Mad Men

How many critics need to tell you to watch this show before you actually sit down and do it? Yeah, it's a little slow, but slow things pay off. Like a spaghetti western. Or graduate school. It's light on overt plot development and heavy on mood and subtext, but that mood and subtext are an effective, biting indictment of the misogynist, capitalist era it's focused upon (an era in which, some would argue, we still live). The acting is mostly presence, but most of the actors have the type of burning presence you just plum don't see anymore. Also, I want Don Draper to be my boyfriend. Yeah, I know he's married and I know he has other mistresses and he can be a little cold sometimes and I know we're both heterosexual and I'm a record store clerk and he's a fictional character and yadda yadda yadda. All I know is that when I'm in his arms I feel safe.

The Wire

Going from a show that is nearly all mood and not much plot to a show that's plot is so thick you could choke to death on it, The Wire has an absolute lock on the over-saturated crime-show genre. The plot has the delicate grace of a ballet, with extra care put in to highlight the mercurial, fragile nature of the pursuit of justice in an unjust universe. As complicated as the plot is, it never seems to get lost in the shuffle of the surprisingly large number of characters and believable emotional lives that the writers juggle every episode. It's tailor made for the DVD format, as you'll find yourself popping in disc after disc in marathon sessions of made-for-HBO crime drama goodness. Also, I want Stringer Bell to be my boyfriend.

Battlestar Galactica

"Dude, you should totally be watching Battlestar Galactica. It's a really smart show." "Of course it's smart, it's for nerds." "What? No, it's not for nerds! It's got everything. Melodrama, humor, sex, political intrigue, topical metaphor, betrayal, space, explosions, robots...the acting is great, the dialogue is realistic, the special effects are really impressive and the writing is perfect. The plot goes places you don't expect it to and they can explore moral and political questions that other shows won't, because people think it's just nerd stuff for nerds and they don't pay attention to what the writers are actually saying. Besides, I love it and I'm not a nerd." "How much money did you spend on comic books last month?" "About two hundred dollars. Oops, my nose is bleeding."

The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack

What is wrong with kids these days? Either the age of information has permanently fried their minds and they're all completely and hopelessly insane, or they all have amazing senses of humor. As long as I get to watch their cartoons, however, I couldn't care less. Flapjack is a prospective adventurer, apprenticed to a grizzled, blue seaman/candy addict named K'nuckles who is searching for a sort of sailor's paradise named "Candied Island." The harbor in which they live is populated by a cast of ruthless, ugly sailors. It's an ugly show. Flapjack is the only character not animated to highlight his worst features. He's the sole innocent in a cast full of bastards and his naivete reminds me of a certain character from a novel by Voltaire ("CANDIED Island" sounds a lot like "CANDIDE Island")...The animation reminds me of the Ren & Stimpy close-ups; it's all eye crust and dandruff and cellulite and pores and body hair. It should make you a little queasy at first and I don't recommend it on a shaky stomach, but the writing and voice acting are so hilarious, you'll forget all about Spongebob Squarepants soon enough.

House

I love this show. It's a formula exercise, but a good one. A person freaks out, health-wise, then goes to see House. House thinks it's one thing and starts treatment. The treatment helps for a second, then the patient gets worse. Omar Epps thinks it's lupus, House rules it out. Cuddy yells at House. House says something rude but funny to Cuddy. Repeat step two. House has a revelation while speaking to Wilson about an unrelated matter. The day is saved. So, formula, yeah, but House is so damn charming it makes you forget that you kind of already know what's going to happen, because you never know what rogue-ishly rude thing House is going to say next. That's why you tune in. He's hilarious. You know, I'm kind of like House. Except I'm not a genius doctor. Or that charming. But I am rude, sometimes. Probably too often. I should work on that. I don't want to offend anyone.

tip: Stay with your wife.

Erik Rico - Double Feature

Informed by the snares falling down stairs clatter of West London's bruk beat mosse, Erik Rico yapple dapples it with a singer's soul that the Brits sometimes miss. Full of mellow keys & melodies, the squishy slap of reverbed bap, it's bedecked in the retro tech of pre-Colombian cosmonauts, a rocket crafted from feathers and stone on "Welcome to the Space Age" and "Children of the Light," or the 8 track boomin from the Chariot of the Gods on the spirit-salving "Peace of Mind," like Stevie's & Herbie's forward facing Prophet-cies from the seventies.

Dungen - Bandhagen

Though much of Gustav Ejstes' (he who is and does Dungen) may evoke soundvisions of frolicking trollkin and Tolkienian bacchanals, buskin beclad ribaldry and dervishly whirling, flaxen haired frost giants’ daughters, pagan and prelapsarian, flutes and lutes and endlessly delayed guitar, his first forays at beatery were Hip Hop based. And though Bandhagen may not bear the sharp snap and bap of Diamond’s drums or the ding of Premo’s bells (though there's the wisty "ting" of what sounds like a gnomesize xylophone), maybe this the sound of rap de-Afronated, dilapidated, a weaving, shambling shambolic wooze, consciousness sludged, flowing like sizurp'd, betwixt the limbic regions of the day, before it shudders and starts fraying, each instrument drifting slowly into the infinite.

frankmusik - 3 little words

A virulently viral infectious confection, a vector infecting with a replicating meme, spreading an insidious signal that supplants logic circuits and subverts critical thoughts. Draped in syn/linn drums and tinny stabs it's a lite brite l.e.d. w.m.d, but scraped of all its glitzy gear, as with the "black gardenia" mix, it sits revealed as a sharp, plain paean to pain that shimmies between want and get.

DJ Ko - Picture This

DJ KO, repping Street Smartz, from whence banged out the late 90's burner "Metal Thangs" (as bumped on Premo's NY Reality Check), keeps heads and dittys boppin with a "golden age" all stars massive (Diamond, OC [who killed it somethin lovely on the "Metal Thangs" refix], Masta Ace, Kweli, Wordsworth, John Robinson) and newer jacks (Skyzoo, Torae, Phonte, 9th Wonder, Black Milk, Elzhi) rocking it like the Y2K bug's still somethin to get you shook. Though it may take til the twenty tens revival to manifest what we can salvage from the epoch of the born cipher, bumps like "Ladder of Success," all celestial voices smudged into sweet noise, and "Someday," flipping classic don Donny vocal for a treatise on the inchoate promise of endless possibility, almost make you miss that blurry, undefined time before the Bush 2 era of terror when the only thing blowin up was your motorola pager and gitmo was just a strategy for stackin paper.

Pharcyde - Runnin (Phillipians mix)

Word is bond, you will not improve on Dilla's refilibration of Getz' & Bonfa's "Saudade vem Correndo" for "Runnin'" ("correndo," "runnin," get it?), perfectly calibrated, saudade intact and impactful, longing left lengthy, the majorest minor bars of the whole cut, bobbing drums with the lagging kick, but the Phillipians mix appends a nice little stoney interlude to the end whilst underpinning Tre’s verse with some loopy bloops that somehow still maintain the anomie.

The Passions - I'm In Love With A German Film Star

This is not a sound that could spring from a sun-drenched land. Avid Mediterranean melancholaholics and studied Angeleno miserabilists, well-versed though they may be in the ways of the weepy, are geo-genetically incapable of connecting with the frigid, fog blown, seasonally affectively disordered core from whence wells The Passions I'm In Love With A German Film Star. Guitar swathed in shimmering sheets of delay, bass thick and throbby, sung with an android's sangfroid, it's like Metropolis' robot Maria coolly swooning for Rotwang, free of the heart's machinations, circuits programmed for bloodless love.

Afta-1 - Time In Between

We live in the AD (After Dilla) years. Stumbling beat, warm, furry lumbering bass, sputtering high hats, the feel of the finger on the pad, these are the forever echoes of his human, boomin system. Flying Lotus & the Brainfeeder mob, Hudson Mohawke, Super Smoky Soul, Jniero Jarel, & on & on til the break of dawn, fellow traficantes of that thick, stewy sound labor under the long shadow of the long gone. Messing with the same, smeary sonics, Afta-1 sources space's tones, the squawk & static of dark matter, the quiddity, the thinging of interstellar material, where warmth isn't measured in degrees and waves move in a vacuum.

Quintron - Too Thirsty 4 Love

Holy crap! this is probably THE best record in the last year! i keep telling everyone this but no one believes me! maybe you will? seriously, i always liked MR. QUINTRON even though he hated me for calling him up and threating to cut off his fingers (it was a joke! his number was in the new orleans phone book under the name MR. QUINTRON, how could i NOT call?). where was i? oh yeah, i always loved the dude but this record brings it up about one thousand notches to an overall score of one billion on the awesome meter! this record is like taking the swamp into a jar, drinking it and bleeding pure voodoo out of your EYESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!! sick!!!!!

Whitman - White Sunrise

Just as f'ed up as QUINTRON but in a totally different way. totally. pure from the guttural origins of doom-folk this forms a whole new level of Whoa-dog! these songs take forms that probably shouldn't be but they do and it's amazingly brilliant. WHITMAN is soft but ice cold! i was waiting FORRRREEEVVVEERR for this record to come out and now i can't stop listening to it! ugh! after you buy this record go see WHITMAN live at the smell or pehrspace cause it will cause you the greatest joy ever until he whips words at your joy bubble, shatters it along with your central nervous system. ah hell!! the art is nice too, the cover has a great bunny rabbit on it! i love bunnies! in fact that triggers a memory in my brain that perfectly discribes this album. ok, here it goes. as i kid i had a nice white bunny named cagney and one cold morning i woke up to feed her and found 6 pink flesh globs in her cage. i thought that she had been attacked by a dog and was torn into bloody shreds. i looked again and saw that cagney was fine but the flesh globs were bloody, hairless and dead baby rabbits. my heart broke. yeah this record is like that.

Boredoms - 77 Boa Drums

Yikes, this is a monster! where to start? 2 cds, 1 dvd and a book! yes! this cronicles one of the most amazing live shows ever to happen on planet earth, in fact it seems as if THE planet earth is giving a concert! 77 drummers on full kits playing on 07/07/07 at 7:07 pm eastern standard time. yeah it's amazing! the cds capture the sounds of the entire show and the dvd gives you a short taste (20 or so minutes) of what it looked like live. the book shows you all the players along with their drums! all of the music was planned out and structured so it's NOT what you might fear, a crazy hippy drum jam. oh no, this was CALCULATED! oh this is so beautiful! the BOREDOMS rule hard and this adds another mile in the sky on their mountain of awesomeness! climb it! CLIMB IT!! it's totally worth it!

Lazy Magnet - Is Music Even Good?

I can't even begin to understand how this album was made. seriously. Lazy Magnet is usually just this one dude named Jeremy Harris from the eastern side of the united states. but on this album he gets about 20 of his friends to help him out. some of his earlier releases have been folk, some have been noise and the last time i saw him live it was THE hardest metal i have ever heard. probably the best live band i have seen in years. it made LIGHTNING BOLT look like sergio mendez. but this cd is neither like the live show OR any of his past releases. this cd is a pure scramble of the highest of quality everything pieced together seamlessly into one giant A.D.D. injection. mr. harris has culled the finest of players giving spectacular performaces onto the great battlefield of music and he has won! LAZY MAGNET wins this year's super bowl!!!!!!

USAISAMONSTER - Space Programs

These dudes always deliver the greatest rock records of our time! when i listen to USAISAMONSTER records and/or see them live i get this crazy feeling. it's as if a membrane of musical mucus drops on my head and i can see EVERYTHING! i can see time, space and the math that makes the universe rolling. but the layer of mucus also strengthens my muscles and i could probably fight a brick wall and win. kinda like looking at the ocean at high tide and dreaming you could live under the sea with the glowing fish miles below the surface. this album rules! this band rules! USAISAMONSTER forever!!!!!!

tip: i would also like to suggest you check out all the awesomeness that goes on down at THE SMELL in lovely downtown los angeles. it's the greatest all ages venue this town has ever seen! about one million bands play there every year so don't miss out! www.thesmell.org. also take some time on monday nights to go to pehrspace for SEAN CARNAGE's amazing monday night shows! they are always the best in every way! the best night of the week for sure! www.seancarnage.com. oh yeah and go eat at  A TASTE OF LIFE, the best vegan food ever! seriously check out the mac and cheese. pure awesomeness! www.atasteoflifellc.com. thanks! also remember that YOU RULE!!!

The Earrings of Madame De...

Max Ophuls is easily one of the most eloquent and inventive storytellers to choose film as his medium and The Earrings of Madame De... is one of the finest examples of his brilliance. He moves his camera like no other director before or since and he is one of the few directors whose work Kubrick greatly admired.

Vengeance Is Mine

This is the strangest story of a serial killer that I have ever seen. In fact I hesitate to call it a serial killer movie for the associations that you are undoubtedly making at the reference. Yes, there are scenes of brutal murder. No, they are not depicted in a manner intended to shock you (this isn't Argento), nor are they depicted from a clinical distance that invites you to hate yourself for watching (this isn't Kubrick). Murder just happens. Our killer gets a thrill out of it (most of the time), on par with getting laid, but the emphasis of this movie is on his relationships, how his lifestyle both affects them and is a response to them. Yeah, the killer is kind of an asshole, but what would you do if your wife and your dad were constantly fighting the urge to get it on?

The Films of Budd Boetticher [Box Set]

This is a great set of westerns that should have been on DVD long ago but somehow never made it. This set chronicles the bulk of Boetticher's collaborations with Randolph Scott and their pairing is among the all time western greats (think Ford & Wayne and Mann & Stewart). The set includes a great documentary featuring the brash antics of Boetticher and many of his big name Hollywood fans gushing over his work (Tarantino, Eastwood, Schrader, Towne, Bogdanovich, Scorsese...). Films Included:  Tall T, Decision at Sundown, Buchanan Rides Alone, Ride Lonesome, Comanche Station.

Wall-E

It is hard to discuss this film for many without qualifying it by saying, "for a kids movie..." but I might suggest that what is truly remarkable about this movie is that it is a major release from a major Hollywood studio, and one that, yes, specializes in family fare. The last film that had a such a pessimistic, yet grounded vision of the future, Idiocracy, was completely buried upon its release and has yet to really find the audience it deserves. Common sense tells us that Hollywood doesn't want to tell its audience that they are an ignorant, over-consumptive waste of space destined for a disaster of their own making (the message seems in conflict with, "don't forget to hit the concession stand for more raw cookie dough balls and cola!"). Wall-E however brings the message to the masses. Though your average Shrek fan found it hella boring (they don't even talk for the first 20 minutes!) the Pixar feature with its heavyweight marketing push will find its way into many a home over the years and be a jagged pill to swallow for unsuspecting "consumers." There's also an excellent love story between the two lead robots that occurs almost completely without the use of dialog. Awesome.

TV On The Radio - Dear Science

Mad Men [Season 1]

I don't have cable so, like the rest of you who still maneuver rabbit ears for the best picture, I need to wait until shows like this make it to DVD to experience what everyone has been talking about. Believe the hype! This show is fantastic and exceptionally cinematic. Not only is it exceedingly well written, but the acting is top notch and the art direction and cinematography place it in a class by itself. Nothing else on television is as rich or well made as Mad Men. I remember first assuming that is was an HBO show before seeing the AMC logo (it seems HBO passed on it...). After watching a couple of episodes my mistake was clearer - nothing on HBO has ever looked this good. Season 2 is not available on DVD at the time of this writing, but I can't wait to get my hands on it.

tip: criterion.com/festival (watch free movies online every month)

amoeba.com/live-shows/videos/index.html (shameless self promotion)

The Joy Formidable - A Balloon Called Moaning

Morrissey - Years of Refusal

Glasvegas - Glasvegas

Chairlift - Does You Inspire You

Franz Ferdindand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Blitzen Trapper - Furr

M Ward - Hold Time

Neil Young - Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbuy House 1968

Pavement - Brighten the Corners: Nicene Creedence Edition

New Order - Power Corruption & Lies (2CD Collectors Edition)

5 Signs - Left Handed Acquisitions

a live hip hop production team from los angeles. Five mpc addicts and vinyl junkies that combined forces to create an album covering old school, dilla-esque, downtempo, new school, boom bap (and bipp), with nods to idm, funk, soul and classic rock. limited edition vinyl only release. get it.

School of Seven Bells - Alpinisms

super lame they start the album with a track that's already sorta been released. but i suppose i only know that cause i'm obsessed with this new band from brooklyn which has the old secret machines guitarist (secret machines? ever heard of them? you sleeping on that shit or what?). also includes the much improved vocalists of on!air!library!, and by much improved i mean euphoric.

TV On the Radio - Dear Science

an excellent band should develop with subsequent releases. their music should mature, as the players become more experienced. such is life. such is dear science. tv on the radio. listen to it as much as you can. it's better than drugs and half as good as sex.

Beach House - Devotion

it's nice when music is honest. it sucks when bands play live shows with laptops. beach house is melodic aka sleepy, and quaint aka beautiful. they live in a city of brick. and one day they'll sell enough concert tickets to kick the macbook to the curb.

Flying Lotus - Los Angeles EP 2x3

the second ep is not as strong as the first. but the concept continues, and i wait with bated breath the final chapter of flying lotus's los angelian opus. a well played moved which used the fortunate interest of warp to boom blast five discs of pure lotus satisfaction all across the world. i only wish the order of release had been in reverse.

tip:

contemporary music is awesome. get with it. go to more shows. spend your money on art not convenience.

Madness - The Liberty Of Norton Folgate

The great British Ska/Pop group Madness returns with an ambitious concept album. Part early Kinks, part Blur, but very much the Madness sound. Songs about life in London, with fresh pop hooks, and stellar production! CD/LP release due in mid-March.

Rockford Files-Season Six

The last season, and possibly the best! Check out the David Chase penned episodes, for many similarities to his later work on the Sopranos.

Mo-dettes - The Story So Far

Finally issued on CD, with all their b-sides. If you took the Bodysnatchers & mixed them with Delta 5, you got the Mo-dettes!

Hawklords - 25 Years On

Nice re-issue of what was basically Hawkwind using a different name. Lead singer/writer Robert Calvert does some his best work here. Healthy dose of bonus tracks!

The Prisoner - Complete Series Megaset

Re-watching this great series, to honor the passing of the legendary actor Patrick McGoohan.