Le Guess Who 2025: Thursday

I somehow never got round to properly writing about 2024's Le Guess Who festival, which left many people disappointed [CITATION NEEDED]. I won't make that mistake this year. But before talking about the festival itself, I need to describe how we got there. The first time my beloved and I went to Le Guess Who, we flew. Then we switched to travelling overland to Utrecht (boat and train to London, Eurostar to Rotterdam, then local train to Utrecht) with a stopover in London. But this year we decided to try making the journey overland to Utrecht in one day, skipping the London stopover. This was partly for financial reasons (a night in London costs money) but also for cat reasons, as cat name of Billy Edwards is getting on a bit and we like to leave her on her own as little as possible. So it was we booked a sail-rail ticket from Dublin that would get us into Euston station in London about 20 minutes before the recommended arrival time in nearby St. Pancras for the day's last Eurostar to Rotterdam. Our time window was very tight, with a delay on our train to London of 30 to 40 minutes meaning that we would definitely miss the Eurostar. But live lives of gay abandon and so we were willing to take the risk.

And in truth, everything worked. We reached St. Pancras in good time and then had the usual uncomfortable wait in the overcrowded holding area on the other side of the security gates before we were allowed board our train. We did have some vague contingency plans for if we missed the Eurostar, of which the night bus to Rotterdam was the cheapest but most terrifying. The more expensive (but not crazily so) alternative would be the night boat from Harwich to Hoek, for which the connecting train leaves Liverpool Street at a time making it easy to catch.

But as I said, it all worked and we arrived at our hotel at around midnight and once they let us in (which took worryingly long) we hit the sack. And then our Thursday began with the first mimosa breakfast of the weekend. We were now ready for whatever Utrecht had to offer. Our first stop was the Centraal Museum, where two Le Guess Who related exhibitions were taking place. The first of these was Broken Spectre by Richard Mosse. He is an Irish artist whose The Enclave was one of the highlights of the 2022 LGW. That work saw footage projected onto multiples screens of material shot in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a rebel-controlled enclave, with an infra-red colour filter making everything look purple. Broken Spectre was in some ways a more conventional film work, in that it was projected onto a single screen (or maybe several screens that were all in the same place), which meant that you weren't having to keep looking around behind you to see what was happening on other screens. The subject matter of this one was environmental devastation in the Amazon as the forest is destroyed to make way for cattle farming, with an invasion of gold miners polluting everything else being the icing on the habitat destroying cake. It's a pretty grim watch, from the scenes in a vast industrial abattoir as cows are butchered, to the scenes of forest burning and on to indigenous people being driven off their land. It is such a downer that it didn't make for a great start to the festival; in retrospect this would have been better watched as a palate cleanser on the second day.

We talked a bit about what made Broken Spectre so much grimmer than intense artworks included in previous years of Le Guess Who. The Enclave does include some dead bodies but overall it just feels weird rather than depressing as you never really get much sense of what is actually going on. There was a Forensic Architecture exhibition at our first Le Guess Who that examined a number of horrendous events. That was pretty grim too, but my beloved reckoned that it was less upsetting than Broken Spectre was that it felt like Forensic Architecture were gathering evidence that might conceivably be used one day to hold the perpetrators to account (most likely an illusory hope, particularly for the Israeli killers of schoolchildren). But with Broken Spectre it's just a shit show and I'm not even sure there is anyone to hold to account, as it felt like we are dealing here with vast socio-economic forces.

There is a bit in the film where this Yanomami woman is complaining to camera about how her people are being driven off their land, and then she starts giving out about the film itself, basically saying "What good is your stupid film going to be for us?" And it's a fair point, if all that happens is people watch the film and feel sad about a situation they see as intractable. I also found myself wondering whether the film might land differently with meaters, who I could imagine thinking "It's sad the forest is being destroyed, but I've got to get my burger!". The film did provide a link to where you can donate money to the Hutukara Yanomami Association. The other LGW-related piece in the Centraal Museum was called Drama 1882 and was a film by Wael Shawky of a stage play (or opera) about the ultimately unsuccessful revolt by Egyptian army officers led by Ahmed 'Urabi against the country's ruler, the Khedive, seen as in thrall to foreign powers. The film shows the progress and ultimate defeat of 'Urabi by a British expeditionary force through song and stylised movement that hovers this side of counting as dance, and manages to be a fun watch despite being about the irresistible power of imperialism.

You may at this point be wondering if this festival featured any actual musical performances. Fear not. The first actual act of this kind we saw was Omar Hayat, a Gnawa musician from Essaouira in Morocco (where I went on holidays some years back; I don't remember meeting him). Gnawa is I think linked to an ecstatic version of Sufi Islam popular in those parts. Omar is an old-ish guy playing some kind of stringed instrument while some younger guys played percussion stuff. But also the younger fellows did some acrobatic dancing, making this Sufi Islam religion a bit different from the kind of staid Christianity I grew up. It was generally felt that Mr Hayat won the milking-the-audience award for Le Guess Who 2025.

Valentina Magaletti was one of the curators of this year's festival, playing several times over the weekend. We did catch a bit of her playing with Upsammy in the Ronda (the largest Tivoli Vredenburg venue that isn't the Grote Zaal) but they had already started when we came in and it was hard to connect with from the back, so we made our excuses and left. But we did come down good and early to see SUNN-O))) and in fact I was able to get right to the front of the stage, to the extent that I could hold my phone up past the onstage monitors to photograph the band. If you've ever seen SUNN-O))) you'll get the basic idea: they wear capes, they play guitars very loud, they have loads of speakers onstage, they fill the stage with dry ice, their music consists of very slow guitar chords, and so on.

On this occasion it was just the core members of SUNN-O))), Stephen O'Malley and Greg Anderson, so they didn't have the weird Hungarian guy dressed as either a tree or one of the Cylons from original Battlestar Galactica or any of the other musicians they sometimes play with. This brought me back to times when I saw them play first and I enjoyed their ritualistic set a lot, although I can see why someone might feel that it gets a bit repetitive.

Did I then see a bit of forward thinking jazzers [Ahmed] playing up in Cloud Nine (at the summit of the Tivoli Vredenburg, although there are rumours of a secret other venue even higher in the building)? It is possible but as no documentary evidence of this having occurred exists I am not disposed to discuss such an incident at this present time.

And so to bed.

images:

Broken Spectre cows (Photo Elysée: "Richard Mosse: Broken Spectre")

Broken Spectre Yanamami (Atmos: "Richard Mosse: Depicting Ecological Collapse in the Amazon")

Drama 1882 (Le Guess Who: "Centraal Museum presents Wael Shawky and Richard Mosse at LGW25")

My Le Guess Who pictures

Music in Film 04: Last Night (1998)

I had been writing about films I saw in 2024 that featured a strong musical element but somehow became sidetracked. Now I return to this important endeavour. You can see previous posts in this series here (The Zone of Interest, Perfect Days, etc.), here (All You Need Is Death, Eno, The Colour of Pomegranates, Portishead, Lone Star), and here (Star Wars, The Long Goodbye, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat).

Now I turn to Last Night, Don McKellar's film about Toronto people getting ready for the world to end at midnight. It follows a number of different people as they prepare in various different ways, but it focuses on Patrick, played by McKellar himself, who has decided to spend his last hours alone, to the consternation of his family. The film manages to be both sad and quirkily humorous, sometimes at the same time.

But what of music? Well there is plenty of it. Every so often we hear the voice of this radio DJ who is counting down through the greatest songs of all time ("as chosen by me"), all of which are soft rock classics. Then there is this guy who is frantically trying to have as much sex as possible with as many different people as possible before the world ends, and each time he is about to get down to it he puts on this sexy funk tune (which investigation suggests might be Parliament's "I've Been Watching You (Move Your Sexy Body)"). At another point there is a news report on people who are spending their last hours taking part in the world's largest ever guitar jam (which looks totally awesome). And then there is a piano concert being put on by this dorky guy the main character went to school with. As he plays his music we see the audience in the concert hall, some of them people we have seen previously, and the music (by Howard Shore) is indescribably beautiful and definitely the kind of thing I would want to listen to as the world comes to an end (except there are a million other things I would want to listen to and do in those last moments).

It was definitely great seeing this film again some 26 years after I last saw it. It still delivers and it is something that I think should be seen as a real classic of the niche "world coming to an unavoidable end" genre of films. I also had the poignant moment of looking up biographies of some of the less famous people in the film and discovering that McKellar's own life had sadly repeated aspects of his film character's prehistory, fortunately without the world then ending.

I should perhaps mention that the screening in the IFI was preceded by an introduction by Dorian Lynskey, who was pimping his book Everything Must Go, about the end of the world in cinema (the book's title comes from an early onscreen image in McKellar's film). He made the bold claim that Last Night was the first film to show ordinary people doing fairly ordinary things as the world's end approached, and I had immediate "O RLY?" thoughts as I thought of the films On The Beach (1959) and The Day the Earth Caught Fire (1961), both screened previously in the IFI.

images:

Last Night poster (Wikipedia)

Everything Must Go (Picador)

Battling Gamelan records: Palegongan and Kyai Jati Roso

Imagine if in Germany there was a centuries old tradition of orchestral music, but the orchestras only played music by German composers. And then in France there was a separate tradition of orchestral music, played on similar or identical instruments to those of their German counterparts, but the French orchestras only played music by French composers and professed complete ignorance as to the ways of German composers and German orchestras. That at least seems to be the way it is with Javanese and Balinese gamelan, with the neighbouring islands developing musical traditions independently of each other with little or no cross-fertilisation. Or so I have been led to believe. As presented to me, the Javanese tradition (the one I have been playing in classes in the National Concert Hall) was historically a court music played by ensembles in the employ of local sultans, while the Balinese music was played by village ensembles for more local purposes. This to some extent drove how the music worked, with the Javanese music being more stately and focussed on group playing (perhaps so that no individual player would become so noted in their own right that they overshadowed the patron), while Balinese music has more in the way of virtuosic individual playing and can get a bit raucous.

But how accurate is this thumbnail description of the two traditions? I found myself thinking about this when I found myself listening to Palegongan, a recording by a performance by Sanggar Sidakaria released by Bali Gamelan Sound. This is Balinese gamelan, recorded in Denpasar, Bali's capital, yet the first two tracks sound almost like they could be something that might be played by a more advanced Javanese gamelan group: they have a certain stateliness and they retain the cyclical qualities of Javanese music. The later tracks get considerably more frenetic and do not sound so much like you could imagine anyone in Java playing them. But I'd still like to get some sense of how Balinese gamelan works and indeed what interplay there has been between the traditions on the two islands, as I find it hard to believe there has been no cross-pollination whatsoever between them.

You can listen to and/or purchase Palegongan here.

Kyai Jati Roso meanwhile is a 2024 recording from the NCH Gamelan Orchestra. The pieces are mostly traditional pieces from the Javanese repertoire but there are two interesting exceptions. The first very short track is from a field recording of a workshop where gamelan instruments are being tuned. Because this involves workmen bashing the metal pots to a natural rhythm, it ends up sounding almost like music itself. Then the second track, "Embat", is a composition by the NCH's gamelan director, Peter Moran, and an updated version of a track released in 2020. This deliberately evokes the rhythms of the workmen on the previous track, but in this new version we also have trumpet from British jazzer Byron Wallen. I've become a bit of a gamelan purist over time (ironic given how little I really know about Javanese gamelan and my complete lack of direct personal connection to the cultural heritage of Indonesia generally and Java in particular). As a result, I am wary of Western compositions being played on gamelan instruments or of gamelan being combined with instruments from outside the tradition. However, this does not mean that I always dislike gamelan fusion. "Embat" works for me, without feeling like an unnatural meshing of things that should not be combined. I think partly this must be down to Wallen himself being gamelan-curious (apparently he has his own gamelan set back in his base) and, obviously, Moran's deep immersion in the tradition.

After that it's all pieces from within the Javanese tradition. These are mostly ladrangs and lancarans, two types of music we have played in our class. The basic difference between these is that in lancarans the basic melody line is played pretty quickly while in ladrangs the melody is slower but there is considerable ornamentation from the other instruments (I can hear the grinding of teeth of any serious gamelan people reading this simplistic description of the difference between ladrangs and lancarans). On this record however elements are introduced that are beyond klutzes like me: handclaps, vocals, and complex variations that you need to have your wits about you to play. There are also Javanese pieces of a type I have not played myself and so find rather mysterious.

I've always had the idea that on hearing a gamelan recording blind I would be reasonably likely to guess whether it was from Java or Bali (stately: Java; flashy: Bali). These two records rather challenge that, with Palegongan moving in a rather stately direction while the NCH Gamelan Orchestra's album sees the playing at times getting a bit flash on us. Could it be that the two traditions are not so very different? Either way I think Kyai Jati Roso might be a useful introduction for anyone curious about gamelan played in the Javanese style. If you are curious you can check it out here.

2024: My Favourite Audio Dramas

I've been posting about my favourite 2024 things. In my last post I looked at theatrical productions while the whole series can be seen here. And now my attention turns to audio drama I enjoyed in that year, some of which is from further back in time.

Limelight: Money Gone (2024)

This begins with all the bank accounts in the world suddenly emptying, leaving everyone with only whatever cash they have on them. The multi-stranded narrative follows different characters over a chaotic few days, with their paths eventually coming together at the end (mostly). It's good but at times the intense drama jarred with the more slapstick comedy elements (although I did really like the out of her depth prime minister and her stupid aides), while the ending was a bit pat.

Listen here

Limelight: Exemplar (2022)

This sees Gina McKee playing a sonic investigator, who listens to audio recordings to investigate crimes and stuff. It is episodic, in that individual episodes are largely self-contained (and somewhat variable in quality). However, hints of an overarching story lurk in the background, with this exploding into view in the superb last episode that is alone worth the price of admission.

Listen here

The Foundation Trilogy (1973)

This is a vintage BBC radio adaptation of the Isaac Asimov novels, featuring voices you've probably heard on Doctor Who, I Claudius, and other TV programmes of the era. It suffers from the fundamental Foundation problem: the Foundationers are a shower of imperialist shits and the story only really becomes interesting when The Mule shows up to kick their ass. But it's well done and in particular The Mule twisteroo is very enjoyable. The bits with the Encyclopedia Galactica voice are also amusing as a clear influence on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Listen here and here.

Limelight: There’s Something I Need to Tell You (2023)

While on holidays with his new girlfriend in Dubai a man meets some Russian guy in a bar, who offers him ten grand to mind an envelope for a few hours. In a situation like that there is a right choice and a wrong choice to be made, but let's face it, it is making bad choices that drives narrative. And I know, jaded cynics might well feel that the setup here is a bit hokey but I assure readers that this drama manages to ratchet tension up to an unbearable level.

Listen here.

The Specialist (2024)

This superb drama from the ever-reliable Matthew Broughton tells of a doctor and her brother who move to an isolated Welsh community where the recently deceased previous doctor had a somewhat cavalier approach to medical ethics, scientific experimentation, and doctor-patient relationships.

Listen here.

Limelight: The Incident at Ong's Hat (2023)

BBC audio dramas are typically set in Wales, but this moves the action to the United States. Jon Frechette and Todd Luoto have created a faux documentary about some weird stuff that is actually a real internet conspiracy except that was made up too by some japester (OR WAS IT?). The faux documentary format working very well, giving things a disconcerting and strange ambience.

Listen here.

Limelight: Spores (2023)

Written by Marietta Kirkbride, this is a split narrative in which a woman in the present day is being interviewed by someone (a journalist? a psychiatrist? a scientist?) about past events, with the other strand being flashbacks to those past events. And in the past she describes working as a social worker (in Wales) and seeing a strange mould appearing first in a client's home and then her own. But somehow only she is able to see the mould. It wobbles slightly in the middle but overall this is a deeply unnerving and my audio highlight of the last year.

Listen here.

2024: My Favourite Theatrical Productions

I am reviewing stuff from 2024. In my last post I looked at the best old films I saw for the first time that year; you can see all of the posts in my series here. Now my gaze turns to the theatre.

While I officially love the theatre, I don't actually go to see plays that often for a variety of reasons. One of these is my own idiosyncratic tastes, which mean that that the kinds of plays I like tend not to be performed that much. But also there is the problem that the theatre is something you have to book tickets for ages in advance, which does not suit a disorganised person like me. And there is the simple fact that the theatre is a lot more expensive than the cinema (for good reasons), which makes me more wary of taking a punt on a particular show. So this is not actually a list of my favourite productions of 2024 but all of the ones I made it to.

Exit Pursued by a Bear (Whyte Recital Hall)

The title is a stage direction from William Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale. Publicity material suggested that this production from the innovative Pan Pan theatre company would retell Shakespeare's play from the point of view of the bears. Sadly this proved not to be the case and it was actually a kind of deconstructed performance of the original with a lot of songs (including the David Essex one, which I see now was written by Mike Batt and Tim Rice). It could have done with either featuring more bears or being a straighter Shakespeare production.

The Sugar Wife (Abbey Theatre)

Back in the 1990s there was a lot of theatre on that I liked and a lot of it featured Liz Kuti in key roles. I particularly remember her as Florence Nightingale in a production of Edward Bond's bananas Early Morning and in the title role in a production of The Duchess of Malfi. Then she stopped acting, became Elizabeth Kuti, and pursued a career in academia in the UK. And she also took to writing for the theatre. This one was first staged in Ireland in 2005 but I somehow missed it, but I went to this revival to chase the 1990s theatre buzz. And… it's not great. The play is about fictionalised analogues of the 19th century Quaker founders of the Bewley's cafes in Dublin, who are faced by awkward questions about where sugar comes from in a time when the United States is still a nation of slavery. But it all felt a bit didactic and suffered badly from their supposedly idealistic visitor being a transparent dickhead from the moment he appears onstage. And for a play partly about race it gives the one black character very little to do.

Dracula: Lucy's Passion

Last year as a Halloween treat Joan Sheehy brought Dracula: A Journey into Darkness to the Abbey, a staged reading by Andrew Bennett of the first four chapters of Dracula. Now she follows that with this multi-actor reading of the bits of Dracula that see the Count travel to England and prey upon the unfortunate Lucy. And it was also staged for one night only as part of the Bram Stoker Festival. Atmospheric and at times chilling, it maybe suffered from being less focussed than the single point of view we got last year as Jonathan Harker describes himself becoming ever more ensnared by the Count. I nevertheless can't wait for the third part next year.

Old Times (Smock Alley Boys' School)

There is this Liverpool theatre company called Purple Door and they regularly tour to Dublin with what seems to be always either plays by Shakespeare or Pinter. This year they were doing two Harold Pinter plays in rep, with this one the most Pintery as it starts off with a couple talking about how some old friend of the wife has invited herself to visit after a hiatus before it becomes harder and harder to work out what exactly is going on, with past, present, and imagination seeming to merge in one unsettling splodge of menace. Excellent stuff.

Some impressive shots of the production on Instagram here

Na Peirsigh (Peacock Theatre)

Someone had the great idea of staging this nearly 2,500 year old play by Aeschylus, translated into Irish by Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. It tells of people in the Persian capital learning that their invasion of Greece has gone horribly wrong. And I went to see it, despite my Irish not being great, hoping that I would be able to follow it well enough thanks to having an outline idea of how Greek tragedy works without having to look too frequently at the surtitles. And it's great, capturing the ritualistic aspects of what even by the standards of Greek tragedy was an early work, from a time when the theatre had not long left behind its origins in religious ceremony. I think the most striking part of the play was when the Persians summon up the ghost of the late emperor Darius the Great, which did feel like an actual summoning (all the more amusing for the shade of Darius then pretty much just grumbling about how his idiot son has fucked it all up). But a close runner up is when Xerxes (said idiot son) arrives at the end, alone and in rags, his army destroyed, to sing a sean-nós style lament about how miserable he is. Really superb stuff and that's without getting into how the original play was striking for its sympathetic presentation of the people who had burned Aeschylus' city to the ground barely ten years previously.

I read some reviews of this excellent production and they were really sniffy about it, which I think illustrates how removed I am from mainstream theatrical opinion.

Dune! The Musical (SEC Glasgow)

Everyone loves Frank Herbert's novel Dune but what if instead of having to read it you could see it performed onstage by one guy taking on the role of Gurney Halleck telling you the whole story through the medium of song? So it was that I was pleased to see this production by Dan Collins at the Glasgow Worldcon.

Betrayal (Smock Alley Boys' School)

More Purple Door Pinter, performed in rep with Old Times. This one is more conventional than Old Times in that it is always clear what is going on: we have a narrative about a woman who is having an affair with a close friend of her husband. Adultery narratives can be a bit ho-hum but this hits the spot. Part of it is the formal innovation of telling the story backwards: we start with the two former lovers meeting some time after their affair ended, then we jump back to the affair's end, then to it in full flight and finally to its beginning. One thing I found as it rolled along was that my sense of which of the characters I liked (or disliked the least) kept changing as the perspective through which they were viewed adjusted. An unnerving classic staged and acted with bravura.

Betrayal did get me thinking about the whole business of ongoing affairs (not shagging around or copping off with someone you then leave your significant other for, but an ongoing bit-on-the-side you want to keep secret from everyone). They sound like a lot of work.

Intstagram shots of the production here.

images:

Martha Dunlea as Lucy Westenra (Bram Stoker Festival: Lucy's Passion)

Caitríona Ní Mhurchú i Na Peirsigh (Amharclann na Mainistreach: Na Peirsigh)

What Is Folk Horror?

Here are some quick thoughts on what exactly is this thing called "Folk Horror" that people are always going on about these days. This is based on a sense I have that the term is being used a bit carelessly to cover anything vaguely horrific featuring a folkloric monster or rural setting.

Folk Horror as a concept was popularised by Mark Gatiss in a 2010 documentary on the history of horror films. Somewhat embarrassingly I have never actually seen this documentary, so I only have second hand accounts of what Gatiss described the term as meaning. I do know that he offered up three films of the late 1960s and early 1970s as exemplars of the genre: Witchfinder General (1968), The Blood on Satan's Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973). What might they have in common that could make them embodiments of a new genre?

Directed by Michael Reeves, Witchfinder General is set in the 1640s and sees Vincent Price playing Matthew Hopkins, a hunter of witches (real or imagined) in an England wracked by civil war and religious conflict. Hopkins is portrayed as an amoral maniac happy to extract confessions through torture before sending his victims to the gallows. The film remains ambiguous as to whether he really believes that his victims are actual witches, but he is shown as cynically using his authority to sexually exploit a comely young woman who crosses his path. This is the only one of the films to be centred on a real historical figure, with whose actual story the film has a tenuous relationship.

Unlike the others, Robin Hardy's The Wicker Man is set in what was the present day when it was released. It sees Edward Woodward playing a policeman travelling to a remote Scottish island in search of a girl who has been reported missing. He discovers that the islanders are all members of a pagan cult led by the local laird, Lord Summerisle (Christopher Lee). There is a Wicker Man.

Set in the 18th century, Piers Haggard's The Blood on Satan's Claw begins with some peasants unearthing a mysteriously deformed skull, after which the young people of the locality start sprouting patches of fur and gathering in a ruined church to practice demonic rites. This is the only one of Gatiss's Unholy Trilogy to feature truly supernatural elements.

So what do these films have in common? They are all set in rural areas. Two of them are set in the past, one in the present day. One of them features a pagan death cult, another features devil worshippers, and another features Christians who commit the foulest crimes against the supposed enemies of Christ. So perhaps people whose beliefs drive them to terrible actions is a point of commonality. The Wicker Man uses the device of the outsider unearthing the horror that has engulfed a community, but the others do not go down this road. Curiously, for films seen as epitomising folk horror, only one of them makes heavy use of folkloric themes.

Beyond the crazy beliefs it's hard to find a thematic link between Gatiss's big three folk horror films. This has me thinking that there might be more than one strand of folk horror. One of these might be "people sticking to the Old Ways even though the old ways are a bit crazy but also folky", which often features the Ingham denouement of "it was you they wanted all along". Examples of this strand include The Wicker Man, Robin Redbreast, Harvest Home, Midsommar, "Murrain", and "The Lottery". Another strand might be "old possibly supernatural folk-adjacent things bubbling up into the present in a non-ideal way". Examples of this strand include The Stone Tape, Quatermass and the Pit, and Blood on Satan's Claw. There may be other strands (one into which Witchfinder General could be easily included). And there may be more to folk horror than plot elements.

Further investigation may be required, but perhaps this delving into forbidden lore is best left to the professionals.

More folk horror posts here and here.

images:

18th century wicker man image (Wikipedia: "Wicker man")

Animal masks (Lunatics Project: The Best: Folk Horror Films)

2024: My Favourite Newly Discovered Old Films

I am looking back on my favourite cultural things of 2024. You can see my last post, about my favourite new films, here, and the whole series here. Join me now as I look at the best old films I saw for the first time in that year.

Murder by Contract (Irving Lenner, 1958)

Nice low budget noir about a highly efficient contract killer who finds to his dismay that his next target is a dame. The many scenes of the hitman and his contacts hanging out and yapping away feel like they might have been an influence on Tarantino.

The Informer (Arthur Robison, 1929)

The first of at least three screen adaptations of Liam O'Flaherty's novel (others include John Ford's 1935 film and Jules Dassin's 1968 Uptight (which moves the action from Dublin to Cleveland). This sees an IRA man grass up one of his buds to the Free-Staters for tawdry reasons before being hunted down by his former comrades. Despite being filmed in Elstree Studios, the film is surprisingly evocative of olde Dublin.

The Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991)

Adapted from a William S. Burroughs novel, this is very odd fare indeed. Some scenes are very evocative of the feeling of being completely mashed out of it but having to hold it together and convince people around you that you are not feeling in any way out of the ordinary. And if you've ever found yourself hanging out with giant talking insects the film will touch a nerve. I was however a bit uncomfortable with all the shooting-wife-in-the-head content.

All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950)

This sees Bette Davis playing an ageing actress who is being supplanted by Anne Baxter's Eve, who initially appears as an adoring fan before gradually revealing her true colours.

Another Man's Poison (Irving Rapper, 1951)

And in this one Bette Davis plays a rather louche crime writer who isn't averse to bumping off inconvenient men in her life. One of her British films.

Network (Sidney Lumet, 1976)

An ageing news anchor has an on-air meltdown after learning that his contract is not being renewed, which then proves such a hit with viewers that the broadcaster starts wheeling him out to gibber at the audience on live TV. Although it does feature a lot of old white guys shouting about things, the real star is Faye Dunaway as a terrifyingly ambitious studio executive. It's also surprisingly funny.

Archangel (Guy Maddin, 1990)

This oddball low budget picture from the Canadian roffler is set during the Allied intervention in Archangel during the Russian Civil War, with a main character suffering from amnesia that leads to events happening over and over again for reasons. They don't make them like this anymore and probably never did.

The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949)

This is based on a novel by Ayn Rand, who is bad, so the film must be bad, right? WRONG. This is in fact a highly enjoyable film about an egomaniacal architect played by Gary Cooper who won't let anyone tell him how to design buildings, not even his clients, with the result that he spends a lot of his time earning his living doing things other architecture. He also has woman-trouble and is being persecuted by an evil journalist who appears to be some kind of communist. Because Cooper is super-swoony he is able to get away with delivering an interminable Ayn Rand speech that wins everyone over, thereby letting him build his stupid buildings, which appear to combine Le Corbusier's worst nightmares with Mies van der Rohe sleekness.

On the Waterfront (Elia Kazan, 1954)

In this film about a corrupt union that is exploiting its members while being in league with the employers we have memorable lines such as "I could have been a contender" or memorable scenes such as Marlon Brando confessing to Eva Marie Saint that he unwittingly set up her brother to be killed as dockyard noises drown out his words. Or the film that teaches you why looking "like Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront" would be such a big deal. A superb film with strong performances from Brando, Saint, Karl Malden (as a priest) and the always reliable Lee Cobb as Johnny Friendly, the union boss.

In A Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950)

A dark, dark film in which Humphrey Bogart excels himself as a deeply damaged man (PTSD from the war is hinted at) who finds himself under suspicion for a murder we know he didn't commit. Whether he ends up taking the rap or being exonerated is almost an irrelevance, as he is clearly going to end up killing someone or being murdered himself, regardless of the situation when the film ends.

images:

Eva Marie Saint in On the Waterfront (Little White Lies: Why I love Eva Marie Saint’s performance in On the Waterfront)

Humphrey Bogart ([FILMGRAB]: In a Lonely Place)

2024: My Favourite New Films

I am finally getting round to posting about my favourite things of 2024. You can see the last post in this series here or all of them here. Now I turn to my favourite new films of the year before last.

Since Yesterday: the Untold Story of Scottish Girl Bands (Blair Young & Carla J. Easton)

An enjoyable film about Scottish all-women/girl bands, of which there were not too many.

Made in England: The Films of Powell and Pressburger (David Hinton)

Directed by David Hinton but it feels Martin Scorsese is the auteur here. Not only does he narrate this film about the British film-makers, he also talks about his own relationship to their films (and to Michael Powell personally) as well as their influence on his own film-making.

Devo (Chris Smith)

Useful documentary about the Akron band that never mentions their Subgenius links while nevertheless making them abundantly clear to anyone "in the know".

Sidonie au Japon (Élise Girard)

A rare non-depressing film starring Isabelle Huppert, in which she plays an author on a promotional tour of Japan who finds herself being haunted by her recently deceased husband except it's more about her coming to terms with her grief than a ghost story as such. Surprisingly funny.

City of Wind (Lkhagvadulam Purev-Ochir)

A teenage boy in Ullan Bator has to grapple with normal adolescent stuff while also being a shaman who helps people engage with the spirit world. The film leaves somewhat open whether all this shaman stuff is charlatanry, with the protagonist giving the impression he is none-too-sure either.

I Saw the TV Glow (Jane Schoenbrun)

Two misfits bond over love of a YA fantasy TV series that they start taking way too seriously. Schoenbrun's films are often seen as trans-allegories, and I get it, there is some gender-identity stuff going on here, but this felt more like it was about neurodivergence and obsessive fandom generally.

Crossing (Levan Akin)

A woman travels with a gormless young lad from Georgia (polyphonic singing, not banjos) to Istanbul in search of her trans niece who has moved there and disappeared.

Dune 2 (Denis Villeneuve)

They love that spice.

Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat (Johann Grimonprez)

As previously discussed, this is that documentary about jazz in the cultural Cold War and the shameful overthrow and murder of Patrice Lumumba, the Congo's first prime minister.

About Dry Grasses (Nuri Bilge Ceylan)

Another long Ceylan film about people in the Anatolian sticks, in this case about a not-particularly likeable teacher who finds himself accused of inappropriate behaviour by a female student. Film should have people from the Turkish Tourist Board signing you up for holidays as you leave the cinema.

Perfect Days (Wim Wenders)

He cleans toilets, he listens to cassettes, he gets on with life, he is reminded of past unpleasantness. Previously reviewed.

The Zone of Interest (Jonathan Glazer)

The bad thing is already happening. You can't see it but you hear it in the distance.

The Zone of Interest image source (An Táin Arts Centre)

2024: My Favourite Newly Discovered Old Songs

It's just possible there is someone out there who would like to read about old songs I heard for the first time in 2024. If so, this is for you.

My last post discussed a compilation I made of my favourite new tunes of 2024. I also made a compilation of tracks from before 2024 that I heard for the first time last year. Join me as I talk you through the tracks. Many of them are from 2023, illustrating yet again how I am often slightly behind the curve. I have also made a Spotify playlist of these tracks, but it is missing one key tune.

Peter Gabriel "No Self Control" (1980) (from the Ace Records compilation Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981)

So yeah, Peter Gabriel, he's very famous. I know some of his Genesis stuff and I remember when he had big hits with songs like "Sledgehammer" from the So album but I am not really familiar with his earlier solo material, for all that I know people like it. This track is from a compilation of music supposedly influenced by David Bowie's Berlin records. I like how edgy it sounds, with the recurring line "I don't know how to stop, I don't know how to stop" becoming quite disturbing when coupled with "You know I hate to hurt you, I hate to see your pain". Also there is the savage Phil Collins drumming.

Decisive Pink "What Where (2023)" (from Ticket To Fame)

Decisive Pink are a weirdo pop duo comprising Angel Deradoorian and Kate NV. Deradoorian was previously in Dirty Projectors and NV wasn't. They played at Le Guess Who in 2023 and I thought they might be worth seeing but couldn't get to them. That's probably all you need to know.

Broadcast "Roses Red" (from Spell Blanket - Collected Demos 2006-2009)

This collection of demos was released last year but I'm including this track in my collection of not-2024 songs on the basis that it was recorded a long time ago. I still feel sad thinking about Trish Keenans' passing.

Orion Rigel Dommisse "Hewn" (2014) (from Omicron)

This track appears on an album released by that Italians Do It Better record label of that guy from Chromatics. Now, the typical non-Chromatics IDIB record is released by a female artist singing in a Europorn accent to a heavily electronic accompaniment, but this one appears to be by someone for whom English is their first language making music a bit less electronically focussed than that of her IDIB stablemates. She doesn't seem to have released very much since the album this came from but investigation reveals that she is playing gigs supporting other IDIB artists so maybe she will release something new soon.

Miles Davis "One And One" (1972) (from On the Corner)

Some years ago I spent all day in the Irish Museum of Modern Art watching the Stan Douglas video art exhibit Luanda-Kinshasa, which aimed to replicate the feel of mid-1970s Miles Davis recording some fusion record in a studio. The music in it was so great that I became keen to listen to more of the Miles Davis tunes that had inspired it so I initially picked up a copy of Bitches Brew, but it wasn't quite the same (plus my cat actively hated it). Someone mentioned however that his album On the Corner is more like what I had described Luanda-Kinshasa as sounding like, so I picked up a copy and yes it is. It is also a pretty crazy record and you can imagine all the oldschool jazzers being all "I may be broadminded but FUCK THIS SHIT".

Grauzone "Eisbär" (1981) (from the Ace Records compilation Fantastic Voyage - New Sounds For The European Canon 1977-1981)

Another track from that compilation of Berlin Bowie influenced sounds. Who among us has not wished they were a polar bear?

Model/Actriz "Slate" (2023) (from Dogsbody)

Another act I missed at Le Guess Who 2023. Someone bigged them up to me and I bought the album because I am impressionable.

Meljoann "O Supervisor" (2021) (from H.R.)

Another home-made R&B classic from the massively successful alternate universe pop star. It also has a typically bonkers home-made video that I encourage readers to check out.

The Crystal Teardrop "Nine Times Nine" (2023)

The Crystal Teardrop, neo-psych sensations and cat fanciers.

Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso U.F.O. "Crystal Sun and Silver Moon" (2023) (from Shall We Return to Outer Space?)

Everyone loves Acid Mothers Temple apart from a number of people whose unsound opinions have been registered with the proper authorities.

Not on Spotify, so follow the link to Bandcamp to hear the track.

Valentina Goncharova (feat. Alexander Aksenov) "Reincarnation II" (from Recordings 1987-1991, Vol. 2 )

An odd piece of contemporary classical adjacent music from the interesting Ukrainian label Muscut.

Natalia Beylis "Afloat In Fog And Feathers" (2023) (from Mermaids)

Natalia Beylis has become a powerhouse figure in Irish experimental music. I came into her orbit through the Hunters Moon festival, which she was involved in organising, but it is only in more recent years that I have come to appreciate what an astonishingly impressive artist she is.

Jrpjej "Quedzoque Tole Tsık’u (Altıdoquehe Dolet tsık’u yi wored)" (2023) (from Şefitse: Circassian Songs of XX Century)

Jrpjej are ethnic Circassian musicians from Russia, although I think they skipped out of there following the commencement of the unpleasantness. The album this track comes from was released on 21 May 2023, the day on which Circassians commemorate the massacres and ethnic cleansing inflicted on their kinfolk in the late 19th century, an event sometimes characterised as the Circassian Genocide.

Alasdair Roberts, Amble Skuse & David McGuinness "The Fair Flower Of Northumberland" (2018) (from What News)

"The Fair Flower of Northumberland" is one of those well known folk tunes and I have heard a good few different versions of it (including one by the Unthanks). This sees Roberts singing while McGuinness plays piano and Skuse provides mysterious electronic treatments.

Rachel Unthank & The Winterset "I Wish" (2007) (from The Bairns)

This is another olde folk tune from the early Unthanks album I mentioned in the last mailing. I think this is another song a lot of people have sung.

ØXN "The Trees They Do Grow High" (2023) (from Cyrm)

And finally we have this widely performed traditional tune, here by weird folk supergroup ØXN, with Katie Kim on lead vocals.

Cyrm image link

2024: My Favourite New Songs

Back at the start of 2025 I made a compilation of my favourite new songs of 2024. I shared it with some of my music fan buds. Now at last I am writing about it here. If you would like a copy and are not someone who is going to shop me to the copyright cops, let me know.

I created a Spotify playlist of these tunes, but some of the best ones are not to be found on that evil platform.

Asmaa Hamzaoui & Bnat Timbouktou Lalla Aicha 1 (from L´Bnat)

This is gnawa music from Morocco, which I understand to be a form of devotional music associated with the somewhat mystical Sufi strain of Islam. This lot are apparently unique in that they are all women, with gnawa music usually a male preserve. I saw them performing at Le Guess Who in Utrecht and was very taken with their call-response vocals, odd percussion, and Hamzaoui's playing of the sintir, which has a sound highly reminiscent of the Ethiopian bèguèna (as heard on Éthiopiques Vol. 11: The Harp of King David)

Mohammad Syfkhan Do You Have a Lover or Not? (from I Am Kurdish)

Syfkhan is an Irish based Kurd from Syria. He sings and plays the bouzouki to a programmed accompaniment. Not completely different to the music of Omar Souleyman (also a Syrian Kurd). While the live bouzouki forces things to be a bit less frenetic than with Souleyman, this will still have you bopping around your kitchen.

Mohammad Syfkhan is not on Spotify. This track is a total banger so I urge you to check it out on Bandcamp.

Deradoorian Digital Gravestone

I get it, it sounds a bit like Can's "Mother Sky". Angel Deradoorian used to be in the Dirty Projectors but left them at around the time people stopped being interesting in that band. She releases music on her own but also as half of Digital Pink. I think this is a taster for a forthcoming album and the lyrics might reference the Armenian Genocide, a horrendous event occurring around the time of the First World War (Deradoorian is herself of Armenian background).

Throwing Muses Drugstore Drastic

Fucking hell are Throwing Muses still going? This is another taster for an approaching album and I would be surprised at how strong this sounds if their last album (2000's Sun Racket) had not been a complete belter.

The Crystal Teardrop Running Out Of Time

Psych revivalists, but good.

Jane Weaver Love In Constant Spectacle (from Love in Constant Spectacle)

Title track from the divine Jane's wonderful recent album.

Maria Somerville Projections

I heard this on the radio and thought "I'd buy that piece of engaging neo-shoegaze for a dollar." Apparently Irish artist Somerville has been around for a while and released at least one mini-album but people are excitedly looking forward to the new album for which this is another taster.

Mary & The Pigeons Charcoal Wings (from Like Water)

In Stoneybatter there is this guy who feeds pigeons in front of his house, which has led to a division of opinions. The pigeons are generally in favour of his generosity, as are members of the rodent community, but quite a few human residents of the local area are hostile. Mary Barnecutt however is on team pigeon; hence the name of her band. She sings and plays cello, usually in combination with some other musicians, and is an intriguing and compelling performer.

Fears 4th of the 1st (from Affinity)

Mopetronica from London-based Irish artist whose real name is Constance Keane. I was unaware of her existence until a friend included one of her tracks on a previous end of year compilation.

Meljoann Bye

The poptastic sounds of Meljoann mean that she is very famous in an alternate universe. She makes her own videos and you can see the one for this song here.

Party Dozen Coup De Gronk (from the compilation TRL 2024)

I do not know anything about these people other than that they appeared on the compilation album TRL 2024, which I somehow ended up acquiring.

Morah Den Ise Edo (from the compilation Enough!)

Another track from a compilation, this time a fundraiser for Dr. Ghassan Abu Sittah's Children's Fund, which attempts to bring medical aid to children in Gaza and also Lebanon. I can find no information whatsoever about Morah online, but you can read more about the Children's Fund here.

Also not on Spotify.

Ex-Easter Island Head Easter (from Norther)

A clearly gamelan influenced track from another band I saw at Le Guess Who.

NCH Gamelan Orchestra Lancaran Degung (from Kyai Jati Roso)

This is from the advanced National Concert Hall gamelan group, which plays music from the Javanese gamelan tradition.

Sanggar Sidakaria Gabor Dance (from Palegongan)

Let's edge it up with a recording of some more gamelan… only this time from Bali, where they have their own separate gamelan tradition. You have to imagine this and the previous track fighting each other.

Not on Spotify.

Loula Yorke Falling apart together (from Volta)

Because I am very impressionable I bought a copy of the Volta album when someone I know posted on social media about how a friend had released a record. This is the kind of oldschool analogue synth stuff Momma used to make.

Cormorant Tree Oh Terror Of The Countryside (from Moonish)

You know the way all Indian actors have Khan as their surname but claim not to be related to each other? In Ireland it is like that with women making oddball electronic music except they are called Keane and not Khan. Here we have a track from Cormorant Tree Oh, the trading name of Mary Keane, who makes music that uses electronics a bit but also various acoustic instruments as well as her voice. I think she is such an amazing artist that I was almost loth to include a track by her on this compilation for fear that some of my less house-trained buds would respond with a "what's this shite?" comment about her tune.

Souterrains Dead & Gone (from Souterrains)

This ties in with an art project about climate change and stuff. Here we have what is meant to be a tune made by someone in the future as they travel across the chain of islands and swamps that sit where Ireland used to be.

Not on Spotify.

Ian Lynch Máirseáil Chrapchosach (from All You Need Is Death OST)

Maybe you have seen the film All You Need Is Death in which case you will know what this is like. If not it I can reveal that it is droney folky possibly electronic music.

The Unthanks Dear Companions (from In Winter)

This combines Becky Unthanks' lyrics to a traditional American tune. This is one I know from singing it at Unthanks singing weekends and (spoiler) it does go a bit singing weekend towards the end.

Mani

Farewell to Mani of the Stone Roses, Primal Scream and other outfits. I saw him live a few times with the Primals but also more notably with punk supergroup Mad For The Racket (also featuring Wayne Kramer, Clem Burke and Brian James, all now also deceased). Onstage he always looked like he was having the absolute time of his life; maybe this was stagecraft but his enthusiasm was always infectious.

While on a long journey to Glasgow (of which more later) I took the opportunity to listen to all the albums I have with Mani playing on them: the Stone Roses' first album and Primal Scream's Vanishing Point & XTRMNTR. Fucking hell, the Stone Roses' first album is amazing. I'm not saying anything new here but it seems like one of those records where everything comes together. Mani's playing is incredible but it's such a great group effort where everyone seems to be on top of their game. I must admit though, I did get a bit teary when 'Made of Stone' came on.

Vanishing Point was the Primals' comeback album after the still un-rehabilitated Give Out But Don't Give Up. And you know what? It's OK rather than brilliant. 'Kowalski' is great but I'm not sure it would be so great if the bassline hadn't been lifted from a Funkadelic track and the rest of the album is fine to listen to without ascending any significant heights. XTRMNTR though is a real classic, feeling like Bobby Gillespie has now recruited enough good musicians from other bands that they can spark off each other and produce great music. Mani's bass is all over it but it's a true group effort and one I'll never stop listening to.

I'm now curious about Freebase, the bassist supergroup featuring Mani, Andy Rourke and Peter Hook. I really hope they have a recording of Spinal Tap's 'Big Bottom'.

image:

Mani performing with Primal Scream in 2009 (Wikipedia)

My Bloody Valentine play Dublin

My Bloody Valentine went on tour and played a load of gigs, including here in Dublin. They also played a notionally secret warm-up gig a few days before the real one here. And I didn't go to any of them. My reasoning was two-fold. Firstly, the not-secret gig was in the Point (known to bootlickers as the 3Arena), Dublin's largest indoor venue, and not somewhere I generally like to see my kind of music, as it is just too big. The other reason was that when I saw MBV some years back at All Tomorrow's Parties I thought they were a bit dull: too static onstage and playing in a rather formulaic manner, the 'You Made Me Realise' holocaust now just coming across as a box-ticking exercise and not something even remotely transgressive or challenging. I still love them on record though, so I did feel a slight twinge of FOMO jealousy as people were heading off to the secret warm-up gig.

It is strange though how popular MBV have become in the years since they were originally active. They never played venues as large as they do now in their heyday. So who is going to see them? Have they picked up loads of fans from the young people in the thirty years or so since they first went on hiatus? Or have loads of people my age who never liked them back then now been converted to shoegaze distortion? And are MBV attendees concert-goers attending their one gig of the year, making this a nostalgia-fest akin to an ageing hipsters' version of those Oasis reunion gigs? Or are MBV attendees keeping up with the latest shoegaze developments to the extent that we can see a surge of interest in attending in February? We'll see.

On a separate note, I find myself thinking about the 2013 My Bloody Valentine album m b v.With the passage of time, is it seen as a core part of the oeuvre or has it been memory-holed as one those completely inessential albums bands sometimes feel obliged to release when they reform for some cash-in gigs? I struggle to remember much about it and it's not something that calls me to listen to it.

If you're interested, there's a pretty good recording of the main Dublin gig on the Internet Archive.

A previous MBV moan.

images

Live image (Internet Archive)

m b v (Wikipedia)

Flashback: My 2025 Blogposts

My blogposts start life as things written for Frank's APA (the amateur press association for people who like music). I actually write quite a lot for that august journal, much of which fails to make it onto this blog for various reasons. Some of it is too conversational, making sense in the pages of the APA but not being something anyone would want to read online (although going by the stats on this blog's readership, what I post is also not in tune with the reading preferences of the online world). And some of it I never get round to revising and formatting for the blog because I am a procrastinating slackass. So as it turned out, I did not make too many blogposts last year, but here they all are again.

Music in Film 01: The Zone of Interest, Perfect Days, and others: I talk about some films I saw in 2024, focussing to some extent on their musical content. Some of the films are discussed very briefly.

Music in Film 02: All You Need Is Death, Eno, The Colour of Pomegranates, Portishead, Lone Star: More fairly short notes on films seen in 2024 that featured music.

Music in Film 03: Star Wars, The Long Goodbye, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat: More films with music (including the very music-focussed Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat). Post features the celebrated Long Goodbye cat scene.

2024: My Favourite New Songs: I present a list of my favourite new tunes of 2024, with a link to a Spotify playlist that features some of them.

2024: My Favourite Newly Discovered Old Songs: A list of great old tunes I heard for the first time in 2024, also with a link to an almost complete Spotify playlist.

2024: My Favourite New Films: The new films I liked the most in 2024.

2024: My Favourite Newly Discovered Old Films: The old films I liked the best in 2024.

2024: My Favourite Theatrical Productions: Still looking back on 2024, here are the best theatrical productions I saw in that year (which I think might also be all the theatrical productions I saw).

2024: My Favourite Audio Dramas: BBC radio dramas old and new that I enjoyed in 2024.

What have I nominated for the 2025 Hugo Awards?: Things I nominated for the 2025 Hugo Awards, many of which failed to make the ballot due to biased political voting and an impartial application of the so-called "rules".

The films of David Lynch: a definitive ranking: I appeared on a David Lynch panel at Eastercon, which means I am officially an expert on the popular filmmaker. Here I objectively rank the great man's films. My ordering may surprise you.

Gamelan Corner: Accumulation: I wrote about an American gamelan piece I was trying to play in our Gamelan class.

Troubled Songs: Music of the Northern Ireland Conflict: I put together a compilation of songs dealing with the Northern Ireland Troubles and used them as a way of presenting a history of that unpleasant conflict. This post got a lot of traction thanks to a well-connected friend sharing a link to it, replies to which revealed that there are a lot of people out there who like The Cranberries.

A Scottish Gamelan Retreat: I travelled to a remote Scottish location to spend a week playing gamelan music. This was a key 2025 event for me and I am pleased with how this write-up of it came out.

Live: Gibby Haynes plays the hits of the Butthole Surfers (with The Scott Thunes Institute of Musical Excellence and Evicshen): Gibby Haynes is or was in popular Texan band The Butthole Surfers and this was my account of seeing him play their songs live with a bunch of kids as his backing band and a whip-wielding lady as his support act.

And that's it. I'll try to do more blog posts in 2026.