my old Rules of Filmmaking. One rule of which is that the more I suffer or have a hard time during shooting, the better the product. This mostly came about making my Production I final, which was an uphill battle and which turned out as one of the better things I've done with a camera. Contrast that to my Production II final, which was an ambitious undertaking but which I made with friends and mostly coasted along. The end product was extremely confusing, probably moreso a result of finally getting to use sound and piecing together a wordy plot that required a careful read-through of the script to follow.

So today is Day -3 because Saturday and Sunday are Days -2 and -1, respectively. Preliminary, short-term efforts before the shoot proper. Today involved getting shots of kids entering an elementary school in the morning and leaving at the final bell at the day's end. It's just a scene-setting device to frame the time a certain event takes. And something thematically, probably.

(And no, don't lecture me on the possible legality or ethic of anything. My parents claimed I was going to get either sued or attacked by a protective parent, despite filming at a distance never closer than 200 feet, and never zooming close enough to visibly identify any child.)

It was only two shots, really. Well, two shots on paper; I went for a few different compositions, focal lengths, all that crap. But now, at the day's end, I'm absolutely exhausted. It reminds me how, the day after my first day of Transmissions shooting, I was more physically sore than I have ever been, probably on account of having to move furniture, constantly change camera setups, and do everything myself.

This, though, shouldn't be the case. I woke up at the fairly-generous hour of 7:45 to stage outside the school by the 8:30 first bell. Sure, the windchill was -19 Fahrenheit, and I forgot gloves, and only a grand total of about ten to fifteen minutes outside resulted in losing all feeling in my fingers, following by the extreme physical pain of the thaw, then running my hands under lukewarm water for quite some time.

Later today I staged at a different spot and had to walk a total of about three-quarters of a mile round-trip on a rough trail through the snowy woods, all while carrying a camera that weighs probably about fifteen pounds.

None of that, though, seemed to equate to the dead-tired weight dragging on my eyelids. Maybe the prospective-ankle-twisting walk through the woods did me in, or being out in the brutal cold about an hour total. And, well, also taking my sister's dog on a half-hour walk.

Before I write what I just realized is the obvious answer, I could just posit that it could be sheer mental exhaustion leftover from Paperwork Wednesday, which was far more grueling than I imagined. I've also been reading the script these past two days, revising it here and there, visualizing the whole damn thing, thinking about the shoot and post. That's maybe a bit too romantic, as I mentally approach filmmaking from a more logistical and technical aspect; almost scientific. With regards to the latter, I think today's exhaustion was probably just the culmination of five cups of coffee spaced evenly through the day to avoid a caffeine crash, and said crash is happening right now.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 26

Now where were we?

A countdown is rather pointless, since I should concern myself less with counting down numbers than making sure every last detail is in place. Still confirming with a few remaining people and I only had to rejigger the schedule three times, each time rather minutely.

Each day I just try to X off a few items on my actually-named "Big List" of things to do before H-Hour on D-Day. I need to come up with a far better name than that; far too ominous. How about just "February 6, 2010"? Maybe even scratch that, since I'm doing some preliminary shooting this weekend for some TV newscasts, albeit with my old Canon GL2 to make it look kind of grungy. This is the Transmissions-style future, after all. No brands, no consumerism, no flatscreen LCD TVs, no Hummers, no Oreo cookies, ad nauseum.

I am, however, Going Rogue and shooting two guerrilla shots this Thursday all by my lonesome and with my Canon XL H1A, which I haven't touched in over a month.

No lie, though: Every day involves about three hours of e-mail responses, paperwork, and then all other hours spent playing $20 videogames, which I buy on pretty much a weekly basis. Sure, I have some idle, semi-worthwhile thoughts about how videogames are much more cinematic, and how movies are much more like games (case in point, my mom said she liked Avatar because it was like being in a videogame - I responded that I can have this experience without spending $250-$400 million dollars). Archetype, however, is far too restrained and without the requisite action to provide further commentary on this thrilling topic.

I suppose I can let everyone peek behind the veil. Today I e-mailed my AD to call two people who've yet to respond to my e-mail query about availability. Then I called Justin and asked the same thing. Probably after this blog post I'm going to the grocery store to get a $100 bill (as a "prop" for the gun sales), some grape or cranberry juice to serve as "prop wine," orange juice for "prop orange juice" for the duration of the film, and some spaghetti and sauce for the one scene as "prop dinner."

Little things like this that, were this production budgeted about a hundred-thousand times more than it is now, I'd have some lowly PA to do it. But here I am, about to back out my car on the shoveled-by-myself driveway and brave the still-icy roads to do some menial work. But I'm used to it. Right now, director/producer/overlord or not, it's my job.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

JDK Radio 010: Night 2

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Radiohead - Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box
2. !!! - Must Be the Moon
3. Prodigy - Smack My Bitch Up
4. Daft Punk - Da Funk
5. Soulwax - NY Excuse (Nite Version)
6. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing
7. Annie - Heartbeat
8. Chromeo - Fancy Footwork
9. Friendly Fires - Skeleton Boy
10. The Knife - Neverland
11. LCD Soundsystem - Beat Connection (Album Version)
12. Royksopp - Follow My Ruin
13. DJ Shadow - Midnight in a Perfect World
14. Justice - Phantom Pt. II (Soulwax Nite Version)
15. Junior Boys - Last Exit (Fennesz Mix)

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Mux044: January 2010

Two new tracks and a lot of old favorites.

Download or stream off drop.io.

1. Frightened Rabbit - The Modern Leper
2. Black Kids - I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How To Dance With You (EP version)
3. The Joggers - Wicked Light Sleeper
4. Jay Reatard - I Know A Place
5. Radiohead - Bones
6. Vampire Weekend - Giving Up The Gun
7. Spoon - Out Go The Lights
8. The Kills - Black Balloon
9. Hot Chip - Made In The Dark
10. Los Campesinos! - Sweet Dreams, Sweet Cheeks
11. Cut Copy - Bright Neon Payphone
12. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out Of This Country

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

In consideration: Nearing the end of the road

SXSW passed on Transmissions.

The tally: 19 rejected, 2 pending; 21 total.
  • Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  • Austin
  • BendFilm (Oregon)
  • Big Bear Lake (California)
  • Charlotte
  • Chicago International
  • Chicago Underground
  • First Take (Georgia)
  • Landlocked (Iowa)
  • Maine
  • Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  • New Directors / New Films (New York)
  • New York
  • Rhode Island
  • Sacramento
  • Sausalito
  • Slamdance
  • Stony Brook (New York)
  • Sundance
  • SXSW (Austin)
  • Toronto
19 rejections:
  • Austin
  • BendFilm (Oregon)
  • Big Bear Lake (California)
  • Charlotte
  • Chicago International
  • Chicago Underground
  • First Take (Georgia)
  • Landlocked (Iowa)
  • Maine
  • Midwest Independent (Chicago)
  • New York
  • Rhode Island
  • Sacramento
  • Sausalito
  • Slamdance
  • Stony Brook (New York)
  • Sundance
  • SXSW (Austin)
  • Toronto
2 pending:
  • Ann Arbor (Michigan)
  • New Directors / New Films (New York)
Also, the Minneapolis-St. Paul festival announced they're accepting submissions. The entry fee is $50, though, and at this stage, I'd rather spend $50 on Archetype than wad up the same $50 and throw it in a hole.

The Year of Archetype: Day 19

I guess it's appropriate that I've recently marathon'd Lost, given Archetype itself has fractured and turned into a bunch of little puzzle pieces. Nothing amiss or whatnot; just the usual slog of pre-production and, now, the massive coordination of everyone's schedules and the expected reconfiguration based on who is available when.

As I've mentioned to a bunch of people and have probably referenced on this here blog, I oftentimes have to step back and remember the most important thing isn't my shot list, or my schedule, but the story. In a commentary on one of the Ocean movies, Steven Soderbergh mentioned that, when he's wearing several hats during production (namely, serving as cinematographer in addition to directing), he tries to ground himself by reading the script once a week.

Unfortunately, it's something like that that reminds me I'm not paying anyone, that this project isn't the only thing going on in these people's lives, and that one of the greatest obstacles is my own laziness pulling me down. It turns me into an overt apologist when I'm doing something like today, in which the Day 1 call time is between 7-8 a.m. on a Saturday. At least we'll wrap shortly after lunch which, as producer-director-treasurer, is perpetually On Me and will undoubtedly be the greatest production expense. (Not that I'm complaining. It's really the least I can do.)

It's weird when I have to mentally remember making my student film Framework in trying to remember what it's like working with a cast and crew. That was my most robust production, in terms of people involved and, well, money spent on food. Transmissions, obviously, had its own filmmaking lessons that directly translate to Arc, but doing something alone is different than having to coordinate the same thing with five different people. Baby steps, really, given two projects from now I'll potentially have scenes with extras numbering in the hundreds. But that's far-future, and right now, I need to concern myself with the near-future of getting everyone together and making sure they're with me on wanting to tell a story as best as possible.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 17

It's not hard to realize I co-exist on two polar opposite ends of a line. There's the insecurity and the doubt that ripples through most of these Archetype-related posts. So let me indulge in something opposite that: the pure, unrestrained ego that years of public schooling has taught me to repress.

Disclaimer: If you already think I'm an egotistical asshole, just stop here, lest The Haters hate a Hater.

Archetype is going to be a great film. Probably capital-G Great. People will watch it fifty years from now, and since I am a brilliant writer and director, they will find new things about it buried within its layers for decades to come. It's both a universal statement about human nature and a sharp critique of the modern times as filtered through the lens of allegory, of using The Future as a plot device. And I'm the only one who could've written it.

I'm going to make good on years of performing exceptionally well on standardized tests; of choosing art over science to study in school; of going to Columbia over MIT. I'm going to be the greatest director of my generation. I want my films to be Number One on year-end best lists; to win awards; to get referenced in pop culture like how even the high-brow 2001 is referenced.

Modesty, clearly, is an easy front. Like how I can talk down Transmissions when, really, it's severely misunderstood. Archetype will draw attention back to my debut, and it'll get the attention it deserves; that, like Archetype, it can stand up to the rigors of deep analysis while also, clearly, offering on the surface an entertaining narrative.

I know what I'm doing. I've known it for over ten years. It's how I can watch a film and know it's nothing; how I can watch Lost and, while entertained, know it isn't going to last much longer than ten to fifteen years. How every criticism I say about Avatar or Inglorious Basterds is something the director was too stupid to even consider. How they don't have the raw brainpower of someone like Stanley Kubrick or Terrence Malick or me.

I know I put up a disclaimer but those who have been disclaimed are reading anyways. Fine. I'm not going to apologize. This is the way I see things sometimes. This is the kind of attitude you need tucked away to embark on something like Archetype; the kind of attitude that makes it impossible for me to just shut up, forget all this, and rot away behind a desk in some office until I retire and die from old age, instead of realizing how untrue that is for me and how I'd rather shoot myself if it came to that.

And the beauty of all this, that I've downplayed for so long: if Archetype doesn't take off, it'll still be a great film, and it won't be the end of me. I'll make another film. And if that goes nowhere, take a guess what I'll do after that. A man doesn't spend fourteen years of his life plotting his future without coming up with ways to keep the dream alive no matter what.

Saturday, January 16, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 16

Last July I was working on three scripts: Decade, Meridien K - both of which I still plan on finishing and, thus, won't discuss their plots - and Meds, a semi-comedy about health-care reform.

One film, clearly, is missing from that list.

I guess it might've been a number of things that created Archetype. Maybe splitting my workload across three vastly-different scripts burned me out and Arc was my rebound. Maybe I was more upset than I care to admit about the total festival failure of Transmissions and as a crude twist decided to write its sequel. The reason I'm thinking about this is because, last week during auditions, one of my prospects asked how I came up with the idea of the film, and I drew a total blank.

And, now, thinking of the same questions, it's still something I can't, for the life of me, remember. I must've just plucked it from midair.

I think I might've already Gone Upriver with Arc. But that's expected. That's normal. While some hate it and try to avoid it, I always embrace the sort of tunnel vision associated with filmmaking. You eventually absorb the story until you can effortlessly improvise as one character or, miraculously, quote from the prose of the script certain things. Like how, just meeting with an actor, I had to recall the line that Drake "wears a suit despite the cold" for his first appearance in order to justify something.

And it's with this tunnel vision that I have to look back and realize that I've already been working on Arc for five months. That's probably why, now that the gears are in motion, it seems so surreal to be shifting into production. Furthermore, it's not some epic short (see also: my ridiculously-ambitious student films) or even Transmissions (which was arguably hardest to finish the pre-pro for), but a months-long commitment, a stepping stone toward my ambitions of, god forbid, doing this for a living.

So maybe I should stick with this tunnel vision, and tell this story a day at a time, and not pull back and look at the big behemoth of ambitions and expectations I've made this to be.

Friday, January 15, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 15

You can't always be the nice guy in filmmaking. This is why directors usually hire someone else to do their dirty work, to hand out rejections, say Sorry in, usually, as nice a way as possible.

Unfortunately, in a small production, I invariably end up doing a lot of things I'm not supposed to. So I've made my casting decisions and am about to dispense them. For the people who didn't get the big parts, I sort of sheepishly offer them the consolation prize of playing a smaller part, though within that subset, only a few have lines, and some only appear onscreen for about two minutes in the whole movie.

I just envision these weird, will-never-happen scenarios, like a scene with Drake and an actor who read for Drake but didn't get it, and how they'll be trying to, like, out-act each other or something. You can clearly tell how much thought I've put into this.

I guess all of this is probably just a mental diversion because, with the cast yet again (prospectively) rounded out, this movie will be made. The eternal sloth in me translates that to I have to make this movie. It's just the way my diseased mind can't shake the lingering possibility of total failure at every possible turn. I hope I can shake that before I do any major groundwork building up to The Chronicle. Another bad habit - thinking more about the far future than the present.

A running theme of these blogs is working myself into a frenzy and then calming myself down, all in the space of a single post. Maybe I can just blame the blog, and how my little flourishes to try to sensationalize this, to sex it up a bit, could really be dragging me down. Or the opposite - making good on years-long attempts to believe in Catharsis.

Either way, here we are now: on the brink of a second All Systems Go for Arc. Then it's month-by-month, shot-by-shot until it's all on tape, then hunkering down for the long months of post. Just like it's always been, right?

Thursday, January 14, 2010

JDK Radio 009: RIP Jay Reatard

About two weeks after I called Jay Reatard the most prolific songwriter this side of Bob Pollard, he's found dead in his Memphis home.

While Jay recorded most of his life, he seemed to come out of nowhere with 2006's blistering Blood Visions, almost immediately followed up by the Singles 06-07 compilation, and then the rare 7" singles compiled as Matador Singles '08. The man couldn't be stopped, and evidenced by yet another album last year, the sound-shifting Watch Me Fall. So for most, there's his legacy: Four albums in four years.

This is the first time a contemporary musician I've enjoyed has died. And in his prime, at that. Sure, recently his band quit, but I doubt that would've stopped his ceaseless output. Whatever happened, whatever the cause (and honestly, I don't want to know because that's not what's important), all I know is there won't be any new Reatard material. Well, that is after I imagine the thousands of demos he probably recorded get released.

I've compiled a few of my favorite Reatard tracks spanning all his albums. And, like the best of Reatard, it's short and fast: fourteen tracks clocking in at 33 minutes, 54 seconds.

Download or stream at drop.io.

Tracks:

1. Night of Broken Glass
2. It Ain't Gonna Save Me
3. See/Saw
4. Screaming Hand
5. Hammer I Miss You
6. My Shadow
7. Nightmares
8. Always Wanting More
9. Before I Was Caught
10. Turning Blue
11. Trapped Here
12. Not A Substitute
13. Oh It's Such A Shame
14. Nightmares (Demo)

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

The Lost drinking game

(Note: This applies for my current series progress, in which I'm currently halfway through season 4.)

Take a drink every time:
  • Someone points a gun at someone
  • Someone knocks someone unconscious
  • The "whooshing" noise accompanies a flashback or flashforward
  • The musical score blasts some dischordant trumpets for seemingly no reason
  • You see a Dharma Initiative symbol
  • Ben fucks someone over
  • There's a development in the Jack-Juliet-Kate-Sawyer love quadrangle
  • Locke does something to piss off everyone
  • People "make a deal" based on someone's "word"
  • Someone declines to explain something by saying it will make sense later
  • Sawyer calls someone by a nickname
  • A dead person appears
  • Every time an episode doesn't start with a "Previously on Lost..."
  • Someone tells a lie
  • Hurley says "Dude"
  • Desmond says "Aye"
  • Ben gets hit
  • A fistfight occurs and, magically, no one has hard feelings about it afterward
  • An extra appears that has not ever appeared before and has never said a line
  • A new Dharma station/hatch is visited
  • Someone runs through the jungle
  • It rains
That might be far too many criteria. If the game was followed, you'd be dead of alcohol poisoning within twenty minutes.

The Year of Archetype: Day 12

The auditions process goes both ways. While I comforted myself with the snide resolve that I had The Power when they were reading, it's now a role-reversal when I ask these actors if they'll accept the parts and, by extension, the commitment to the project. I, now, have no Power.

On paper, or briefly mentioned, it sounds enormous: a shoot stretching from January through July. Then I try to ratchet down the actual level of commitment involved; other than the crew, most of the cast just has to work two or so days each month. It's not so much that it's Archetype > personal lives as personal lives > Archetype. Barring the fact that actors might take this very Seriously and spend a lot of time creating their characters, it's really an infrequent thing. Albeit over a long period of time.

So this is where another round of Nerves kick in, namely because of the rather nasty surprise of getting my "first cast" locked and having not one, nor two, but three of the main actors having to drop out because of (I grudgingly admit) legitimate reasons in which they couldn't be part of the whole project. Dead-horse-beating when I say better to know now than have someone on a shaky commitment start the project and drop out in the middle, leaving Archetype truly Fucked barring my ability to perform some magic, coherent rewrite that'd solve all problems.

I guess I should leave this unfinished for now, given I don't want to be too much a tease about knowing who I want to cast as who and not telling them yet. I want them to finish the script and sort of know what they're getting into. And once I offer them the parts and if - by god - they say Yes, my next set of worries is locking down days with my sister during which I can invade her and my brother-in-law's and brother-in-law's brother's house at some ungodly morning hour well through the day for shooting, in which I'll have so many rules - no loud television, no loud talking, no excess movement on the creaky floors - that I might as well ask them to stay somewhere else each weekend chunk of shooting. During which I not only hijack their house but kidnap their dog for inclusion in my little movie.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Mux043: Hypnosis

Here's a six-track mix with some long tracks that I've been wanting to include in muxes for some time. Little did I know that, when combined, they'd create some sonic field that has a tendency to sap my conscious reasoning and send me into a sort of trance. Hence it's title.

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. Boris - Farewell
2. Boards of Canada - Music Is Math
3. Massive Attack - Dissolved Girl
4. DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like Part 2 (Edit)
5. Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love For Planet Earth (Non-Album Edit)
6. Radiohead - Everything In Its Right Place

The Year of Archetype: Day 10

I can feel myself slowly turning into a luck-freak. First was last post's fringe paranoia about possibly having to combat weather after crafting a meticulous schedule. Now, after my three lead roles, for separate, legitimate reasons, couldn't commit to the project, I felt like covertly stashing several rabbits' feet in my pockets and furiously rubbing them while auditioning four actors yesterday. The gesture, however, might've looked odd to an outsider's perspective.

So yesterday went extremely well. It started off haphazardly, given my AD came down with something and couldn't make it. We've done all our auditions as a tag-team, in which I usually get the task of communicating all the stuff about characters and plot and - if I'm feeling saucy - themes, and she gets to lay down the logistics of the shoot and make sure what these people are getting into. Fortunately, all four prospects yesterday were really easy to talk to.

I run auditions a bit differently than most, I imagine - no monologues, no shop-talk about acting experience, and script readings are usually a sort of afterthought. It's really a meeting to see if someone seems to have the right attitude to be part of this project. That they're someone I want to work with for somewhere in the neighborhood of seven months. That, god forbid I get ahead of myself, I might be able to use for future MPC ambitions (read: films). So over the course of yesterday, I spent a great deal of time talking about music (derived from one prospect's comments that my background muzak - The Muxtapes - had some solid tracks), (related) Pitchfork, Lost, the obsession with western civilization of being as successful as possible while as young as possible, dick jokes in Funny People, and a gamut of things relating to the presence of Rinna at the auditions.

And, yeah, they read, and everyone was really good. So, fingers crossed, I hope these people can commit and I can stop biting my fingernails over whether or not another delay is on the horizon.

This is enough of a wad of text for a Sunday morning. Tomorrow's Topic of the Day might include Jesse Broman's renovation of the basement of my sister's house, which serves as the lair for Ridley Kraid, and which, now dressed up beyond looking like a crummy basement dungeon, looks far more livable than my original script imagined. Guess I'll have to rejigger the shot list. But by now, I should be used to contingencies.

Friday, January 8, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 8

I already have the analogy for all of my pre-Transmissions work: Shouting into a cave that turned out to be empty. Hell, I think the same could be said of Transmissions with regards to its less-than-stellar (read: shut-out) festival performance.

As for Archetype, it's sort of at the point where I white-knuckle know this film will be made, but some things just keep failing to congeal. The cast is always shifting except a few rock-solid, can-commit people (propers to Justin and John and, if you're out there, Jim). So I think it's like putting my ear to some railroad tracks, knowing the train is coming but I don't know exactly when.

That last paragraph had far too many italics.

Tomorrow I have one two three four FIVE auditions. I've always joked that days with X auditions are like X first dates in a row. Granted, I have the back-up of Maria my indispensable AD, but she's talked to the people and I'm just some ivory-tower director, knee-deep in paperwork and going in blind to talk to people to see if I want to work with them over seven months. Exhilarating, exhausting, and intimidating. The same could probably be applied to the interviewees. Specifically, I'm reading four guys for Drake tomorrow, but also considering them under the umbrella of many minor parts, some of which are prominent but don't even speak. There's another Claire audition, which has been proving almost trickier than Drake to cast.

This is all underscored by the nagging, perpetual delay caused by casting, given that all the other logistics are Go for the first month/six days of Arc shooting. Not that I'm jumping the gun; half of the six days are spent outside, and given the frigid topside temp and yesterday's snow, I want to shoot in early February and hope that I don't get cockblocked by evil sky-demons. Reminds me of shooting Framework, my far-too-ambitious Production II final film at Columbia (which, miracle of miracles, I actually made before realizing how extraordinarily confusing it was), the bulk of which was renting cameras and painfully hauling them back to the dorms, only to get my planned weekend of shooting constantly rained out, with the long-running, dead-horse joke that if there is a God (s)he clearly didn't want that film to get made.

Today I have more to do than shuffle around paper and halfheartedly prep for tomorrow. There was another casting change and I have to rewrite some additional scenes I wrote that utilized a specific talent of the actor that I thought'd work well with the plot. After a Week of Nothing (and, really, so far a Year of Nothing), going back into the writing process will seem like a reprieve.

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 5

Another actor was uncertain they could commit to the full duration of the project. That makes three, which was for all my core cast. Cause for alarm, certainly, but my AD talked me down off the this-is-the-end-of-the-world ledge last night. I spent a lot of yesterday thinking about scrapping Arc and writing a smaller film from scratch, somehow using all the props I already bought. Funny, then, that Arc started out as a project in which the logistics were simple. I only thought I'd have trouble with the dubious legality of shooting a few specific scenes that involve breaking laws. It, typically, bloomed into something far more ambitious, to the point that one early draft had the B-storyline take place at the University of Minnesota because JS could possible get me the access; I scrapped it because, hell, even I'm not dumb enough to try to bring guns - even fake ones - on a college campus.

Regardless, Maria ran another craigslist ad and we'll run some cast prospects through the meat grinder this weekend. Again, I'm trying to remind myself that my former picks for the cast were based on one mere craigslist ad, so lightning can strike twice with regards to casting this film. It's just hard having visualized this film for many months, getting a cast that I thought was a lock, and having my own let's-shoot-this-over-seven-months plan basically backfiring on me.

So now, with some prospective prospects a few days away, I just have to white-knuckle it and spend these enormous globs of free time prepping Part 2, maybe even Part 3, and watching far too much Lost.

Monday, January 4, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 4

My player-hating of Avatar has become almost comical now. Especially since I just read that the film has grossed over $1 billion. Yikes. That's a lot of money given that only a handful of films have ever made that much. Especially given Avatar has only been out for 17 days.

I don't think it's a huge stretch to assume or claim that I don't think I'll ever make a movie that'll gross that much. It's just not in my set of ambitions. Watch Avatar and it's pretty obvious how it achieved that, or, hell, watch Terminator 2 or any James Cameron movie and the blueprint's right there. Avatar has the advantage of a non-R rating, and coupled with an enormous marketing budget and a worldwide release (it's already the highest-ever grossing movie in Russia) and costlier ticket prices for IMAX or 3D films, making that much money is expected rather than wondered. That, and its story is in such broad strokes that pretty much anyone can get behind its message except Dick Cheney.

And, building on - my god - two blog posts worth of continuity, it has that whole Lowest Common Denominator factor built into it.

Now I'm going to veer into some esoteric territory, so if you have no idea what I'm talking about (and probably only about four people will be able to follow), feel free to stop and go about your morning routine.

It's making me think about The Chronicle. Specifically, it's a set of films that will, invariably, require a great deal of money to make. Hell, anyone who's glanced the Wastelands Black screenplay knows that production design alone will cost a pretty penny, if only because of the vast number of setpieces in vastly-different locales. I have to think about balancing mass appeal and my rigid standards, since the movies have to make some money so that I can finish out the series. Same how, if The Fellowship of the Ring tanked, The Two Towers and The Return of the King probably wouldn't have been made. And it's a bit terrifying knowing that everything similar to that has played it safe and kept its appeal wide-open for everyone, whereas The Chronicle is like a contract with the viewer, in which the viewer is asked to trust me to tell the story my way, and along the path they'll learn how to best watch it. It's kind of like The Wire that way; disheartening to know that The Wire was on the verge of cancellation for most of its run, probably as a result of this methodology.

Anyhow, that's all far-future; or, at the soonest, a decade away. It's odd how I predictably think more about a different project than the one I'm currently working on. Maybe not odd, given that the logistics of Archetype occupy most of my lucid thought, and when I drift, it's mostly Chronicle thoughts. I'm not thinking about shot lists and schedules for Ages; just the imagery, and the ultimate fantasy of sitting in a dark theater and watching it play up on a big screen.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 3

Something I forgot to mention last time: Regardless of all anxieties, I need to keep reminding myself that Archetype, ultimately, will be easier to make than Transmissions. If nothing else, I'm having someone else/certified doing the sound mix, and everything relating to audio was more than half of Transmissions. And getting that to work took a few months of groping in the dark and pressing random buttons on my pirate copy of Cool Edit Pro.

Today's really cold. Not surprising, given it's January. Makes me slightly worried about my Day 2 schedule, which is entirely outside, and which, if I find a new Drake within two weeks, will take place at the end of the month, which is usually the coldest time of the whole year. Of course, the first thing I think about is how the cold drains batteries, and only afterward I think that everyone might be, you know, miserable and uncomfortable and borderline-frostbitten. I don't think my simple note of "Dress warm!" on the schedule will absolve me of all guilt and/or ill will among my unpaid crew.

Yesterday I watched two films on totally opposite ends of the easy-digestion tract: A Woman Under The Influence and Terminator 2. The former was extremely uncomfortable because how real it felt, and the latter felt really forced as a sort of Lowest Common Denominator fare. It, of course, furthered my James Cameron player-hating, given I "liked" it the first time I saw it - at a friend's house when I was in first grade, it being my first R-rated movie, like eating some forbidden fruit. It made me think about how, making Transmissions, one of my greatest concerns was making a film without thinking about the potential audience. Like that would ruin it the same way that reading reviews about your own work can; like getting rejected from 18 film festivals and counting could possibly alter my own aesthetic.

It's on the same level of concern as making sure I get the point-of-view right (caution: there will be some continuity of themes in these here blog entries). I spent enough years in peer-reviewed film school to know when to take advice and when to stick to your guns. Transmissions was easy: I had ultimate control; no one else even read the script before it was done. There are a lot of hands in the Archetype cookie jar, and it's all about finding that balance. So sorry, mom, that you found the script confusing, because I'm not going to change it to cater to you.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

The Year of Archetype: Day 2

Every day I (try to) do something relating to Archetype. Usually something small, only an hour or two, so I can check it off my list and then get on with whittling away the rest of the day's hours, counting down to whenever it is that the actors confirm that they want the parts offered to them so that I know everything is Go. (Considering, of course, the total surprise that my pick for Drake, the co-lead of the film, is moving to LA and, thus, can't play the part.)

But yesterday I did nothing. Rationalized as a New Years' Day off or something. In reality: playing a lot of n+, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, and Guitar Hero Smash Hits on my Xbox; watching a movie and a half (Bob Le Flambeur [which has some of the most terrible editing, 1955 or not] and Saving Private Ryan); reading Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow and still being completely confused or exhausted by the breathless, indulgent prose, all while eying the three unopened books I own, imagining they are much more entertaining; laying on the couch with eyes closed, hoping sleep will come and claim a few more hours so that it'd be closer to turkey-and-stuffing dinner. For the latter, my aunt, uncle, sister, brother-in-law, dog-in-law, and brother-in-law's brother's dog came over.

I guess I'll sidestep and mention something about Saving Private Ryan. Right now, my greatest fear is accidentally watching a great movie and subconsciously trying to emulate it while making Archetype; being influenced, that is. I've arranged my Netflix queue top-heavy with shlock (like The Hangover) to manually avoid this, and watching SPR was in knowing that I have major qualms with the movie insofar as to consider it "safe" for not puppermastering my own style. I mainly watched it since I've been playing a lot of Call of Duty lately. COD 2, specifically, which rips off SPR and Band of Brothers to an enormous, unashamed degree. Case in point: the D-Day sequence, which, despite taking place at Utah Beach instead of Omaha, manages to have your character get off the boat, get "shell shocked" and have the audio sound underwater and your vision get all shaky-blurry while you look to a lander aside and see all the men coming off get torn up by German MGs and then set on fire. Sound familiar?

By as for SPR itself, that movie is an exercise in total undisciplined filmmaking. Sure, at the time, it was justifiably shocking, in terms of, at least, sheer gore and advances in Shaky-Cam (TM) technology. Part of the latter was what, when I was a kid and saw it in the theater with my mother, made me realize for the first time that a director was making choices about the film.

But now, in retrospect, so many films have come after it (and, in the same year, the vastly-different and gore-less The Thin Red Line) and copped its style that now it seems like gross war-porn. Coupled with a sentimental John Williams score, it seems almost exploitative.

And my biggest problem: The total lack of a coherent point-of-view. POV is always one of my chief concerns when making a film; Archetype takes rigid place from Ridley Kraid's limited POV, and I wrote thousands of words of documents to myself regarding the carefully-weighed POV of Transmissions, which, spoiler, doesn't take place from Kraid's POV.

But SPR: I always chapter-skip the first scene, when an aged Private Ryan finds Captain Miller's grave. The camera pushes in for a close-up of Ryan, and then it goes to D-Day. But we're then, mostly, with Cpt. Miller and a POV always on the ground but with seemingly everyone. To suggest chaos, I guess, but the opening scene implies that the film will be from Ryan's limited POV. But Ryan wasn't in the beach landing at Normandy. And, worst of all, the film is bookended by Ryan scenes, so the POV is already horrifically fucked. It takes a sort of swinger's Anything Goes approach, sometimes even taking place from the German perspective.

I guess I can be guilty of enjoying the war-porn, since if it wasn't rooted in WWII, it'd get a hard NC-17 rating that would be the death knell to it making any money. That, and my own plans for future war movies don't get to that level of gore, since, if nothing else, I want just-guns warfare so you can keep track of who is where and whatnot.

Back on track: Wondering about today's Archetype doings. I hope to do something with Maria, my assistant director, and run some of my lines with her for my benefit. It's somewhat intimidating that I'm the least-qualified actor in the cast, in terms of resume, even though I know Kraid inside and out. We'll probably also watch some of The Wire, which I plan on marathoning since I got seasons 4 and 5 for Christmas, completing my collection. I guess, somewhere along the line, Archetype had its mandatory Wire influence. Something along the lines of having only source music, grey morality, and trusting the audience's intelligence, though I eschew The Wire's - beating a dead horse here, I know - POV of 3rd-person omniscient. I plan on rocking out 3rd-person limited for the lion's share of my filmography. Old War being the exception since, well, I wrote the first draft in 2003 and there's a dream sequence that, I swear, will be the only dream sequence I ever shoot.

Now I suppose I'll ride out the rest of this mux I'm listening to before I get back to SPR, and a prospective day of talking shop and talking nonsense about Arc and whatever with AD Maria.

Thursday, December 31, 2009

The Best Non-2009 Films I Saw This Year

I think I saw less than ten films this year. I’ll probably see the rest in February, when they all come out on DVD sometime around the Academy Awards. Until then, I looked up my Netflix history of the past year, and, despite my extreme standards for what differentiates a good film from a great one, here are some pretty-great-to-hella-great films I saw for the first time this year.

Straw Dogs
I was either on a Peckinpah kick or this rotated up to the top of my queue. Regardless, Peckinpah, to me, has a strange similarity to David Lynch: they can make you extremely uncomfortably in broad daylight. Whereas Lynch uses it as a scare tactic (e.g. most of Twin Peaks and the creepy-guy-behind-the-café in Mulholland Drive), Peckinpah, here, uses it to show men ogling Dustin Hoffman’s wife. Hoffman, a scholar relatively emasculated among laboring, hard-drinking Englishmen, eventually interprets their harassment of his wife into implications of physical threat. When that shit eventually goes down, Peckinpah delivers what could be considered the most gruesome, vile, bloody-teeth-bared defense of one’s house since, well, never. Consider it an hard-R Home Alone.

The Wind That Shakes The Barley
On the same idea of being on a jag of films related to something, I must’ve watched a lot of Jim Sheridan movies, because I seemed to have watched pretty much every movie about Northern Ireland. The Wind That Shakes The Barley – winner of the Cannes Palme d’Or of its year – starts at the genesis of “The Troubles” and unflinchingly shows the formation of a guerrilla army that will, eventually, bleed for generations upon generations for their freedom. Granted, to pull something like this off, the Brits were given no redeeming qualities whatsoever (to put it simply: they were fucking bloodthirsty animals), and a brother-versus-brother ending threatened to derail all that had come before it. But that’s the moral behind all this, and what’s still going on today: a country split in two, mostly caught in a war that’s being fought simply because it’s always been fought, not because of the causes of the first battles.

Also, points for making a “historical epic” without the usual crutches of a swelling score, huge stars, or huge close-ups. Cillian Murphy arguably carries the film (especially when he executes the Englishman and the informant), but there’s no Brad Pitt or George Clooney here. Just some (probably) Irish lads re-enacting both the birth and death of their country.

Bloody Sunday
Another Northern Ireland film. Paul Greengrass helmed this and, like a lot of great European work, was actually made for television. Here is the story of what was supposed to be a peaceful march gone wrong, leaving innocent civilians dead with no (and still no) repercussions on behalf of the British soldiers. Greengrass keeps the film quite literally grounded, and we just know what a handful of characters know, which makes the action all the more gut-wrenching when the shots are fired, same as how he infused the Bourne movies with a sense of urgency and United 93 with a spontaneity most thought impossible. The British soldiers, before the massacre, piss and moan about how a tour of duty in Northern Ireland is a terrible bit, in which their buddies get picked off at a reliable pace and they have to endure stone-throwing youth day in, day out. Some, naturally, get overzealous, which leads to wrongful bloodshed.

The Big Red One
I think I had seen this before in the vastly-truncated non-director’s cut. In Fuller’s complete version, we follow the eponymous unit through basically the entire war. I never really appreciated the movie until I found out how little it was made for, in terms of budget. There are about ten times as many setpieces as The Hurt Locker, and all are memorable. From a fight in which a wounded soldier is concerned first and foremost if his penis was blown off to the near-finale when Mark Hamill’s level-minded, gentle GI snaps and shoots a dead German over and over, The Big Red One doesn’t dress up World War II as a good-versus-evil morality play.

The Proposition
For whatever reason, I once watched the opening of this movie and sent it back. Hearing that director John Hillcoat was directing The Road (one of my favorite books), I decided to revisit The Proposition. Like many films about the formation of a country that began as a colony, there’s the constant strain between the colonists and the natives, and the very-real fear that, outside of the colonists’ tended gardens, they’re surrounded by hostile bush. The Proposition, like most revisionist westerns, doesn’t romanticize any of it.

Street Fight
Why the mayoral race of Newark, New Jersey turned into a – ho ho ho – street fight is a total mystery. It’s not like New York or Chicago or LA or another huge city. But whatever the reasons, it’s also great viewing when a doc starts out on one topic – here, probably Cory Booker’s run for mayor – and ends up getting into another – Sharpe James’s absolutely ruthless campaign and oft-illegal muscle that wants Victory at any cost. The doc plays fair for the most part. While James gets what he deserves in terms of criticism, the film also shows Booker as a bit too much of an idealist, also showing his campaign advisors confiding to the camera that they think Booker is going to sabotage himself. That is, after the fact that the man deliberately lives in the projects and brings his politics to the level of the everyman.

Overlord
Another odd byproduct of (trying to) watch a film every day: I first watched Overlord and fell dead asleep, and I think I sleepwalked to the mailbox to mail it, since it disappeared and showed up asking for a rating on Netflix. Anyhow, I caught wind of this via the doc about Z Channel, and I don’t know how I’d hear about it otherwise. If nothing else, Overlord succeeds as a film that captures the reality of World War II by using actual stock footage and shooting the film itself with old cameras to give it a stock-footage look. I think the story was pretty good, too, since I think I gave it a good rating. Another byproduct of mass film watching: even greatness doesn’t always stick.

Fantastic Planet
What the hell did the script read like? This thought ran through my head during the vast majority of Fantastic Planet, which is the trippiest animated film I’ve seen. When I recently saw Avatar and became increasingly fatigued of the day-glo planet Pandora, I kept thinking about how Fantastic Planet has aged well and Avatar probably won’t. One actually has, god forbid, a story and themes and probably some allegory about something whereas the other is just pretty.

Storytelling
Pitch-black comedy. Not for everyone, but it is one of the very, very, very few films I’ve awarded the coveted rating of five stars on Netflix. Advice: Watch this alone or else you’ll be extremely uncomfortable.

Saw
I put my money where my mouth is and decided to delve into what I thought would be a terrible film. While Saw II through VI (yes, I’ve watched them all) have their low points despite sticking to an extremely-complicated chronology, the original Saw is a master’s class in minimalist horror. Add to it a twist ending that I never expected, and you have the blueprint for a great original followed by mediocre sequels.

Chopper
Consider something like Raging Bull is to Robert De Niro as Chopper is to Eric Bana. Both are intense character studies, and while Raging Bull came off of past De Niro brilliant performances in Mean Streets, The Godfather Part II, and Taxi Driver, Eric Bana seemed to have come out of nowhere before Chopper. Here he plays an absolutely psychopathic criminal who seems to have delusions that he’s secretly working for the government. Apparently the real Mark “Chopper” Reed has written several books (which are bragged about in the film), and I just might have to delve into them to read more about the literally-insane exploits of the title character. I can imagine that, however deep into Chopper’s poisoned mind I get, Bana will still seem like the only person capable of playing him.

Tigerland
I just watched this last week, after being convinced that I wouldn’t be surprised by any film until Malick’s IMAX history-of-the-universe documentary (which supposedly will release alongside The Tree of Life). First of all, the look of the film is brilliant. I can’t find any resources online, but it looks like it was shot 16mm on either a really high-speed or reversal stock. After having watched about every documentary ever on the Vietnam War, this looks exactly like that; and apart from knowing that Colin Farrell is a contemporary actor, this feels like it came out in the 70s. And, apparently, this film didn’t go anywhere except to five theaters and then DVD, which is some heinous cinematic injustice. On top of all this, it’s a fantastic story, and, weirdest of all, it’s directed by Joel Schumacher, responsible for the terrible Batman Forever and more-terrible Batman & Robin. It’d be like if John Hughes directed 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Mux042: 2010 Better Not Suck

Download or stream at drop.io.

1. Death Cab For Cutie - The New Year
2. Weezer - My Name Is Jonas
3. Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)
4. Patrick Wolf - The Magic Position
5. The Black Keys - 10 a.m. Automatic
6. The Wrens - Everyone Chooses Sides
7. Wolf Parade - Shine A Light
8. Yo La Tengo - Sugarcube
9. Radiohead - Reckoner
10. The Arcade Fire - No Cars Go

Sunday, December 27, 2009

JDK's 2009 in Pretty-Good Albums

There’s only so many hours in a day, and so much time in a year. And within that, the way I listen to music is fractured. On a very rare occasion do I don my Grados and lay on my couch, eyes closed, and listen to a record front to back. Most full listens happen on car trips, with the A side going there and the B side coming back. Sometimes I’m mowing the lawn or shoveling snow or washing the dishes or doing some sort of random chore that doesn’t require much thinking. Or maybe it’s just on in the background while I’m writing something like this (current soundtrack: The Antlers’ Hospice given iTunes sez I haven’t listened to it in full in a while).

That said, there are many albums I only give a single listen in any given year. And there are some albums I give a few listens and have a feeling that, had I listened even more, they’d make my coveted list. Regardless, below are a collective of “at least good” records that provide a solid listen but didn’t get the attention they (probably) deserve.


Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
I never know what to make of an Andrew Bird record. They’re all lush and gorgeous and pretty, sure, but that’s where my mental capacities end. The only Bird track I ever dug deeper into was “Fake Palindromes,” which is about torture or something.


Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
I like this album. I swear I do. And, my god, the first time I listened to it was probably the perfect occasion – I was playing with my sister’s dog in the backyard. But somewhere around the second listen it just kind of fizzled out. I was counting the minutes between “My Girls,” “Summertime Clothes,” and “Brothersport.” And, as I’ve mentioned online a few times, the songs either sound like they’re in a cave or a bubble bath. Or a bubble bath in a cave. Also, the awful abrasive noise starting off “Summertime Clothes” is endemic of some of the downright-bad samples used on the album. I may be a “hater” of individual AC records because I think they’re good, not great, but I admire the band as a whole, given that their sound has evolved to a ridiculous degree in very few years. The only similar leaps were Radiohead’s OK Computer to Kid A jump in three years and pretty much the whole Beatles catalog of the mid-60s.


Atlas Sound – Logos
Much friendlier than the icy prior album (which has a name so long I won't bother to type it), and with some highlights like the much-lauded “Walkabout” and “Quick Canal.” I guess it’s good that Bradford Cox has Atlas Sound as his outlet for confessional bedroom rock, given that some of the best parts of Deerhunter’s Microcastle were Cox-less, such as the not-sung-by-Cox “Agoraphobia” and the written-by-the-bassist “Nothing Ever Happened.”


Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue
Bibio, who I assume is just one guy, plays some ultimate shapeshifter on this album. It runs the full gamut of folky-rock (the title track), to trip-hop (“Fire Ant”), to damn-fine indie rock (“Haikuesque”). There are some heads and tails of songs that sound pitch-perfect replications of Boards of Canada, which makes sense given he excellently covered their song-snippet “Kaini Industries” for the Warp20 collection, complete with a robot-children-playing-with-rusty-toys end-of-track finale.


The Decemberists – The Hazards of Love
Herein lies the classic Decemberists problem: their albums are sequenced and mashed together for one song to run into another, but they're so long. I usually have, at maximum, forty-five minutes to listen to music (hence that usual limit for my muxes), and that extra fifteen minutes that pushes The Hazards of Love to near an hour is too much. I do, however, like the band’s shift from sea-shanties to what I guess you can call indie-prog, given Colin Meloy, somewhere around The Crane Wife, cut guitarist Chris Funk loose to fucking shred.


Do Make Say Think – Other Truths
While I’m sure the band would be livid to here this, Do Make Say Think makes the best background music. It’s quality post-rock that doesn’t beg for your attention like a Tortoise record. It’s a bit jazzier, a bit laid back. You can write blog posts to it which, for me, is pretty important.

Also, they get points for ditching the long, confusing tracknames of past records and having the four tracks called the easy-to-remember “Do,” “Make,” “Say,” and “Think.”


The Dodos – Time To Die
My friend Jacqueline is gay for this band, and my admission that I listened to Visiter “probably twice” got a reaction as if I skinned one of her cats in front of her. I’m not of the camp that just loves my “Fools” (and, by default, Miller Chill). I’m pretty sure this is an album band, which is why I haven’t devoted enough time on Time To Die to make any sort of definitive statement. But “Fables” is pretty fun, and these guys have serious musical chops, which is pretty rare in the indie world.


Eyedea & Abilities – By The Throat
I think these guys beat Lil Wayne to making a rap-rock album that is on the other side of the Limp Bizkit coin. (That is to say, one side of the coin is shit and the other side could be fantastic and... ah, fuck it.) Abilities throws down some hard rock beats and even some riffs, and Eyedea is the second-angriest MC from the Twin Cities (Brother Ali being first, obviously). This album is lean and muscular, which is rare for a rap album. Gone are the expected skits (e.g Outkast, early Kanye) or long sound clips from either cartoons (e.g. DOOM) or movies (E & A’s E & A), replaced with a record twenty-nine no-frills minutes.


Fever Ray – Fever Ray
Forget what everyone else says – this is a Knife album. Let’s all remember that, prior to Silent Shout, The Knife, stylistically, was all over the place. “Heartbeats,” anyone? Or anything else off Deep Cuts? But now, apparently The Knife is the official soundtrack for Night, and so is Fever Ray. This stuff is so pitch-black that I hardly even find appropriate times to spin it, so I usually just toss the brilliant “If I Had A Heart” (and the awesome Fuck Buttons remix) on a mix if I’m leaving the house past nightfall.


Franz Ferdinand – Tonight
Did everyone suddenly forget this album? It’s a near-miracle for a band that, on its debut, sounded pretty much the same on every song, to move in a close-but-new direction for a third record in five years. You Could Have It So Much Better initially sounded alarm bells when single “Do You Want To” sounded like “Take Me Out” was applied the Pro Tools “make a hit single like the last hit single” filter. That album was a bit more exploratory, which is quite a statement when considering this record features, if nothing else, an in-the-red rock-out at the end of “What She Came For,” bouncing synth bleeps on “Live Alone,” and, of course, the colossal “Lucid Dreams,” which eschews the single’s straight-ahead rock and veers off into electro-wonderland near the end of its eight-minute runtime. They somehow then pull it together for a quiet ballad “Dream Again” before the acoustic ballad “Katherine Kiss Me” for the closer. It’s always great when a buzz band can make it past a second album.


Health – Get Color
If early Animal Collective was playing with electronics, early Health (see: self-titled) was playing with drums and, most memorably, serving as fodder for Crystal Castles to remix into a better product. Get Color, though, has the band finding its way. Much has been said about the knife-in-the-chest rip of “Die Slow” and the blast of “Before Tigers.” But the true album highlight is the mesmerizing “In Violet,” which skitters along on a synth pulse and evokes the most beautiful electronic chords since “Idioteque.”


The Hood Internet – The Mixtape Volume Four
Call it this year’s “grower.” I’ve been a fan of The Hood for about a year, and after getting spoiled of having instantly available to me Mixtapes One, Two, and Vs. Chicago, I had a fevered anticipation for Volume Three that paid off. Its most memorable moment, for me, was the end track of R. Kelly over Rogue Wave’s “Endless Shovel,” the latter of which has now become one of my favorite songs. It seemed The Hood could do no wrong, even if it seemed like Volume Three, with its shorter tracks, was veering into Girl Talk territory.

That’s what initially put me off on Four. First of all, I barely recognized any of the tunes (excepting the fantastic Lil Wayne vs. Royksopp, Michael Jackson vs. Ratatat, Drake vs. The Rapture [a real pleasant surprise], and Dead Prez vs. Grizzly Bear), and the tracks were even shorter than Volume Three. I’ve read interviews where The Hood talks about their love of Girl Talk and how they’re flattered to be compared to him. But whereas I love Girl Talk because of the snippet oh-shit moments, I like The Hood because they provide coherent, can-dance-to-it-for-a-few-minutes tracks. Also, while Girl Talk, post-Night Ripper and post-Feed The Animals, looks like he has nowhere to go except tread old ground, there’s an infinite number of possible mash-ups for The Hood to mix.

So after five or so listens, I’ve started to warm to Four, namely since it’s becoming familiar. I know when to anticipate the Drake vs. The Rapture track, which takes the jagged guitars and killer bassline from “House of Jealous Lovers” and loops it into bliss. And I’ve learned to appreciate the beauty of “Fire Ant Paint Job,” which eschews The Hood’s trend of having an indie-rock ender (see Vol. One’s “I’m A Flirt [Shoreline],” Vol. Two’s “If I Could Rock [It Would Be Like This],” and Vol. Three’s “Endless Hookup”). Yeah, Volume Four’s Keyboard Cat vs. Usher ender is obviously a joke, but it’s a bit unsettling that they re-use Usher’s “Make Love In This Club,” which was previously used over a Los Campesinos tracks near the end of Vol. Three.

I just sound like a nerd now, and I typed far too much about a mixtape.


Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall
Reatard is the most prolific songwriter this side of Bob Pollard. Also astounding is that he’s gone so quickly from the blow-out Blood Visions to two varied singles compilations to another album proper, which eschews megadistortion in favor of some varied instrumentation. Oh, and apparently he’s an asshole (fistfights, his band quitting, etc.). Maybe that’s the secret.


Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care
Each subsequent Junior Boys album is good, but man, Last Exit was, well, Last Exit. It was, and still is, totally brilliant. Was it that it came out of left field? Had Junior Boys done anything prior? Barring all the other great tracks, “Last Exit” is a master’s course in sonic minimalism, and now the band seems to be (I’m sure you could connect a pun here) coasting on its chill vibe. What was great about Last Exit is that it wasn’t a dance album but you could dance to it. Now it seems they’re trying too hard. Or maybe too little.


The Pains of Being Pure at Heart – The Pains of Being Pure at Heart
I’d love for them to prove me wrong, but I don’t have high hopes for this band. I’ve always mentally referred to them as “My Bloody Valentine lite.”


Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Phoenix, Daft Punk, and Justice make me hate French people a little bit less. WAP seems a little too prim and proper, though. It’s Never Been Like That had some jagged edges (like the shouting of the album title on “Long Distance Call”) that, to me, keep it up on the Best Phoenix Album pedestal.


A Place To Bury Strangers – Exploding Head
I’ve talked about how Fuck Buttons’ Tarot Sport doesn’t “replace” Street Horrrsing. Well, barring a few songs, Exploding Head definitely replaces APTBS’ debut. These songs just pummel the shit out of you, and I expect to feel it through my whole body when I see them in March. For now, I just blast the hell out of “Ego Death” (one of my favorite rock songs of the year) and “I Lived My Life To Stand In The Shadow of Your Heart.” Whereas the debut had APTBS’ Oliver Ackermann uncomfortably fronting some ballads with a warbly, bassier Ian Curtis impression, here he finds his element in hardcore noise and letting his voice sound as commanding as the ripcord guitars.


The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
This one is tricky because I know it’s a 2008 reissue, which took it out of the running almost immediately. I, however, listened to it a fair number of times, and my many muxes have plundered some of its more memorable tracks. I think the band is also a duo, cementing the odd fact that all my 2009 favorites are duos.


Sonic Youth – The Eternal
In preparation for this album, I listened to the entire back catalog of Sonic Youth. Yes, the entire back catalog, including their SY-label releases and albums that everyone knew were shit. Here’s what I’ve unfortunately learned: Sonic Youth’s sound probably isn’t going to ever change again. So every time a new Sonic Youth record comes out, sure, it’ll have a great single like “Antenna,” but the wheel has already been invented.


Spoon – Got Nuffin’ EP
Apparently “Got Nuffin’” will be on Spoon's January release, Transference. Outside of that, this EP is a waste of time. Spend the eleven minutes reading a book to a homeless child or something.


Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer
I’m not one to make Honorable Mentions lists (and this is not an Honorable Mentions list, I swear), but if I did make one, this would be on it. I read this somewhere else, so I’m stealing it: it seems that Spencer Krug’s best output is now in Sunset Rubdown, instead of Wolf Parade or, god forbid, Swan Lake. After the artsy, attention-demanding Random Spirit Lover, here comes the – I’m going to use the A-word again – accessible Sunset Rubdown record that, despite most tracks being six minutes, can be enjoyed by a great number of people.


We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
Another record close to breaking my top eight, with the only points against it being that I haven’t listened to it enough times (though, yikes, my iTunes sez I’ve listened to it ten times). The album shines with the likes of the huge build-up on “It’s Thunder And It’s Lighting” and “This Is My House, This Is My Home,” and straight-up-loud tracks like “Quiet Little Voices,” but otherwise it kind of sinks into a quiet.


The xx – xx
Good god this took a lot longer than I thought. I’m hungry. But The xx’s xx is a good album. But you probably already knew that.



In the spirit of full disclosure, and the knowledge that some of my ’09 favorites won’t be discovered until early ’010 (much like Street Horrrsing last year), here’s every album I listened to in the calendar year.

A.C. Newman – Get Guilty
And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead – The Century of Self
Andrew Bird – Noble Beast
Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
The Antlers – Hospice
Asobi Seksu – Hush
Atlas Sound – Logos
Bat For Lashes – Two Suns
Bear In Heaven – Beast Rest Fourth Month
Bibio – Ambivalence Avenue
The Big Pink – A Brief History of Love
Bill Callahan – Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
BLK JKS – After Robots
Blues Control – Local Flavor
Bowerbirds – Upper Air
Box Elders – Alice & Friends
Brother Ali – US
Bruce Springsteen – Working On A Dream
Camera Obscura – My Maudlin Career
Casiontone For The Painfully Alone – Vs. Children
Cass McCombs – Catacombs
Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains
Dan Deacon – Bromst
The Decemberists – Hazards of Love
Delorean – Ayrton Senna EP
Destroyer – Bay of Pigs EP
Dinosaur Jr. – Farm
Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca
Discovery – LP
Dizzee Rascal – Tongue N Cheek
Do Make Say Think – The Other Truths
The Dodos – Time To Die
Drake – So Far Gone
Eyedea & Abilities – By The Throat
Fever Ray – Fever Ray
The Fiery Furnaces – I’m Going Away
The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
Franz Ferdinand – Tonight
Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport
Future of the Left – Travels With Myself And Another
Girls – Album
Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown
Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest
Handsome Furs – Face Control
Harlem Shakes – Technicolor Health
Health – Get Color
The Hood Internet – The Mixtape Volume Four
Iron & Wine – Around the Well
Japandroids – Post-Nothing
Jay Reatard – Watch Me Fall
The Juan MacLean – The Future Will Come
Junior Boys – Begone Dull Care
Magik Markers – Balf Quarry
The Mars Volta – Octahedron
Mastodon – Crack the Skye
Matt and Kim – Grand
Memory Tapes – Seek Magic
Metric – Fantasies
Modest Mouse – No One’s First, And You’re Next
Mos Def – The Ecstatic
Mount Eerie – Wind’s Poem
The Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come
Neko Case – Middle Cyclone
Neon Indian – Psychic Chasms
No Age – Losing Feeling EP
Oneida – Rated O
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart – Higher Than The Stars EP
Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Pink Mountaintops – Outside Love
A Place To Bury Strangers – Exploding Head
Polly Scattergood – Polly Scattergood
Realpeople (aka Beirut) – Holland
Royksopp – Junior
The Rural Alberta Advantage – Hometowns
Shout Out Out Out Out – Reintegration Time
Sonic Youth – The Eternal
Sparklehorse – Dark Night of the Soul
Spoon – Got Nuffin’ EP
The Strange Boys – And Girls Club
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Sunset Rubdown – Dragonslayer
Super Furry Animals – Dark Days / Light Years
Swan Lake – Enemy Mine
The-Dream – Love vs. Money
The Thermals – Now We Can See
Thom Yorke – The Eraser Rmxs
Thom Yorke – Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses / The Hollow Earth EP
Thunderheist – Thunderheist
Tim Hecker – An Imaginary Country
Tortoise – Beacons of Ancestorship
Tyondai Braxton – Central Market
Various Artists – 5: Five Years of Hyperdub
Various Artists – Dark Was The Night
Vivian Girls – Everything Goes Wrong
Volcano Choir – Unmap
Wavves – Wavvves
We Were Promised Jetpacks – These Four Walls
Weezer – Raditude
White Denim – Fits
Why? – Eskimo Snow
Wilco – Wilco (The Album)
Wild Beasts – Two Dancers
Woods – Songs of Shame
The xx – xx
Yacht – See Mystery Lights
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz!
Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs

And while it’s too soon to make any calls, 2010 will, like any year, be a solid year for music. If notihing else, there’s a new Spoon album, a semi-confirmed Arcade Fire record, another full-length from The National, and an oft-promised My Bloody Valentine LP. That might be my top four, right there. Unless some band – like Japandroids – comes out of nowhere.

Saturday, December 26, 2009

JDK's 2009 in Albums

I hate it when websites put up their “Best Of” year-end lists. The implication of the word “Best” seems like it makes my own opinion moot. So here are some of my “favorite” albums of the year.


1. Japandroids – Post-Nothing

I saw the Japandroids play at the Pitchfork Music Festival this past summer. In short, they were fantastic, and they played with an energy I thought impossible for a duo.

Later that day I won a charity auction for some Japandroids merch. While I was cradling a vinyl of their debut Post-Nothing, I was asked by some blogger if they could briefly interview me about the band. I obliged, and the first question was, “How would you describe their music?”

I paused for a moment because, honestly, I didn’t quite know how to call it anything other than the blanket term of “rock.” Sure, others have said they’ve part of some 90s revival of something-rock and garage-rock, but I don’t even know what that means. I just know what I hear on their album and live on stage: fast, intense, distortion-heavy, drums-heavy songs that are anthemic without the weight of being called an “anthem”; lyrics that, despite my usual habit of ignoring, I’ve actually read and found out usually consist of little more than a few sentence bits sing-shouted over the course of a track; rock about escape, which one could argue is what rock is all about; escape from the nothing-towns of our youth, the friends we had just because we went to school with them, not giving a shit about the weather in our hometowns “‘cause we’re far from home tonight.”

All this over eight blistering tracks and thirty-five minutes and forty-four seconds.

One could mull over the corner the band has painted themselves into, and how a second record could bring a change in sound or a change in some sort of direction that would probably seem untrue to themselves. Maybe they should just bow out now and leave Post-Nothing as their ultimate work after two pretty-good EPs.

Regardless, Post-Nothing was my most-listened-to record of the year; I saw Japandroids play live twice and they are one of my best live bands I’ve seen; I have an autographed t-shirt pinned up on my wall; I dug my mom’s old record player out of the crawlspace so I could listen to Post-Nothing on vinyl; and, despite the killer single “Young Hearts Spark Fire” and the single-quality of every last track, Post-Nothing coheres into a brilliant album, and it’s by far my favorite of the year.


2. The Antlers – Hospice

In the same vein I love The Antlers’ Hospice as I do Deerhunter’s Microcastle. Both make the case for the dwindling trend of an album as a whole instead of just a collection of songs, beyond the simple trick of having tracks bleed into each other.

Unlike Japandroids, though, I have blissfully ignored the lyrics to Hospice. I only know that album highlight “Bear” is probably about an abortion, and I’ve read reviews and year-end lists that mention the overarching story of a cancer patient and death and all that gloomy stuff.

But even with subject-matter that wouldn’t play well as a good driving record, Hospice manages to reach cathartic heights I haven’t heard since The Arcade Fire’s Funeral. “Sylvia,” “Bear,” and “Two” have their slow points, which makes their triumphant apexes all the more majestic.

And, like Japandroids and my next-favorite album, the band is apparently a duo. Consider it the Year of the Duo.


3. Fuck Buttons – Tarot Sport

Take former album Street Horrrsing and LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33 and create a synthetic bastard child and somewhere in its angsty teenage years you’ll get Tarot Sport.

Gone is the sometimes-huge disconnect between tracks of the still-brilliant Street Horrrsing and the toy-microphone screaming. Gone is the inner-map-of-the-mind noise-madness that defines the former and, fortunately, keeps it relevant (meaning Tarot Sport is no replacement). Here is, by god, a Fuck Buttons album you could dance to. Here’s an album that goes from the paranoia of “Surf Solar” to something as high-flying as the march-step “Olympians” and spaceship-to-Mars glory of ender “Flight of the Feathered Serpent.” If Street Horrrsing was a way to see inside your mind, Tarot Sport is the world surrounding, in all its chaos and beauty, absolutely seamless from fevered start to breathtaking finish.


4. Why? – Eskimo Snow

I’m usually wary of albums culled from the same sessions as the prior album. How can an educated listener think of them as anything but B-sides? That’s my continued problem with Radiohead’s Amnesiac, which has been called Kid B by many.

But Why?’s Eskimo Snow is the comedown to last year’s Alopecia. Singer Yoni Wolf seems to be either apologizing or embarrassed of the massive guilt-admissions that peppered the band’s 2008 offering, in which Wolf dug down into some ugly shit like, “Sucking dick for drink tickets at the free bar at my cousin’s bar mitzvah / Cutting the punchline ‘cause it ain’t no joke.” Here, he seems more pensive, more guarded, still willing to admit “sporting my ex-girlfriend’s dead ex-boyfriend’s boxers” but unwilling to finish the statement “I need to quit doing all this random fucking,” just letting the anticipated word fizzle after a long-held F (which I thought he’d let rip at their live show, but didn’t).

So sharing the Alopecia sessions is probably the reason for the band releasing two albums in two years. Because of the strength of Eskimo Snow, I might have to revise my opinion of multiple albums culled from single sessions.


5. Cymbals Eat Guitars – Why There Are Mountains

Cymbals Eat Guitars’ Why There Are Mountains falls into the sort of space as The Antlers’ Hospice. It doesn’t, however, have any clear singles. Some might point to “Wind Phoenix” as a standout track, but I see it as the long-coming burst after the four-minute build up of “What Dogs See.” And one of the band’s more accessible, stand-alone tracks, “The Living North,” comes at the very end of the album. Not to mention the album starts with “And The Hazy Sea,” a six-minute marathon with as many peaks and valleys as some entire records.


6. Dan Deacon – Bromst

I was talking to my friend Dan Kricke shortly after the leak of Bromst. I was already a big fan, and he was a bit on the fence. “I think what you don’t like about it is that it’s like a bunch of ‘Big Milk’s,” I said, referring to one of the slower, more contemplative tracks on Deacon’s schizophrenic Spiderman of the Rings. It’s arguably true, which may be due to the nature of Deacon using more “analog” equipment, like marimbas and vibraphones and all that stuff that was tucked in the back of the BHS orchestra room. Counter that, though, with the revealing documentary about the making of the album, which shows off Deacon’s new favorite toy: a computer-programmable piano capable of hammering out notes faster than human fingers could possible play.

Still, Bromst is a solid step for Deacon in terms of both his impossibly-complex compositions and his more toned-down, simple melodies. For those who fear change, there’s still “Woof Woof” and “Get Older.” For those thinking Deacon might get locked into his bright-neon-plastic cage, listen no further than the plaintive “Snookered,” which feature vocals by Deacon (“been wrong so many times”) that haven’t been contorted to Woody Woodpecker-esque shrillness, or the beautiful, computerized-piano ending of “Slow With Horns / Run For Your Life.”


7. Grizzly Bear – Veckatimest

I didn’t really “get” Yellow House until I drove to my parents’ house on a predawn Christmas morning a few years back. Veckatimest, however, seemed poised as that fearful indie promise – a “crossover” record – once “Southern Point” slammed right into “Two Weeks,” which is the first song since Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” that I’m pretty sure I’ll have stuck in my head when I’m eighty years old.

There’s been a lot of ballyhoo concerning the album, from the “Two Weeks” Letterman premiere to the album showing up on the Billboard charts its first week to the Jay-Z sighting at a Grizzly Bear show. This all, of course, underscore the fact that it’s a fantastic album that lived up to the hype that the band was piecing together said “crossover” record after the acquired taste of Yellow House (that is, for those who venture outside of repeat listens of “Knife”).

But, like most of the albums on this list, it’s up here because it’s an album-album. Some might download it and delete everything except “Two Weeks” and “While You Wait For The Others” off their iPod, but I’m in it for the long haul. For me, Veckatimest starts with “Southern Point” and I’m sure as hell not done listening until the gorgeous closer “Foreground” goes silent.


8. Dirty Projectors – Bitte Orca

I guess I’ve fallen into a trap that may or may not have been baited by the Dirty Projectors themselves. Much like the weariness associated with “crossover” records, here is the DP’s “accessible” album.

But other than “Stillness Is The Move” and “Useful Chamber,” what’s so accessible about it, really? Can anyone tell me what time signature most of these songs are actually in? Or how profoundly weird the track “The Bride” is without even hitting the three-minute mark?

After, I suppose, months of trying to figure out all this, the answer came pretty simple: it’s the first record in recent memory in which the singers can actually sing. It’s not just empty prettiness: all that other stuff – the weird guitars, the math-rock beats – keep it interesting. That, and from here to forever, the long-as-hell ending of “Stillness Is The Move” will segue into a beatmatched “Teardrop” by Massive Attack on every mixtape I make for the rest of my life.

Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.

Friday, December 25, 2009

JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2009 Edition)

My taste in music is constantly shifting. If nothing else, on any given year I'll listen to thousands of new songs.

So here are my current favorite songs ever. Note the list tends to skew toward current fare - mostly because I didn't start listening to good music until 2004.

Unfortunately, this beast is over 100 MB, so you'll have to brave the dark waters of Megaupload to download it.

JDK's The Best Mix Ever (2009 Edition) by jdkentala

And thus:

1. Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit
2. The Walkmen - The Rat
3. Guided By Voices - Teenage FBI
4. Why? - Fatalist Palmistry
5. The Thermals - A Pillar of Salt
6. Jay Reatard - Nightmares
7. Broken Social Scene - Cause = Time
8. Mission of Burma - That's When I Reach For My Revolver
9. The National - Slow Show
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
11. The Microphones - The Moon
12. Deerhunter - Nothing Ever Happened
13. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah - In This Home On Ice
14. Wolf Parade - I'll Believe In Anything
15. Frightened Rabbit - Head Rolls Off
16. Smog - Teenage Spaceship
17. Rogue Wave - Endless Shovel
18. Radiohead - The Tourist

Saturday: All the albums I listened to plus my eight most favorites. Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.

Thursday, December 24, 2009

JDK's 2009 in Random

I'm not one to rigidly define music into infinite sub-genres. For instance, on my 2009 "rock" list, you could parse it between "indie-folk rock" (Grizzly Bear), "noise rock" (A Place To Bury Strangers), and "garage rock" (Japandroids).

That said, here are some tracks I couldn't really decide if they fell into the camp of rock or electronic. And there's some hip-hop that, by itself, wouldn't fill out a full roster since I'm not a particular connoisseur of that fine genre.

So, download or stream off drop.io.

1. The-Dream - Walkin' on the Moon
2. Brother Ali - Crown Jewel
3. Eyedea & Abilities - Burn Fetish
4. Tortoise - Prepare Your Coffin
5. Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move
6. Bat For Lashes - Daniel
7. The xx - Crystalized
8. Wild Beasts - Hooting & Howling
9. Japandroids - Heart Sweats
10. Why? - This Blackest Purse
11. Bibio - Kaini Industries (Boards of Canada cover)
12. Fuck Buttons - Surf Solar (7" Edit)

Friday: my favorite songs at this point in my life (sans "1979" by The Smashing Pumpkins because somehow I forgot it). Saturday: All the albums I listened to plus my eight most favorites. Sunday: Notable albums that didn't make the top-eight cut.