Sigur rós @ Fort Canning Park, Singapore [23/11/2012] , Or Excuse Me I Am Trying To Have Some Feelings Over Here.

If you're a fan of the Sigur rós, there's probably one defining image above all that encapsulates the band's existence in your mind ; that iconic silhouette of frontman and Actual Ethereal Fairy Chipmunk Angel Man Jónsi Birgisson as he bends over nearly in half, frantically sawing away at his guitar with a cello bow. Seeing that image in real life was pretty fucking special. And that voice of his, heard in real time? A million times more enchanting than any recording of the band you probably own. He's not much of a banterer, but the few words he did spare ("Thank you very much for coming out" and "This is a new song, I hope you like it") were uttered in the most mega-adorable way you can imagine. We're talking MAD amounts of charisma here ; when he raised his arms at the chorus of Hoppipolla, in a gesture urging the crowd to sing along, and then cracked his first smile of the night as he heard us trying to keep up in our woeful phonetic imitation of Icelandic, I pretty much knew I was ready to follow this man to the ends of the earth, without question. (We got our first "Thank you very much" of the night after that song. I think our adorable -and fairly respectable -Asian attempts at singing in his language succeeded in winning him over). Fuck you and your perfection, sir. If there's one thing this gig did for me above all, it affirmed my utter life-consuming respect and adoration for this guy and everything he does. My heart is yours, whale man.




I've read some reviews of the gig claiming that the sound system left something to be desired. To which I say WHAT WERE YOU MOTHERBANGERS SMOKING THAT NIGHT because that shit sounded amazing. I may be a n00b as far as sound technology goes, but I thought the band sounded virtually perfect. I didn't catch a single bum note, and every song sounded several hundred times fuller and more majestic than on a studio recording. I was particularly impressed by this, considering the fact that I secretly expected the audio quality to pale a little compared to the albums, especially in the context of an open air venue. And I was so wrong. There's not one single recording of that concert  available on the Internet right now that is capable of doing justice to how good these guys sounded.



ORRI. Oh my god, the ORRI. And by Orri, I refer to Sigur rós' beast of a drummer. There is no way one man could have made the amount of noise he made that night, and not a single beat did he drop. Not to mention he was also regularly taking turns on the xylophones and that tiny piano thing (what is that even called?). As captivating as Jónsi and his tasseled sleeve and rat-tail hair were, it was often very very difficult to tear my eyes away from the far right side of the stage, where the drums were. Does Orri have a medal for being an awesome human being yet? Because he's earned one. Because fuck, he is hella good at his job.




The 9000-strong crowd was fairly decent and well-behaved, compared to the last throng of infidels I had to deal with. No one pushed, shoved, prodded or even so much as brushed up against me. No creative swearing was required. The weed smokers and hipsters were out in droves that night ; never had I seen so much fedora and feathers and sundresses in a muddy, sloping field in the middle of monsoon season, but fortunately that wasn't the sort of thing that really rubbed me the wrong way or anything.
There was a brief but intense argument between two factions of concert-goers ;  the people who had brought plastic sheets and newspapers and wanted to turn the evening into a sit-on-the-grass-and-chill listening session, and the people who were already standing up and crowding around the stage. That dilemma thankfully sorted itself the moment the band appeared onstage and EVERYONE jumped to their feet anyway. For the record, I would have personally loved a sit-down-and-chill gig, but the standing up was fine in any case.



However, I did take offense at the multitude of cameras and iPads being held over people's heads throughout the gig. Look, I'm glad someone is recording all this for posterity, but I don't need to see a tiny pixellated Jónsi on your tablet screen getting all up in my face when the REAL man is only about 100+ meters away from me. I had to spend a fair amount of time adjusting the position of my head and neck to avoid the assortment of digital rectangles keeping me from getting an optimum view of the stage. It was only when a couple of the camera-toters left early that i could see both Jónsi and Orri within the same line of sight (and got quite excited about that).  But SERIOUSLY. Chill out with the technology already.

There seemed to be an unspoken consensus among nearly everyone present that simply standing and  listening in hushed, reverent silence was the way to go. There were, as always, the handful of asshats who insisted on carrying on a conversation throughout an entire song (really? really? REALLY? REALLY?), and the idiots who took to screaming or woooo!-ing during the most quiet, haunting bits of a song.
Namely, that legendary section of Svefn-g-englar where Jónsi howls angelically into the cavity of his guitar as all the other instruments go quiet. That is not the time for you to to scream out "FUCK YEAAAHHHH!" like the dudebro you are. Don't, man. Just don't. You're killing the moment. That is not okay. That is a breach of ethics, in my book. To That Guy, whoever you are, I hope you burn your breakfast every day from now until Christmas.



Thankfully, the noise-making asshats were a mild annoyance at worst, and also led to the absolute gem of random concert exchanges, as reported by Sue Fyenn :

some girl : JONSI I LOVE YOU!
some guy from the other side of the crowd: YEAH WELL JONSI DOESN'T LOVE YOU BACK

Win.



A very special mention goes out to the backing musicians ; the horn section, the two replacement dudes for absent keyboardist Kjartan Sveinsson (who decided to sit out this tour for personal reasons, the jerk - I genuinely missed his bearded presence behind the piano) , and the ladies of the string quartet (minus one). They were incredible, and an absolutely crucial part of how good the band the sounded on the night. Plus, I had never heard a string section play live before in my life until Friday night, and dear god, it is fucking sublime.



We got a solid 2 hour, 15 song set. But even then, you can't have the band play ALL the songs you want to hear. I did not get Staralfur or Untitled #4, but I did get a song I never expected them to include in any setlist ever for this tour. So that's something, huh?

The band also played us a new song, Brennisteinn (Brimstone), which is loud, brash, violent, mildly terrifying, extremely bad ass and an overall throwback to the sound of their first album, Von. The background visuals for the track were also chillingly impressive ; raw and feral and pretty intense, all set to that face-melting bassline and a bunch of cold green light in your face. If this is the sound they're gunning for in the new EP (and presumably an album AND MORE TOURING PLEASE to follow), well then BRING IT ON MOTHERFUCKERS.




It's a fact now : Sigur rós is a force of nature. Just before 10.30 pm or so, I glanced up at the sky to see that it had inexplicably turned bright orange. It looked as though it was both daytime and night simultaneously.

AND THEN THE MAGIC RAIN HAPPENED.

The magic rain story that people who were at Fort Canning that night are probably going to bore their grandchildren to pieces with in the coming decades.
It had been thunderstorming in Singapore a few hours before the gig was due to start, but the skies remained clear for the duration of the show itself, or so we thought. A mild drizzle started up as the band returned to play their encore. As Untitled #8 built up to its crescendo, the rain got steadily heavier and heavier and heavier, as if keeping pace with the music. By the time the 15-minute track was drawing in to its closing portion, we were all thoroughly,completely, magically drenched in soul-cleansing rainwater that the band had managed to summon from who fucking knows where. And then, as Jónsi drew out the very last note of the song, the rain stopped.
The rain stopped. 
It didn't trickle off or slow down, or fade. It stopped, right on cue with the final note of the very last song of the set. I noticed people who were so busy looking up at the sky, wondering what the hell had just happened, that they missed the band quietly making their exit from the stage after pulling off whatever glorious unholy spell it was that they had cast on the weather for those 15 minutes in time.



Moments later the band returned to the stage with heartfelt smiles plastered on their faces, looking genuinely pleased at us and with themselves. They took their collective bows and stood around applauding back at the crowd for a good few minutes. I caught Jónsi with his hands cupped around his mouth, presumably yelling back an "I LOVE YOU TOO" to someone or other, or simply "WOOOO!"-ing appreciatively back at the audience. And boy, did that warm me up right through my rain-drenched mud-dipped clothes.
 Hopefully, now that they know they have fans this devoted in South East Asia, fans this willing to sing along in shamefully broken Icelandic without a trace of self-consciousness, means that there will be that much more of a chance that the guys will add Singapore and/or KL dates to future tours. Because seriously guys, all these years and you never considered looking a little to the left of Taiwan on the map? FOR SHAME.


As Threatened, Here Are Some Final, Complicated Thoughts Regarding The Whole Thing


 If all of the above sounds like I have absolutely nothing to complain about, you're right. I do have nothing to complain about. My only enemy was my unrealistically high expectations that kept me from really, truly losing myself in the moment and drowning in all my feels. Not even Sigur rós could live up to the irrationally perfect vision I had in my head of how the night would go. You can't have everything happen exactly the way you want, and I had to learn that in a bit of a painful way, to be honest.

I still felt stabs of jealousy as I read twitter updates from people attending the KL gig just a couple of nights later, wishing ardently that I could be going again, with a clean slate, as some sort of do-over. To get my perfect night with Sigur rós, maybe even my ONLY night with Sigur rós in this lifetime, done just right. Done just the way I dreamed it would happen since I was fifteen years old. The songs I wished they would have played, the emotions I wished I would have felt, the unparallelled, life-affirming fulfillment I imagined I would experience. That I expected to experience, that I thought I was entitled to experience. I had fixed this in my mind to be the one event that would define and overshadow everything else that had ever happened in my life, and would ever happen in the next decade. This is the band that came into my life and completely redefined what music could be and could mean to me. I've cried buckets listening to their records.  I've made friends talking about their music. I've forced other friends to fall in love with them just as hard as I had. To say that these guys and their music mean a hell of a lot to me would be a woeful understatement (this is all very angsty and melodramatic, but you have to admit that something about post rock music just DEMANDS angst and melodrama).




 In retrospect, it was very very stupid and childish to expect so much - TOO much - out of a concert experience, and I am PISSED at myself for it. Five days later, and it still hurts a wee bit when I listen to songs that were played that night, kicking myself for being so caught up in my fantasies, for not having been PRESENT enough to fully enjoy those moments for how utterly magnificent they truly were. And they were. But I am insanely lucky to have had the opportunity to see them at all. And take nothing away from the band - they were absolutely fucking phenomenal in every humanly possible way, And I can say without a shred of doubt that I adore them even more than I ever did before.





I imagine going back in time, 8 years or so, to 15 year old me. I imagine her - me - puking her guts out with excitement and disbelief as I tell her hey, guess what asshole? We get to see Sigur rós, for real, with our own eyeballs, before we die! It happens! It's real! We won't even have to wait till we're like OLD and have enough money to fly over to Iceland and abduct them right out of retirement and make them play us a private concert as ransom (which is something I actually, seriously planned out with another individual who shall remain unnamed).

They come to us instead. Oh yes they do. They come to us.

I fucking know right?? You'll be there! You'll be there with a bunch of awesome people you love who also all love Sigur rós as much as you do! You'll even travel to another country! You'll be sick and tired and hungry for most of the weekend and you'll get rained and thunderstormed upon so much you'll forget what it feels like to ever be dry, and you'll be cramped into an impossibly tiny room in a budget hotel somewhere in Singapore and you won't be able to sleep.

But you'll be there, and you will see Sigur rós. It won't exactly be everything we ever dreamed it would be, because we dreamed too hard, and we dreamed too much. Because expectation can be a false and cruel thing. And we'll hurt a little, for a little while. But it happens to us. It happens to us, can you even believe that oh my god. And I don't know how we'll feel about this when we're much, much older, but I really hope in time we'll both learn to appreciate that night for what it was instead of for what we wanted it to be. Because we deserve at least that much.

you absolutely adorable piece of fuck

The only other gig I managed to attend earlier this year was a frustrating, painful affair that left me physically unable to listen to the band's music for a good week or so without feeling horrible.When I finally got back home from Singapore, having rested, showered, ate my first meal in ages that wasn't McDonald's, and tried unsuccessfully to stop feeling jealous of the KL gig-goers, I put on some headphones and played a Sigur rós track at random. There was a rush of warm fuzzies in my stomach, almost immediately. And I think I knew I was going to be okay with this.I haven't been able to listen to any other music since Friday, actually. so that's beyond promising.

I spent the rest of the night trying to articulate my complicated post-gig emotions at my mother, and she responded with "What are you going to do now? I mean this is it, you've seen Sigur rós live. What now?".

What now indeed, mom. Well mom, there's the usual stuff like graduating with my degree and getting a job I love doing and making something of myself and being a good person. And then maybe I'll just go see Sigur rós again. And again. And again. And again. Maybe once on every continent. Now that it's happened once, another chance doesn't seem as distant or hopeless as it was even 6 months ago. And next time - whether "next time" is going to be Sigur rós or anyone else I'm just as madly in love with - I'll be wiser and more receptive and less self-centred and more there. More present.  And I will let go of what I think I want and what I think should happen and what I think I should be feeling and just focus on the magic that is already there, because it is there, in spades. In avalanches.

Thank you thank you thank you thank you, you glorious beautiful talented wonderful fairy chipmunk musical deity motherfuckers. I'm glad you guys exist in the world, and make the music that you make. And I heart you all so hard it hurts.


credit for all gorgeous photographs from Fort Canning go to ciaomyshiningstar and the lovely auroraborealissandwich (with her gracious permission - many thanks again!)

So this happened in front of my face just a couple of nights ago.

More words to follow, once I've organized my rather complicated thoughts and feelings into something resembling semi-coherence, and once I've tackled a backlog of assignments and studently duties. Sigur ros play the Urbanscapes festival in Kuala Lumpur tonight, and my greedy punk-ass self wishes I could be seeing them twice in one weekend in two different countries because :

a. HOW BITCHIN' WOULD THAT BE??

and

b. for some reason or other, I don't think I got nearly ALL that I could have gotten out of the gig on Friday night. Was it the ultimate bitch-ass night of glorious spiritual and musical transcendence I had been imagining for months and months? Well, not entirely. I think there comes a point where you can overhype and oversell something even to yourself, until the build-up of anticipation that precedes the Thing almost leads to a mild letdown once the Actual Thing is right in front of you. I know you know what I mean.

So was it the ULTIMATE bitch-ass night of glorious spiritual and musical transcendence I had hoped for?
No (mainly because I wanted to break down crying at the intro of every song, and I didn't.)

Am I disappointed by this realization? Well, also no. How can you be disappointed once you've had SIGUR ROS IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE FOR TWO HOURS? I MEAN LIKE FUCKING HELL. Anyway, a proper post about all this will be up in the next few days.

Here is Jónsi being an adorable whale-man at you until my return.






[credit for all pictures except whale-Jónsi go to this lovely tumblr site. none of the images are mine because I don't own a decent camera and also I am crap at photography.]

Sigur Rós Playing With Flat Icelandic Rocks. And Giggling A Lot.

I swear, these guys could play marshmallows next, and it would make me curl up on the floor and flail around at the utter unfathomability of their Divine Awesome.



It actually makes for truly fabulous Internet-surfing background music. I have listened to nothing else for 3 whole days. If you're curious, this clip was taken off the band's 2007 tour film Heima, which everyone should watch at least once in their lifetime. Here's the trailer. Geographical landscape pornography set to majestic glaciery post-rock, dudes.

I'm A Part-Time Meme Hijacker. Watch Me Grab It And Run.

Nobody tagged me for this, which is fine, because memes are always more fascinating when you're not under obligation to take part.

"Think of 25 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of, they musically shaped your world. They stood up, they lasted, they mattered. They still matter, in some way (even if only in memory). "

Right. Before I start, I'll have you all know that
a. I'm barely two decades old, so there probably hasn't been much room for musical profundity, really.
b. You probably won't find anything on my list that was released before 1996.
c. I make no apologies for any album on said list which may contain unforgivable levels of suckage.
d. I will not be tagging anyone, as usual.
e. This will probably be really long, considering that it combines two of my fave things ever ; music and talking about myself.

Here Be The Life-Affirming Musical Profundity (in no particular order):

1. A Rush Of Blood To The Head - Coldplay


Yeah. Coldplay. Apparently well on the way to becoming the next perennially bloated U2, so I've heard. But A Rush Of Blood To The Head will forever stand as a testament to Coldplay at their best ; halfway between the acoustic sentimentality of Parachutes and the anthemic, ambitious, pretentious shit of X&Y. And it would be impossible to forget the year in which Amsterdam became my Emo Anthem of Emo-ness (because I was a pathetic emo mess at age 14 ). And it remains my strongest piece of evidence that these guys are at the peak of perfection when singing about primary colours and shady Dutch capital cities.

2. Takk - Sigur ros

This one is pretty darn nostalgic in a lot of ways. It constituted a large portion of the first mixed CD I ever received, it was the first album I ever got as a gift, a review of it was in the first copy of Galaxie I ever purchased, it contains the one song that made me tear up the first time I heard it, and most importantly, it was the reason for my discovering that my Life's Ultimate Purpose is to stuff music down people's proverbial throats whether they liked it or not.

3. Debt & Departure - Those Bastard Souls

Debt & Departure remains special in the sense that I discovered it pretty much on my own ;no assistance from radio, TV, the Internet, music mags or even word of mouth. It was just there, lying at the bottom of a stack of old CDs in a dusty, mouldy, cockroach-infested cupboard. I decided to give it a spin, just for fun, and fell in love practically on the spot. It wouldn't be years later until I discovered the album's very impressive credentials, namely the fact that most of the band members were stray wanderers from Jeff Buckley's original posse, and that it was considered one of the best albums of the 90s. Not that any of it matters,really.

4. Hopes And Fears - Keane


Hopes and Fears intruded upon my life when I was fourteenish, and proceeded to enable a lot of my early adolescent emo phasing. Somewhere Only We Know played on pretty much a constant loop on my head, especially when I was at school, where I would gaze wistfully out the window at the trees outside and imagine Tim's (or is it Tom's?) voice soaring through the leaves. Keane will never be as good as this, which is probably a mean thing to say. Oh well.

5. Begin To Hope - Regina Spektor



It was late 2006, and we were doing this super huge makeover on the house, and this was the only thing we listened to during our back-breaking 12 hour painting sessions, until even my mom was singing along to the "ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-heart" chorus in Fidelity.
In fact, the smell of paint still makes me think of that song. Aww.

6. Paint The Sky With Stars - Enya

Shut up.
Enya rocks.

7. Life For Rent - Dido


You know those albums you've listened to so many times that every note of every instrument has practically seared itself into your brain? This would be one of them.
And shut up. Dido's awesome.

8. Hearing Voices - Will Ackerman

When I asked my dad to get me a copy of Takk from Tower Records, he went over there, completely mispronounced the band's name, and came home with this instead. Out of pure pissed-offness I decided to ignore the existence of Hearing Voices until my dad played it one day and I fell sickeningly in love with all the gorgeous guitars and vocals in languages I couldn't understand (Hebrew, Sanskrit and Italian to name a few). And I am a sucker for languages I cannot understand. Never have I been more grateful for my father's inability to say the word "Sigur ros".

9. Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not - Arctic Monkeys


I listened to Fake Tales of San Francisco on Grace's mp3 player on the bus while we were on a librarian field trip thing (remember them good old librarian days, dude? When we made Nerd-dom proud by laughing at obscure limericks in the Dictionary of Quotations, amongst other intellectual pursuits?). Prior to that field trip, I was of the opinion that the Arctic Monkeys were just some loud, pimply, brash English youngsters badly in need of elocution lessons. That bus ride changed my whole outlook on the band. They're still loud, brash, pimply, virtually unintelligible and English. But now I can love them for it.

10. The Collection/ Let It Rain - Tracy Chapman


How much I frakking adore this woman, I cannot even begin to describe. Also it's kind of cool to think that my mom used to listen to these songs on cassette tapes on the bus, on her way to work back when she was my age.

11. Logic Will Break Your Heart - The Stills


I went barking mad over these guys during what is referred to as "the beginnings of my indie phase". It's not exactly musically-groundbreaking stuff, but I can forgive its relative simplicity for the number of times it has kept me company during long, boring car journeys, mainly trying to figure what exactly the chorus to Gender Bombs says. Exceedingly cerebrally-stimulating activity, that.

12. In Rainbows - Radiohead

Yeah. I could have said something awesomer, like Kid A or OK Computer. But the reality is that the bulk of my Radioheaducation came in one massive dose, with no real distinction between time frames or albums. I could probably inform you rather well as to what song comes from which album, but it makes no actual difference to me (travesty, I know). In Rainbows marked the first time I could savour a Radiohead album on its own terms, at a time when I was both old and Radioheaducated enough to be aware of their awesomeness, and that's a pretty big deal to the BAP.

13. O - Damien Rice


This took over my life roughly around the time when I started rebelling against Catholicismess, the religion I was brought up with (with? in?) and asked too many questions nobody could answer and took the plunge into my own special brand of a weird sort of agnosticism and wrote a letter to my mother explaining all my issues because I could hardly have a face to face conversation with my folks about religion by that point without somebody being reduced to tears, and yeah. The last time in living memory that I made my mom cry. And O, despite really having nothing much to do with the Catholic faith really (except for Why'd you say hallelujah/ If it means nothing to ya) was sort of the only thing I listened to during those months. Nothing else was miserable enough, really.

14. He Poos Clouds - Final Fantasy


Seriously. Best album title ever. Final Fantasy was one of the first things I ever experimented with when it came to acquiring music on the Internet via blogs, and I remember being as amazed as heck that anybody could make songs like these off nothing more than ye olde violin. I'll profess love for almost anything under the sun if you toss some violin music in there, and He Poos Clouds was sort of like having a prayer answered at the time. For about 3 months I honestly was not the least bit concerned about the existence of any other musician on earth.
And imagine my delight when I found out how Pretty the guy is!

15. Leonard Cohen: I'm Your Man OST - Various

I never really got into Leonard Cohen's original stuff much before, but the cover versions on this soundtrack album were like a drug. One listen and I was hooked. Everything from Nick Cave to the Wainwrights to Teddy Thompson to Beth Orton to Jarvis Cocker, it was all I played for maybe a month (until the new Sigur ros rolled along;because I am fickle like that) and my whole family have even picked out their funeral songs off this collection. Go buy this and guess which mine is.

16. Try!The John Mayer Trio Live In Concert - The John Mayer Trio


See, when John Mayer isn't being a massive jerk, he actually makes some pretty kickass music. These three kept me company on all those long, lonely nights I had to spend staying up with my History textbooks and all that manner of crap, cramming names and dates and facts into my head. And it was always History, for some reason. Mayer, Jordan and Palladino never seemed to get along with any other subject. Gentlemen, I thank thee all for the big fat A on my exam slip right next to "History".

17. Gold - ABBA

Shut up.
If you must know, my parents used to play this album every Sunday morning right after church when my mom would be making the only homecooked breakfast of the week. And I was like, 8 years old maybe. You could probably say I didn't know any better. But I told you I wasn't going to make any apologies.


18. Singles - Travis


It seems odd to place such a tragic event in association with the jangly happiness of Travis, but I bought and listened to Singles at a time when an acquaintance of mine from school died a particularly terrible death. I didn't know the person well at all, but everyone was so badly shaken up and in tatters over it that it was hard not to be affected by it, at least to some small degree. It got all of us pondering on mortality and how ridiculously, disgustingly young we truly were at the time, and to some of us it was even a rude shock, pertaining how very little time we actually had left and how unfair the universe could be when it felt like it. And also how some people live and love and accomplish more in 17 years than others ever will in 70.

19. Narrow Stairs - Death Cab For Cutie

Y'know back in the day, maybe a few months ago, when I hated school's guts and felt like throwing up even when thinking about it, blah blah blah? This album kept me sane. In all seriousness. Thanks, Grace.

20. Donnie Darko OST - Various


I mean like, duh. Greatest film soundtrack of all time. Of course it had a profound musical impact on my life or whatever it is that meme said it was! It was the first time I ever felt like the songs were an utterly indipensable part of the movie, that there was no way you could get the same viewing experience even if you changed the order of songs within the 120-odd minutes, let alone replace any of the tracks. Frakking work of geniusical art. I worship it. I do. Also the best concluding montage EVER, set to Gary Jules' cover of Mad World.

21. Grace's Valentine's Day Mixed CD (2007) - Grace. And some other musical people.

I listened to this so much I had to rip all the tracks into my computer because I was afraid I'd end up breaking the CD, or wearing it down to dust or something. It was my first official introduction to the world of music beyond what I was accustomed to, and I was pretty much hooked from the very first notes of Albert Hammond Jr's In Transit right up to the final guitary- pluckings of Skinny Fists by Christians and Lions. And yes, I can recite the entire tracklist from memory. If that's not musical profundity, I don't know what is.

22. The Magic Position - Patrick Wolf


I don't really know why. Or what. It just makes me happy. Maybe it's all the tinkles and the bouncy violins, or Patrick's lovely happy hair. Maybe it was all those years I spent wallowing in self-indulgent adolescent Emo (I still Emo fairly often, but it is a more sophisticated brand of Emo, really). This album just puts me in the bloody magic position, that's what. Wherever the magic position is.

23. Sway EP - The Perishers

I had the world's massivest crush on the lead's voice (not quite THE massivest; Jake still holds the record on that one) and the fact that they were all Scandinavian just made me more excited, and I played this every night before I went to bed for some months when I was 16. A lullaby of sorts.

24. These Streets - Paolo Nutini


Stupid gorgeous boy and his stupid gorgeous voice and his stupid gorgeous Scottish accent had me in drugged-up romantic daze for centuries. I almost seriously started to consider eating fish again, for his sake. That's how hardcore my affair with this one was. But gosh. Is he pretty or WHAT?

25. Black Holes & Revelations - Muse

Pretty much the reason for my attending my first ever real gig. Which was so awesome it defies words, including made-up ones.

There. Consider yourselves tagged. And I really mean it, because I'm honestly super pumped about seeing what your choices are going to be. Also feel free to mess around with the 25 Albums concept. I mean, 10, 5, 13.5 albums...it's all good. It's not like the meme police are watching or anything.

Stuff That Was Awesome In 2008

Guess I felt like blogging again.
Meh.
Now, it's December and all, and any and every blogger worth their salt has been coming up with some plain kicktastic end of year lists of the best music and movies of the last 12 months. I don't feel justified in compiling such lists, because my taste in music ain't all that rad compared to some of you others, and while my taste in movies really is awesome, I haven't watched enough films that were actually released this year in order to merit a properly legit list of that kind. Instead, I am just going to put up a list of very random awesome stuff that made the awesome rounds in a most awesome fashion in 2008.
So.

BAP's Stuff That Was Awesome In 2008

(Wait- is it was awesome or were awesome? Stuff is plural, but you can't count stuff...and were just sounds wrong- oh it's Christmas. Screw grammar.)

1. Dengue fever

Now, see, dengue isn't awesome in any way. It's terrible. You're burning up all the time, everything you put in your mouth tastes like garbage (even water, which, as we all know, has no taste) you throw up roughly 2.75 times a day, you throw up even when there's nothing left in your gut to throw up, on account of you not eating because everything you put in your mouth tastes like garbage anyway. But despite all that, the dengue was awesome, because it added to my life experience, in a way. It was the first time in my life I was ever truly sick. It was the first time I had drips put in. It was the first time I had to stay in hospital. Ever. It was the first time I ever had people come visit me in hospital. It was the first time I had my freaking liver damaged. And because I was basically at the final stages of the illness by the time I was hospitalized, I was allowed to eat pasta and stuff from the Pizza Hut next door, which rawked. I don't get takeout in my own house. And I got to skip two days of school. So yeah. Having dengue fever was awesome, to a degree. Just so I can tell people about it and have them feel bad for me.

2. Sigur ros


Sigur ros is awesome all the time. They just never take any time off from their perpetual State of Awesomeness. Ever. And 2008 was no exception, as they released a brand new album, their fifth studio effort (or maybe it's the sixth, I've lost count) með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust ,which is made up of awesometastic proportions, and proved once and for all that this band is simply incapable of producing bad or unawesome music. They just cannot do it. I believe they were also on tour with Bjork at some point this year, and we all know that Bjork is awesome by default.

3. Doctor Who Series 3 Episode 10 : Blink


I have never watched any of the retro Who episodes, but of all the ones I have seen, Blink takes the cake and the icing and the everything. And there is only about 5 minutes of the Doctor himself in the entire 45 minute show, and even that is being generous. Blink is so awesome, I watched it four times. Blink is so awesome it gave me multiple chills, even on the fourth watch. Blink is so awesome it makes me wish I had written it myself. Blink is so awesome, I will never ever look at a statue or a sculpture in quite the same way again. Blink is so awesome it almost made me want to move to Hull and marry a farmhand. Blink is so awesome it made me go around picking random stuff up and wondering if they would be good enough to be utilized as my Timey-Wimey Detector (which goes DING when there's stuff and makes hens explode). Blink is so awesome it has provided me with enough one-liners to last the whole of 2009. Blink is so awesome I want to marry it and have its babies. However inappropriate it may be.
And I'll take Sally for the Doc's next companion, please!

4. Neil Gaiman



Much like Sigur ros (see item no.2) Neil Gaiman never takes a break from his own perpetual state of Awesomeness. Here is a sexy sexy man who writes sexy sexy stories (except the last few chapters of American Gods. I mean, dude, seriously?) and in 2008 the man did not disappoint with his newest offering, The Graveyard Book, a very simply and sincerely told story of a boy with no name who grows up in a graveyard. And that's all you need to know.
Oh and the fact that it is awesome goes without saying, of course.

5. Donnie Darko


Yeah, so I caught up with the Cult of Darko roughly 7 years too late, but as it is in the case of nearly all good things, better late than never. I realize I have been fangirling too much this year to be taken all that seriously, but I honestly believe Jake Gyllenhaal will never be as good as he was in this film, as Donnie. It was an all-encompassing performance, by turns chilling, disturbing, heart-wrenching and full of awesomeness in every scene. An angsty psychopathic pill-popping arsonist with a penchant for art and the ability to see six-foot tall bunny rabbits named Frank and is destined to save the world? I mean, where the heck are you going to get another role like that? Jake was so good in this, I wanted to crawl under the couch and bawl my eyes out. The soundtrack to this movie is so perfect, it hurrrrts. The story appears to make no sense whatsoever, but you know that it is Awesome, and Awesomeness of this breed takes a lot of time and thought to truly be appreciated.

6. Jake Gyllenhaal

I think, that maybe, just maybe, I may have said enough about this individual for the year. I'll zip it. Seriously.

7. Help! The Movie



I don't even want to talk about it, it's too awesomely ridiculous. Go. Go forth and watch, and Bust Thy Guts Laughing.


8. The Pelle Carlberg and Club 8 Gig


Which I attended with Grace and her buddy, Boon Ken, made all the more sweeter by the fact that I almost cancelled my plans to go. I've always intended to put up a proper concert review of sorts, and I am going to do that next month, on the anniversary of the gig. And Boon Ken, if you're reading this, I'm stealing your pictures.


9. English Literature Classes

Which were an absolute lifesaver after the boredom and mind-numbing monotony of school. Sure, I have to bust my ass to get all the way to town to attend (and once, it was pouring with rain,but I went anyway, even though I do have to walk part of the way), and it's quite tough to think all intellectually when you've just had your brain mushed in school and your eyes are burning and and you're dreaming about your dinner, but it's such a relief to be able to talk about books in a language I actually enjoy speaking and writing,with people I can stand to be around, and it's pretty much four hours a week of escapism, really. And I get do it again for another year. Bliss.

10. Novak Djokovic Winning The Australian Open


It was the first time I had really gotten into tennis, and stopped viewing it as a posh rich person's sport where all you do is watch a ball fly back and forth across a net for anywhere between 40 minutes or 5 hours ( sometimes you also get to look at pretty people, I've realized). And I had so much fun with this year's tournament. I even watched repeats. Imagine! Repeats. And when Novak won it felt almost like a personal victory. Of course, after that he turned all whiny and bratty and I'm not quite sure what to make of him anymore.

11. Heath Ledger's Joker


I realize that practically every other blog on the planet is raving about the man, especially now that it's awards season and all, but really, what's not to rave? The dude's portrayal of The Joker was a full on CAPS LOCK AWESOME. I was trying to make up my mind about whether or not he deserves all the plaudits that are being heaped upon him, and wondering if he would have had the same admiring reaction if he were still alive today. And I guess he truly does.Deserve it , I mean. I've always maintained that it was a sort of a blessing that he passed when he did, or he would have been spending the rest of his existence trying to live up to The Joker. Or maybe not, we'll never know now. The man is nothing more than a stranger to me, however connected I may have felt to any of the characters he played onscreen, yet his passing did affect me in a way I'm still having trouble explaining. I mean, the very first song that played on my mp3 player the morning I found out about his death has now become The Heath Song, never to be deleted from the computer, ever (well, the virus messed with that, you know. But still. The BAP has backup files). So yes. Heath Ledger's Joker shall eternally be the epitome of Awesome, the level of Awesome to which all other actors will aspire to and probably never reach. And that's for the best, I suppose.
Oh and just so that we never forget how pretty Heath was:


There. The Joker was AWESOME but that makeup sure didn't do him any favours.

12. Pushing Daisies


Best thingamajibby on the television all year. And now my brother tells me it's being cancelled. Sinful, I tell you. Where else am I going to satisfy my pie needs? And my Ned needs? And my quirky humour needs? And my Kristin Chenowyth needs? And my Ned/Chuck/SQUEE! needs?

13. Radiohead

Yet another group of individuals who are incapable of ever not being Awesome (and Barb, I say that to make you happy). I believe In Rainbows was released last October, but who cares, really. It is packed full of awesome Awesomeness from start to finish, so it doesn't really matter at all what year it was released.
I shall now let the Awesome speak (sing?) for itself.



14. Everything Is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer

The book was a sort of reward to myself for snagging a bunch of As for My Very Important Exams, and it even kept me company during my dengue-afflicted days. It is AWESOME in many ways, my favourite Awesome part being of course Alex's very garbled, very exaggerated and very ridiculous narration of the "Very Rigid Journey". I suppose it's best if you start off reading without knowing a thing about the plot other than the fact that it is Awesome, and also more than a little bit sad. And if you get the chance, do watch the movie adaptation as well. It stars Elijah Wood and that moustachioed freak from Gogol Bordello (who actually does a fantastic job) and boasts a gorgeous soundtrack to boot.

15. James Franco

He's had a pretty awesome year, first with Pineapple Express, Milk, hosting Saturday Night Live, the Golden Globe nomination, and the Acting With James Franco tutorial videos.



The general consensus is that these videos are pretty funny, but I wouldn't know. See, my computer doesn't have any speakers. I know. Not awesome at all. And my lip-reading skills aren't that rad either, so you people will have to watch it and tell me how funny it really is, if at all. All I can attest to is that Franco's younger brother isn't all that bad-looking himself.



For years, I've regarded him as the Very Pretty but Somewhat Mediocre actor from the Spiderman flicks, but then he starts getting good. I mean, like, really good. I mean, like, PHWOAR the boy can ACT! moments of epiphany. Also other moments, like, PHWOAR the boy is PRETTEH! type of realizations. And then you discover less superficial things about him, like he paints, and writes poetry, and reads James Joyce and Doestoevsky on set, and is currently pursuing two masters at the same time at two different universities, and is taking like, I don't know, 62 subjects and scoring all As like nobody's business. I can't remember ever wanting to shag a guy for the sake of his pure brainpower alone this much before (well okay it helps that he's hot). But he has come perilously close to replacing Jake. Not to mention that he is also responsible for what is probably the year's Awesomest interview. And I do indeed look forward to see how his career goes off from here. In the meantime, feel free to talk nerdy to me, Franco.

16. The Many Hours Spent With Grace Who Never Updates

Yes, Grace, I had to put this in. I've had a pretty miserable year all things considered, and all those weekends we spent eating food that wasn't very good for us, spending money we didn't really have, watching movies that probably weren't worth the ticket prices, talking superficial talk, peppered with varying doses of hormonally-charged fangirling while being stared at all the time by other people, those times were utter lifesavers. In fact, they were probably what kept me sane in the year of 2008. So props to you, because you rawkz, and here's to another year of more of the same stuff, dude.


Cheers, and Merry Blogmas to you all, peasants.

I Have Returned. Here, Have An Eargasm. Or Six.

I've been gone for quite a while, if you've noticed. I'm quite sure you people haven't missed me one jot, but like I always say; dig into your inner hypocrites and pretend you did, darnits.
Anywho, I need to get this Eargasm business sorted out, because I am disgustingly late. And it doesn't matter that I have to type on my lap, or that this computer screen makes me feel like I have the eyesight of a diabetic 75 year-old, and all my music files have been erased by a mean-ass virus, I'm going to do this anyway. So onwards.

For those not in the know, the Eargasm Mix is part of Splotchy's Green Monkey Music Project, hosted this time around by the awesomest Canadian I know, the Bad Tempered Zombie. Participants were asked to submit a list of 6 songs that gave them an auditory orgasm, "songs that have those perfect little auditory moments, those all too brief seconds that give you a thrill and transport you somewhere utterly sublime' and we also have the option of posting an explanation of sorts, as to why we chose the songs we did. And I have completely forgot what songs I picked, so give me two secs while I head on over to Splotchy's home base and refresh my atrocious memory. And I'm not much of a music journalist either, so.
Oh and all my music files have been deleted by the Big Bad Virus, so I won't be able to pinpoint the exact minute-and-second in the song during which the eargasm occurs.

1. (Antichrist Television Blues) by Arcade Fire

You know a song is eargasmic when the band has to put the title in brackets, as if to contain its enormous magnitude of eargasmicness from being unleashed upon the world and destroying entire civilizations. Word. I believe somebody else also picked this very song for their list, and I'm very curious to see if we both chose it for the same reasons.
Because it has Eargasm-Containing Brackets.
Well, no.
I'm not sure if this is cheating, but (Antichrist Television Blues) makes it on this list, not because of a particular jolt-giving auditory moment, as the project rules suggested, but for the way the song ends. The absence of any audio, in other words. Arcade Fire, besides being rather a kick-ass band, have quite nearly mastered the art of ending a song Dramatically. Not dramatically, but Dramatically. This song ends on an eargasm. The ending of this song, to use Grace's word, is KERPOWEY. Or KERSPASHY. I'm not quite sure how she put it. It's like one huge 3 minute and some seconds-long wait as the whole thing builds up to the final note. Or the very moment the final note ends. Mainly because it cuts off at a such an odd point, where you're still expecting a few more lines, and then The Dramatic Eargasmic Ending proceeds to blow your mind. In a very mind-blowing manner.

2. Svo Hljott by Sigur ros

If there's a band out there capable of even more eargasmicness than Arcade Fire itself, it's these guys. Svo Hljott, or So Quietly, if you prefer the English, is about 9 minutes long, and like everything else this band have ever created, is gorgeous beyond all reason (which reminds me; my next post is going to be a review of Twilight, the movie). The magic happens at around 4:20. Prior to this it's all Jonsi's heavenly voice and heavenly guitars and a generally heavenly, if somewhat angsty, atmosphere. Then the drums come in, the famous cello-guitar (a ceetar?) and and it all builds and builds and builds and builds and builds up to a point where yours truly is crawling around on the floor gasping and demanding a respirator. And it keeps going right up to the end, it does. Those skinny Icelandicers are quite merciless once they know they've got you hooked.
Also, the very first time I heard this song, I cried. And me, I don't cry. Ever. And if that's not an Eargasm, or any other kind of Gasm, I don't know what is.


3. Teardrop by José Gonzales


Originally by Massive Attack (you know, the freaky-ass video with the singing foetus) I never quite liked this song very much until I heard Jose's version of it. It was one of those rare moments for me, when a cover blows the original right out of the proverbial water. Once again, I cheat a little. There's no specific moment of eargasm. It's one long, mellow, slow, drawn-out eargasm. It stunned me, and it still does, how Mr. Gonzales can make his voice and a couple of acoustic guitars sound like a bleeding 254-piece orchestra (if a 254-piece orchestra exists). The sound is so fudging rich and it seems to fill up all the ventricles in my heart with sweet jangly acoustic Scandinavian goodness. I also have a thing for songs where a bunch of the same lines are just repeated over and over again. I suppose it comforts me or something. And the fact that I can't listen to it at the moment is absolutely carving me up from the inside out. *le sigh*

4.Cold Days From The Birdhouse by The Twilight Sad

A few things you should know:
a. I adore the Scottish accent.
b. I mean, I really really adore the Scottish accent.
c. I have been told on several occasions that I will never be happy until I acquire a Scottish boyfriend to call my own. Preferably one named McAllister.
d. The Twilight Sad is a Scottish band.
e. When the lead singer sings lead, he does not lose his accent. At all. It remains thick, as thick as my hair gets when I haven't trimmed it in 4 months.
f. I like Scottish accents.


You see where I'm going here?
No, to be fair, The Twilight Sad is an excellent band, and Cold Days From The Birdhouse is an unbelievable song of gorgeous eargasmic proportions. It's just that I get quite a rush when he starts singing "And this is where yer arm can't go" and "Where are yer manners?" and he rolls all his Rs and I get tingly and lie back and dream of Glasgow. In which case I could have picked pretty much any song of theirs and called it an Eargasm. But for the sake of nostalgia I've put in the very first Twilight Sad song I ever heard. And don't let me superficialityness stop you from appreciating what is truly an amazing song.


5. Untitled #8 by Sigur ros

Sigur ros can do Eargasms like no other. They live for it, and so do their fans. Untitled #8 starts off all lovely and acoustic, which I like. But my favourite part is when about halfway through when you can only hear the bass and the strange whooshy drums and Jonsi doing his "eeeeiaaiiooooooeeeee" wailing. And the drums get whooshier and the bass gets bassier and Jonsi's wailing gets wailer and it is all so Genius in such a Ridiculously Genius way that I want to go find a nice empty piece of wall and bang my head against it.
Also, Untitled #8 is from the band's third album called (). Yes. That's right. The album is called (). They don't need a title, just a pair of brackets to contain the Awesome Eargasmicness of every. Single. Track. On. That. Album. (). HA! Tell Arcade Fire to call me back when they've made an entire album that needs to have its Eargasmicness contained in brackets!()! ()! ()!


6. How To Disappear Completely by Radiohead


I really like it when Radiohead goes mellow. I like it a lot. That's when you get to hear Thom's voice in all it's proper glory. And I have mentioned before that I particularly enjoy having a set of lyrics repeated over and over. Thom's voice. Repetitive lyrics. Weirdish guitars. Eargasm. Happy BAP. Like so: =D


There you have it, my choices for this edition of the Green Monkey Music Project and why I picked them. I must say it's been mighty fun playing along for the first time! Thanks a whole lot to the Zombie for letting me join in the party, and for coming up with such a kick-ass idea for a playlist, as well as to Splotchy for being so generally awethum. You can download my 6 songs here, if you like, and check out everyone else's contributions here.