I’ve been antic­i­pat­ing Dar­ren Aronofsky’s lat­est film The Foun­tain for close to a year. It always seemed intrigu­ing to me, even though I knew almost noth­ing about its plot. The visu­als seemed arrest­ing, and the basic sub­ject mat­ter of the Foun­tain of Youth/Tree of Life was what hooked me. This past Wednes­day I finally saw the film and it’s prob­a­bly one of the most dif­fi­cult films to talk about. I won’t go into a full review of a film here, but I will say this: the film is a song, a sym­phony, and what it is try­ing to describe are the three most impor­tant human con­di­tions of life, love, death. What I mean when I say “a song” is that it has themes and abstract ideas expressed by artis­tic means. A truly unique expe­ri­ence and a unique style of film­mak­ing; this is not a nor­mal expected movie with a log­i­cal plot and out­come. It raises ques­tions and leaves the inter­pre­ta­tion up to the audi­ence, much like music does. What you gain from it is informed by your own per­sonal expe­ri­ences and how you relate to it. Enough of the film, though:

Clint Mansell’s sound­track for the film is sim­ply stun­ning, likely going to become one of my favorite releases of the year. It’s amaz­ing to con­sider that this for­mer Pop Will Eat Itself mem­ber is com­pos­ing music such as this. Per­formed by Kro­nos Quar­tet and Mog­wai, the music attempts to evoke the cir­cu­lar nature of the human con­di­tions I men­tioned above. Repet­i­tive and evolv­ing, the music strad­dles clas­si­cal, post-rock, folk, elec­tronic music, etc.. All of these come together to form a lament and a cel­e­bra­tion at the same time. You can men­tion Max Richter, Ryan Teague, Angelo Badala­menti, and Philip Glass as some ref­er­ence points for this work. Bring­ing in the musi­cians of Mog­wai, though, was utterly inspired. Their cin­e­matic post-rock music is already suited to movie scores, but cou­pled with strings and more tra­di­tional arrange­ments, their con­tri­bu­tion to the sound of the score brings it up to date and gives it an inti­mate and human feel that orches­tral music some­times can­not achieve alone. Like the film itself, this music sticks in your head, chal­leng­ing you to dis­sect and ana­lyze it, fol­low the themes and be uplifted by them. The main theme is addic­tive and will haunt you for a long time, much like the film’s visu­als, mes­sages, and questions.

Want 30 min­utes of the crusti­est, most gigan­tic beats ever? Look no fur­ther than this ridicu­lous mix­tape by Tommy Tempa for new UK label 2600 Record­ings. This mon­ster has been kick­ing my ass. I have no idea what most of the music is on it, and I can only hope that some of it will be appear­ing on the forth­com­ing 2600 release Home Enter­tai­ment (shit, look at that line-up!). But don’t read this, just down­load and crank it.
Tempa — Mix­tape Vol. 1 (mp3)

This album is heart­break­ing. Just dev­as­tat­ing. Erik Skod­vin is one half of Deaf Cen­ter, who released the epic and haunt­ing Pale Ravine last year. His solo project is a decid­edly more exper­i­men­tal affair, indulging heav­ily in his love of mak­ing music with wood and other nat­ural field record­ings. Mix­ing somber cel­los, haunt­ing and some­times extremely dis­em­bod­ied female vocals, this album is the equiv­a­lent of a mod­ern Nor­we­gian opera…one of the ones with mur­der, atmos­phere and tragedy. Kick­ing off with the electro-acoustic per­cus­sive and dream­like cello expanse of “The boat was my friend,” the album moves into much less struc­tured audio exper­i­ments with “My feet, over there” and “An ordi­nary hike.” But then there are songs like “Easy on the bones” and “The black dress,” which make your soul weep from the beauty of their dark­ness. Penul­ti­mate “The din­ing table” is sort of like Assault on Precinct 13, but done trib­ally in the woods, at night, with sticks and logs. This leads into the utterly astound­ing Badala­menti style “Final sleep,” giv­ing us min­i­mal strings and bass under­neath a gor­geous oper­atic vocal from Kristin Evensen Giaver. This lament is the per­fect closer to an album that rides the fine lines between tra­di­tional and exper­i­men­tal, doom and hope, beauty and noise. Another stand­out from Type Records. Get it from Bent Crayon in the US or Boomkat and directly from Type Records rest of world.

Who knew 20 min­utes could kick your ass so much? If you’ve ever been within earshot of my gush­ing solil­o­quies about 2tall’s Shift­ing Tides this review will be a no brainer. Like­wise, if you fol­lowed my advice this sum­mer and picked up Cuts of Cul­ture, this pow­er­ful EP will be right up your alley. 2tall and co-hort Lam­ont serve up 7 tracks of thick beats, deft cuts, and rolling synth bass lines. “Per­pet­ual Pat­terns” gets the party started cor­rect with a HUGE and robust synth loop, cou­pled with asian strings and whip crack­ing drums. The scratch solo cho­rus tells you exactly what’s in store: “a record you can feel.” These guys keep the bumps bumpin’ through­out, tak­ing a break from the party to chill out in swag­ger­ing way with “Wind­ing Down” and work some drums to death on the epic “Senses Over­loaded (2tall remix).” Wrap­ping up with the pro­gram­ming frenzy of “Thought Police” and scratch show­case “Glow­stick Jus­tice,” this EP is sure to please fans of all types of turntab­lism and hip-hop pro­duc­tion. Aside from being out­stand­ing pro­duc­ers and DJs, 2tall is a mas­ter engi­neer and any­thing he touches sounds like pure audio gold. Out on Real Tab­list, Senses Over­loaded will be released dig­i­tally shortly through Bleep.com and then on CD and Vinyl in early 2007.

Ooooh-wee like a sum­mer breeze. Com­bin­ing crisp drums and soul­ful gui­tar play­ing, Guerrero’s lat­est is def­i­nitely one of those end of sum­mer, breath of sigh­ing fresh air type of albums. Some­times like a lament (such as “Tomorrow’s Good­bye”) and some­times like an evening party amidst the turn­ing leaves (like “Salve” with Curu­min), this is def­i­nitely a solidly reward­ing release. This is the first Guer­rero album I’ve ever bought, and I’m glad I did. I can’t call it a hip hop album or even that unwieldy term ‘instru­men­tal hip-hop,’ it’s more like a soul album in a lot of ways (check a song like “War No More” for proof…that’s a fookin’ clas­sic soul feel!), but with­out that sheen of icky ‘neo-soul’ — it feels time­less in that way that only late 60s soul can. I guess song titles like “1966” and putting “soul” in the album title should have been my first clue! One of the most inter­est­ing track is the bizarre col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lyrics Born, “Let Me In Let Me Out,” which didn’t at all sound like what I was expect­ing. Funky gui­tars and drums accom­pany what is basi­cally a rock-style vocal. And it doesn’t sound at all forced to me, but that’s prob­a­bly cause Lyrics Born is the most unpre­ten­tious MC I’ve ever seen or meet (I met him once at a show and I was super impressed with what a happy and pos­i­tive per­son he was). Kudos to Tommy Guer­rero for putting together an equally pos­i­tively spir­ited album. Should be basi­cally avail­able every­where and comes recommended.