MOVIE REVIEW: The Hobbit - An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition

When news came out that the somewhat slim Hobbit book would be turned into not one, not two, but three epic movies, the collective voices of the internet immediately shouted, “Shameless Cash Grab!” After the first movie came out last year, critics heaped scorn on its shallow and plodding plot, its uneven tone, and in the case of 48fps showings, its “Masterpiece Theater in HD” visuals.

Well, I’m here to discredit all of that. I saw it in 48fps in the theater last year and it blew my mind. At first I whispered to my wife, “There’s no way. There’s no way the movie is going to look like this for three hours.” The descriptions I had read were accurate. It looked as if you were viewing an extremely detailed live production through a giant window. It was glorious. And even after two hours and forty-five minutes, I was sad to see it end. Now, at the time, the visuals were so distracting (with 48fps, you’re receiving twice as much visual data than the normal 24fps of everyday schmoe movies), I barely paid any attention to the plot or what was happening.

Earlier this year the home video release of the Hobbit came out and I strained hard to resist it because I knew that there would inevitably be a special extended cut that would come out just before the next installment hit the theaters. And the extended cut did come out, just a couple weeks ago, and I greedily swiped it up and proceeded to watch the hell out of it.

After viewing the Blu-ray extended cut, the nine and half hours of behind the scenes special features, the movie again with commentary, and then half of it again in French just to see if the songs would be sung in a different language (they were!), I can safely say that I am qualified to review this movie, and that it is not shallow, plodding or a cynical cash grab by Warner Brothers. Although, the tone does jump around a bit here and there from kid friendly to gruesome, from corny dwarf songs to “serious” talk of mountains and dragons, I don’t personally find it distracting, that’s just part of the charm and epicness of the film. Nobody wants to be grim for three hours straight.

Any fan of the movie or the original Lord of the Rings trilogy should get this edition and watch the behind the scenes material. As was seen on the LOTR extended editions, the behind the scenes material is outstanding. Every aspect of making the film is covered in depth, in detail and in HD. It’s really cool to have a talking head tell you about an incident on the film set, and then they show the actual footage of that incident. Some of it seems pretty personal, for example a scene where Ian McKellen had to act in front of a green screen by himself for a long period of time and became quite upset about it. Other stuff is mind blowing in its conception. That same scene involves the actors performing live on two identical sets, except the one Ian Mckellen is on is slightly smaller in scale. Then they overlap the two and it looks like a large Gandalf walking around a tiny hobbit hole interacting with a tiny hobbit.

While the first disc of extra content covers the technical film-making side of things, the second disc covers the lore and creation of the film’s world. They go into extreme detail on each of the thirteen dwarves, showing their lineage, personalities, weapons, relations with each other, etc. It’s shocking how much of this content does not come across in the film. I’m assuming they will all be fleshed out more in the upcoming releases. At least, I hope so because it’s all really great. Did you know that one of the dwarves has an axe blade lodged in his head, and because of that he can only speak in Dwarvish?

The extended scenes only add up to about thirteen extra minutes of material, mostly taking place in Hobbiton and Rivendell. We get more great visuals and a few minor conversations, and a couple more songs. The scenes are seamless enough that I couldn’t really tell much of a difference. To me, the more material, the better.

Having experienced the Hobbit extended edition, I’m now psyched for the next two installments. I almost wish I could just skip the theater and immediately own the next two extended collections, but then I remember that 48fps. It’s the only thing the theaters can hold over me as competition against my comfy couch. Once again, if you’re into these movies, get this for sure. If you were a bit disappointed with this first Hobbit film, but wish you weren’t, then get this extended edition. I think it will let you enjoy the film a lot more than you did the first time around.

BOOK REVIEW: Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

I've finally done it. I've finished Infinite Jest.

For those unaware, Infinite Jest is a novel by David Foster Wallace from 1996 whose 1100+ pages contain a story notorious for being willfully difficult in a postmodern sort of way (this novel comes with nearly 400 endnotes, some of which run for ten or so pages and have their own endnotes). It's long been though of as "that big book that some people put on their shelves just so they look smart." I've started and given up on it multiple times, but I've finally slayed this beast of a novel.

Reading this book is not unlike eating a cinderblock. It's an original experience that doesn't relent in its challenge, and the first bite goes down pretty much like the last bite. The story takes place mostly in Boston, specifically an upscale tennis academy/boarding school and a nearby halfway house for drug addicts of various kinds. The two locales are eventually linked in the narrative by the search, conducted by triple- and quadruple-agents for a film made by the former headmaster of the tennis academy that is apparently so compelling that it will render a viewer hopelessly, fatally addicted. However, the chronology is a purposeful mess, and many of the scenes of expository action are present only in semi-occluded references, which means that figuring out what's really going on is a puzzle of fairly tall order.

Since Wallace is very interested in being (maddeningly) detailed, you will, over the course of this novel, learn way more than you ever wanted to know about competitive junior's tennis and drug addiction, not to mention fictional US/Canadian relations, optics, and whatever else Wallace decides to include, often at very little prompting. The obsessive detail leads to the very real fact that a reader of this novel will need to be able to confront more than three pages in a row with nary a single paragraph break on a regular basis without cracking. It makes an already very long book even longer as it forces your brain to render all that data into a coherent scene.

The story takes place in the near future, which means the near future from a 1996 perspective, which actually means approximately now-ish. As such, he's included speculative elements about the course the nation could take; some fantastical, some all too possible. It provides him a way to sneak even more commentary into the book, a tendency that he indulges on basically every page. For example, there's a great twenty+ page scene that finds the high-schoolers at the academy playing "Eschaton," a game of their own invention that sits at the intersection of tennis, international diplomacy, and thermonuclear war.

Very few will attempt this novel, fewer will make it through, and fewer still will understand just what happened, but those who do will be rewarded, if rewarded is the correct word, with images and scenes that are totally indelible. It's a book of great density and Byzantine structure that will necessarily change how a person views both fiction and human observation, but whether or not it's worth it is entirely up to the reader, as is the decision as to whether the nested references to Hamlet and other such brain-intensive exercises are actually genius or merely overwrought. For my own part, I'm immensely glad I got to see the view from the top of this word-mountain, but it's unlikely I'll climb it again.

DUAL ALBUM REVIEW: Goodie Mob - Age Against The Machine

Today we have a special treat for you called a Dual Review. Occasionally, multiple contributors from IV have something to say about an album/movie/book/game, etc. and rather than just letting one person take all the opinionated glory, we decided to combine our thoughts into one piece. We were going to call it a Duel Review, but since Trey-K and I pretty much agree with each other’s conclusions, that won’t be necessary (this time…).

In full disclosure, you should know that I am a white, bearded, thirty-something male with musical roots mostly in rock and metal. Since Trey and I have been friends for as long as I can remember, some of our musical influences have rubbed off on each other. Dungeon Family’s Even in Darkness was the first hip-hop album that really struck a chord with me. Rappers were actually saying something credible, with eloquence, and without dropping the F-Bomb or the N-Word every other syllable. And on top of that, the songs were catchy, with each member’s style so distinctive, I could actually tell them apart.

I have such fond memories of riding around with Trey and listening to that album, I’ve always wanted to hear more from the same group. Well, here we are over a decade later with a new Goodie Mob album, it’s approximately one-fourth of the Dungeon Family members I care about, so what the hell, I’ll take it.

After one listen through of Age Against the Machine, I felt that it was both better than I expected and also disappointing. My disappointment comes from something that Trey mentions as well: the interludes/skits/mini songs. In rock, it’s best to have a tight knit album, a collection of solid songs from start to finish. Anything else in between is what we call filler. Filler breaks up the album, ruins the flow, like bad grammar pulls you out of a good book. On AATM, we get a collection of good songs crippled by filler. I feel like there is a solid EP right in the middle of this record with the rest being unfinished tracks or Cee-Lo solo songs. It’s possible that at the end of the Mob’s studio time in Jamaica, they just gathered what they had and splorked it onto the record with no concern for completeness or flow. It’s a shame because the good songs on here really are good.

I’m impressed how well Cee-Lo fits into this album, considering his recently found pop status. He doesn’t feel out of place when all the members are on the same track. He doesn’t shine above the rest or stick out like, “Oh, there’s Cee-Lo” as something separate from “those other guys”. It feels very natural and it’s good to hear Cee-Lo rapping again, even though he is an astoundingly good singer. There are a couple of instances where I feel he may have snuck into the studio at night and inserted some of his own solo tracks into the mix. While not bad, those songs do stand apart and don’t gel quite right with the album as whole, furthering the overall disjointed vibe.

The production here is excellent and I’m glad to see from a prog-rock perspective that these guys take some risks with the tracks, changing up rhythms and using odd sounds here and there. It’s an impressive effort that keeps the good songs from sounding too same-y.

At the end of the day, I’m glad I got the album. Big Rube’s voice on the intro track transported me back to 2001 and made me relieved that even as I get older and everything changes, some things still remain to take me back there again. I like this album purely based on nostalgia, but I also recognize the moments of actual quality that shine through from time to time. If you aren’t a fan of hip-hop, it probably won’t sway your opinion much, but you could do a lot worse. You could do a lot worse.

-Attikuh Isley

And now on to Trey-K and the main event:

Along with Attikuh Isley, anyone who knows me can say that I am a big fan of the Dungeon Family. Any release from them or even their affiliates will get my attention. Their track record is something that no one can dispute. The hip hop collective are responsible for some of the best albums in not just rap, but in music PERIOD.  OutKast, in particular, has one of the best album catalogs in rap music, but even as great as their albums are, I would put Goodie Mob's debut album Soul Food over all of their albums. When I say this to others, I get looks of shock and concern that I have gone crazy, considering how much of an OutKast fan I am.  Nevertheless, I stand by it.  What Goodie Mob crafted with their first album was a stripped down, raw portrait of the South, specifically Atlanta, filled with soulful beats and rhymes speaking on social consciousness, paranoia, spirituality, poverty, and even food. When music fans talk about hip hop soul and do NOT mention this album as part of that genre, they should have their mouths wired shut and their ear drums popped because Soul Food defines how soul music can mix with hip hop.  With this album and their follow-up Still Standing, the quartet of Cee-Lo, Khujo, T-Mo, and Big Gipp showed that the South not only had folks that can rhyme, but also that there was more to Southern rap than strip club, shake-your-booty music.

DIRECTOR INTERVIEW: Adam Bowers

 

Adam Bowers is an independent film maker from Dunedin, Florida that made a big splash in 2010 with his critically acclaimed slacker comedy New Low. Praised for intelligent, quick and witty dialogue, the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2010. The film has achieved a well-earned cult status and Bowers is now poised to make a new movie called Paperback, which will be funded by online fundraising website, Kickstarter.

INVISIBLE VANGUARD: The soundtrack for New Low sets a tone that I find to be an accurate representation of life in Gainesville, Florida. How did you come about selecting the music for the movie?

ADAM BOWERS: Oh, I’m glad you feel that way about it. That was kind of my goal with it, capturing what life was like down there. My other approach for everything in the movie was just trying to use as much of what I liked as possible, so New Low is basically just a big mash-up of everything I was into at the time (that Gainesville sub-culture, the bands on the soundtrack, Woody Allen movies... That sort of stuff).

IV: The quality of the writing in the film is impeccable. When did you start writing the movie and did you find it difficult to make the script into a reality given the budgetary limitations that you must have had to overcome?

AB: That’s really nice of you to say, thanks. I didn’t have much trouble turning the script into the movie, partly because I wrote it knowing I was going to go straight into making it in that DIY, no-budget way, which is how I’d made things up until that point. So I would be careful not to write anything that I didn’t think we’d be able to pull off. I think it helps a lot, too, that the movie is so dialogue-driven, because that’s something you can make interesting that doesn’t cost anything.

IV: The film has some pretty compelling characters, how did you go about casting? Did you intend to play the main part of Wendell all along?

AB: I’d actually made a 40 minute student film version of the movie the year before, for an independent study course at my college, called New Personal Worst, where I played Wendell, Jayme Ratzer played Vicky, and Val Jones played Joanna. I’d wanted Toby Turner for Dave, but he wasn’t available then, so I cast a friend of a friend named Chris Ramenda who was great. But I knew really early on who I wanted for those main roles, and most of the other roles I cast with people I knew. A lot of them came from the college improv group I was a part of called Theatre Strike Force. But as for me playing Wendell, the character was written so much in my own voice that it felt unlikely that I’d be able to find someone who would get it in the small pond that is the Gainesville acting community. So, I just thought it’d be easier to play him myself.

IV: Did the fact that you played the dual role of actor and director slow the shooting of the movie?

AB: I’d say it made it easier, actually. I had to do a ton of stuff on the movie outside of directing/producing, and I was just very OCD about trying to improve the script and everything, so I was kind of just swallowed by the movie for awhile, and that made it so I knew the script front-to-back. So, there weren’t really any times where I would need to take a minute before shooting and learn my lines or anything, because I was just already so zeroed in on it. Not to mention, playing Wendell meant one less person I would have to try and wrangle to the set every day.

IV: The film played at the Sundance film festival in 2010, what is your favorite memory of that experience?

AB: My favorite memory of that is probably going out to dinner with my family after the premiere and just being able to pause for a second. The whole thing, though, was an amazing, nerve-wracking, on-another-planet sort of experience. Sundance is a great organization that really cares about independent film, and I feel very lucky to be welcomed into that community.

IV: The climax of the film might seem a bit abrupt to a lot of people, it’s really up to the imagination of the audience to figure out what happens to the characters next. Have you thought about making a sequel to New Low at some point in the future?

AB: Ha, I have heard it catches people off-guard. I don’t know where it would go, though, after what we see in the film. To me, the ending in the film is the only one that makes sense that I would consider to be a “happy” ending. I think the ending of the film is hopeful, and without spoiling anything for readers who haven’t seen it, I think making things go another way would have meant something sadder for the characters.

IV: I just read today that you are trying to get a new film project going via Kickstarter. Any idea of when you would get started shooting the new film?

AB: Yeah, I just started a Kickstarter for a new film. Actually, to answer your question about the “sequel” to New Low, I look at this movie as a sort-of sequel to that film. It takes place in Gainesville, and there are two characters in it that are very much like Wendell and Vicky from that film, and I think they could be seen as a logical progression of what they would be like five years from the events of New Low, what their relationship would have become. We’re planning on shooting this new film in September. I’m really excited. Please consider backing the Kickstarter, or sharing it with family and friends, so we can make it!

IV: Have you given any thought to what you would like to hear on the soundtrack?

AB: I have, actually. Without revealing too much, it will have a similar tone to New Low’s soundtrack, but I won’t be doing quite the same thing. There will definitely be at least a Gainesville band or two involved, though, that’s for sure.

IV: Can you give any additional information about the project?

AB: Something I’m really looking forward to with this project is working with the team I have lined up. It’s being produced by Andie Bolt, who’s a producer/comedian, and a friend of mine out in LA, and Roger Beebe, who is a UF professor of film and the owner of Video Rodeo, the store my character works at in New Low. It’s being executive produced by Adele Romanski, who’s done a lot of great indie films the past few years, including The Myth of the American Sleepover, The Freebie, and Black Rock, among others, which are all great if you haven’t heard of them. And the director of photography is Jay Keitel, who has made a number of absolutely beautiful small indie movies, like Amy Seimetz’s Sun Don’t Shine. So, I can’t wait to see how it’ll turn out.

IV: If all goes well, when can we expect the release of the new film?

AB: We’re hoping to have it done for festivals in early 2014, with distribution to follow ASAP. The more vocal fans are, the quicker we’ll be able to get it to you guys.

IV: Thank you so much for your time Adam, I look forward to seeing what is sure to be a long and fascinating career for you.

AB: Thanks a lot, I really appreciate that.

You can donate to Adam’s Kickstarter account by clicking  here.

Interview by: Tobias Gaia

ALBUM REVIEW: Killer Mike - R.A.P. Music

I've never really had a religious experience, in a religious place.
Closest I've ever come to seeing or feeling God is listening to rap music.  Rap music is my religion.  Amen.

These days, there are rarely words that resonate with me perfectly.  To me, Michael Render's words at the beginning of the title track is the truest shit I ever heard.  To some, it may be hard to understand, especially if you are not a big fan of rap.  Listening to rap growing up provided sympathy, compassion, understanding, comfort, relaxation, community - well, pretty much everything that religion provides for others.  When you have preachers, parents, or both telling you what you should do as if they have never done it, rap always spoke to me as if it understood how I felt and spoke to me with honesty.  Rap did not judge me.  In fact, it empowered me to do the scariest thing to do these days - be myself.  At the end of the day, any music genre can be this to others, and it probably is.  Unfortunately, of all music genres, rap music always receives harsh criticism from in the media and politics, many of whom simply criticize out of their own ignorance, whether intentional or not, of hip hop culture. Now, there is definitely some rap out there that lacks some integrity and creativity, but it is always the music that has integrity that lasts the test of time.  With his sixth album entitled R.A.P. Music (Rebellious African People Music),  Michael Render aka Killer Mike has delivered such an album.

First, let me apologize again for being mad, mad late on this review.  In fact, I deserve to poke my eyes out with toothpicks.  When I was writing the review for his last album, Killer Mike had already released this album over 6 months beforehand.  This album should not have slipped under my radar but it did.  Once again, however, it's better late than never.  What changed between Pl3dge and R.A.P. Music for Killer Mike?  The biggest change is that Killer Mike elected to have underground hero and producer El-P handle all the beats for this album.  I was definitely a little put off by that, especially with how I felt Pl3dge was Mike's most complete album production-wise with more than one producer behind the boards.  In addition, I was not sure whether El-P's offbeat style would match with Mike's streetwise, aggressive rhetoric.  However, I remember reading about the same skepticism when Ice Cube enlisted the Bomb Squad to produce his first solo album after leaving N.W.A.  It ended up working so well that people were still clamoring for them to collaborate again, and with R.A.P. Music, it is no different.

Killer Mike waste no time with the opening track "Big Beast" featuring Bun B, T.I. and Trouble, opening the album with a fury and intensity that we have not heard since Amerikkka Most Wanted.  Man, I wish other artists had the guts to kick off an album like this:

Hardcore G shit, homie I don't play around 
Ain't shit sweet 'bout the Peach, this Atlanta, clown 
Home of the dealers and the strippers in the clubs doe 
Catch you comin out that Magic City with a snub, hoe 
Lurkin in the club, o' tourists muh'fuckers 
Welcome to Atlanta - up the jewelry, muh'fucker! 
These monkey niggaz lookin for some Luda and Jermaine 
And all that nigga found was a Ruger and some pain
...

I know some dumb country niggaz but them niggaz ain't weak
Know they dress and look the part but them niggaz ain't G
I don't make dance music, this is R.A.P.
Opposite, of that sucka shit they play on TV

Both Bun B and especially T.I. provide stellar verses, and Trouble nails the chorus.  What is most surprising is El-P's production.  The beat is uptempo, hits hard, and perfectly compliments Mike as he puts a lyrical beatdown on the listener.  Any doubt on the Killer Mike/El-P chemistry is now gone, even if it might fall short at some point.  Fortunately, it never does.  The following track "Untitled" featuring Scar has El-P slowing things down with a deep bass pattern alternating between two octaves and congas drumming in the background.  The beat itself is hypnotizing, but Mike makes sure his drops something to chew on as well.

A Word on Behalf of Whizz Bang Brand Snake Oil

-To be read aloud in your best Tom Waits voice.-

We were camped in a pup tent five miles west of Tuscon and you know what it’s like for a guy with two dwarves to feed, they’re each like a teenager with a tapeworm, they never stop eating. Hot as balls all day and any minute the sun was gonna crash out and leave us to the coyotes and desert night winds and all I had was three Pall Malls and a tin of pinto beans for comfort. But thank god the dwarves had tuckered out early and weren’t gonna wait up to hear me sing the full Brunhilde from Gotterdammerung.

Their loss.

I’d just finished my last cigarette, saving the beans for breakfast, and was about to tuck into the full nine minutes of ‘Fliegit Heim, ihr Raben’ When I hear hooves on the dirt and a horse’s snort. I turn ‘round prepared to take my interrupted aria out of the rider’s philistine hide when he holds up a bottle.

Now, he’s a filthy flea bitten jack and smells like boiled armadillo and cabbage, dressed in a hand me down potato sack with a hat he stole from a dead Comanche mental patient, but he says to me, he says, “Drink it pardner. It weren’t on my lips.” That’s all the guarantee I need. What man among you could turn down free hooch, in the desert, when it’s cold?

It tasted like horse piss and back alley Louisiana rum used to bathe cats then ladeled out and sent walking in the desert. But upon finishing the bottle, damned if I didn’t sing Brunhilde’s immolation so sweetly…I’ll put it to you this way, before that night coyotes in those parts only ever barked like rat terriers. I taught those bastards the meaning of sadness. Now they Howl.

And this here’s what I drank

 WhizzBang Brand Snake Oil:

 A Profound Sadness that Still Haunts the Sonoran Desert.

AUDIO SHAKEDOWN - Volume 11

Greetings, dear readers and welcome once again to the one and only Audio Shakedown. It's been a while since the last installment and I've been gathering bits of writing here and there as time has passed, so there's no real theme to the group other than that I've been cramming them all into my head with furious abandon over the past month or two. Listen, read, and enjoy.

Tom Waits - Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards - Tom Waits is an American treasure as incredible and irreplaceable as the Grand Canyon, and if you listen to the 56 songs that comprise the Orphans collection, you'll have a reasonable idea why. The Brawlers disc contains Mr. Waits' careening rock and roll and primal blues stomp, and for my money probably edges out the other two discs, as great as they are. Bawlers contains love songs and assorted weepers, which when done by Tom Waits are potent indeed. Many musicians have a rock side and a ballad side, and most collections could stop there, but Waits is no ordinary musician, so the Bastards disc is necessary, as it showcases his love of oddball spoken word, shambling beat poetry, and bizarre raconteurship. Considering his career spans four decades now, Orphans is not an accurate picture of his entire oeuvre, but it is a fascinating glimpse into a musical mind like no other.

Jerry Lee Lewis - Jerry Rocks - Everyone knows the amazing rock and roll sides that the Killer released on the Sun label in the fifties, but when a compilation of his work is released, it always splits the running time between the piano-burning rockers and the somewhat homogenous country material he released around the same time (Sorry, die-hard Lewis fans, but it's true, if you skip through his country weepers, you hear the exact same four note walkup to the opening chord over and over again, and the rest of those songs usually fare no better where originality is concerned.) But this Bear Family Records collection dispenses with the downtempo business and gives you all the rockers, including some material that rarely shows up on comps. There are some great covers, all the originals you know and love, and even some upbeat country numbers. I'd been looking for a compilation like this for some time, and it definitely delivers.

Voodoo Blues - The Devil Within - A while back I thought, "It seems like there should be a collection of older blues songs about the influence of voodoo and folk magic on black culture in the south." Thirty seconds later, a Google search confirmed my genius. There are a few of them, actually, but this two-disc collection seems to be the most enjoyable. It has a nice balance of material, from the older, creepier material (Robert Johnson, Sam Hopkins, Skip James), to the newer, more tongue-in-cheek sorts of songs, (Howlin' Wolf, Screamin' Jay Hawkins). The range of approaches to the subject matter is beneficial, since a narrow focus on both style and theme could easily render the proceedings overly homogenous, a trap that some of the other collections in this vein fall into.

Them - Them - People frequently overlook Them when remembering great mid-60's bands, but it's fascinating to hear Van Morrison in his rock and roll wild man days. On their self-titled debut, the band occupy the space (both temporally and sonically) between Howlin' Wolf-style Chicago blues and The Stooges' down and dirty ruckus, which frequently ends up sounding similar to the Rolling Stones, an equation that makes musical sense, really. This album is really a perfect status report of mid-decade rock and roll, from the organ heavy "I'm Gonna Dress in Black" that gives The Animals' "House of the Rising Sun" a run for its money, to the incomparable ode to sex "Gloria," which has been covered by everyone from The Doors to Patti Smith. There's no reason this album shouldn't be talked about with the same reverence as Aftermath, Animalisms, or The Kink Kontroversy.

Toad the Wet Sprocket - Dulcinea - It's easy to lose sight of Toad the Wet Sprocket, a statement that was true even in the mid-90's. 1994 was a banner year for musical sadness, but Toad the Wet Sprocket tended to be drowned out by their more histrionic peers in alternative rock. The band's gimmick was that they had no gimmick (other than the band name, which they pulled from an old Monty Python sketch, though that is neither here nor there where their music is concerned). They played well, but had no showiness about them. They weren't the loudest or fastest, or even most miserable. In fact, compared to the wailings of other bands at the time, the glum nature of these songs seems composed and almost elegant. Toad's strong point is that they know their way around a melody, and they crafted solid songs to support them, as is evident here on Dulcinea. It didn't necessarily make them the most newsworthy band, but it did result in several albums worth of great music. Sometimes I need nothing more than their jangly guitars and Glen Phillips' fragile voice, bolstered by the harmonies that frequently crop up behind it in their songs.

Carousell - Black Swallow and Other Songs - Carousell is one of the many guises (A Broken Consort, Riftmusic, *AR, etc.) of Richard Skelton, a UK-based composer of beautiful droning songs made primarily with bowed strings of various sorts. With each new appellation, Skelton displays a different focus on his signature sound, and with that in mind, it appears that Carousell is his most conventional version yet, since there's identifiable notes and very nearly a discernible rhythm to some of the proceedings, unlike earlier recordings. The instrumentation is more diverse as well, including piano, strings both bowed and plucked, what sounds like field recordings, and the occasional whispery, wordless voice, courtesy of wife Autumn Richardson. This record is gorgeous, and while it does cleave closely to his established atmosphere of arboreal melancholy, the compositions here are more lush than his usually spare (though equally compelling) style. The result is a collection of soundscapes that manage to be both earthy and ethereal at once, like being able to touch a memory. This is not a record for everyone (a fact Skelton must understand, since the initial run of discs was limited to 100), and so much the better, because it can live like a secret with those who understand its value.

I'll end this one with a film recommendation (it's musically based, so I think it falls under our focus here). The new Mudhoney documentary I'm Now is an excellent look at a band that's too often forgotten when people talk about early 90's grunge. They outlasted pretty much everyone, even through drug addiction and changing styles, and it's great to be able to hear all of the original members tell the story as they lived it.