#hoo boy six nominations!

[larrylimericks]

15Nov22

Grammy noms — Harry got a sextet! (With three from the main Big Four set!) We hope that the mantle In his House can handle One or two or six more statuettes.

[movienotesbyzawmer]

August 30: Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol

(previous notes: Mission: Impossible III)

I bet the powers that be at the Mission: Impossible movie factory didn't lose any sleep over the stupid colon in the title that screws everything up. I mean, just look at that up there with the colon after my date, then the colon in the middle of the OG title, and then it's like, well, you can do whatever you want with punctuation but we're adding a subtitle after it now and you just have to deal with it. On posters and stuff it's just "Mission: Impossible" and then underneath those words they put "Ghost Protocol" so they don't have to deal with it. What a mess. I tell you it is a damn mess is what it is.

Anyway, we have arrived at the M:I movie that, more than any of the others, just really hit the spot for me when I saw it upon its original release. I saw it at the end of a frustrating and tiring work day and it was exactly what the doctor ordered. At some point in the middle I realized that I was enjoying it thoroughly without having to tolerate the kinds of flaws that were apparently part and parcel of this kind of movie. Maybe there were flaws that I just wasn't registering. We'll soon see.

Continuing the tradition of making very hip choices for the directing duties, here we have the live-action directorial debut of Brad Bird, who started off directing episodes of The Simpsons before moving on to no less than The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Dude had two Oscars on his mantle by the time he showed up for this. Press play already!

Um Sweet Christ those opening shots look gook in 4K like HOO boy

Whoa, neat opening where Sawyer from Lost is chased off the top of a building in Budapest but his jacket deploys an air mattress right as he almost-hits, but then he's shot by Lea Seydoux in an alley, rat-a-tat-tat with the action here, like what is up

Simon Pegg is back, and he's being tricksy with the tech in a prison! He's opening cell doors and the prisoners are surprised and delighted with that twist! He plays them a jazz standard on the intercom and Ethan Hunt suavely emerges from one of the cells. Fun silly things ensue involving Ethan's rebellious and confident independent strategy and a small riot that seems kind of like a bar fight.

He has made a pal in the joint and he's breaking him out. Some kind of cool tech creates a really sweet vortex-y hole in the floor and they are swooped up by their helpers, it's fun.

We're introduced to Paula Patton who is a new team member, and then the credits roll, and they are spirited in a way that recalls the first movie, also showing real scenes from later in the movie.

Flashback to the thing that was happening with Sawyer shows how that botched operation, something about a file and a courier, got Sawyer killed because lots of bad guys were all over the place there. AR contact lens technology figures prominently, and that is a good idea (plus we totally might have those soon, right?).

0:18:16 - Once again we begin the movie without the leading lady from the previous one, but we're starting to get an explanation here. Or just a tease of one I guess.

And quickly we get a sneaky-style self-destructing message that sets up that Ethan has to disguise himself as a specific Russian and sneak into the actual Kremlin. This movie 100% gets what a Mission: Impossible movie is supposed to be.

This time, they aren't using fancy masks or voice shifter things, just costumes and a fake mustache. They comment about that in the dialogue but don't explain why.

0:24:52 - Dialogue mixed SO QUIET here I have no idea what SP just said. It seems like you're supposed to have heard it.

But that is quickly forgotten when they use the coolest spy gadget of them all - a screen that is placed in a corridor that makes the guy at the other end of the corridor think it’s the corridor, but it's a screen and SP & Ethan are hiding behind it and it is super super neato I love it

Then just when it's cool that that is going well, it's suddenly cool how NOT well it's going because someone is spying on their spycraft! The thing they were going to heist isn't there, and someone deliberately makes their comms thing be heard by the bad guys!

And THEN we see something we really didn't think we'd see and it is kind of mind blowing - Ethan escapes from the Kremlin with a very smooth quick-change of his disguise that we see him do in all one shot… but then the Kremlin totally explodes and it explodes all over Ethan as he's running away! It looks amazing!

Right after that there is some fun with subtitles - Ethan is in the hospital all damaged and concussed and stuff, and the news is talking about the obvious big story, and the subtitles are in Russian. At first I was like, "hey is my home theater tech busted?" but no, the subtitles become gradually more in English as Ethan starts to come out of it. Then we see with subtitles that Ethan is reading lips about the police people that want to be bad guys to Ethan.

After Ethan escapes, we shift to a wholesome-looking Russian family we haven't seen before. The scene is a nice little piece of drama about how the dad sees the Kremlin news and wants to get the family out of there, and very quickly that goes south and thugs have them all at gunpoint, it's nicely done

Ethan is being extracted by two new characters played by accomplished, Oscar-nominated actors Tom Wilkinson and Jeremy Renner… the conversation is dire and I don't want to type during it gahhh gah gah gah I am watching because holy shit this goes south too! TW informs Ethan that the DoD is going to frame him for blowing up the Kremlin and his only choice is to escape. He's telling him HOW to escape in a funny way, but they are attacked and it's visually very interesting and TW is headshot and they are in the water and it is such bad news for Ethan and his new colleague played by Mr. Renner, I probably typoed a lot during that because it was so hard to look away.

So Ethan is on the hook for the terrorist attack of the century and he's being chased by a little battalion of thugs who just shot that important spy boss, and he's in Russia. It is very not good for Ethan.

He's with JR and JR is playing a different character for him. He's a bookish analyst guy who feels very out of place in action-land.

We're learning about the main bad guy, Hendricks, who was the guy that screwed everything up in the Kremlin. He's a super-smart theoretical physicist or something who has big, well-thought-out ideas about destroying the world with nukes, and he took nuke codes from the Kremlin. So things are just really really hairy and it's effective storytelling is what I'm saying.

Also effective is that they met up with SP and PP on a neat secret train car thing that is well appointed with spy gear

And VERY VERY EFFECTIVE is what happens next, which is a series of establishing shots of Dubai which KILL ON MY TV. I am glad I have a 4K panel, kids. This begins what I recall as being an extended sequence of sweet-ass suspense. Ethan has to break into a server room by climbing the outside of the 130th floor of the Burj Khalifa using glove-gadget tech that will hopefully work. There is at least some actual Tom Cruise clinging to the side of that building. It's so cool looking. And to make matters worse, a dust storm approaches! Or should I say "to make matters even cooler looking". Yes I should. Please read that part.

Paula Patton's character seems underdeveloped so far, especially compared to her teammates Simon Pegg and Jeremy Renner.

Jeez you guys, if you like suspenseful action scenes about barely surviving climbing a skyscraper this movie is for you.

1:05:34 - In the middle of a tense conversation we see that they were using the maskmaker but it wasn't working. They just don't want us to have mask fun in this movie. They hate mask fun. Why does Brad Bird hate mask fun.

Oh then this scene which is neat - bad guys are meeting with LS… but Ethan and JR are taking their place, and PP is taking LS's place for the real bad guys one floor down. The movie explains it better than me, but it is pretty exciting, the two meetings happening at the same time with opposite trickery.

Hah, SP does a sweet fake-hand trick to get the diamonds from the bad guys so he can get them to Ethan and JN, and JN is doing the thing where he uses the contact lens tech… gosh why are you even reading this, just watch the movie. I really like the tricksy espionage.

It all falls apart because LS spots the contact lens in JR's eye. The plot is moving along in a way that, I'm once again noticing, would normally require more half-assed-ness. It's just a solid spy plot. Which probably makes these notes more boring. Poor you.

LS dies by getting kicked out of the open window of the Burj Khalifa with a brewing sandstorm in the background! Neat looking!

And then a thing where Ethan is in a thick dust cloud and he's tracking the important paper thing with his tracker device, and it starts moving quickly at him and we realize just as it's too late that it's in a car that's gonna run him over! Then that mechanic gets used in a car chase in a dust storm, which we don't see very often outside a Mad Max movie, and that climaxes in a really cool looking collision, followed by the reveal that one of the nuclear code bad guys was Hendricks in a supermask. So we DO like mask fun after all! Except why do we care that it was Hendricks?

A scene where JR is confronted for maybe being a double-crosser has a beautifully choreographed gun-get-grabbity-grab thing that was probably super fun for the actors.

1:27:05 - JR tells a story that at first we think is that family we saw briefly almost scramming, but no, he's talking about Ethan, and what seems to be a story about Ethan's wife (Julia from the last movie) getting killed in Croatia, and Ethan killing six Serbians for revenge, and that's why he was in prison in the beginning? It's still a little mysterious and kind of complicated. It doesn't quite fit with what we think we know.

Dubai imagery is pretty. I have been to Dubai. I am standing by for your marriage proposals now.

I didn't really follow how we got to this point, but Ethan went for a walk and met with some underworld Dubai person and made a deal the ended up with a huge cache of spy gear and a private plane to India. I went to India like right after Dubai. I have my own car and a job kind of so you might need to calm your hormones at this point.

A probing exchange with PP establishes that indeed Ethan's story is that he killed the men who killed his wife. Doesn't really seem legit, though. There's more to the story, clearly.

One of the tech things they play with on the plane is the most magic-seeming one. It is a suit that looks like tight chain-mail, and it floats over a cart, like a magic carpet that you wear.

We're introduced to Brij Nath, whose name I had to look up so I could tell you how it is spelled. He has an access code that they need, which seems like they just kind of simplified the situation, and he's one of those only-kinda-bad bad guys that's really just a pawn, for our heroes as well as for these storytellers.

The wearable magic carpet gadget is fun and funny! SP has to remote control JR wearing the floaty-suit and JR is trying not to freak out too badly, and maybe on purpose it recalls the scene from the first movie where Tom Cruise hovers parallel to the floor.

Hendricks is now in a secret room in the place where they all are, and he has a bad-guy briefcase computer and orders some subordinates to do something with a virus, and I don't actually understand what's really happening but am I to believe that Ethan et al are thwarting literal nuclear terrorism here in Mumbai? Right here at this pleasant party at the palace of an only kinda-bad bad guy?

1:48:30 - Ha, the climax of the wearable magic carpet thing involves JR barely surviving by doing an acrobatic stunt that seems oddly intuitive and satisfying. You'll just have to watch the movie to know what I mean.

The spy-tech car they have is rad.

They fail to prevent the launch of a nuclear missile! We see it come out of the sub and start missiling toward its destination which we have learned is California! Hendricks mutters things about how that should get the ball rolling making world powers hate each other and nuke each other and may there be peace on Earth, he also, yes, says that.

A chase on foot has Ethan and Hendricks suddenly brawling on an exotically elegant robotic parking ramp. Platforms move around mechanically and transfer unmanned cars to different areas, and it is against that video gamey backdrop that Ethan and Hendricks struggle to get that sinister suitcase which is all bouncing around that environment. Unexpectedly, Ethan's hope of grabbing it is thwarted by Hendricks suicide-jumping down several stories! We see it! He definitely does that! Ethan drives a car off a thing to follow him, plummeting down hood-first, and the airbag saves him! He gets the briefcase and barely saves the day in time!

Again a denouement making it very clear that everything is really shockingly okay and tidied up. Even the thing with Ethan revenge-killing Serbians and the thing with his wife is cleaned way up, but with an elegance and sweetness that elevates this movie above the others. She's not dead after all, just fake-dead for her protection. And they're only where they are in Seattle so he can glimpse her lovingly across a marina.

So! I feel strongly that this is the best Mission: Impossible movie! It is an extraordinarily deftly-constructed spy thriller! It's got all the funnest types of things that are in the other movies, and other fun spy thrillers, but with so much less garbage! They did a great job and they should be proud.

[david452]

10 Takeaways From A Big, Weird Night

The 2021 Grammys somehow survived a COVID-inspired six-week delay, not to mention angry diatribes from The Weekend, and put together a seamless, entertaining, music-packed telecast that also proved utterly, bafflingly infuriating. How can all that be true? Read on!

1. The broadcast itself was a triumph. Give huge amounts of credit to executive producer Ben Winston, making his Grammys debut: His telecast moved breezily across multiple stages, cut past years' fat and much of the filler, highlighted a huge and diverse array of music and allowed the performers to be showcased at their best. A typical Grammys telecast has terrific highs and embarrassing lows, but Sunday night's performances were too proficiently and elegantly produced to allow for train wrecks. After a jumbled, clunky, Zoom-intensive Golden Globes telecast just a few weeks earlier, Winston showed the world how it's done.

2. The awards themselves? Hoo boy. You could see it coming, yet it still felt shocking: The Grammys took a moment, upon handing Beyoncé the 28th Grammy of her world-class career, to acknowledge that she'd just surpassed Alison Krauss for the most Grammys ever awarded to a female artist. (Watch your back, Georg Solti!) Unacknowledged in that moment was that Beyoncé has a long history of getting passed over for the major awards of the night; she has never won record of the year or album of the year, and she won song of the year only once, in 2010, for "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)." Scan a list of the Grammys that Beyoncé has won, and note the number of times the modifier "R&B" appears.

So, when the time came to award the night's final prize, it had to be Megan Thee Stallion and Beyoncé's "Savage," right? Megan had already won best new artist; "Savage" had already won best rap performance and best rap song; Beyoncé's "Black Parade" had already won best R&B performance, and her "Brown Skin Girl" had already won best music video (which means that Beyoncé's 9-year-old daughter, Blue Ivy Carter, now has her first Grammy). Billie Eilish, for her part, had won only best song written for visual media, for "No Time to Die." But record of the year went to Eilish, who spent much of her speech apologizing to Megan Thee Stallion for winning.

With no disrespect intended toward Eilish, who handled the situation well, that's the Grammys for you: They make progress; they make adjustments; they get your hopes up; they pull the football away at the last minute.

3. The call for boycotts will get louder. In the runup to this year's Grammys, The Weeknd announced that he'd never submit his music for Grammys consideration again after the Recording Academy failed to so much as nominate him for his blockbuster album After Hours. Beyoncé attended but didn't perform, and she seemed to expend as little energy as possible on the whole affair. The Grammys have a long history of snubbing Black artists at inopportune moments — see, for a notorious example, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis beating Kendrick Lamar in the awards' 2014 hip-hop categories — and patience is wearing thin.

4. It was a mixed bag for the big winners. Many observers expected the night to be yet another coronation for Taylor Swift, whose album Folklore earned her six Grammy nominations and some of her best reviews. But Swift went 0 for 5 to start, only to take album of the year near the end of the telecast. Eilish, who famously dominated last year's awards, hadn't made much of a splash during the rest of the evening. In both cases, the big wins sneaked up on them.

5. There was better news in the down-ballot races. While it was a shame to see Phoebe Bridgers go 0 for 4, Megan Thee Stallion was the clear and correct pick for best new artist (though it was kind of a head-scratcher when she wasn't nominated in that category last year). Fiona Apple, inexplicably shut out of nominations in the major categories, won best rock performance (for "Shameika") and best alternative music album (for Fetch the Bolt Cutters). H.E.R. took song of the year for "I Can't Breathe," a resonant and powerful track. Kaytranada became the first Black musician to win best dance/electronic album in the category's 17-year history — an outrageous milestone, given the genre's origins, but a milestone nonetheless.

6. Get ready for a tiresome new front in the culture wars! Last year, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion released one of the filthiest songs ever to top the Billboard Hot 100, and "WAP" made its Grammys debut in grandly transgressive, explosively entertaining fashion. Rest assured that "cancel culture" and Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head are gonna have to make room on some conservative fainting couches, possibly by the time you read this.

7. Somehow, against all odds, none of the performances truly stank. This particular kind of showcase — with careful stage management, good sound mixes, a blend of live and pre-taped moments, many stages to accommodate set changes and so on — allowed artists to do their best work. This was the 3 1/2-hour music-industry infomercial the Grammys craved, and the beneficiaries included both the musicians themselves and a home audience that has been starving for live music.

8. The Grammys didn't forget struggling venues. Without turning into a telethon or slowing down the broadcast, the show did a nice job spotlighting a few of the many music venues whose long-term survival has been threatened by the coronavirus pandemic. It was refreshing to see the Recording Academy understand that its industry's success hinges on not only streaming and sales but also the return of live music and the venues that make it possible.

9. Trevor Noah deserves more praise than you might think. The Daily Show host maintained a fairly low-key presence throughout the night — he didn't preside over any skits, and his monologue was limited to a few quick jokes — but he did a deft job moving the home audience through a complicated hunk of awards-show machinery. Awards-show hosting gigs are generally thankless, and he made a hard job look easy.

10. Finally, it can't be reiterated enough: The Grammys still have a lot of work to do. It's not a matter of saying, "If Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar put out a great record in 2021, it has to win album of the year." It's that the Grammys are not trusted, period, by wide swaths of their audience and membership, and any effort to correct that needs to start there. They have to create trust.

That trust can come only through transparency about their process, their membership and their efforts to better reflect their industry and its massive worldwide audience. The Grammys' typical response to controversies tends to involve artist-specific attempts to redress previous years' grievances; that's part of how Metallica wound up winning eight Grammys across six different years after infamously losing best metal performance to Jethro Tull in 1989.

The issue isn't that Beyoncé should have won album of the year in 2015 over Beck's Morning Phase or that Lemonade should have won album of the year in 2017 over Adele's 25, though both of those outcomes were — with no shade thrown at either winner — hard to stomach. The issue is that it's getting harder for the Grammys to keep on like this without facing a large-scale revolt from the artists whose buy-in they need in order to retain a semblance of relevancy.

[medisinals]

character solidifying 1 & 2!

character solidifying questions | @ferocioushonesty | no longer accepting

blackwell + parents!

1. How does your character think of their father? What do they hate and love about him? What influence - literal or imagined - did the father have?

        First off, Blackwell doesn’t see anyone in his life as his father. There’s Augustus, his mother’s husband, who was probably the most present in his life, but wasn’t his father biologically and made it exceedingly clear he didn’t want to be his father socially. There’s Eoin, his biological father, whom he never met. And there’s Cathair, the gardener on his mother’s estate, who was probably the closest he had to an actual father figure, but… still not all that close, tbh.

        Augustus was entitled and insecure, a son of old English nobility reduced to marrying the noveau riche for money. He kind of hated the child’s existence. The child was a product of an extramarital affair; Augustus couldn’t look at him without seeing evidence of his wife’s infidelity and his own emasculation. He was all in favor of offloading the child elsewhere- they had three sons already, they didn’t need anyone else’s brat- but his wife Florence held the financial power in their relationship, and if she wanted the child raised as part of their family, Augustus had no way to refuse.He coped poorly, including projecting a lot of his rage and disgust onto the child.

        Publicly, of course, the child was Augustus and Florence’s own. The family knew of Florence’s infidelity, as did certain of their staff, but that secret wasn’t supposed to spread. The child looked more like his mother than either of his alleged fathers, so he didn’t seem out of place among the family, but Augustus worried that something about the child would give him away, so he wasn’t often brought with when the family went out in public. This was a matter of uneasy compromise between Augustus and Florence.

        When the child first started asserting his own gender, Augustus was… violently opposed. It took Florence’s interference to establish safety for the child, and even then Augustus only tolerated the child in the absolute worst sense of the word “tolerate.” If he couldn’t do anything about the child, he figured grudgingly, he might as well keep someone else’s bastard son as someone else’s bastard daughter.

        As soon as Florence died, Augustus found a way to get the child out of his sight. Florence’s will provided for the child’s schooling at a well-renowned boys’ school in England; what mattered to Augustus was that he would be gone. He sent the child away under another name, and gave him no reason to return.

        Blackwell doesn’t see Augustus as having had a significant impact on him or his life, but really- Augustus taught Blackwell to expect no compassion and no understanding. He taught him spite and stubbornness and survival, and to seek security wherever and however he could find it. He taught him how quickly things could be taken away.

        Eoin, as previously mentioned, was never part of the child’s life. Everything the child knew about him was secondhand: that he was a local (read: Irish), that he was a tailor, that he was a drunkard, that he left town six months before the child was born, that there must have been something wrong with him and that that must be why the child walked with a limp from his very first steps. Even then, the child held doubt on most of what he heard.

        And then there was Cathair, the gardener. Cathair taught the child the names of flowers and how to coax them into beauty. He taught him superstition and safety; he taught him which plants were safe to eat and how. He taught him Gaelige in stories and jokes and songs, even if the others would rip it back out of the child’s mouth. Cathair was the one who pulled the child out of the half-frozen pond when he nearly drowned one March. Cathair was the only one to show him kindness for kindness’s own sake.

        The child was attached to Cathair, of course. He tailed the gardener as he made his way through the grounds, listened to everything he said. They were far closer than Augustus and the child had ever been. Still, Cathair wasn’t exactly a substitute father. Close, but Cathair wasn’t available or reliable in the way a child requires. Which isn’t Cathair’s fault- it was never his responsibility to adopt or even care about his terrible boss’s creepy kid. The fact that he chose to show the kindness and care that he did, even if he couldn’t step in as an actual parental figure, did make a significant impact on Blackwell as a child, and on the person he would become.

2. Their mother? How do they think of her? What do they hate? Love? What influence - literal or imagined - did the mother have? 

        Florence was… very smart, and very driven, and very strong-willed. She was also petty and self-centered and often lacking in compassion.

        She cherished her fourth child as a symbol of her autonomy. She felt trapped in a loveless marriage, living a life that wasn’t entirely within her control. Her affair with Eoin was a rebellion against those trapped feelings, a way to prove to herself that she could break the rules that bound her. Her decision to tell Augustus about the affair came from the same impulse to prove he had no control of her, as did her decision to keep the child.

        She was the child’s first and strongest supporter when he began to assert his own gender. That, for her, was another power play. She knew how Augustus hated the child; defending and supporting the child was more about her showing her defiance of Augustus than it was about any actual affection or care for the child. 

        Of course, Blackwell was young when he knew his mother. A lot of the nuances of her motivations escaped him. He was always sharp, though, and he could read a situation well enough to know not to expect certain things from her: she wasn’t warm, she wasn’t particularly attentive, she wasn’t very interested in anything he had to say to her unless she could find a way to use it towards her own goals. But she was still the closest thing he had to a figure of safety. She defended him from Augustus’s wrath. She allowed him to grow up as himself. Whatever her motivations, she was a vital supportive presence in Blackwell’s early life.

        And then again, she was also the first of many relationships in his life to use caretaking as an excuse for controlling behavior. The fourth child was forbidden from many of the freedoms that his older half-brothers were allowed to enjoy (including such things as being able to leave the manor grounds), with his “delicate constitution” always being cited as the reason. (“Delicate constitution” can mean many things. Here, it is being used to mean you’re trans and disabled and we have no idea what to do with that.) To be fair, there may have been valid concerns about the child’s health- but no one ever brought up his health except to use it to prevent him from doing something. The real reason he was kept so cloistered was a compromise with Augustus. Florence had to give some ground, and that ended up being that the child’s existence was mainly hidden from the larger world.

        Florence taught Blackwell the importance of having allies stronger than he was. He learned that it wasn’t important whether or not someone loved him- what mattered was whether or not they were willing to defend him. She also taught him that any perceived vulnerability could and would be used against him, even by those who nominally stood on his side.

        And her death when he was 8 was what convinced him he wanted to be a doctor, but hoo boy that’s a whole nother post coming.

[goodbysunball]

Best of 2017

Countering the truly embarrassing news cycle of the past year was the deluge of great new music released upon the world, so much so that I’m leaving a good chunk of more than deserving albums hanging. To simplify everything, this is a compendium of what was played most around here, along with a handful of new-to-me reissues/archival releases.

I skipped doing the rap recap this year because my list was so pathetically brief, and doing so seemed both short-sighted and irrelevant. That being said: Quelle Chris’ Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often was my favorite album, followed by Starlito’s Manifest Destiny and Playboi Carti’s vapid, relentlessly fun album. Goldlink’s “Crew” featuring Brent Faiyaz and Shy Glizzy was my favorite song, like everyone else.

Full list of 30 records below. We’ll do better next year.

LP

12. Mount Trout, Screwy (self-released)

This unassuming, digital-only gem crept up on me as the months turned cold. Scraps of paper with notes written on them are held afloat by spare guitar lines; elsewhere winds whip in and chaos overtakes clarity. Lots of the lyrics sound like half-thoughts that forced themselves out after extended periods of solitude, sometimes peaceful, sometimes anguished. Screwy rewards patient attention without dragging you through the mud - but it’s there, should you need to cool off.

11. Group Doueh & Cheveu, Dakhla Sahara Session (Born Bad)

The intriguing pairing on Dakhla Sahara Session turns out to be one of the best surprises of the year, and easily one of the most listenable. Cheveu’s robotic yet effervescent contributions are immediately recognizable, as are Group Doueh’s swirling guitar lines and sweeping vocals; the two fit in and around each other, explosion welded together into a foundation for a colored smoke tower.

10. Leda, Gitarrmusik III-X (Förlag För Fri Musik)

The two people behind Neutral put out a lot of music this year, most of it well worth hunting down despite its highly limited, premium price barrier. I can’t claim to have heard everything, but by my count the two best were Neutral’s När mini-LP and Leda’s limited-to-100 Gitarrmusik III-X LP. Most of this sounds like King Blood collaborating with Robert Turman, looping machinations mixing with heavily distorted shredding, all of it recorded in a metal-walled bunker. Doesn’t sound like much on paper, but when you arrive at “Gitarrmusik VIII” and “IX,” time just about stops. (If you missed out, “Gitarrmusik I” and “II” are available here.)

9. The Body & Full of Hell, Ascending a Mountain of Heavy Light (Thrill Jockey)

The first collaboration between these two heavyweights was a slow grower, both bands clearing the land by seeing how far out they could push their respective versions of extreme metal. Ascending, then, is the sound of the two bands communicating as one. The immediate standout is “Farewell, Man,” exactly what comes to mind when one imagines what kind of song the Body and Full of Hell could write together. But tracks like “Our Love Conducted With Shields Aloft,” all free drumming, violently humming noise and sandblasted vocals, hint at a broader, uglier horizon.

8. Bad Breeding, Divide (Iron Lung/La Vida Es Un Mus)

One of the year’s nastier hardcore records, and a reminder that the shitstorm at home extends across the Atlantic, too. The band’s got enough chops to rip through every track here - check out that stuttering riff on “Anamnesis,” and how it comes roaring back after a quick respite - but the best songs close each side. The screaming of “Now what?” that concludes “Leaving” is chilling, and serves as one of the best summations of this mess of a year.

7. The Terminals, Antiseptic (Ba Da Bing)

I’ve been hankerin’ for more Steven Cogle ever since that self-titled Dark Matter LP, and if that’s one of your favorite records of recent yore like it is mine, you oughta get your mitts on Antiseptic. The long-running band is absent Brian Crook, but he is ably replaced by Nicole Moffat, who also appeared on Dark Matter; her violin seeps into the empty pores, creating a dense, beautiful atmosphere ripe for Cogle’s powerful vocals. The deal’s done by the time “Edge of the Night” hits.

6. Taiwan Housing Project, Veblen Death Mask (Kill Rock Stars)

Wrecking crew led by Kilynn Lunsford and Mark Feehan brings the heat, here as two parts of a six-piece ensemble. The ten tracks on here range from caustic to catchy (”Eat or Be Eat” into “Luminous Oblong Blur” for the former, “Multidimensional Spectrum” for the latter), accentuated by sax blurts and ever-present static grime. If that ain’t enough, lyrics acidic enough to melt bone make Veblen Death Mask a complete meal worth droolin��� over.

5. Sida, s/t (Population)

The Theoreme LP that came out last year turned into one of my favorites this year, syrupy-thick industrial body music from one Maissa D. She fronts Sida, and she turns in the vocal performance of the year on their first LP. She seemed more restrained as Theoreme but that’s all out the window here; "Qu'Est-Ce Qui T'As Pris?” ups the ante and things don’t slow down from there. The band, for their part, turn in a burly and caustic punk/no wave hybrid that does all it can to keep up. An aural steamroller.

4. Omni, Multi-task (Trouble In Mind)

It was a real mistake to not include Omni’s deceptively catchy debut Deluxe on my year-end list last year, so when they came back and made an even better record, credit is due. Not sure how Frankie Broyles doesn’t sprain his wrist or let melodies go off the rails, but his snappy drumming and spindly guitar work are the stars of the show. The lyrics slyly present a general malaise with modern romance, and when it all clicks, like on “Supermoon” into “Date Night,” strap in.

3. Bed Wettin’ Bad Boys, Rot (R.I.P. Society/What’s Your Rupture?)

Ready for Boredom was a great album full of weary-headed anthems, and it looks like growin’ up hasn’t come any easier for these bedwetters on Rot. The Boys left their glam rock tendencies (i.e., “Sally”) behind this time, and they stick to making gruff pop songs for people whose weeks slip by uneventfully more and more frequently. Songs like “Plastic Tears” and “Device” are urgent and unbelievably catchy, and whoever did the vocals on “Work Again” needs more time at the mic. The Replacements are still a good reference point for these guys, but after two rock-solid albums, it’s time they get to shed that flattering-yet-overbearing label and lay claim to this sound that they’ve perfected.

2. Dreamdecay, YÚ (Iron Lung)

Man, Dreamdecay are so good. They’ve softened the edges from N V N V N V but they’re even more potent this time around, figuring out how to include big slow-moving guitar riffs in a nominally punk framework. Songs like “Mirror” just about leave you on the floor with the guitar theatrics, while “IAN” is a one-way ticket to the stratosphere. All of it sounds incredible, and I think Andrew Earles said it best, so I’ll let him do the honors: “YÚ could easily rearrange how someone thinks about music… in that unforgettable way that stays with the experiencer forever.”

1. Aaron Dilloway, The Gag File (Dais)

What more can I say about The Gag File? I have gushed. Not only a complete statement of an album, but one of the only records to force a localized shutdown when it’s on, keeping everything else at arm’s length. A world unto its own. Clear the cobwebs out.

7″/12″

Anxiety, Wild Life 7″ (La Vida Es Un Mus)

There’s a good bit of cornball humor present in Anxiety’s lyrics and credited band member names, the sort of thing that has persisted/pervaded a lot of modern punk and hardcore. But these guys sell it, and more: with better (read: less juvenile) lyrics, sly and self-deprecating; a monster vocal performance (”Dumped” especially); and a blistering intensity that oughta put their peers on notice.

Bent, Mattress Springs 7″ (Emotional Response)

Bent’s been on my radar since their Non Soon tape, and this year they dropped the Snakes & Shapes LP, every bit the shifting, shambling and at times annoyingly silly experience Non Soon prepped me for. The Mattress Springs 7″ came soon after, and compressed all the best parts of the LP (including “Mattress Springs”) into several minutes of leaky roof drums, hypnotic bass lines and smothered, frantic guitar parts.

Crack Cloud, Anchoring Point 7″ (Good Person)

Whereas Bent are happy to let their songs droop and flow, Crack Cloud come across as almost militaristic in their approach. Perfectly rehearsed, not a hair out of place, and yet as urgent as anything released under the banner of post-punk in the past however-many-years. The first three jagged and dense tracks whip in and cut out, just in time but somehow just too soon; “Philosopher’s Calling” is the payoff.

Hothead, Richie Records Summer Singles Series 7″ (Richie)

The Richie Records Summer Singles Series once again distinguished itself in a household where 7″s aren’t really given the time of day. Sure, Writhing Squares Too breathed life into krautrock in 2017, and David Nance’s "Amethyst” is kingdom come on the right day, but Hothead? Their shambling take on two covers (and a quick sketch) netted them the gold.

Mordecai, What Is Art? 7″ (Sophomore Lounge)

Mordecai is one of America’s great treasures, ain’t no way around it. Their Abstract Recipe LP on Richie from this year is great, reclaiming the highs of Neil’s Generator while pushing further from their influences - but the two disparate sides of this 7″ compress everything great about the band into a tidy package. The A-side rambles out of the gate in the same way Abstract Recipe does, whereas the B-side goes all Don Howland: low fidelity, downtrodden but toe-tapping. Buy everything they’ve recorded.

Mutual Jerk, s/t 7″ (State Laughter)

“He’s really a nice guyyy” begins the A-side track “He’s Harmless,” and hoo boy you better sit down for this one, because that bass line is not quitting anytime soon. Feeble excuses pile up, a disinterested defense of a friend presented with a mocking snarl until the constant pummel causes the dam to burst. The flip cynically covers comfortable suburban lifestyles and macho hardcore, two new takes on No Trend's vast influence, but not quite reaching the impossible heights of song-of-the-year “He’s Harmless.”

Neutral, När 12″ (Omlott)

Neutral’s self-titled LP quickly turned into a favorite here in the early months of 2017. The duo kept busy all year, eventually releasing this mini-LP that favors electronics over guitars. The brittle backbone is the perfect support for Sofie Herner’s fragile yet mechanical vocals, a fitting soundtrack for a walk home so cold your eyelashes freeze. Shadow music that lacks a distinct time or place but leaves a flood of sensory overload in its wake.

Scorpion Violente, The Stalker 12″ (Bruit Direct Disques)

“The Wound”’s slow ooze remains one of my favorite musical moments of the year; there’s a reason it’s the only one you can’t stream via Bandcamp. Pay up, because if any modern label deserves your money, it’s Bruit Direct Disques.

The Shifters, “A Believer” b/w “Contrast of Form” (Market Square)

Brilliant little single of downer pop from the Shifters, whose self-titled cassette gained them a lot of Fall comparisons and was previously mined for a 7″ by It Takes Two. But it looks like they’ve got ambitions beyond the record nerd cadre: both songs are immediately satisfying without imparting a sticky sweetness - who can find fault with that?

Straightjacket Nation, s/t 12″ (La Vida Es Un Mus)

This is the punk record of the year for me, one that maybe got lost in the deluge of releases from La Vida Es Un Mus. If you wanna learn about effective vocal delivery in hardcore, please see “2021.” Eight tracks, all meat. Please tour the US.

Reissue/Archival

I don’t really feel too qualified to comment on music largely made before I was born, especially since I am the owner of several 2017 reissues with flowery press kits that I will probably never listen to again. But if you’re gonna be a sucker, let a sucker clue you in to these tried-and-true slabs deserving of any and all accolades. Unrepresented here, somewhat criminally, is the Black Editions, a label doing really amazing work reviving the P.S.F. catalog.

The And Band / Perfect Strangers, Noli Me Tangere split 7″ (Look Plastic/Noisyland)

Noli Me Tangere is two sides of barely-music from early ‘80s Christchurch, with this new edition featuring extensive liner notes from George Henderson, he of the And Band (and perhaps more recognizably, the Spies and the Puddle). Both sides showcase a coupla outcasted NZ bands supporting each others’ avant-scrawl, as inspirational as it is baffling.

Byron Morris & Gerald Wise, Unity LP (Eremite)

Freedom music, full of raw intensity (”Byard Lancaster did push-ups when not playing”) and fiery exchanges. The two sidelong pieces are demanding of your full attention, repaid in kind with chills so deep you’ll swear a spirit passed through ya.

Cosey Fanni Tutti, Time to Tell LP (Conspiracy International)

Gorgeous reissue with a foil-stamped gatefold and a huge booklet full of ephemera from the recording period. Less Throbbing Gristle menace than new age shimmer, especially on the B-side; the gentle ascent is the natural conclusion once you’ve lived through the stunning title track. Cosey, take me away.

Die Tödliche Doris, “ “ LP (États-Unis)

Brutally minimalistic post-punk from early ‘80s Germany, painstakingly restored by the Superior Viaduct sub-label États-Unis. The A-side is full of blistering, manic bursts; the flip smoothes things out, allowing ideas to stick around, proving this approach works in both short- and long-form. Call it ZNR meets DNA.

Harry Pussy, A Real New England Fuck Up LP (Palilalia)

Two live sets, one on each side, both monstrous and in shockingly high fidelity, especially given the circumstances detailed by Tom Lax and Tom Carter on the sleeve. The show from T.T. the Bear’s is the performance I always want (”Harry Pussy took the stage and sandblasted the night into oblivion”) and rarely get.

Khan Jamal Creative Art Ensemble, Drum Dance to the Motherland LP (Eremite)

Capping off a brilliant year for Eremite was a beautiful reissue of Drum Dance to the Motherland’s cosmic transmission. All of the hyperbolic reviews ring true when “Inner Peace” stumbles into a groove, but my favorite part is the almost painfully shrill horns on the title track.

Meat Thump, “Metal Gun” b/w “Left to Rust” 7″ (Coward Punch)

Coward Punch Records kept the memory of Brendon Annesley alive with a couple of archival Meat Thump 7″ers this year. The earlier one was good, but didn’t quite hit home; here, “Metal Gun” could be twice its length, and “Left to Rust” rambles down my spine in the same way that still-great “Box of Wine” 7″ does.

V/A, Oz Waves LP (Efficient Space)

I did not have more fun this year than when I was dancing along to this record like a poorly operated marionette, which was every time “Will I Dream?” started. Efficient Space continues to deliver the goods I didn’t know I needed.

[desertshake9-blog]

The Linc - Nick Foles to the Jaguars for Leonard Fournette?

Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links ...

2019 NFL Mock Draft: Jaguars trade Leonard Fournette for Nick Foles, Bengals replace Andy Dalton - CBS Sports One problem here: I don’t think the Jags are going to give up No. 7 overall in exchange for Nick Foles. You could work out a deal where the Jags send No. 7 and No. 69 to the Eagles for Foles, No. 26 and No. 54 (the trade value basically makes Foles worth the 28th overall pick, which is probably a reasonably fair swap), but Jacksonville is going to likely lose high-end, expensive talent to free agency as a result of salary-cap issues. Jacksonville would like to use the seventh pick to either replace the talent or to secure another young quarterback for the long haul. How about we make both front offices happy instead? The Jaguars can send Leonard Fournette -- their former top pick and a very talented player who has struggled with injuries and hasn’t meshed well with the front office -- to the Eagles for Foles and a throw-in pick down the road. There are some contractual issues here that might hold things up on both ends. Foles is either going to have his option picked up or will be given the franchise tag and traded. So he won’t be cheap. Fournette isn’t cheap either -- he has a top-10 salary over the next two years at the running back position. Philly might not be willing to spend at the position, but Fournette is a better pass catcher than he gets credit for, and he could excel in Doug Pederson’s scheme. The Eagles were at their best with LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi running downhill.

2019 NFL Mock Draft Roundup: Eagles add interior pass rush - BGN Six out of nine picks are linemen. We all know the Eagles are not shy to invest premium resources in the trenches.

Offseason Talk - Iggles Blitz There is a feeling in the Tampa media that the Bucs could cut DE Vinny Curry and/or DT Beau Allen. Hmm. The Bucs are expected to play more of a 3-4 under Todd Bowles. That could make both guys expendable. If so, the Eagles could talk to one or both about coming back to add depth to the DL. While both players loved their time in Philly, price would be an issue. While neither player had a good season, they aren’t likely to come crawling back to the Eagles for peanuts. They’d want reasonable money. Keep an eye on this.

Projecting which Eagles player is next to make the Pro Bowl - NBCSP Alshon Jeffery: His last Pro Bowl appearance was in 2013 when he was still with the Bears, but Jeffery clearly has the talent of a Pro Bowler, although his numbers in his first two seasons with the Eagles have been modest. In the two years, he’s averaged 61 catches, 816 yards and 7.5 touchdowns per season. Another year like that and he won’t be a Pro Bowler. But he played through a torn rotator cuff in 2017 and then missed three games to start 2018 because of it. If he can stay healthy and play a full season with a healthy Carson Wentz, there’s a good chance he could take a spot in the annual All-Star showcase.

1-On-1: Joe Douglas - PE.com Vice President of Player Personnel Joe Douglas joins Fran Duffy at the Senior Bowl to discuss what he’s seen from some of the nation’s top college prospects and what he’s looking for from this year’s stellar crop of underclassmen.

10 Biggest Winners Of Senior Bowl Week - The Draft Network 1. Penny Hart, WR, Georgia State. Nobody went from as unknown to as intriguing as Penny Hart, who eviscerated defensive backs for three straight days during practices. I called him my biggest winner of the week on the Draft Dudes podcast, and nothing has changed even though he had a quieter Senior Bowl game — his roster was filled with slot receivers.

Best of Senior Bowl week: QB rankings, NFL draft risers, biggest takeaways, more - ESPN In$ider Which prospects’ draft stock rose the most this week? Montez Sweat, DE, Mississippi State. At 6-6 and 252 pounds, Sweat is an explosive speed rusher who is strong enough to go through offensive tackles and athletic enough to work the weave when they take away the edge. He is on the leaner and lighter side for a defensive end, yet he’s stout setting the edge against the run. He gets off the ball, he shoots his hands inside and he has the length (35⅝-inch arms) to keep blockers off his frame.

Bang for their Bucs: Wide Receiver, DeSean Jackson - Bucs Nation One could argue Jackson gave up on his team. There were times where it certainly appeared that way on the field, and on Instagram. However, looking at some of the usage numbers compared to the way other teams use receivers of similar talents, and maybe you can start to understand why he was so frustrated. Without stepping into the locker room, it’s hard to know exactly why his numbers became skewed in the way they did. No matter how you slice it, Jackson had more targets 20-yards or more downfield than he did 10-yards and less. For a receiver facing off coverage as much as Jackson does, those numbers shouldn’t be like that. Was it Winston? Was it Koetter? Was it Monken? We don’t know. I’d love to have Jackson on the Locked on Bucs podcast to discuss it - honestly and openly - but I don’t know that he feels there’s anything worth talking about. For now, we have the numbers and our perceptions.

Valentine’s Views: The Kansas City Plan sounds like a winner - Big Blue View I have suspected for a while that the New York Giants would like to emulate that plan, and a report Saturday evening by Paul Schwartz of the New York Post confirms that “More and more, this appears to be the scenario about to unfold for the Giants.” There is a lot to unpack from Schwartz’s report. The upshot, though, is that if Schwartz is correct — and as well-connected as the veteran Post writer is there is no reason to doubt his reporting at all — Manning will be back in 2019. A highly-drafted heir apparent could well be alongside him. If the Giants can find that guy.

Cowboys’ in-house OC search only shines brighter light on one of the biggest indictments of Jason Garrett’s tenure - SportsDay The addition of Jon Kitna means there have been 19 coaches to work under Garrett on the offensive side of the ball in his eight full seasons as head coach. Name the assistants who have left his staff to oversee the offense of another NFL team. None. Former wide receivers coach Derek Dooley is currently the coordinator at Missouri. Garrett’s brother, John, was the coordinator at Oregon State and Richmond before landing a job as the Lafayette head coach. But not one assistant has left the Cowboys offensive staff for a better job in the NFL since Garrett has been the head coach.

NFL owner’s superyacht catches the attention of a Presidential candidate - PFT When it comes to keeping up with the Joneses, Daniel Snyder continues to fall short. And the competition regarding which man has the biggest five-letter thing (yacht, or otherwise) has caught the attention of one of the umpteen candidates for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 2020. Elizabeth Warren has taken to Twitter to call out the Washington owner for his purchase of a very big boat. “This billionaire NFL owner just paid $100M for a ‘superyacht’ with its own iMax theater,” Warren said. “I’m pretty sure he can pay my new #UltraMillionaireTax to help the millions of yacht-less Americans struggling with student loan debt.”

8 ways Saints fans are overreacting hilariously to NFC Championship loss to Rams - The Falcoholic And hoo boy, are they ever mad. Harry Connick Jr. is boycotting the Super Bowl and shared the mad online letter he wrote to Roger Goodell on Instagram. And a church in New Orleans is offering the opportunity for disgruntled Saints fans to work through their frustration by throwing a penalty flag during services on Sunday. But these fine folks aren’t satisfied with tossing flags around and being mad online. They’re also doing a bunch of absurd things in real life in their quest for justice, and today seems like a great time to revel in it and laugh at all of this ridiculousness.

The Saints really didn’t need Sen. Bill Cassidy to argue on their behalf in Congress - SB Nation It was a Friday in Congress with no significant votes on the docket, just a discussion about sending money and weapons to the Middle East. The U.S. Government was in the midst of a shutdown — the announcement of our government’s temporary re-opening had yet to come. That made it the perfect possible time for one senator to ... pander to the home crowd with a little discussion about football. Yup. The growing wave of complaints of Saints fans cheated out of a Super Bowl 53 appearance crested to a logical escalation Friday. In the span of five days, New Orleans has leveled up from punched televisions to billboards to change.org petitions to class action lawsuits, and now, a debate on the floor of the United States Senate.

...

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Source: https://www.bleedinggreennation.com/2019/1/27/18199324/eagles-news-nick-foles-trade-jaguars-leonard-fournette-philadelphia-quarterback-jacksonville-draft

[thereallygoodblogshow]

MA Fashion and Textile Practices Major Project Path - 16th May

So here I am at the beginning of the Major Project module, where has the time gone?! This past few months have really sped by and I feel excited and slightly apprehensive to be on the last leg of my MA path, how will I do? I have an idea of what I want to achieve and how to get there - so here goes!

After submitting for TMA 1409 - Fashion and Textile Processes I wanted a bit of a breather to take stock and have a bit of a break mentally. I find I am better at approaching something new by removing myself from it entirely and then going back to it with fresh eyes. So to enable this process I spent a bit of time relaxing, reading and watching movies - the best type of escapism for me! Watching a movie takes up a small moment of time where you are transported to another place and can forget everything. One movie that stuck out for me was the Oscar winning The Favourite from director Yorgos Lanthimos. I have seen a few of his movies before - The Lobster and The Killing of a Sacred Deer both weirdly wonderful in their own way! 

The Lobster is set in a dystopian near future where single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.                                                                                                    The Killing of a Sacred Deer follows the life of Steven, a charismatic surgeon who is forced to make an unthinkable sacrifice after his life starts to fall apart, when the behaviour of a teenage boy he has taken under his wing turns sinister.  

When The Favourite was nominated for 10 Oscars I was quite surprised and delighted as I had considered Lanthimos’s movies to be rather niche and indie prior to that. The Favourite is set in early 18th century England, where a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant Abigail arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah. The film stars Olivia Colman as Queen Anne - who won Best Actress Oscar at the 2019 Oscars, Rachel Weisz plays Lady Sarah and Emma Stone was cast as Abigail Hill.

Fox Searchlight [FoxSearchlight]. (2018, Sept 4). THE FAVOURITE | Official Trailer | FOX Searchlight [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYb-wkehT1g

It wasn’t something I noticed immediately but the main female characters, and most of the women featured in the film were dressed entirely in black and white and wore little or no makeup. The male characters in contrast were adorned in brightly coloured costumes to portray the ‘peacocks’ they were. After previously looking at the meaning of colour and why black and white were so important it struck a chord with me. So why was this decision made to keep the female characters in black and white? 

Multi Oscar winning costume designer Sally Powell explains it was a mixture of budget constraints, lack of early 18th century fashion reference and wanting to ensure the female characters were as pared down as possible to stand out against the sets sumptuous backdrops. Every costume in The Favourite was constructed and made within a tight six week timescale, this was on top of Sally and her team working on the costumes for Mary Poppins Returns at the same time. The lack of early 18th century fashion reference was one of the reasons Sally chose a striking black and white palette for the costumes. The clothes that remained from that era were minimal and tatty looking and couldn’t be used, it seemed to her a lost decade of fashion reference, plus hiring costumes that represented that era were none existent. Making the costumes from scratch was the logical step, but with a limited budget Sally and her team had to be savvy with their designs. Limiting the costumes to black and white ensured a targeted approach as well giving them the option to use cheaper and previously un-thought of fabrics to realise them.   

Nishijima, A. (2018). Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz) and Abigail (Emma Stone), moving on up. [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://fashionista.com/2018/11/the-favourite-movie-costumes-outfits-hair-makeup.

Lanthimos, Y. (2018). Abigail Hill (Emma Stone). [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://fashionista.com/2018/11/the-favourite-movie-costumes-outfits-hair-makeup.

Sally and her team concentrated on shape and tone and she knew they didn’t have the budget to use intricate embellishments, so got creative with glue guns and laser cut vinyl! She had a basic blueprint for the costumes and then made variations on them with clever use of texture and simple decorations. Historically accurate they were not, but Yorgos Lanthimos - not one to follow convention - gave her carte blanche to use this unorthodox approach to court costume.

Hair and make up designer Nadia Stacey was also instructed by Lanthimos to keep hair unstructured and makeup minimal or none existent. She says of which (2018):

"I'm really proud because [the movie is] meant to be about these three women," Stacey says. "You shouldn't be looking at makeup and it shouldn't be distracting you. It should be about those three women and their story."

And that is exactly how I viewed the film, I couldn’t take my eyes off the female leads - the brightly dressed, made up, peacock men were the ones who paled into insignificance compared to these strong, powerful women. The monotone costumes, lack of structured hair and minimal make up only enhanced the characters these talented actresses were portraying. A clever move by Yorgos Lanthimos and the team he had gathered to make this unforgettable movie. It also emphasises the power of stark contrasts - from that of the black and white costumes against the ornate backdrops of Hatfield House, but to how colour can be used as a visual metaphor for what we want to say.   

Lanthimos, Y. (2018). Lady Sarah Churchill (Rachel Weisz). [Photograph]. Retrieved from https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/the-favourite-costumes.

Article: Soo Hoo, F. (2018). No Makeup and Black and White Costumes Allow the Women of 'The Favourite' to Shine. Retrieved from https://fashionista.com/2018/11/the-favourite-movie-costumes-outfits-hair-makeup. 

Article: Newbold, A. (2019). Sandy Powell On Taking A Rock'N'Roll Approach To Period Dress In The Favourite. Retrieved from https://www.vogue.co.uk/article/the-favourite-costumes.    

[musicistheair-blog]

Damon Albarn

An English musician born in 23rd of March 1968 in Leytonstone, East London.

First Steps

His mother, Hazel Albarn worked as a stage designer for Joan Littlewood's theatre company at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London and was working on Mrs Wilson's Diary just before Damon was born. Damon's father, an artist Keith Albarn was mainly involved in TV arts programming and was interested in designing and making modern furniture. He eventually became the manager of art jazz-rock group Soft Machine. Hazel Albarn came from Lincolnshire and Keith Albarn from Nottinghamshire. When they had met each other, they decided to move to London to experience its wide cultural-scene. So Damon came in contact with music from the first day of his life, and never walked out of it. When Damon was growing up, his parents listened mostly to old blues, Indian ragas and African music. Damon didn't apparently like much of them. His sister, Jessica, also an artist, was born in 1971.

Damon was a relatively normal child. He was keen on football and his room was filled with the fossils. Since the age of six he has been wearing the glass beads, which he got from his mother. "They give me luck" he has later said. He was attending the George Tomlinson Primary School and at the later age moved to the Stanway Comprehensive School.

Ten years after Damon's birth Albarns moved to Colchester, Essex, where Keith Albarn had got a new job. Around the time of moving Damon was spending three months in Turkey with family friends. When he came back he began studying violin and piano and got interested in drama. Because of his unconventional background he was considered weird and vain and often got called "posh stroke gay" at Stanway Comprehensive. "I was weirdo", he recalls. At the time he was really keen on drama and took part in many school plays and quickly became one of the school's "stars". Damon was also interested in composing music and one of his compositions won a heat in the nationwide Young Composer of the Year competition. He has later claimed that classical composer Kurt Weill's music had a more effect on his musical development than any pop song writer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJKZyZCIYII&list=PLwDQF_pE3sOW0CEoiFkhpiX1Kd8-rejcP

Beginning of the Creation

At the age of 12 Damon met a year younger Graham Coxon. "Your brogues are crap, mate. Look, mine are the proper sort” were Damon's exact first words to Graham. They both liked The Jam, The Human League, XTC and Madness and soon became the best friends.

One of the first bands Damon was involved along with Graham was The Aftermath, which didn't get anywhere. The Aftermath's follower was Real Lives, where Damon was on the vocals and played the piano. The band made a few appearances in local pubs and clubs without any real success.

In the mid-eighties Damon lost his interest to music temporary, concentrated wholly in drama, and moved to Debden to study at the East 15 Drama School. After a year he thought he was "the worst actor in the world" and decided to go back home. At the time he was very depressed and having a bad time. He took a part-time music course at the Goldsmiths College in South London, where he met Graham again and worked as a barman in London's Portobello Hotel. Later, he worked at the Le Croissaint at Euston Station in London and soon after as a tea boy at the Beat Factory studio, owned by Graeme Holdaway. At nights, he worked on his music at the studio.

Blur

With the help of the Beat Factory he got involved in an odd synth-band called Two's A Crowd with Sam Vamplew. After writing a few songs, Damon withdrew the band and joined Circus in 1988. Circus was formed initially by Damon's college friend Tom Aitkenhead and Eddie Deedigan, who both quit the band later. Soon guitarist Graham Coxon, drummer Dave Rowntree and finally bassist Alex James were picked up to Circus. Due to Damon's accelerated musical development, Circus experienced many radical musical changes. The band evolved into Seymour, which later changed its name to Blur.

Blur were formed and signed with Food/EMI in 1989. 

Announcing their arrival with debut album Leisure in 1991,

Birthday

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGFa5_wdRsU ~ Birthdays are generally supposed to be happy celebrations but the lyricist doesn’t view things this way; it only reminds him of age and dying, it’s sort of ironic how actually when you think about it, we celebrate our deaths rather than our births.

Blur continued to revolutionise the sound of English popular music with second release Modern Life Is Rubbish (1993).

Miss America

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=maflDjy9dLU ~ Damon Albarn, an outspoken critic of celebrity culture, has an uncanny talent for imagining figurative characters. On ‘Miss America’, he makes a criticism on the commodification of beauty. Miss America herself wears a label and is an artificial champion for American women, especially because modern life is rubbish.

Five successive UK #1 albums followed - with Parklife (1994)

Parklife

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSuHrTfcikU ~ “I came up with the idea for this song in this park. I was living on Kensington Church Street, and I used to come into the park at the other end, and I used to, you know, watch people, and pigeons…” said Damon Albarn

and The Great Escape (1995) helping to propel the band to mass popularity in the UK and beyond.

Ernold Same

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-3_VVcwwaY ~ A straightforward song about the mundanity of modern life, probably referencing Arnold Layne (Pink Floyd’s first single). On some versions of the album The Great Escape, an instrumental reprise of ‘Ernold Same’ appears as a secret track at the end.

The eponymous Blur was released in 1997

Song 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbBvKaM6sk ~ This song is totally unlike all of Blur’s other songs. It’s actually supposed to be making fun of grunge and some suggest the “WOO HOO!” is a parody of the iconic American Homer Simpson.

and seventh album Think Tank (2003) was Blur’s first as a three-piece after the temporary departure of founding guitarist Graham Coxon.

Out Of Time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRkX1Up1vnc ~ The song is a bass-driven track with minimal drums and acoustic guitar accompanied by eastern and orchestral flourishes. The faint screaming noise at the start of the track is a sound clip from Doctor Who. Since the 2009 reunion, the song has been a staple of Blur’s live sets, albeit in a slightly different arrangement featuring Coxon playing electric guitar.

One of the most successful British bands of the last two decades, Blur have won a total of five BRIT Awards, and were twice nominated for the Mercury Music Award.

In 2009 Blur reconvened as a four-piece to play a series of UK shows including two sold out dates at Hyde Park and a historic Sunday night appearance at Glastonbury. A film about Blur No Distance Left To Run was made that summer and released the following year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gN3rdPyjaGY

In 2012 the band received a BRIT Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music and wrote two news songs ahead of their massive sold out show in London's Hyde Park to mark the closing of the Olympic Games. The songs 'The Puritan' and 'Under The Westway' were debuted live on Twitter via a worldwide video stream from a London rooftop. And twenty one years after the release of their debut album, 2012 also saw Blur 21: The Box, the band's body of work compiled and gathered together into one box.

Beetlebum

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAXnqjUfal4 ~ Damon Albarn has confessed that the song is about heroin and the drug experiences he had with his then-girlfriend, Justine Frischmann of Elastica. In the 2010 Blur documentary, No Distance Left to Run, Albarn confirmed this notion on film. The song’s title is a reference to the phrase “Chasing the beetle” which refers to inhaling the smoke from heated heroin, morphine, or opium that has been placed on a piece of tin-foil. Albarn has stated in an interview with MTV that the song describes a complicated emotion, sort of “sleepy” and sort of “sexy”.

The band embarked on a 30 plus date world tour in 2013 which saw them play to fans around the globe, with shows across Asia, Europe, South America, as well as a headline slot at the Coachella Festival in California.

The recordings for the band’s eighth studio album began in Spring 2013 at Avon Studios in Kowloon. Damon Albarn, Graham Coxon, Alex James and Dave Rowntree spent 5 days jamming together and carried on with their live dates while the recordings were put aside and the group finished touring and returned to their respective lives. Dave resumed his day job as a lawyer and Alex returned home to his farm in Oxfordshire from where he writes a regular farming column in The Telegraph and hosts the annual food and music festival The Big Feastival with Jamie Oliver. Graham, who has released eight critically acclaimed solo albums to date, continued to work on his own material and, in 2014, Damon released his Mercury-nominated debut solo album Everyday Robots.

Then, in November last year, Graham revisited the tracks and, drafting in Blur’s early producer Stephen Street (Leisure, Modern Life is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape, Blur), he worked with the band on the material. Damon then added lyrics and the 12 tracks on The Magic Whip is the result.

The new album from Blur, titled The Magic Whip, started life in Hong Kong when the band had an unexpected break in touring in May 2013. It is released by Parlophone Records on 27rd April 2015 - 16 years since 13, the band’s last record as a four-piece.

Go Out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp1ks7PTzng ~ “It wasn’t a jolly, winking, overfamiliar Blur thing. I realize that a lot of people love below because of those songs, and lots of people hate them because of it, and people from the camp who hate us probably don’t know much about the other stuff that we did. ‘Go Out’ struck me as being somewhere between the two – it’s sort of casual sounding, but it’s also quite powerful. For me, it felt like a place that we hadn’t really done before: it’s mildly familiar because of Damon’s voice, but sonically is quite different from anything we’ve done before.” Graham Coxon

Gorillaz

Gorillaz are a virtual band, comprised of four fictional animated band members: 2D (voiced by Blur vocalist Damon Albarn, and plays keyboard and sings lead vocals), Murdoc (bass), Noodle (lead guitar and occasional vocals) and Russel (drums and percussion). The band was created by Damon Albarn from the Britpop band Blur, and Jamie Hewlett, the co-creator of the comic book Tank Girl.

Gorillaz music videos follow the adventures of the band members, so the music is written around the concept of them being within a certain environment for each album. The band’s music is a collaboration between various musicians; Albarn being the only permanent musical contributor. They style is broadly alternative rock, but with a large number of other influences - to quote one of their lyrics, they have recorded everything from "Rap, Hip-Hop, to Punk, and Ska".

They originally identified themselves under the name "Gorilla", and the first song they recorded was ‘Ghost Train’ (1999), later released as a ‘B-side’ on their single Rock the House and G-Sides.

Ghost Train

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YXbG5UKN_g The band's first release was the EP Tomorrow Comes Today, released in 2000. It was very well received in the UK underground music scene and generated a lot of word-of-mouth advertising, as well as a large shroud of mystery over who was behind Gorillaz and what could be expected from the band in the months to come. Promo outlets circulated a promotional booklet to promote the fictional backstory behind the cartoon band.

Tomorrow Comes Today

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiNdcBg3xC8 ~ Wishing for tomorrow to come today demonstrates being both simultaneously optimistic in the impossible happening and faithlessly depressed about the consequences that are to come.

The band's first single, ‘Clint Eastwood’, was released on March 5, 2001. It became a smash hit and put Gorillaz into the global spotlight. Due to this, the fictional band members' Hotmail accounts were abandoned (and later hacked) and the inboxes on the site were never updated. Later that same month, their first full-length album, the self-titled Gorillaz was released, producing four singles: ‘Clint Eastwood’, ‘19-2000′, ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’, and ‘Rock the House’.

Clint Eastwood

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UclCCFNG9q4 ~ The song’s title is a reference to Clint Eastwood, the actor who has portrayed icons of rugged manliness and badassery perhaps better than any other. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Gunsmoke are alluded to in the song. In the former movie, Clint’s nameless character says that he has “sunshine in a bag”, gold coins.

Each of the singles' videos contained humorous and often ridiculous storylines and imagery, though ‘Clint Eastwood’ and ‘19-2000′ were the only singles to break through the American music scene. ‘19-2000′ became popular after being featured in both an Icebreakers commercial, as well as in EA Sports' FIFA 2001.

19-2000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq7Ovshz1UI ~ This song is also about the rise in commercialism of the 21st century. Everything but a person’s personality will speak for who they are, so if you want to be perceived better by other’s you’re better off buying fancy things for people to judge you by.

Also the trumpets from the song ‘Rock the House’ can be heard in various MTV shows. The only time the video for ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ was played in the States was when Toonami broadcasted a Midnight Run special where they played animated music videos from Gorillaz, Daft Punk, and Kenna.

Sound Check (Gravity)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQpclIzUwLk ~ the 8th track included on the self-titled Gorillaz album and definitely my favourite, the segment “Love is breaking” says, in other words, the definition of love is becoming more and more tainted, and he is just seemingly confused about it, (hence the “I don’t know”).

Double Bass

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ONnnlhrM-g ~ “All of which makes me anxious, all times, unbearably so” - Murdoc Niccals

I believe this song is a reference to Murdoc himself. When he was alone on plastic beach, playing his bass, he claimed to begin to interpret the noises the bass made. And we have seen Murdoc has always had bags under his eyes, which anxiety is a symptom of. This leads me to believe he has insomnia. And that this song is him describing the fear and insanity he feels everyday that drives him to be this way. We have also seen him use sex as an escape, and Satanism is him trying to embrace his insanity. So it seems Murdoc is actually a very troubled individual.

M1A1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=twao9b_HXp4 ~ ‘M1A1′ is the final track (excluding bonus tracks) from the Gorillaz debut album. The song samples some of the music from the film Day of the Dead as written by John Harrison. This is the first song to sample music from a zombie film, a theme which would show up several times throughout Gorillaz' work, including the “Intro” from the album Demon Days as well as the name of the group Jamie Hewlett put together to help with the artwork, which was Zombie Flesh Eaters.

They were also rumored to work on a movie project which was abandoned later on because there was no script which was good enough for the group. "We lost all interest in doing it as soon as we started meeting with studios and talking to these Hollywood executive types, we just weren't on the same page. We said, f**k it, we'll sit on the idea until we can do it ourselves, and maybe even raise the money ourselves", Jamie said in an interview.

After stepping back from the spotlight for a while, Gorillaz came back in 2005 with another studio album Demon Days, features a variety of guests ranging from Shaun Ryder to MF DOOM. This album is primarily set on a floating island, which is prominent in the videos for ‘Feel Good Inc’, ‘El Mañana’ and ‘Dare’.

The entire album of Demon Days is about (amongst other things) how the general public respects false icons and about what humanity has done, the chaos that we rose out of and recreated ourselves

Kids With Guns

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VCkFSe3voRc ~ What Albarn is trying to say in the song is that the recent generations that have determined the fate of the world have created a future in which people will have to arm their own children with guns so that they can protect themselves from the chaos and terror that will surely erupt throughout the world if we continue to prosper, as we are too smart for our own good, so to speak. Albarn is trying to say that, now that we have the ability to destroy our entire race (nuclear technology, etc.), and have the resources and equipment ready, we will surely use it, whether we should or should not.

Feel Good Inc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyHNuVaZJ-k ~ It is a dystopian song that mocks herd mentality. The music video features computer generated imagery and 2D animation. The inspiration for the video came from Hayao Miyazaki’s 1986 animated film Castle In The Sky.

For the windmill to work, 4 parts must be working in tandem. There are 4 members in the Gorillaz, so if you take away one part of the windmill, it won’t turn right. Notice that Noodle is separate from the rest of the Gorillaz in the music video. “Is everybody in?” - Is everybody ready to join 2D’s revolution? Is everybody in on the plan?

Probably referring to Noodle’s windmill island. It is interesting to note that at the end of the video for ‘Feel Good Inc’ black choppers are seen flying towards her island. In the video for ‘El Mañana’ we again see Noodle’s island, only this time being attacked by the black choppers. According to the Gorillaz autobiography, Rise of the Ogre, the two helicopters that attack the island in ‘El Mañana’ are actually different designs than the ones from ‘Feel Good Inc’, indicating the possibility of the first two merely tailing Noodle before the other two move in to attack.

El Mañana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hji4gBuOvIQ ~ El Mañana is Spanish for “the future” or “the near future”. “Mañana” by itself can be translated as “Tomorrow”. In the video for this song, we see Noodle’s island being destroyed, and Noodle presumably dying.

White Light

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFjITwNRGGk ~ After the bright choir and instrumentation of the interlude it looks like alcohol as taken over. The song is getting chaotic and it sounds like our protagonist is in trouble. In the interlude it really sounds like if heaven is close, but all of sudden it falls. I think it’s a metaphor for the protagonist being finally called to Hell, because he has sinned (alcohol). He is doomed because of alcohol and will live in an eternal tourment.

Dare

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAOR6ib95kQ ~ Featuring Happy Mondays' Shaun Ryder. This song, in the overall narrative of Demon Days, takes place after the general depression spanning from ‘Feel Good Inc’ to ‘White Light’. Importantly, it is sung by Noodle rather than 2D. This is likely meant to convey a sense of a second perspective. The voice Noodle is delivering tells that of 2D if he is so distraught over the current state of the world, then he should take action because all he does is whine about it.

Don’t Get Lost In Heaven + Demon Days

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcKzlZHl7PY ~ From the Gorillaz Rise of the Orge book: “An homage to Brian Wilson’s genius for vocal arrangement, ‘Don’t Get Lost In Heaven’ is a gleaming confection of choir, piano, and glockenspiel. If sunshine had a sound, this’d be it; displaying a warm-hearted recreation of the Beach Boy’s signature layered choral sound”.

Demon Days as an album talks a lot about negative aspects of modern life, from the Iraq War and global pollution, to the plastic nature of an overly monetised music industry. It represents today’s era as being the “Demon Days”. The title and ending track off Gorillaz’s 2005 album, Demon Days, is a really uplifting end. It’s making the case that although things are bad, there is always time to recognise the evils of the world and improve your life.

From Gorillaz Rise of the Orge book: “The light at the end of the tunnel, the dawn after the longest night of the soul. Based around the same chords as ‘Don’t Get Lost In Heaven’, allowing the two songs to become one glorious crescendo, a real musical climax that guides the listener into a far more optimistic climate”.

Noodle: “As with the previous track, the vocal harmonies were provided by the London Community Gospel Choir. This is the final relief; the hope, the rapture and the reward for the journey”.

2D (reflective and thoughtful): “You remember when you were a little kid and you would look at the clouds in the sky as the sunlight bounced off them. And something that simple would make you feel a part of everything and all alone at the same time. And that feeling’s not something you can ever put into words so you spend your whole life chasing it; making music, taking pictures, painting… whatever in the hope that other people will understand that sense or… feeling. As creative entities we look for signs of life outside ourselves for a connection to… alleviate the sense of solitude. That’s why we all do what we do. whether we know it of ourselves or not”.

They scored their first No. 1 album in the U.K. with this record and cracked the Top 10 of Billboard Hot 200 by peaking at No. 6. By the end of the year, it had gone five-time platinum in the U.K., double platinum in the U.S. and triple platinum Down Under.

Following their worldwide success, the band planned to go on a holographic 3D world tour which was scheduled to be held in 2007 and 2008. They then previewed the gig during performances at 2005 MTV Europe Music Awards and 2006 Grammy Awards with the addition of virtual Madonna on the latter show. But the traveling show was scrapped later on due to logistical issue. "It was extremely expensive, extremely difficult, a million and one things can go wrong, every second that the thing's playing. We did that thing at the EMAs. That was a test of what it could be like", Jamie said during an interview. "And when we sat and watched that, everyone involved was literally gnawing their fingernails, because we knew of the 65 things that could go wrong any second. And when it finished, when the three minutes was over and nothing went wrong, we all breathed a huge sigh of relief. So we realized that if we did a tour, it'd be a logistical nightmare". 

Instead of hitting the road, Gorillaz was busy making a documentary. After around two years in the making, they finally released in April 2009 a film titled Bananaz which was directed by Ceri Levy. This movie covered the antics of the “real musicians” behind the virtual band over the course of seven years and was screened selectively in 2008 at film festivals.

A year after debuting Bananaz, they step up bringing a new album Plastic Beach on March 9, 2010. It features the likes of Snoop Dogg, Bobby Womack, Mos Def, Lou Reed and Mike Jones. The lead single ‘Stylo’ is released months prior to the album and reaches No. 25 on Billboard Alternative Songs chart.

Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0OVD0_YJnU ~ “Snoop’s the grandaddy, isn’t he? ‘Doggystyle’ was for many people the record that got them into rap and G-funk. The track also features The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, a Chicago nine-piece brass group featuring eight sons of Phil Cohran (who played trumpet with The Sun Ra Arkestra). This is a proper soundtrack: brass-laden, pimped out, plastic funk, mixing the organic with the plastic to form something new and shiny. And who better to open up this world than Snoop?” – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Rhinestone Eyes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYDmaexVHic ~ The song samples the unreleased Gorillaz demo ‘Electric Shock’ and the storyboard for the unmade music video. “This one was recorded in my little submarine. I nicked a bit of my own ‘Electric Shock’ track, and stuck it in here, with a little delay over the top. Came out quite well, don’t you think?” – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Stylo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhPaWIeULKk ~ “This is a new sound for Gorillaz. An electro-ish “crack funk” sound, with a little bit of politics and a lot of soul going down. With ‘Stylo’, I wanted the music to feel euphoric, whilst still putting across how precarious our tightly packed situation is now, worldwide. Where we’re at as a species on this overpopulated planet (“Coming on to the Overload. Overload. Overload”). Bobby Womack’s chorus, he just explodes into the track. How good is it to get Bobby Womack on the record? This was the first recording he’s made in 15, 20 years, so what an honour. Bobby said he only returned to do this Gorillaz track because his granddaughter said Gorillaz were cool. Which is true. We are.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Superfast Jellyfish

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6zPvkP5uVI ~ This song is an elaborate metaphor lambasting the music industry. Gorillaz take their time with their music, perfecting it and attempting to put out quality songs with depth and meaning, but the rigors of the industry attempt to force them into making cookie cutter pop songs like the rest of the musicians. According to the industry, the faster they can crank out the low-grade music, the more money can be made, and quality should be ignored. Gorillaz disagree.

“When you think about Gorillaz, it makes sense to have a Super Furry Animal on there, doesn’t it? I’ve always loved them, so I sent a jet over to pick Gruff up and take him over here. A lot of fun, this track. If you turn it up loud enough all the colours start spilling and washing out of the speakers. You could flood your room with a track like this.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Empire Ants

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-yP9f0gadU ~ Albarn is more natural when working in the kind of ornate Village Green Preservation Society-style pop that dominates Plastic Beach. His collaborations with Little Dragon, ‘Empire Ants’ and ‘To Binge’ are two of the most arresting things here, they’re airy, elusive, and amazingly beautiful.

“A moment’s peace amongst the rush. I sampled a lot of this from the theme music to Tomorrow’s World, and the vocalist is Yukimi Nagano from Little Dragon, an electronic band from Sweden. It was actually 2D who got me into Little Dragon. He played me this lovely song of theirs called ‘Twice’, which he first heard on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Glitter Freeze

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N30cj9w6rw ~ This song features Mark E. Smith of The Fall and includes some Morse code at the beginning after Damon says “Where’s North from here” and it says “Plastic Beach” 

“I’m really glad we managed to get Mark E. Smith on the record. I’m not sure he felt the same, but y'know. He wanted to do his part facing north. “Which way’s north from here?”. We used his question as a little intro, kind of like what we did with Shaun Ryder on ‘Dare’. Sometimes the greatest moments are those little mistakes that you catch in the mix when you’re just warming up. Like ‘Punk’ on the first album, and ‘White Light’ on Demon Days, this is the album’s rawkus section of chaos. Every album’s got to have one.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Some Kind of Nature

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvjjc18nB14 ~ “I grew up on Lou Reed, and The Velvets. And I loved Lou’s solo stuff, ‘Magic and Loss’ and ‘The Blue Mask’ and ‘Transformer’ of course. It’s funny. This track’s got a good ol’ sunshiny vibe. Like something off Sesame Street. Apparently Lou Reed is one of the only people to never appear, or refuse to appear, on Sesame Street. So it’s quite a coup that we got him on this. I recorded with Lou over in New York and he wanted to do his whole vocal thing in private, on his own. He ordered everyone out the studio. Me too. I love Lou, but y’know: this is my album. I wanna know what’s going down. Still, his track… wow! Solid gold.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

On Melancholy Hill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=04mfKJWDSzI ~ This song is actually said to be about the not so good side of consumerism. The album itself in many ways criticizes society in a number of ways, but it is different from the rest of the songs because it has more of a “pop” feel to it. Lyrically it fits in with the theme of the album but it is more upbeat showing a paradox in the song because it sounds “happy” but is actually kind of sad.

“The melancholy hill – it’s that feeling, that place, that you get in your soul sometimes, like someone’s let your tyres down. It’s nice to break up the album with something a little lighter. It’s good to have something that’s a genuine pop moment on every album. And this is one of those.” – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Broken

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MgzG2JiQ6Q ~ So, as it turns out, “him” is the narrator, who no longer sees himself from outside his body. He now sees himself as part of the story. It’s his own story, his own relationship that is broken. His lover has left him with no way to apologize, and their “space” is forever changed. They may wish for love, or still be in love, but something has changed and they can no longer go back to how things were.

2D’s and Paula Cracker’s relationship is broken. Paula was caught having sex with Murdoc, by Russel resulting a break up. Their love now is- broken. “Erm….I don’t really know what to say about this track, y’know, like Frank Zappa said “talking about music is like fishing about architecture”. This track just works. I don’t want to talk about it. Is that, OK?” – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Plastic Beach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGM8BMqBcTo ~ “It’s a special moment for fans of Gorillaz and The Clash. How did this come about? Well, I had commandeered Paul Simonon from the Good, The Bad And The Queen. And it made sense. Gorillaz were always influenced by The Clash. They were always my favourite band, I loved how they took the heart and soul of punk and reggae smeared it in London graffiti and paint and then sailed it round the world. I don’t think that’s a million miles from what Gorillaz do now.“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

To Binge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMnrFiG8FRo ~ This is a song about Alcoholism and how it can ruin relationships. In the video, the liquid seems to look like orange juice, but it is revealed at the end to be beer, which tells you the whole concept of the song.

In both drugs and love, it’s never healthy to binge, feeling too much after feeling too little. She’s expressing that binge-ing doesn’t feel the same as when things were steady. Her feelings are changing and she can’t figure out if she wants to quit. She feels bad doing the drugs/being with him, but she falls right back to how she wants it to be and is once again caught up in the good feelings the drugs/relationship temporarily give her.

In the last verse, 2D by using economy to symbolize his heart is undergoing a sharp decline because of his addiction. His “autonomy” is the free will he possesses, but can’t do much with because he’s so dependent on his alcohol. 2D is in the neverendin cycle of his alcohol addiction, and as hard as he tries to free himeself he always finds himself back with the alcohol in his hand. Again, apply Alcohol to a relationship. This song is a dual meaning.

“Another collaboration with Little Dragon, ‘To Binge’ ends up as a beautiful duet between vocalist Yukimi Nagamo and 2D. A Hawaiian version of melancholy, yeah? You don’t see a lot of miserable Hawaiians, do you? It’s not known for its grim outlook on life.” – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Cloud of Unknowing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S02Sb_KnndQ ~ “This track’s a mirror of the opener, a final reflection on the Plastic Beach. Bobby Womack’s performance on this song can still bring tears to my eyes. That mixture of hope and uncertainty in his voice – the age and the experience, the fear and the joy… ‘scuse me. This song, like the Who’s ‘Love Reign O’er Me’ is the moment that gathers together the events of the album – and pauses for reflection: ‘Waiting to see what the morning brings, it may bring sunshine on its wings…’“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME

The Cloud of Unknowing is a religious document from the middle ages. Penned by an anonymous author, it urges the reader into believing that the best way to feel god’s touch is through deep meditation. While during meditation, he tells us that we must forget everything we think we know about god. Only then, once you are on “The Cloud of Unknowing”, can you truly experience god in his purest form, and feel his touch. So, the subject of this song may be that state, in which we are less susceptible to bias, and more open to the true nature of experience.

Pirate Jet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xqqb0LGVKiI ~ The plastic eating people refers to how poisoned our foods are. Animals have been eating plastic as it enters the environment. We eat the animals, eating our own poison.

“‘Pirate Jet’ takes the album out swinging, a finale with shuddering jazz hands: “Did you like the show? It was called PLANET EARTH”. We’re finished and now everyone’s evolved into plastic. A new breed of human. But y’know, I want to clear this up. Plastic Beach. It’s not a green record. It’s not a judgement on the world. It’s just a picture. Plastic Beach: it’s another place, another way of looking at the world. And this is its soundtrack….“ – band member Murdoc Niccals in an interview with NME.

Doncamatic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJQyTnD74gk ~ This song is featured on the digital download version of Plastic Beach. The music video is set after the ‘On Melancholy Hill’ video as Gorillaz are waiting for Daley to arrive. The song is named after the first instrument created by Korg, the Donca Matic is “the groundbreaking Japanese-designed drum machine which started the Korg Musical Instrument Company in 1963!”

“Claim back the boy you left behind” is Daley’s way of encouraging people to regain their youthfulness. Too often, children sacrifice their creativity and innocence to seem mature. Daley believes this is where people go wrong as he later encourages listeners to “Close the white book” and “Unplug the brain from the game” where the white book can be interpreted as the rules of society and the games are the acts that occur within society. Interestingly enough, Daley has some scientific backing, as depression and stress has been linked to excessive technology usage according to research done at the University of Gothenburg.

The Fall is the Gorillaz fourth studio album released in 2011, a year after they released their third album, Plastic Beach. According to the story of Gorillaz, The Fall was made solely by lead singer 2D, on his hiatus from Gorillaz between the making of their 2nd and 3rd albums. 2D finished recording when Murdoc gassed him while he was in Beirut in order to kidnap him to bring him to the plastic beach to work on their third album.

Phoner to Arizona

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAeUwuUGSaM ~ Recorded in Montreal, Canada on the 3rd of October 2010. The lyrics are almost impossible to understand as it is an automated computer speech that has been distorted.

Revolving Doors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePoSILQJeOg ~ Damon Albarn - 2D wrote this song in a hotel in Massachusetts after seeing revolving doors, which reminded him how far he was away from home and how out of place he was. This song is about how the music industry is constantly changing, usually for the worse, and all the stress and depression caused by it or fuelled by it.

2D has come to the realization or is trying to deny the fact that he was born depressed and un-amused with life. That no matter what amount of drugs he takes, how much “sunshine he has in a bag” or whether or not people care for him. He will always have a cynical swing of depression that revolves around in his mind like a revolving door in a building.

Little Pink Plastic Bags

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvqfEURv-P4 ~ Features additional keyboards by Jesse Hackett. Recorded in Chicago, Illinois on October the 16th 2010. People don’t have any goals in life, but are just along for the ride. They don’t know where they’re going, they’re just going to go.

Amarillo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKtNaVaqAKk ~ This song is named after the place in Texas, USA, called Amarillo where it was recorded.

In this moment Albarn was seriously thinking about leaving the Gorillaz project to focus on his group Blur alone , but the choice was quite a hard one , which also explains why it was a particular moment in his life. A single prayer, asking for a response from God. The song is deeply involved with the concept of personal development and change. “I got lost on the highway” signals that the narrator has strayed from his path, becoming something he doesn’t want to be. This is made clear in the next line, “Forgive me for what I’ve become”.

The Speak It Mountains

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXmahzlugdI ~ The lyrics mean that it is the beginning of the day and it is getting harder to live as time moves on even though there is new life being made and the world, although beautiful, can be deceiving and cause death and lack of life.

Bobby In Phoenix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFgR7js-H3k ~ The Fall was recorded by Damon Albarn on an iPad over the course of a month during a tour through the US and Canada. Albarn said of the recording, “I literally made it on the road. I didn’t write it before, I didn’t prepare it I just did it day by day as a kind of diary of my experience of America”.

It’s a love song by Bobby to his favourite place in the USA. And how in his old age he can feel the dread of death looming over him, and how even his beloved Phoenix can’t quite calm that dread.

California & The Slipping Of The Sun

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aHc5Fn5IrI ~ This song features a train station announcement being made when Damon was at the train station talking to Jamie Hewlett, Mick Jones, Tanyel Vahdettin and Darren “Smoggy” Evans.

Do Ya Thing

~ This song, made by the Gorillaz, Andre 3000, and James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem) was part of Converse’s ‘3 Artists, 1 Song’ music series. The song is also the starting point for a limited edition Chuck Taylor All-Star Collection designed by Gorillaz artist Jamie Hewlett. The shoe designs feature artwork from other projects related to Gorillaz.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf_PmmlCiso

It was released in two different versions: the approximately 4-and-a-half-minute radio edit, and the explicit 13-minute version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn4A0Onfjkg

The former was released as a free download on Converse's website, while the latter was released for streaming on Gorillaz's website.

“Andre 3000 murders this track, but that’s an understatement. He doesn’t just murder this track, he kidnaps it, and he ties it up, and then he brings it to his van, and then he drives it down to his evil lair were he tortures it for like 3 weeks, and then chops it up into little pieces and tosses it into the ocean. Serial Killer style.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfu4j0mILCY

The music video opens to a video of a crocodile scaring a herd of antelope. It then cuts to a scene where 2D wakes up and changes clothes in 212 Wobble Street, London, SW21 7QJ. He exits his room and checks another one, finding other band member Noodle fast asleep. After that, he looks in a bathroom and finds a masked figure representing André 3000, surrounded by light blue-skinned "sweat collectors". Disgusted, 2D looks in another room that turns out to be shrouded in complete darkness with the sounds of sheep, chickens and a man crying, which in turn is a reference to a Motorola commercial which band member Murdoc Niccals appeared in. Murdoc then scares 2D by popping up in the room, and he proceeds to go down the stairs using a stair lift as 2D goes to the living room as the Doncamatic submarine makes a cameo appearance behind him, and finds a previous character from the album Plastic Beach named the Boogeyman reading a newspaper (while the ‘Dare’ music video plays on the TV). He goes down to the kitchen and opens a cabinet, only to find the masked figure stuffed inside it. Calmly shutting the door on him, he cooks toast and puts it on his plate along with, without realizing, a human ear from a bowl of them near the toaster. 2D then opens a refrigerator and finds the masked figure stuffed inside it, who gives 2D a milk carton and jelly. At the dining table, he reads a fictional newspaper comic entitled ‘The Gorillaz’, showing comics called ‘The Funnies’ which features a comic of Murdoc hugging 2D. Murdoc, having finally finished going down the stairs, goes up to 2D and angrily hits him with a Gorillaz Converse shoe, unlike the comic, leaving the former very upset. 2D decides against eating the toast upon realising that it has an ear on it, turns off the radio (which also cuts the song) and leaves the house, while Murdoc starts a transmission from his radio station, playing the intro to the Gorillaz song ‘5/4′. Once outside, he receives a notice of eviction from a baboon mailman representing James Murphy, and smiles, looking relieved. The car from the music video of ‘Stylo’ is "parked" outside. The camera points up, revealing a still-giant Russel Hobbs sleeping on the roof of the house and the remains of the windmill island (nicknamed "The Slowboat") from the ‘Feel Good Inc.’ and ‘El Mañana’ music videos floating in the sky.

Following hints in the media that Gorillaz were back at work, their Instagram social media began uploading updates on each band member as short stories. It’s been six years since Plastic Beach and it would seem that 2D, Murdoc, Noodle, and Russel have a lot of catching up to do.

The Book Of Noodle

“She drifted away from Plastic Beach to safety, or so she thought. years later Noodle is face to face with pure evil ... Will she prevail?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wrYpbV8ft4 ~ On October 3, 2016, Gorillaz uploaded updates on their Instagram page concerning guitarist Noodle’s travels since Plastic Beach (2010).

This is not the first time Noodle has disappeared from the band following an attack. She also survived a deadly attack during the filming of the video for ‘Feel Good Inc’. She was last formally seen in the video for ‘On Melancholy Hill’ where she was attempting to reunite with her bandmates. Storyboards for a cancelled video for ‘Rhinestone Eyes’ show another attack on the band by The Boogieman. This time, her disappearance led her to her home country of Japan.

The Gorillaz Instagram story shows a murdered Maazu with Noodle holding her bloodied sword in a busy Japanese bar/restaurant.

Noodle’s return to England is reminiscent of her original introduction to the band way back in 1998, when she was smuggled by Japanese scientist Mr Kyuzo: After temporarily clearing her memory of the project, Kyuzo smuggled Noodle to the United Kingdom in a FedEx crate and falsely reported her death (along with the other 22 children) to his superiors. Noodle arrived at the doorstep of Kong Studios in 1998. Once the crate was taken inside, Noodle sprung out of the box and performed a guitar solo (which 2D described as “200 demons screaming in Arabic. Brilliant!”). She ended her solo with a 20 foot high karate kick before bowing and saying the word “Noodle”. This resulted with her earning the name “Noodle” (her only currently known name).

The Book Of Russel

“Discovering that life in a glass dome is not all it's cracked up to be, Russel shakes off his mistaken identity but will he ever make it back to safe shores?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMsje5xNW1E ~ One week after the release of ‘The Book of Noodle’, Gorillaz posted an update on the whereabouts of drummer Russel on their Instagram. ‘The Book of Russel’ explains Russel’s imprisonment in North Korea as a literal giant local tourist attraction before his release and return to England. 

The posts came accompanied with videos and military music of a stylised North Korea. This drew some criticism for its racist/frivolous attitude to the real-life famine and oppression taking place in actual North Korea.Russel grew to an unnatural size due to all the radioactive fish he ate on his way to Plastic Beach. In an interview with Puss Puss Magazine in October 2016 he said of his giant growth: 

“The biggest challenge was people judging me. Because yeah, I get it, I was big – but I’ve got an overactive thyroid. People see a sixty-foot giant and assume they’re up all night crying and spooning cookie dough into their faces. It was my THYROID.”

The hip-hop hard man rescued Noodle during the attack on Plastic Beach, but after being mistaken for a whale and harpooned, Russel was separated from Noodl and ended up in North Korea and achieved celebrity status after locals concluded that he was Godzilla. However, when he shrunk back to normal size (due to meagre food rations), he was released and made his way back to England and ultimately reconnected with Noodle.

It’s clear that Gorillaz are now reunited. “The band was getting back together”, the book concludes. When asked about the new album, Russel replied: “You can expect whatever you like. What is coming will come, whether you expect it or not.”

The Book Of Murdoc

“Murdoc abandoned the pirate-infested Plastic Beach. With only a cyborg Noodle for company, and nowhere near enough booze, what will he do when it runs out?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFxwCuEiNjA ~ Focusing on Murdoc Niccals, the latest story from the band sees the band member leave Plastic Beach after a pirate attack, fleeing on his own in a rusty submarine. The Battleship is named after The Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, also referenced earlier as Muroc navigated through the Octopuses Garden. Packing only a crate of rum and cyborg version of his bandmate Noodle, Murdoc remained safely below the waves until his supply of booze ran out. Upon surfacing, he encountered a fleet of steel ships sent by record label EMI. Gorillaz have a long-standing working relationship with label Parlophone, a subsidiary of EMI (up until 2012) and Warner Music Group (2013-). They have evidently been scouring the world in search of their greatest songwriting asset, Murdoc Niccals. Taken hostage by the label, he was jailed for three years and was freed upon agreeing to write a new Gorillaz album.

The Book Of 2D

“The attack on Plastic Beach forced 2D into hiding, but he wasn't alone. Washed up on a desert island with Massive Dick and faced with starvation, will he go native or find his way back to civilisation?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVJLjRpIrRs ~ Starting once more from the attack on Plastic Beach, the story reveals that vocalist 2D had hidden himself away in his underwater quarters. It wasn't much safer below the waves either: a great white whale known as Massive Dick swallowed him in one bite and swam away into the depths. The story then reveals that a lifetime of eating garbage in the ocean caused Massive's sudden death, washing 2D and the whale's carcass ashore on a desert island. With limited survival skills, 2D had no other option but to eat the body of the whale.

The story isn't all doom and gloom however, as 2D soon finds he isn't alone on the island after following a plane along the coast right into the middle of a beach rave. Deciding to "have a gap year and find himself," he was soon fired from his job as a friendship bracelet weaver and decided it was time to fly home.

There was the announcement that both De La Soul and Snoop Dogg would appear on the new Gorillaz album a couple of months back. “With Damon, it was easy because we love working with him”, Posdnuos told The Guardian. “We’re about to be on the new Gorillaz album. Snoop was also performing on the record when we were over there. He pulled us to the side and said: “Hey man, we’ve never worked together, can we get this going?” Usually the lawyers will say: “You can pay this artist or maybe we can swap?” and then it goes from there.”

Hallelujah Money

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d3yeszApV8 ~ Released one day before Donald Trump’s inauguration. A protest song against the global political atmosphere of 2016 - particularly with regards to the influence of money and race politics in the U.S. elections. It describes the dream-like America that Trump promised his voters, and uses a tree as a symbol of western prosperity.

English composer, poet, and multi-instrumentalist Benjamin Clementine and his fairy tale-like narration add to the sense of wonder surrounding this dream. Clementine hones in on Trump’s plans to build a wall on the Mexican border, a topic that continually resurfaced during the elections.

The video was directed by Giorgio Testi and Gorillaz, and edited by Sebastian Monk. It features stirring images of La Candelaria brethren, African tribesmen, and dancing geishas flashing behind Clementine as he “stands in the gold-plated elevator of Trump Tower”.

Following the 2016 U.S. election, Donald Trump’s ability to win the electoral vote left many voters disillusioned with the democratic process. His anti-establishment platform seemed paradoxical considering his personal wealth and relations with other big money parties in the U.S. Clementine ironically exhorts listeners to worship money—it can be their new god, just like how President Trump worships and uses money for his own personal interests.

The scream at the end of the song is taken from Spongebob Squarepants, specifically from season one, episode fourteen, ‘Karate Choppers’. Spongebob is reacting to Mr. Krabs telling him “you’re fired”, which was Donald Trump’s catchphrase on The Apprentice. While the inclusion of the scream is a playful nod to Gorillaz’s cartoon existence, it’s also a way of expressing genuine fear at the results of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

Everyday Robots

Speaking about working with XL Recordings owner Richard Russell on the Everyday Robots album, Albarn told Rolling Stone: “In an ironic way, it’s sort of the most collaborative record I’ve ever done when it comes to songwriting. Some of the songs just came from the two of us experimenting in the studio.”

Russell handled the drum programming while Albarn took on the singing, piano and guitar parts. “We did it in just three months at my studio”, he said. “We’d work five days a week, 10:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m.”

Everyday Robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjbiUj-FD-o ~ Starting with a Lord Buckley sample, Damon Albarn’s ‘Everyday Robots’ is an interesting mix of hip-hop production with piano ballad pop rock that’s right in line with his work in the Gorillaz. The track almost sounds like a cross between Radiohead and Jay Z, and this shows how Damon can adapt his creative work to today’s music in the UK, with this “postdubstep” going on (like James Blake or Mount Kimbie).

Recorded in 2013 at the Damon’s West London studio 13, ‘Everyday Robots’ was produced by XL Recordings head Richard Russell. Albarn came up with this song while stuck in a traffic jam in California. He explained to XFM’s John Kennedy. “I was just watching everyone around me and everyone is so lost in their little worlds: on the telephone, listening to music.”

The song’s music video was created by Argentina-born, London-based artist and designer Aitor Throup, who said that he used, “CGI software and actual cranial scans and facial reconstruction techniques to explore and reveal the process of building a uniquely personal portrait of an artist and individual.”

Hostiles

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hY0LhRZtQIs ~ Damon Albarn told The Guardian that he wrote this song after spending Christmas at his mother-in-law’s house, “spending hours on the sofa playing The Dark Knight video game with my daughter, just zapping these endless characters with no real humanity.”

Written from the perspective of a gamer who is going to spend the day killing digital enemies. “The hostiles are sort of in those shooting games that character that constantly get up on each level and you’re given no character other than they’re hostile to you. They’re completely soulless things and there’s something in that relationship that we have with the world when you’re in a sort of altered state and the blankness of just killing, that sort of passive aggression that exists in computer games.” - Damon Albarn

Lonely Press Play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9MMJgFKv24 ~ This dirge-like ballad finds Albarn crooning lyrics of isolation and loneliness. It is one of several satirical rants on Everyday Robots against 21st century tech obsession. The video is made up of scenes from Albarn’s travels filmed on the Damon’s iPad. The clip visits Tokyo, Dallas, Utah, North Korea, Iceland, as well as London, Devon and Colchester in the UK.

“That starts really strangely with arrhythmia, which means when your heartbeat is irregular. It’s about accepting that you live with uncertainty.” Albarn explained to The Sun. “The ‘press play’ refers to abstractions in an everyday sense, whether it’s watching a DVD or putting on the radio or passing time playing a game on the tube“, he added. “We live in a world where the symbols like the (press play) triangle has become synonymous with time out”, Albarn continued. “It goes back to the Egyptians and their esoteric take on the whole universe.”

Mr. Tembo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODG3VRkncBc ~ This is an ode to a baby elephant that Albarn met in a place called Mkombozi, in Tanzania. He recalled to Rolling Stone: “It was recently orphaned and walked onto this aerodrome; the people I know took it in and called it Mr. Tembo. I was there, and I met this little elephant, and he was very sweet. I sang it to him. It was recorded on a phone, and in a lighthearted moment, I put it on a list for Richard. He said, “I’d really like you to try that”, so I did.”

The song features backing vocals by The Leytonstone City Mission Choir. “Back in Leytonstone, there was a Pentecostal Church at the end of my road that belonged to the city mission. I remember standing outside with my bicycle listening to the singing, but never being able to find an entry point. But it was a very strong childhood memory that I’ve carried with me. I got in contact with that church, and they’ve still got a small choir, so they very kindly agreed to sing on the record a bit.”

The Selfish Giant

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iI8_Jz2SwbE ~ Natasha Khan of Bat For Lashes sings a ghostly echo of Albarn’s voice on this narrative of a night spent at Dunoon in Scotland. Dunoon used to be a nuclear submarine base. Albarn recalled to The Sun: “Blur did a gig there. It was a ghostly place, shrouded in melancholy and had seen better days.” This also samples horns by Kenny Clayton from The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde.

The Oscar Wilde story, the song was named after, is about a giant who doesn’t let children enter his garden, but after a while, he helps one of them to climb a tree in his backyard. The giant smashes the wall around his garden and other children come to play in the garden, but the very boy the giant helped has left. The giant is heartbroken. Albarn’s song seems to play with this story a bit: the narrator feels like a selfish giant, and he let someone get close to him, but he can’t stand the idea of being left.

You & Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7XdqfD9xSY ~ Damon Albarn shouts out the West London road of Westbourne Grove, which has been his manor for a number of years. It serves as the main road on the route of the annual Notting Hill Carnival in August. He told Uncut magazine: “Always after Carnival, there is this enormous residue of energy that hovers around for a few days. It’s a Post-Carnival Apocalypse song!”

This is actually an amalgamation of two different songs, the first being titled ‘You’ and the other being ‘Me’.

‘You’: Refers to using heroine: the lighter is used to make the heroine dissolve a vapor, and if you inhale that vapor, you’ll get high. This method is often called chasing the dragon. Damon began his relationship with heroin at the height of Britpop. He acknowledged to Q magazine the role that the drug played in his artistic growth. “I hate talking about this because of my daughter, my family. But, for me, it was incredibly creative… A combination of heroin and playing really simple, beautiful, repetitive shitt in Africa changed me completely as a musician. I found a sense of rhythm. I somehow managed to break out of something with my voice.”

Instrumental intermezzo: Around 3:30 some steeldrums kick in, giving the song an estranged feeling, which probably echoes how you feel when you’re on drugs. The steel drums break in the middle of the song was played by a local London musician. Albarn explained on a Reddit AMA that “his pans represent to me the true ghost of carnival”. This middle section is followed by the second part of the song, which sounds more like a distinctive song, though it has the same gloomy feel as the first part.

‘Me’: He is saying the addiction may have been his fault and he should be blamed. He is also using twilight in the sense of light caused by the setting of the sun as well as the other meaning of the decline of his career meaning the addiction has made him not only a worse person but a worse musician thus he quit though it was hard and was several relapses. “All goes round again” could also show how repetitive things can become and the fact that those lyrics were used repetitively adds to the effect.

Hollow Ponds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6q1Uf5Cgac ~ Damon Albarn takes us on a walk through his personal history on this song, taking in key moments that have shaped him such as the drought of 1976, the road he once lived in being severed by the M11 link road in 1991, and seeing the graffiti “modern life is rubbish” sprayed on a wall in 1993 (also the same year Blur released their album titled Modern Life Is Rubbish).

“1976 is a long time ago really. There’s that realisation that a lot of things have been quite interesting in the way I turned out. They seemed to be worthy of some kind of meditation. That’s what I’m trying to do in ‘Hollow Ponds’: go back and then realise that it’s now. In a way, how do we know that we exist other than that beam of light that’s our history?” says Damon Albarn.

The song contains a sample of the Central Line underground train leaving Leytonstone Station.

The History Of A Cheating Heart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcoR_-4g2Mg ~ This song deals with finding inspiration to write music and how that can be hurtful at times. Albarn explained the song’s meaning to The Sun: “I’d talk about relationships with my family, from childhood to now”, he said. “It’s driven by mistakes, happiness, dreams, expectations. How you find yourself locked in cycles and how you get out of them. I know that my experience is very similar to other people. I’m offering some of the more difficult stuff. I’m posing a question to everyone else as well.”

Uncut magazine asked Damon if he thinks the pursuit of an artistic vision is damaging to emotional stability, to which he replied: “I think it definitely can be. Because, as a songwriter, you need to feel stuff for it to come out honestly. And how do you do that? You do that by being curious, and curiosity is a very open book for a lot of fuck-ups in life.”

Heavy Seas Of Love

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCUfitpIsW8 ~ This song is a duet between Damon Albarn and Brian Eno. Brian Eno is better known as a producer than a singer. It was Everyday Robots producer, Richard Russell, who suggested that he sung on this track. Albarn told The Sun: “He said, “No one asks Brian to sing, everyone asks him to produce.” And Brian is such a fan of singing – he has a vocal group who meet every Tuesday. He has such a clear, crisp voice and mine is such a different tone, so it was interesting to put the two together.”

“As above, so below” is an important saying in the Pagan philosophy of Hermeticism. Essentially, your “spirit” mirrors the real world, and the real world in turn shadows a greater spiritual world beyond that.

The song features The Leytonstone City Mission Choir, who also contributed to ‘Mr. Tembo’. Albarn felt that the choir held a nostalgic importance to him and asked the Church if he could record with the collective.

The artwork for the song’s single release features the Palacio Salvo building, which is located in the Uruguay capital of Montevideo. Albarn explained during a Reddit AMA: “I found my whole stay in Uruguay quite affecting – the view from my hotel was completely dominated by the Palacio Salvo. I spent a lot of time looking at it”. The music video was directed by Damon Albarn and edited by Matt Cronin.

Personal Life

Albarn is now in a relationship with the artist Suzi Winstanley. They have a daughter together, Missy Violet, born in 1999. Albarn described becoming a father as "witnessing a life force" and saying that "it massively changes you. It slowly sort of shaves off the unpleasant thorny bits and hopefully creates a nicely rounded... I don't know, having a kid, you just become far more, inevitably you look to the future far more and, you know, it's desperate sometimes when you have a particularly bad few weeks of the newspaper just reminding you about this is wrong, this is wrong. We've got ten more years everyone."

Albarn has been an active supporter of various charities and philanthropic efforts throughout his career as a musician and has been involved in various charity albums and singles. DRC Music, a collective formed by Albarn, released their debut album Kinshasa One Two as a charity album in which all of the money earned is given to Oxfam.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMy4Rzd1cTk&index=1&list=PL0FB6F34A16A6DE1C

Albarn has also formed a collective with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea, Yeah Yeah Yeahs guitarist Nick Zinner, and Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos to make a charity single with the money earned from that single also donated to Oxfam.

In 2013, Albarn alongside fellow Blur bandmate Graham Coxon performed live with former rival Noel Gallagher of Oasis and Paul Weller of The Jam to play Blur's 1999 single 'Tender' in support of Teenage Cancer Trust.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AqMbI3o7Ps

[antscale3-blog]

The Linc - Nick Foles to the Jaguars for Leonard Fournette?

Let’s get to the Philadelphia Eagles links ...

2019 NFL Mock Draft: Jaguars trade Leonard Fournette for Nick Foles, Bengals replace Andy Dalton - CBS Sports One problem here: I don’t think the Jags are going to give up No. 7 overall in exchange for Nick Foles. You could work out a deal where the Jags send No. 7 and No. 69 to the Eagles for Foles, No. 26 and No. 54 (the trade value basically makes Foles worth the 28th overall pick, which is probably a reasonably fair swap), but Jacksonville is going to likely lose high-end, expensive talent to free agency as a result of salary-cap issues. Jacksonville would like to use the seventh pick to either replace the talent or to secure another young quarterback for the long haul. How about we make both front offices happy instead? The Jaguars can send Leonard Fournette -- their former top pick and a very talented player who has struggled with injuries and hasn’t meshed well with the front office -- to the Eagles for Foles and a throw-in pick down the road. There are some contractual issues here that might hold things up on both ends. Foles is either going to have his option picked up or will be given the franchise tag and traded. So he won’t be cheap. Fournette isn’t cheap either -- he has a top-10 salary over the next two years at the running back position. Philly might not be willing to spend at the position, but Fournette is a better pass catcher than he gets credit for, and he could excel in Doug Pederson’s scheme. The Eagles were at their best with LeGarrette Blount and Jay Ajayi running downhill.

2019 NFL Mock Draft Roundup: Eagles add interior pass rush - BGN Six out of nine picks are linemen. We all know the Eagles are not shy to invest premium resources in the trenches.

Offseason Talk - Iggles Blitz There is a feeling in the Tampa media that the Bucs could cut DE Vinny Curry and/or DT Beau Allen. Hmm. The Bucs are expected to play more of a 3-4 under Todd Bowles. That could make both guys expendable. If so, the Eagles could talk to one or both about coming back to add depth to the DL. While both players loved their time in Philly, price would be an issue. While neither player had a good season, they aren’t likely to come crawling back to the Eagles for peanuts. They’d want reasonable money. Keep an eye on this.

Projecting which Eagles player is next to make the Pro Bowl - NBCSP Alshon Jeffery: His last Pro Bowl appearance was in 2013 when he was still with the Bears, but Jeffery clearly has the talent of a Pro Bowler, although his numbers in his first two seasons with the Eagles have been modest. In the two years, he’s averaged 61 catches, 816 yards and 7.5 touchdowns per season. Another year like that and he won’t be a Pro Bowler. But he played through a torn rotator cuff in 2017 and then missed three games to start 2018 because of it. If he can stay healthy and play a full season with a healthy Carson Wentz, there’s a good chance he could take a spot in the annual All-Star showcase.

1-On-1: Joe Douglas - PE.com Vice President of Player Personnel Joe Douglas joins Fran Duffy at the Senior Bowl to discuss what he’s seen from some of the nation’s top college prospects and what he’s looking for from this year’s stellar crop of underclassmen.

10 Biggest Winners Of Senior Bowl Week - The Draft Network 1. Penny Hart, WR, Georgia State. Nobody went from as unknown to as intriguing as Penny Hart, who eviscerated defensive backs for three straight days during practices. I called him my biggest winner of the week on the Draft Dudes podcast, and nothing has changed even though he had a quieter Senior Bowl game — his roster was filled with slot receivers.

Best of Senior Bowl week: QB rankings, NFL draft risers, biggest takeaways, more - ESPN In$ider Which prospects’ draft stock rose the most this week? Montez Sweat, DE, Mississippi State. At 6-6 and 252 pounds, Sweat is an explosive speed rusher who is strong enough to go through offensive tackles and athletic enough to work the weave when they take away the edge. He is on the leaner and lighter side for a defensive end, yet he’s stout setting the edge against the run. He gets off the ball, he shoots his hands inside and he has the length (35⅝-inch arms) to keep blockers off his frame.

Bang for their Bucs: Wide Receiver, DeSean Jackson - Bucs Nation One could argue Jackson gave up on his team. There were times where it certainly appeared that way on the field, and on Instagram. However, looking at some of the usage numbers compared to the way other teams use receivers of similar talents, and maybe you can start to understand why he was so frustrated. Without stepping into the locker room, it’s hard to know exactly why his numbers became skewed in the way they did. No matter how you slice it, Jackson had more targets 20-yards or more downfield than he did 10-yards and less. For a receiver facing off coverage as much as Jackson does, those numbers shouldn’t be like that. Was it Winston? Was it Koetter? Was it Monken? We don’t know. I’d love to have Jackson on the Locked on Bucs podcast to discuss it - honestly and openly - but I don’t know that he feels there’s anything worth talking about. For now, we have the numbers and our perceptions.

Valentine’s Views: The Kansas City Plan sounds like a winner - Big Blue View I have suspected for a while that the New York Giants would like to emulate that plan, and a report Saturday evening by Paul Schwartz of the New York Post confirms that “More and more, this appears to be the scenario about to unfold for the Giants.” There is a lot to unpack from Schwartz’s report. The upshot, though, is that if Schwartz is correct — and as well-connected as the veteran Post writer is there is no reason to doubt his reporting at all — Manning will be back in 2019. A highly-drafted heir apparent could well be alongside him. If the Giants can find that guy.

Cowboys’ in-house OC search only shines brighter light on one of the biggest indictments of Jason Garrett’s tenure - SportsDay The addition of Jon Kitna means there have been 19 coaches to work under Garrett on the offensive side of the ball in his eight full seasons as head coach. Name the assistants who have left his staff to oversee the offense of another NFL team. None. Former wide receivers coach Derek Dooley is currently the coordinator at Missouri. Garrett’s brother, John, was the coordinator at Oregon State and Richmond before landing a job as the Lafayette head coach. But not one assistant has left the Cowboys offensive staff for a better job in the NFL since Garrett has been the head coach.

NFL owner’s superyacht catches the attention of a Presidential candidate - PFT When it comes to keeping up with the Joneses, Daniel Snyder continues to fall short. And the competition regarding which man has the biggest five-letter thing (yacht, or otherwise) has caught the attention of one of the umpteen candidates for the Democratic nomination for the Presidency in 2020. Elizabeth Warren has taken to Twitter to call out the Washington owner for his purchase of a very big boat. “This billionaire NFL owner just paid $100M for a ‘superyacht’ with its own iMax theater,” Warren said. “I’m pretty sure he can pay my new #UltraMillionaireTax to help the millions of yacht-less Americans struggling with student loan debt.”

8 ways Saints fans are overreacting hilariously to NFC Championship loss to Rams - The Falcoholic And hoo boy, are they ever mad. Harry Connick Jr. is boycotting the Super Bowl and shared the mad online letter he wrote to Roger Goodell on Instagram. And a church in New Orleans is offering the opportunity for disgruntled Saints fans to work through their frustration by throwing a penalty flag during services on Sunday. But these fine folks aren’t satisfied with tossing flags around and being mad online. They’re also doing a bunch of absurd things in real life in their quest for justice, and today seems like a great time to revel in it and laugh at all of this ridiculousness.

The Saints really didn’t need Sen. Bill Cassidy to argue on their behalf in Congress - SB Nation It was a Friday in Congress with no significant votes on the docket, just a discussion about sending money and weapons to the Middle East. The U.S. Government was in the midst of a shutdown — the announcement of our government’s temporary re-opening had yet to come. That made it the perfect possible time for one senator to ... pander to the home crowd with a little discussion about football. Yup. The growing wave of complaints of Saints fans cheated out of a Super Bowl 53 appearance crested to a logical escalation Friday. In the span of five days, New Orleans has leveled up from punched televisions to billboards to change.org petitions to class action lawsuits, and now, a debate on the floor of the United States Senate.

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