Music
Please notice that neither the Arcade Fire nor Kanye West are on my list (though I do enjoy watching Kanye yell at Taylor Swift). Eat my shit.
I'm listing this first because I'm pretty sure it's my favorite. It's just so.... what I want music to do, always. Improvising a fantastic, commoving blend of free jazz and noise, Nace and Flaherty have proven themselves to be the perfect pair, consisting of Paul's relentless and biting tenor sax squealing and piercing through the walls of atmospheric guitar noise/fuzz/drone from Bill Nace (who you probably may remember from Vampire Belt, which was goddamned amazing).
Social Registry's new additions, Zs, received much fanfare with their latest full length, following their amazing Music of the Modern White LP, which earned them the applause of the New York Times, who has hailed Zs as "one of the strongest avant-garde bands in New York." Much like their friends in Skeleton$, Zs has a very academic, theory-driven understanding of music that is complimented (not countered) by their art-punk habits of destructiveness. New Slaves is remarkable and most certainly a record to return to, both structurally enticing and rhythmically enchanting.
I have loved Liars from their beginning, and have remained loyal in that relationship throughout their entire discography, even with They Were Wrong, So We Drowned's mixed reviews (I adore that record). With Sisterworld, the band continues with what seems to be a pattern for them: make a completely different sounding record, get mixed reviews, then make another record in the same vein to further flesh out those previous ideas, get better reviews, then make a completely different record, etc. So this record is building more on the concepts of 2007's self-titled release, similarly loud and fuzzy with occasions of grooviness, with the best cases being "Scissor" and "No Barrier Fun." Thank god not every indie rock band right now is as cheerful and twee as Vampire Weekend. There is hope in Liars.
The novelty of this elongate and elaborate project has already been much celebrated on this blog upon its release. Fortunately, the content is just as exciting. With a minimalistic, Kevin Drumm-esque approach to the composition of quiet landscapes, Merzbow proves himself a diverse and developing influence with this 12-disc boxset.
The blogs endlessly salivated over those Wolfgang California skater sociopathic high-school pricks this year, but some of the hype seems warranted in the case of Earl Sweatshirt, a 16 year-old kid offering sadistic raps decorated with nasty synths and cheap beats. I would elaborate further, but Earl hates music writers, as he puts in his title track: "Try talking on a blog with your fucking arms cut off."
Goddamn, I love Ben Frost. This record technically was released in 2009, but the vinyl format arrived in 2010, so it counts as one of the best for both years. Electronic crescendos of pulsating static rip over the barks and growls of wolves and subtle chimes of pianos and makes the world turn and makes me get up in the morning and keeps me from falling out the window and is your paycheck and subtitles your foreign films. Be grateful for every second of play on this record. I will probably include it in 2011's best-of list as well, because I CAN'T GET OVER IT.
Zach Hill is my daddy. And this is his best solo record to date. See my review here.
Salem got a lot of talk this year, some of which were discussions of odd subgenres (seriously, if I hear someone say witchhouse one more fucking time...) and some of which were on poor live performance reviews (like the disaster of CMJ), but at the end of the year, looking back, we all have to conclude, regardless, that this gothic choir clipping, haunted record kicks ass and is ultimately brilliant.
Ajemian's jazz band offers their debut of improv madness, featuring frantic group vocal rants a la Panoply Academy (remember them?) and whirlwind percussion clatter. Their follow-up 7-inch gets an honorable mention as well.
Heavy, imaginative, fuzzed, heavy, blown-out, doomy, glitchy, noisy, heavy. This two-piece rocks it with some complex and creative writing decisions, borrowing from unexpected sources: using choirs, pianos, saxophones, etc. What matters is that the end result is heavy. Heavy.
Alva Nota's offerings to the avant-garde are highly conceptual, in the most extreme degrees of conceptual. Like last year's releases, Alva Nota is once again preparing his sound collages in dedication of numerous creative personalities from various fields. It is important to note, however, that much like other highly conceptual pieces by similar artists such as The User, these compositions work aesthetically independent of their purpose, as music (or non-music) alone. For 2 being Alva Nota's most orchestrated release to date, this is even truer now.
Burning Star Core is a big favorite of mine, and while this is no Challenger, it's still one of the better noise records this year. On this loud and devastating musical outing, C. Spencer Yeh composes some of his most percussive work thus far, giving Papercuts a sort of movement that causes a lot of newer appearances on the scene to seem so... inert.
Explosions of brass and thunderous drum blasts reminiscent of Brian Chippendale begin the record with a violent onslaught on your tender eardrums, giving you an accurate idea of what's in store for the next half hour of chaotic and dissonant free jazz scattered around Desert Fathers-styled guitar twang. The record as a whole, surprisingly, does an incredible job of diversifying the dynamics within each individual track, with the occasional mellow trailing of melodic saxophone breaking subtle pauses between inevitable ruptures of further violence, executed with a brilliantly moving pace and uplifting emotionalism, causing this to be a very mature effort in the midst of so much ADHD in the genre.
Drumm gets NOISY in this wonderful re-release of his essential Sheer Hellish Miasma (first time on vinyl) on Peter Rehberg’s Editions Mego, currently home to the likes of Fennesz, Emeralds and Oneohtrix Point Never (notice that I didn't include their releases this year on my list! I am so different!).
Insane explosion of neo-dada hyper-free jazz art-punk noise. For more information, please see my previous review of this record.
Film
There may be some spoilers. I try not to, though.
Solondz continued the story of a previous film, Happiness, with his latest effort, but this time he re-cast the entire troupe of characters, with most notable addition being Paul Reubens replacing Jon Lovitz (as a ghost!). Attending the premiere at the IFC theater in NYC, I had anxiously prepared my question for the Q&A afterwards, determined to discover his motivation in recasting. Alas, Solondz and Ally Sheedy slipped out during my late showing and left me unanswered. As with his entire filmography, Solondz's newest work is completely misanthropic, cynical, and filled with awkward interactions between children and sex, man and god, parent and child, and man and woman.
This wildly imaginative and hyper-stylized film tells the story of an atypical suburban family, consisting of a married couple and their adult children, sheltered from the world existing beyond their backyard fence. Incest ensues! Highly recommended.
We're all sick of split personality or hallucinations being utilized as some sort of cheap plot twist in films (Secret Window, Fight Club, etc.), and I realize that the same criticism is being aimed at this film. But anyone familiar with Aronofsky's other films would understand that the internal turmoil and breakdown in the mind of his characters is the basis for all of his remarkable (and depressing) films, such as in Pi or Requiem. Black Swan continues such with great success, accompanied with remarkable design by Rodarte and beautiful cinematography by Matthew Libatique.
This documentary about street art by an amateur filmmaker gets suddenly hijacked by Banksy and turned into a piece about the commodity fetishism of art, which leaves me wondering if the whole thing wasn't just some elaborate hoax by Banksy himself the entire time. Can something as catastrophic as Mr. Brainwash naturally occur? I would like to think not.
A magical fantasy of folklore and death from the director that brought you Syndromes and a Century continues the story of Boonmee, who is now dying of an illness and met by the ghost of his wife and son. The film is the kind that breathes, but its slow progression is the source of its power.
Clouzot's unfinished masterpiece taken from the shelf and expanded with newly discovered storyboards and production records gives us an opportunity to have a small peek at what is being hailed as the greatest movie never made.
The gorgeously shot latest film by the reinventor of cinema himself, Monsieur Godard (that's French for Mr. Godard, lolz), is quite impossible to follow, with even the subtitles being experimental mixtures of fragmented dialogue of various languages. Like his other films, Godard owes no explanation and thus provides none, and eventually the beauty of the film alone educates the viewer of its thesis, engulfing them in a complete rapture of cinematic ecstasy.
In the first full length since Brown Bunny, Gallo continues a stripped-down, DIY method of film making by approaching the story without a formal script or pre-production planning. Most involved were unaware of what was to occur during filming. As seems to be his signature, this is an abstract romance, where the gentleman must come to grips with something. But despite its being soooo Gallo, I love it.
Books
CAConrad's series of Frank poems got an expanded re-release in 2010. Wildly amusing, beautifully moving, semi-autobiographical (but not really), and fantastically surreal, these poems will make you weep, laugh, or have a stroke (but a good one, where your face looks cool afterward). An excerpt:
"would you sign
my book Mr. Poe?"
Frank asks the pile of bones
amidst shovels of dirt
"why certainly young
man" answers Frank in a
different voice
Baldwin's book offers rich, smart storytelling about the fallacy of human memory, with the unfortunate central character being a research scientist specializing in Alzheimer’s disease, who is realizing his own inaccuracies of recall. Baldwin beautifully illustrates the isolating complications of relationships, our unreliable brains, and the classic case of people misunderstanding each other updated with new bio-scientific perspectives of loss (both emotional and physiological).
Lipsky joins Wallace in the final moments of his 1996 tour in support of his breakout novel Infinite Jest, capturing the author in what later is realized as some of his final moments leading to his eventual suicide in 2008, though the book thankfully does not dwell on the tragedy of Wallace, but instead celebrates his magnificent life.
Despite Hawking's previous, more sensitive dealings with the issue of god and science, in his latest, he takes on the rock-star aggression of Dawkings, asserting that, "One can't prove that God doesn't exist, but science makes God unnecessary." Beautifully written and undeniably badass.
Black Life - Dorothea Lasky
Black Life is a weighty collection of truly emotional, feminist, serious, and not ironic poetry by a woman. Uh-oh. But Lasky delivers, with resonating intensity. An excerpt:
It’s a lonely world
Hi everybody
It’s Dorothea, Dorothea Lasky
I have done something very wrong and
I am so very sorry about it
“You have done a very bad,
Very bad job, my old boss says
In his Honda
As I take his dick in my mouth—it is all I have left
Men that look like surfers read at the local bar
As my old boss empties me out of his car
Without so much as a kiss
I see a pretty girl in purple lipstick—she is me
I have done something so wrong that my mother can die from it
Laura walks across the universe in a mumbling tongue
And in her stupor she doesn’t necessarily connect my name with my face
I have acted in such a worse way it made
My baby win his law school parade
And they hoisted him up, even the girls did
With a big party full of balloons
There is something so wrong with me
That I make the baby’s diapers even in my sleep
Because they need making
The baby comes home and falls gently down the stairs
So that we can see his head cracking like a watermelon
All that pressure built up like a haze of stars
I am red-mouthed again and I go out the door
There is a sun setting, with a halo around it
I tell people, who are listening to me, that that sun is God
But they never believe me, they only listen
They only believe what they are taught to believe
Which is to believe in nothing
Which is what they were taught when they were born
Art/Gallery
Walking down the length of the nearly empty room at the MoMA, one finds themselves surrounded by various voices, young and old and in between, reciting days of the week from numerous, spaced-out audio sources, each voice fading with distance as others amplify upon entering one's audible threshold, creating a three dimensional, shape-shifting envelope of sound. This sound sculpture by Bruce Nauman originally premiered at the Venice Biennale but eventually found its way home in NY to much praise.
"The Secrets Spoke" - Quinn Dukes
Loud Objects' Giant Noise Toy is an interactive sculpture consisting of a twelve foot switch that visitors can turn on and off for an audio experience unique to each flip. A giant Buddha Machine? Perhaps! Still ongoing at Clocktower Gallery, NYC.
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