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Saloua Raouda Choucair @ Tate Modern, London, 3 June 2013 During your next visit to Tate Modern please make sure not to miss the wonderful (and rather short) exhibition on Lebanese painter & sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair. You won’t regret it. Laura Cumming for The Observer: A bolt from the blue is not what one expects at Tate Modern. Unqualified revelations have never been the museum’s priority. Nobody goes to Bankside hoping to be astonished by a brand new name, a new artist, a new strain of art that has not yet been bruited on the international circuit all the way from Venice to Sydney to Basel. It does not deal in risks or experiments or artists without a press review to their name. It is powerfully attached to the status quo. Or at least that was the case until last week. For the first time in its 13-year history, Tate Modern has devoted a solo show to an artist who can confidently be described as completely unknown in Britain. She has never had an exhibition here, still less shown any of her paintings, drawings or sculptures here or practically anywhere outside her native Lebanon.Saloua Raouda Choucairis an extraordinary new name. She is also in her 97th year. Choucairwas born in Beirut in 1916. She has never stopped making art despite the fact that her earliest success – in Paris in 1951 – was more or less her last. She studied in the studio of Fernand Léger in Paris and was a pioneer of abstraction (or, to my mind, semi-abstraction) in Lebanon, but did not sell a single work there until she was in her 50s. Many artists have endured similar struggles but few have found themselves simultaneously quite so thwarted by political strife. One of the paintings in this show is pocked with holes from a bomb blast during the civil war that left Choucair’s husband deaf, and the Beirut art scene has been so devastated by violence that the galleries that represented her work have shut down in sequence over the years. Of all the monumental sculptures she dreamed of making, only the beguiling prototypes exist. And in Beirut itself, all that survives of her public art works is a series of 17 stone forms that used to huddle together in a familial crescent, and upon which families used to sit, but which have been split in two bySolidere, the company in charge of rebuilding the city centre; an art work in divorce. The show opens, as so often, with a youthful self-portrait. But in this case the sharply intelligent young woman all chopped about in post-cubist style, green shadows beneath the eyes, nameless urban jungle behind her, is wearing a headscarf. It is 1943 and Choucair has not yet left Beirut for Paris and seen the European avant garde at first hand. When she does, though, it will be with far less traditional responses. Her reaction to Léger’s art, for instance, is to take his tubular belles and give them some spirit. Her dark-eyed models don’t just sit there holding the pose without any clothes, they drink espresso, converse and read books (in one case, books on great artists, and we may guess who). They are never content to remain passive within their heavy black outlines; there is always a sense of imminent movement. A vein of humour is rare enough in art but it runs consistently through this show. Chores, as it’s called, could easily pass as some early modernist painting, all compressed forms and wild distortions. But if you look closely you can see that the bottle-washer’s head really is inside the giant wine glass she is washing; that the woman who’s doing the ironing is labouring away at the stretch of cloth that has been flattened against the substrate in true cubist style so that it doubles as the chore itself but also as her whole environment. There are plenty of jeux d’esprit in the opening galleries, but the major work here is an exquisite little painting called Paris-Beirut. An Islamic star, Cleopatra’s Needle, the colours of the desert, the Arc de Triomphe: all are reduced to their essential forms and held in perfect balance in a picture as condensed as a sonnet. The Arc opens as a portal in both directions – which way will Choucair turn, should she go or should she stay? In the event she returned to Beirut and a great stream ofgorgeous syncopated abstractsthat are based on mathematical permutations but fly free of science. Thermal currents, reflections, quivering trees, dancing figures; the catalogue places due emphasis on the strictly non-figurative principles underpinning the art, but paintings are their own evidence and these speak constantly of the visible energies of life. Choucair’s sculptures fuse Islamic design with modernist traditions. Like her paintings they are small-scale, spry and ingeniously balanced. Two roundels fit together, making a friendship. Six molar-like lumps fit together, and a bridge is established. She has many vertical forms constructed out of idiosyncratic blocks that irresistibly evoke mid-rise towers. One of these sculptures, carved out of wood, with recesses, reliefs and louvred apertures, seems to vibrate from top to bottom with interior life – unseen human existence. The last room has beauty in abundance, numerous sculptures created out of gossamer thread, spun steel and glass. Some are planetary, evoking eclipses and starbursts. Others have affinities with womankind – corkscrew curls, metal bows and gyrating curves – and the quirkiest are highly strung, shivering excitedly as one passes. Even without any knowledge of the Sufi principles apparently underlying this art, one has the sense of a free and humorous spirit perpetually at work. That Saloua Raouda Choucair has had to wait a lifetime for such a show is shocking but standard. Western museums are resolutely conservative. But perhaps Tate Modern is about to change direction, for this is the first in a series ofexhibitionsof Arab and African artists whose work is cherished at home and entirely unknown here. Fittingly, it’s on for half a year and is neatly positioned among the themed galleries on level four so that browsing crowds will come across it more easily. Choucair profoundly deserves it. Saloua Raouda Choucair @ Tate Modern, London, 3 June 2013 During your next visit to Tate Modern please make sure not to miss the wonderful (and rather short) exhibition on Lebanese painter & sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair. You won’t regret it. Laura Cumming for The Observer: A bolt from the blue is not what one expects at Tate Modern. Unqualified revelations have never been the museum’s priority. Nobody goes to Bankside hoping to be astonished by a brand new name, a new artist, a new strain of art that has not yet been bruited on the international circuit all the way from Venice to Sydney to Basel. It does not deal in risks or experiments or artists without a press review to their name. It is powerfully attached to the status quo. Or at least that was the case until last week. For the first time in its 13-year history, Tate Modern has devoted a solo show to an artist who can confidently be described as completely unknown in Britain. She has never had an exhibition here, still less shown any of her paintings, drawings or sculptures here or practically anywhere outside her native Lebanon.Saloua Raouda Choucairis an extraordinary new name. She is also in her 97th year. Choucairwas born in Beirut in 1916. She has never stopped making art despite the fact that her earliest success – in Paris in 1951 – was more or less her last. She studied in the studio of Fernand Léger in Paris and was a pioneer of abstraction (or, to my mind, semi-abstraction) in Lebanon, but did not sell a single work there until she was in her 50s. Many artists have endured similar struggles but few have found themselves simultaneously quite so thwarted by political strife. One of the paintings in this show is pocked with holes from a bomb blast during the civil war that left Choucair’s husband deaf, and the Beirut art scene has been so devastated by violence that the galleries that represented her work have shut down in sequence over the years. Of all the monumental sculptures she dreamed of making, only the beguiling prototypes exist. And in Beirut itself, all that survives of her public art works is a series of 17 stone forms that used to huddle together in a familial crescent, and upon which families used to sit, but which have been split in two bySolidere, the company in charge of rebuilding the city centre; an art work in divorce. The show opens, as so often, with a youthful self-portrait. But in this case the sharply intelligent young woman all chopped about in post-cubist style, green shadows beneath the eyes, nameless urban jungle behind her, is wearing a headscarf. It is 1943 and Choucair has not yet left Beirut for Paris and seen the European avant garde at first hand. When she does, though, it will be with far less traditional responses. Her reaction to Léger’s art, for instance, is to take his tubular belles and give them some spirit. Her dark-eyed models don’t just sit there holding the pose without any clothes, they drink espresso, converse and read books (in one case, books on great artists, and we may guess who). They are never content to remain passive within their heavy black outlines; there is always a sense of imminent movement. A vein of humour is rare enough in art but it runs consistently through this show. Chores, as it’s called, could easily pass as some early modernist painting, all compressed forms and wild distortions. But if you look closely you can see that the bottle-washer’s head really is inside the giant wine glass she is washing; that the woman who’s doing the ironing is labouring away at the stretch of cloth that has been flattened against the substrate in true cubist style so that it doubles as the chore itself but also as her whole environment. There are plenty of jeux d’esprit in the opening galleries, but the major work here is an exquisite little painting called Paris-Beirut. An Islamic star, Cleopatra’s Needle, the colours of the desert, the Arc de Triomphe: all are reduced to their essential forms and held in perfect balance in a picture as condensed as a sonnet. The Arc opens as a portal in both directions – which way will Choucair turn, should she go or should she stay? In the event she returned to Beirut and a great stream ofgorgeous syncopated abstractsthat are based on mathematical permutations but fly free of science. Thermal currents, reflections, quivering trees, dancing figures; the catalogue places due emphasis on the strictly non-figurative principles underpinning the art, but paintings are their own evidence and these speak constantly of the visible energies of life. Choucair’s sculptures fuse Islamic design with modernist traditions. Like her paintings they are small-scale, spry and ingeniously balanced. Two roundels fit together, making a friendship. Six molar-like lumps fit together, and a bridge is established. She has many vertical forms constructed out of idiosyncratic blocks that irresistibly evoke mid-rise towers. One of these sculptures, carved out of wood, with recesses, reliefs and louvred apertures, seems to vibrate from top to bottom with interior life – unseen human existence. The last room has beauty in abundance, numerous sculptures created out of gossamer thread, spun steel and glass. Some are planetary, evoking eclipses and starbursts. Others have affinities with womankind – corkscrew curls, metal bows and gyrating curves – and the quirkiest are highly strung, shivering excitedly as one passes. Even without any knowledge of the Sufi principles apparently underlying this art, one has the sense of a free and humorous spirit perpetually at work. That Saloua Raouda Choucair has had to wait a lifetime for such a show is shocking but standard. Western museums are resolutely conservative. But perhaps Tate Modern is about to change direction, for this is the first in a series ofexhibitionsof Arab and African artists whose work is cherished at home and entirely unknown here. Fittingly, it’s on for half a year and is neatly positioned among the themed galleries on level four so that browsing crowds will come across it more easily. Choucair profoundly deserves it. Saloua Raouda Choucair @ Tate Modern, London, 3 June 2013 During your next visit to Tate Modern please make sure not to miss the wonderful (and rather short) exhibition on Lebanese painter & sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair. You won’t regret it. Laura Cumming for The Observer: A bolt from the blue is not what one expects at Tate Modern. Unqualified revelations have never been the museum’s priority. Nobody goes to Bankside hoping to be astonished by a brand new name, a new artist, a new strain of art that has not yet been bruited on the international circuit all the way from Venice to Sydney to Basel. It does not deal in risks or experiments or artists without a press review to their name. It is powerfully attached to the status quo. Or at least that was the case until last week. For the first time in its 13-year history, Tate Modern has devoted a solo show to an artist who can confidently be described as completely unknown in Britain. She has never had an exhibition here, still less shown any of her paintings, drawings or sculptures here or practically anywhere outside her native Lebanon.Saloua Raouda Choucairis an extraordinary new name. She is also in her 97th year. Choucairwas born in Beirut in 1916. She has never stopped making art despite the fact that her earliest success – in Paris in 1951 – was more or less her last. She studied in the studio of Fernand Léger in Paris and was a pioneer of abstraction (or, to my mind, semi-abstraction) in Lebanon, but did not sell a single work there until she was in her 50s. Many artists have endured similar struggles but few have found themselves simultaneously quite so thwarted by political strife. One of the paintings in this show is pocked with holes from a bomb blast during the civil war that left Choucair’s husband deaf, and the Beirut art scene has been so devastated by violence that the galleries that represented her work have shut down in sequence over the years. Of all the monumental sculptures she dreamed of making, only the beguiling prototypes exist. And in Beirut itself, all that survives of her public art works is a series of 17 stone forms that used to huddle together in a familial crescent, and upon which families used to sit, but which have been split in two bySolidere, the company in charge of rebuilding the city centre; an art work in divorce. The show opens, as so often, with a youthful self-portrait. But in this case the sharply intelligent young woman all chopped about in post-cubist style, green shadows beneath the eyes, nameless urban jungle behind her, is wearing a headscarf. It is 1943 and Choucair has not yet left Beirut for Paris and seen the European avant garde at first hand. When she does, though, it will be with far less traditional responses. Her reaction to Léger’s art, for instance, is to take his tubular belles and give them some spirit. Her dark-eyed models don’t just sit there holding the pose without any clothes, they drink espresso, converse and read books (in one case, books on great artists, and we may guess who). They are never content to remain passive within their heavy black outlines; there is always a sense of imminent movement. A vein of humour is rare enough in art but it runs consistently through this show. Chores, as it’s called, could easily pass as some early modernist painting, all compressed forms and wild distortions. But if you look closely you can see that the bottle-washer’s head really is inside the giant wine glass she is washing; that the woman who’s doing the ironing is labouring away at the stretch of cloth that has been flattened against the substrate in true cubist style so that it doubles as the chore itself but also as her whole environment. There are plenty of jeux d’esprit in the opening galleries, but the major work here is an exquisite little painting called Paris-Beirut. An Islamic star, Cleopatra’s Needle, the colours of the desert, the Arc de Triomphe: all are reduced to their essential forms and held in perfect balance in a picture as condensed as a sonnet. The Arc opens as a portal in both directions – which way will Choucair turn, should she go or should she stay? In the event she returned to Beirut and a great stream ofgorgeous syncopated abstractsthat are based on mathematical permutations but fly free of science. Thermal currents, reflections, quivering trees, dancing figures; the catalogue places due emphasis on the strictly non-figurative principles underpinning the art, but paintings are their own evidence and these speak constantly of the visible energies of life. Choucair’s sculptures fuse Islamic design with modernist traditions. Like her paintings they are small-scale, spry and ingeniously balanced. Two roundels fit together, making a friendship. Six molar-like lumps fit together, and a bridge is established. She has many vertical forms constructed out of idiosyncratic blocks that irresistibly evoke mid-rise towers. One of these sculptures, carved out of wood, with recesses, reliefs and louvred apertures, seems to vibrate from top to bottom with interior life – unseen human existence. The last room has beauty in abundance, numerous sculptures created out of gossamer thread, spun steel and glass. Some are planetary, evoking eclipses and starbursts. Others have affinities with womankind – corkscrew curls, metal bows and gyrating curves – and the quirkiest are highly strung, shivering excitedly as one passes. Even without any knowledge of the Sufi principles apparently underlying this art, one has the sense of a free and humorous spirit perpetually at work. That Saloua Raouda Choucair has had to wait a lifetime for such a show is shocking but standard. Western museums are resolutely conservative. But perhaps Tate Modern is about to change direction, for this is the first in a series ofexhibitionsof Arab and African artists whose work is cherished at home and entirely unknown here. Fittingly, it’s on for half a year and is neatly positioned among the themed galleries on level four so that browsing crowds will come across it more easily. Choucair profoundly deserves it.

    Saloua Raouda Choucair @ Tate Modern, London, 3 June 2013

    During your next visit to Tate Modern please make sure not to miss the wonderful (and rather short) exhibition on Lebanese painter & sculptor Saloua Raouda Choucair. You won’t regret it.

    Laura Cumming for The Observer:

    A bolt from the blue is not what one expects at Tate Modern. Unqualified revelations have never been the museum’s priority. Nobody goes to Bankside hoping to be astonished by a brand new name, a new artist, a new strain of art that has not yet been bruited on the international circuit all the way from Venice to Sydney to Basel. It does not deal in risks or experiments or artists without a press review to their name. It is powerfully attached to the status quo.

    Or at least that was the case until last week. For the first time in its 13-year history, Tate Modern has devoted a solo show to an artist who can confidently be described as completely unknown in Britain. She has never had an exhibition here, still less shown any of her paintings, drawings or sculptures here or practically anywhere outside her native Lebanon.Saloua Raouda Choucairis an extraordinary new name. She is also in her 97th year.

    Choucairwas born in Beirut in 1916. She has never stopped making art despite the fact that her earliest success – in Paris in 1951 – was more or less her last. She studied in the studio of Fernand Léger in Paris and was a pioneer of abstraction (or, to my mind, semi-abstraction) in Lebanon, but did not sell a single work there until she was in her 50s.

    Many artists have endured similar struggles but few have found themselves simultaneously quite so thwarted by political strife. One of the paintings in this show is pocked with holes from a bomb blast during the civil war that left Choucair’s husband deaf, and the Beirut art scene has been so devastated by violence that the galleries that represented her work have shut down in sequence over the years.

    Of all the monumental sculptures she dreamed of making, only the beguiling prototypes exist. And in Beirut itself, all that survives of her public art works is a series of 17 stone forms that used to huddle together in a familial crescent, and upon which families used to sit, but which have been split in two bySolidere, the company in charge of rebuilding the city centre; an art work in divorce.

    The show opens, as so often, with a youthful self-portrait. But in this case the sharply intelligent young woman all chopped about in post-cubist style, green shadows beneath the eyes, nameless urban jungle behind her, is wearing a headscarf. It is 1943 and Choucair has not yet left Beirut for Paris and seen the European avant garde at first hand. When she does, though, it will be with far less traditional responses.

    Her reaction to Léger’s art, for instance, is to take his tubular belles and give them some spirit. Her dark-eyed models don’t just sit there holding the pose without any clothes, they drink espresso, converse and read books (in one case, books on great artists, and we may guess who). They are never content to remain passive within their heavy black outlines; there is always a sense of imminent movement.

    A vein of humour is rare enough in art but it runs consistently through this show. Chores, as it’s called, could easily pass as some early modernist painting, all compressed forms and wild distortions. But if you look closely you can see that the bottle-washer’s head really is inside the giant wine glass she is washing; that the woman who’s doing the ironing is labouring away at the stretch of cloth that has been flattened against the substrate in true cubist style so that it doubles as the chore itself but also as her whole environment.

    There are plenty of jeux d’esprit in the opening galleries, but the major work here is an exquisite little painting called Paris-Beirut. An Islamic star, Cleopatra’s Needle, the colours of the desert, the Arc de Triomphe: all are reduced to their essential forms and held in perfect balance in a picture as condensed as a sonnet. The Arc opens as a portal in both directions – which way will Choucair turn, should she go or should she stay?

    In the event she returned to Beirut and a great stream ofgorgeous syncopated abstractsthat are based on mathematical permutations but fly free of science. Thermal currents, reflections, quivering trees, dancing figures; the catalogue places due emphasis on the strictly non-figurative principles underpinning the art, but paintings are their own evidence and these speak constantly of the visible energies of life.

    Choucair’s sculptures fuse Islamic design with modernist traditions. Like her paintings they are small-scale, spry and ingeniously balanced. Two roundels fit together, making a friendship. Six molar-like lumps fit together, and a bridge is established. She has many vertical forms constructed out of idiosyncratic blocks that irresistibly evoke mid-rise towers. One of these sculptures, carved out of wood, with recesses, reliefs and louvred apertures, seems to vibrate from top to bottom with interior life – unseen human existence.

    The last room has beauty in abundance, numerous sculptures created out of gossamer thread, spun steel and glass. Some are planetary, evoking eclipses and starbursts. Others have affinities with womankind – corkscrew curls, metal bows and gyrating curves – and the quirkiest are highly strung, shivering excitedly as one passes. Even without any knowledge of the Sufi principles apparently underlying this art, one has the sense of a free and humorous spirit perpetually at work.

    That Saloua Raouda Choucair has had to wait a lifetime for such a show is shocking but standard. Western museums are resolutely conservative. But perhaps Tate Modern is about to change direction, for this is the first in a series ofexhibitionsof Arab and African artists whose work is cherished at home and entirely unknown here. Fittingly, it’s on for half a year and is neatly positioned among the themed galleries on level four so that browsing crowds will come across it more easily. Choucair profoundly deserves it.

    Sébastien Tellier - L'amour et la Violence [Boys Noize Euro mix]

    L'amour et la Violence [Boys Noize Euro mix]

    Sébastien Tellier

    THE REMIXES 2004-2011

    Sébastien Tellier - L’amour et la violence [Boys Noize Euro mix]

    “L’amour et la violence” is an old favourite of mine. Dug up the Boys Noize remix a couple of weeks and here I am listening to it again and again and again, ad nauseam. 

    leapers: “Well, listen Holly. You wanna take a walk with me?” “What for?” “Aww, I got some stuff to say. Guess I’m kinda lucky that way. Most people don’t got anything on their minds, do they?”

    leapers:

    “Well, listen Holly. You wanna take a walk with me?”
    “What for?”
    “Aww, I got some stuff to say. Guess I’m kinda lucky that way. Most people don’t got anything on their minds, do they?”

    “

    I don’t think we ever missed one episode of ‘Star Trek’. Not the old one, but ‘The Next Generation’. We loved ‘Star Wars’, had our favourite quotes, but we lived in TNG.

    Naturally, we all wanted to be Worf. We all wanted to be Klingons. Worf’s solution to any problem was to attack. In the episode Justice we found out Worf didn’t enjoy sex with human females because they were too fragile and he had to show restraint. Our big joke around pretty girls was Hey, show some restraint. In Hide and Q the ideal Klingon girl jumped Worf and she was grotesquely hot. Worf was combustible, noble, and handsome even with a turtle shell on his forehead. Next to Worf, we liked Data because he mocked white people by being curious about stupid things that the crew would do or say, and because when gorgeous Yar got drunk he declared himself fully functional and had sex with her. Wesley, the one you’d think we’d identify with, our age and a genius, and with a careless mom who let him get into trouble, did not interest us because he was a bumbling white town-baby and wore ludicrous sweaters. We were in love of course with the empathic half-Betazoid Deanna Troy, especially when the show let her hair go long and curly. Her jumpsuits were low-cut, her red V belt pointed you-know-where, and her big head and short curvy body drove us wild. Commander Riker was supposedly hot for her, but he was wooden, implausible. Better once a beard hid his baby cheeks, but we still wanted to be Worf. As for Captain Picard, he was an old man, though a French old man, so we liked him. We also liked Geordi because it turned out he was always in pain because he wore the eye visor, and that made him noble too.

    The reason I go into this is that because of this show we set ourselves apart. We made drawings, cartoons, and even tried to write an episode. We pretended we had special knowledge. We were starting to get our growth and were anxious how we’d turn out. In TNG we weren’t skinny, picked on, poor, motherless, or scared. We were cool because no one else knew what we were talking about.

    The Round House by Louise Erdrich
    Thundercat - Tenfold

    Tenfold

    Thundercat

    Apocalypse

    Thundercat - Tenfold

    Apocalypse kicks off really strong: “Tenfold” lured me in and “Heartbreaks + Setbacks” got me hooked. Which definitely helped me transition into the less accessible part of the album. Overall, Apocalypse is a beautifully constructed and layered album. 

    The album is currently streamable on NPR => HERE

    If you’ve ever passed by the funk and jazz-lite dollar bin at the record store, Stephen Bruner kindly asks that you pause to revel in the pastel colors and unfettered joy. The virtuosic bassist and singer comes from a diverse pedigree: a boy band, a stint in Suicidal Tendencies and, more recently, a hired low-end for space-age R&B artists like Erykah Badu and Sa-Ra. But as Thundercat, Bruner digs into astral soul music that’s often both funky and heartbreaking — especially on Apocalypse, out June 4.

    Co-produced and co-written by producers Flying Lotus and Mono/Poly, Thundercat’s follow-up to The Golden Age of the Apocalypse was written after the death of keyboardist, FlyLo bandmate and friend Austin Peralta. It can be, at times, bittersweet, as if attempting to smile and dance the pain away in the gossamer late-night plea “Heartbreaks + Setbacks,” the somber yacht-rocker “Without You” and the time-signature-shifting jazz-pop “Tron Song.” But then there are tracks that really want to move, like the Herbie Hancock mutant fusion of “Lotus and the Jondy” or your next party-starter, the sweaty and somewhat self-deprecating “Oh Sheit It’s X.” That one’s a team effort — a FlyPolyCat joint, if you will — with Bruner’s crooning and playful Off the Wall falsetto on top of ridiculous capital-F Funk handed down from the Mothership.

    Thundercat knows how to write genuinely affecting and technically bad-ass songs around his instrument — a rare art, usually given to some serious “bass face.” But with Apocalypse, Thundercat has made an emotionally complex record, while still finding time to party.

    Caged Animals - Cindy + Me

    Guardian new music:

    Apparently Cindy + Me, the new single from Brooklyn-based Vincent Cacchione, aka Caged Animals, is about a “crazed teenager in love, running away from home with the girl and some twisted view of the future. We’ve got her father tied up in the house, a smouldering corpse, we’ve got the cash.” With a song that rich in detail, surely the video treatment writes itself? And yet, rather than capturing this spirit of escapism, director Carlos Lopez Estradahas created an 80s-style corporate film that shows poor Cacchione having all sorts of tests done on him by a troupe of monkeys – which seem to have escaped from the set of Basement Jaxx’s Where’s Your Head At? video. At one point they force feed him a banana-shaped pill that makes him hallucinate his girlfriend is getting amorous with one of his simian captors. Built around a sample from synthesiser-maverick and instrument inventor Raymond Scott’sCindy Electronium, the joyously sinister Cindy + Me is a mesh of backwards synths, squelchy beats and Cacchione’s droll delivery that sets up his forthcoming second, as yet untitled album perfectly.

    Cindy + Me is out on 17 June on Lucky Number.

    Dabba (The Lunchbox) (2013) by Ritesh Batra

    @ Cannes Film Festival 2013

    I really want to see a good Indian film about modern Mumbai life with no musical number in it. Dabba could be it. 

    Also, it stars Irrfan Khan, an actor I like.

    Talking Moviez:

    A wistful, elegant love story played out across the streets of Mumbai, The Lunchbox is an unexpectedly aromatic charmer from first-time film-maker Ritesh Batra. Eschewing the pitfalls of what appears, on face value, to be a highly schematic set-up, Batra infuses his film with warmth and humanity, while cameraman Michael Simmonds steps up to deliver delicate visuals of modern Mumbai.

    Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.] Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1 Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality.  The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year. [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.]

      Les Revenants (The Returned), Season 1

      Channel 4 recently bought French TV fantasy drama called Les Revenants and is airing it in its original version with subtitles, which says a lot about how special they think this show is… And boy are they right. I just binged on the first season (eight episodes, each an hour long): eerie, beautiful, atmospheric, gripping, full of intriguing and compelling characters, very well acted and with a haunting score by Mogwai, no less… I’m v. impressed and had no idea the French were capable of producing a TV drama of such quality. 

      The story is set in a small alpine town of Haute-Savoie, France — a remote location of eerie beauty that plays a key role in setting the mood. Coupled with the dark colour palette of the show’s slick cinematography, The Returned is tonally very reminiscent of Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake, another great atmospheric TV drama out this year.

      [Some of the show’s promo stills were shot ala Greg Crewdson, giving off a strong Lynchian vibe, which makes total sense of course.]

      About Group - All Is Not Lost

      Nowness:

      The melancholic and soulful voice of Alexis Taylor overlays an explosive, arborous montage in the video for About Group’s new single “All Is Not Lost.” The dramatic images were selected by the Swedish director and artist Henrik Håkansson from his own project, “Aug. 11, 2012 Symptoms Of The Universe Studies (6min 29 Sec)”, that focuses on two individual black alder trees being torn apart in footage that was taken from different angles and at contrasting speeds. Spliced in with this is slow-motion film of butterflies in flight that was shot by Håkansson at high frame rates of 4000-7000 per second. “I had seen his work before and liked the films of insects, flying or being squashed in slow motion. I thought he could make something beautiful,” says Taylor, who splits his time between About Group and his duties with pan-genre dance outfit, Hot Chip. In About Group, Taylor is joined by a trio of fellow English experimentalists in guitarist John Coxon, drummer and founder of This Heat, Charles Hayward, and jazz and reggae keyboardist, Pat Thomas. The quartet’s second album Between the Walls, due out on Domino in July, was recorded with a mix of free-form improvisation and a desire to tap into the emotional resonance of Taylor’s songwriting that permeates today’s bittersweet track. 

      “Jonah, you’re not even a man, you’re like an early draft of a man where they just sketched out a giant, mangled skeleton but they didn’t have time to add details like pigment or self-respect. You’re Frankenstein’s monster if his monster was made entirely of dead dicks.
      Veep S02E06