Tower

A veritable tower of jazz arrived in the post. Well, 6 CDs each containing two albums. I'm counting twelve new albums to listen to as a tower, Christmas money is a wonderful thing.

Enough of the jazz, there'll be plenty of that in the next week or so most likely. Instead, as chance would have it, we're up to the top spot, let's go...

Album #1:
Grouper - Alien Observer / Dream Loss

These are actually two albums that came out on the same day. I'm counting it here as a double set. To separate the two would be senseless, but if you pushed me to just pick one I'd go for Alien Observer, simply because its the one I tend to listen to more. Liz Harris is on her own out there, the vocals are murmured, the music has a lovely murky ambience about it. Sometimes the vocals are fairly prominent, other times they're submerged, sounding like they're coming from underneath the ocean, or at times from another world entirely. It's all about the mood, the ebb and flow, the endless drift. Haunting as you like and very special indeed. Sample track: Alien Observer


Film #1:
We Need To Talk About Kevin

Quite simply a masterclass in film-making from director Lynne Ramsay. The performances are terrific, but it's the overall vision of the movie that really impresses. I'm a terribly unprolific reader these days so unsurprisingly I hadn't already read the book, but after hearing Ramsay speak and read plenty of articles surrounding the film's release what is clear is that Ramsay has made Her Film and made it most defiantly Her Way. I felt wowed when I left the cinema. I'm off to see it again sometime soon. I want to be wowed again.