So, what does that tell us about Hamlet? To paraphrase the Mad Hatter, how is a migraine like a melancholy prince of Denmark? As already stated, there is that foreboding sense of having been cast into an unjust universe. You mourn alone in gasping sorrow as life continues on apace in what seems a pageant of now-insipid frippery. The face is drawn pale, temples throb with dark passion, and one may even wail and gnash and cry out at the cruel wind and stars. To all outward observers, you have grown withdrawn, sullen, and aggrieved by the slightest provocation. Will no one shutter the lamps of the world, muffle the trumpets and percussion of man and nature, and lead us to a cool dark place where we may plot revenge on the Fates that have betrayed us?

In retrospective sympathy, I recall B saying how he had overcome his own migraine before the show began, the floating lights slowly vanishing. I found it curious how he had the classic symptom of aura, or halo, which I have never encountered. And indeed, how evocative those terms themselves are. Halos are of course associated with angelic embodiment, or general holiness, often taking on a diffused glow as aureola in religious pictography. Aura have been most recently adopted by late 19th century mystic practices such as Theosophy, which associated particular colors with emotional state, but also with paranormal manifestation which are sometimes nothing more than ‘floating lights.’ Curious, then, that all of the characters that actually observe the Old Hamlet on the battlements are established as anxious and troubled in some fashion – the guards Marcellus and Bernardo at the play’s opening, who are jumpy and quick to challenge strangers, as did the exiting Francisco who is “sick at heart.” And Hamlet’s schoolmate Horatio, who has come for reasons never made clear – those he states later don’t make sense given the timeframe – but who seems compelled out of concern with Hamlet’s state as his closest confidante. And Hamlet himself, who in the deepest state of disquiet can not only view but interact fully with the ghost of his late father.

His father speaks of entrapment between Purgatory and Hell, for he roams at night but burns by day to purge away his sins. But he cannot expressly speak of “the secrets of my prison-house” which cannot be communicated to anyone not already suffering alike. This type of solitary prison is likewise inhabited by Hamlet, who later describes all of Denmark and indeed the world as being such – “A goodly one, in which there are many confines, wards, and dungeons, Denmark being one o’ th’ worst.” Clearly he is the only one present who believes it thus, and says as much – “thinking makes it so/To me it is a prison.” It is a prison of the mind, in which the suffering occurs only in the head of the afflicted. And so confined, Hamlet both announces intent to take on the appearance of madness – “put an antic disposition on” – in pursuit of revenge on his father’s killer, and acts so contrary to the courtly norm elsewise that even when he is speaking truly, he is taken as mad.

This duality of personality, and the underlying question of its ground – namely, is Hamlet truly ‘mad’ or merely acting the part – runs throughout the analytic literature and has filled many a student essay. For my purpose, I am mainly intrigued by the incongruence of Hamlet’s sincere speech with its interpretation by others. The notion of insanity simply being out of step with the dominant social paradigm has come across in myriad sources of late. For example, this is a lament made by another self-identified victim of the system of professional psychiatry, Robert Pirsig’s narrator Phaedrus in both Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and its sequel Lila. In response to his theories, the response is progressively hostile – “they only thought him eccentric at first, then undesirable, then slightly mad, and then genuinely insane.” This equating truthtelling with insanity is rife in sympathetic treatments of other countercultural theorists, from Nikola Tesla to Wilhelm Reich, Horton-Who-Heard-A-Who, perhaps even the anarchic McMurphy from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Popular media has genius – practically the definition of the capacity to see more than others from the same information – overlapped heavily with madness, whether the coldly charismatic Hannibal Lecter, the true-life John Nash of A Beautiful Mind, or the Fringe mind of Walter Bishop. An episode of Numb3rs even comments on research suggesting that the same brain area indicated for exceptional mathematical ability is also correlated with schizophrenia. In The Protest Psychosis, Jonathan Metzl writes of the reclassification of schizophrenia in the psychiatric bible DSM to institutionalize being ‘angry and black’ in response to activism during the civil rights era.  And then there is “Poor Yorick” of Hamlet’s childhood, the court jester who – by tradition – is alone able to speak truth to the divine monarch without fear of retribution. Truth, hidden in the motley dress of calculated madness. (For extensive references to how Hamlet is treated as mad by others when he speaks frankly, see Ed Friedlander’s insightful “Enjoying Hamlet“).

And despite his playacting, Hamlet is truly suffering, and several times wishes that the option of suicide were not precluded by religious decree as a mortal sin. He has seen his father in literal torment after death, watches as Ophelia is buried with “maimed rites” as an assumed suicide (which Friedlander asserts is a misreading of events), and reflects on how even the release of death is not worth the risk of something worse to follow. Yet until he is finally able to act concretely on his plan of revenge, he is tantalized by the prospect of a way out. How many migraine sufferers have, in the grip of templed agony, not wished even idly for something similar? To escape the primacy of pain, I once endeavored to construct a proper orthodoxy of migraine severity so that I could grade each occurrence compared to past incidences. Taking the model of weather classification, particularly that of hurricanes and tornadoes, I came up with 5 tiers:

1. Pre-Migraine. The warning symptoms of tensing temple capillaries, and perhaps the beginnings of a slow throb. The only phase where intervention has been successful for me.
2. Stable Migraine. A low-grade version that has developed past M1, but is not progressing to higher stages. Highly irritating, but still possible to engage in some activities so long as they avoid further sense irritants. This is often the result of not intervening soon enough at M1, but soon enough to keep it from developing further.
3. Full Migraine. If the start conditions were more extreme (no meals instead of late meals, for example), then the more debilitating form develops. At this stage, the main aim is to crawl into a cool dark hole as soon as possible and simply hope that I can avoid it getting to stage 4.
4. Nausea Migraine. After a full migraine onset, not lying down soon enough can bring on nausea and dizziness, generally just compounding the “please let it end” awfulness of the experience. Sometimes the only recourse is to give into the nausea and hope that lets it subside back to stage 3. Or, worst case, it becomes a
5. Cyclic Nausea Migraine. The most destructive, dispiriting, life-negating form. Thus far I have only been inflicted with a class 5 twice, and those represent two of the worst days of my life, particularly as they were both compounded by severe exigent stress from external events.

Last night I would rate a 4.5, making it easily the third worst incident in my life. And yet, due to delayed onset, I still managed to enjoy the entirety of the show before almost immediately succumbing to that hazy removed state of walking dead, only able to count breaths while heading homewards towards the cave and the succor of oblivion.

The rest, one might say, was silence.

“This is why people OD on pills/and jump from the/Golden Gate Bridge

Anything to feel weightless again”

Let’s go to a concert.

Except you cannot escape yourself if you are, or ever were, a music journalist. Then, some part of your consciousness remains aloof in a corner, notepad flipped back, choosing with agonizing precision what pithy phrase to tag, to shape, to wrestle the performance into an ill-fitting sack that might capture some nuance of the experience. Except, of course, you can’t really write about music, not in any way that equates to the merest act of standing there in its presence. Dancing about architecture. So, the old tricks come back, the tropes of reference and imagine-if and RIYL. Is the singer a modern Prometheus, carrying the spark that will set fire to the seething worshipful throng desperate for conflagration, or just a stumbling mumbling schmo who shouldn’t have given up a steady job at the Guitar Center? Can you lasso this latest concoction of creative thievery and, whip in hand, break it and tame it and make it answer to a single label called genre? And, ego beating like a fevered pulse and forever demanding due, can you let pass any opportunity to play the Grim Eater, make the sly background insertion, reveal erudition through deft mythological allusion and ironic tabloid mimicry? And underneath the hubris, itself hidden behind a veil of attempted egalitarian “ahead of the hype machine” appreciation, is there the base truth that “all critics are failed artists”? Nah, wingman W is in a band. Maybe it’s just a surfeit of love, the kind that makes you talk off random ears about the latest unheralded masterpiece. We’re part of the memetic engine that replicates fandom. Preach, and perhaps, next time, more will not miss out on the revelation. Also, the blog needs page views.

So, the opening band. Low expectations, not a familiar name, Toro Y Moi has still come a long way traveling from hipster hinterland South Carolina to play in a dark box in front of a crowd of strangers for what cannot amount to much more than hamburger money for 3 fashionably underdressed look-like-kids. Wikipedia posits the style of founder Chazwick Bundick as being “identified with the chillwave movement of summer 2009,” which despite sounding like a description of 19th century French history is at least a place to start. Having dared to proffer a category, however, no sooner is the box drawn than its borders are rubbed out in dispute. Chillwave is “sonically disparate,” relies on a diagnostic menu of “often characterized” elements that boil down to a list of effects pedals and electronic instrumentation used by scores of non-member bands since their invention. This vague approximate definition then comes under assault on philological grounds from the vaunted perch of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and (er) Gawker. The story unwinds back to Hipster Runoff blogger Carles coining the term and dragooning a handful of acts to support its existence. Carles’ inauspiciously-titled post “Is WASHED OUT the next Neon Indian/Memory Cassette?” comments on the familiar lament of the indie-gone-mainstream, leaving the underground faithful left to seek out the next new thing to replace the now overexposed colossi (cf. the ‘real fans’ of practically every band, forever).

More specifically, he explores the problem space of how to position oneself in the correct orientation for pre-breakout success in the undergrowth now left behind by the likes of Animal Collective: the ‘brand’ cannot be too personal; members cannot be too dweeby, or ‘too’ serious; ‘conceptual’ material and ‘artistic’ live shows both delay audience burnout. And indeed here is enough material to undertake a serious study of the market dynamics of band popularity, the sort of arcane brinksmanship with fickle consumers that sends A&R agents and coolhunters and, nowadays, indie scene bloggers into conniptions of professional anxiety and partisan fervor. For the moment, however, scroll back and notice what Carles does not say about this proposed new collective noun – namely, anything about what its members should sound like. It’s a market designation (e.g. microcap stocks) with PR chaser (e.g. socially responsible funds), not a musical reference. A band can be not ‘authentic’ enough, or too dweeby-looking, but thus far they can sound like anything that authentic non-dweebs with pop sensibility can come up with. And before ending up with ‘chillwave,’ Carles first throws out a laundry list of 31 other pastiche terms mostly referencing shoegaze and new wave, and name-dropping tastemakers Pitchfork. Nevertheless, he crowns ‘chillwave’ the winner of the one-member poll of 32 flavors and then inducts its founding members as the post title indicates. A ’summer of chillwave’ is invoked, and ergo, must exist.

Gawker’s “How to Invent a Music Genre” covers some of the end-stage backlash as the mainstream culture press first consumed, then regurgitated the term in spite. NYT’s Jon Pareles gets credit for providing the ‘microtrend’ (his term) with an almost-usable circumscription of an actual sound in common, while also managing to tie it into the current socioeconomic milieu:

“They’re solo acts or minimal bands, often with a laptop at their core, and they trade on memories of electropop from the 1980s, with bouncing, blipping dance-music hooks (and often weaker lead voices). It’s recession-era music: low-budget and danceable.”

Pareles’ report on this year’s SXSW also carries on the theme of bands as market players, eschewing the former coy elusiveness of last year’s indie rock for a new come-hither catchiness, marketing immediacy and availability since “bands weren’t counting on a second glance.” Recession-era music, indeed. But it’s WSJ’s Speakeasy that focuses on the label, calling the question whether it’s truly a trend to watch. Carles and Washed Out’s Ernest Greene both put forward positive descriptors, while Josh Kolenik of Small Black mentions joking with Neon Indian about creating a scene “that never really existed.” And Alan Palomo of Neon Indian gets to the core idea – “now it’s just a blogger or some journalist that can find three or four random bands around the country and tie together a few commonalities between them and call it a genre.” Was it ever not thus? Yet somehow this ‘made-up’, placebo genre seems to work just as well as a real one, in terms of getting press, gigs, and even a section in that modern-day Tower Records, the iTunes Store. Speakeasy backfills an origin story, with chillwave being a reaction to “over-produced Italo-Disco and French house records of recent years” much like the story of indie rock to Britney pop, grunge to glam metal, punk to disco and prog rock. Write your own rock history here, of dirty/sloppy/raw following refined/tight/glossy, until raw grows up and starts making Target commercials. And then, viva la revolution!

The Guardian’s Dorian Lynskey digs into Toro Y Moi’s place in this hallway of mirrors and finds Chaz Bundwick shrugging sheepishly at being at the center of something with a name but little else to define it. Self-defined as a singer-songwriter, he concedes its ancillary benefits but asserts he was in fact going more for “My Bloody Valentine hip-hop” and when writing the debut album Causers of This, drew from the infinite well of “trying to get over this girl.” On stage, Bundwick held mostly to the standard shoegazer stance of focusing mostly on gear, his frequently onomatopoeic vocals – already passed through layers of reverb, distortion, and looping – troubled by a cold. As the set began, buttressed by guitarist and drummer, Toro built up a torrent of interwoven, fuzzy samples that might actually fall under the thumbnail sketch forwarded by chillwave theorist Carles, “like something playing in the background of an old VHS cassette that you found in the attic from the 90’s.” Indeed, this retrospective perspective is prominent in the most curious part of the ‘chillwave’ entry on Wikipedia: “The overall aesthetic of chillwave is generally influenced by the idea of hauntology. In this case, nostalgia of 80s synthpop is filtered through a distorted lens, re-envisioning the era in a more vague and lo-fi sense.” Hold on, ‘hauntology’?

While sounding like something from the voluminous liner notes of DJ Spooky, this offhand reference actually invokes the ghost of Jacques Derrida, and pulls the whole debate on genre into the philosophy of history, Continental assaults on the basis of meaning, and a somewhat glum prospect for an artistic event horizon in music. For hauntology, as put forward in Derrida’s Spectres of Marx, is the state of a somewhat Zen phantom, who consists of both being and non-being. Lingering on after death, the spectre haunts its future and thus prevents history from truly moving forwards, as it continually looks back in comparison. Striking a parallel with Francis Fuyukama’s “end of history,” the hauntological music critic sees time at the end of natural genres, leaving only room for music to refer back to prior movements and thus defining itself only by the ghosts of past vibrations. So as chillwave is a gauzy nostalgia for rundown 90s guitar shoegaze played back on laptops and pawn shop synths, thus might we see all new music as a kind of mashup, rehash, or hyperlinked recombination of what has come before. You could just as well view all music criticism as différance, Derrida’s symbol game of reference, each review tying this band back to that, in endless chains that never ground to referents in actual experience. Thus emboldened by having no regard for saying anything, we return to Toro Y Moi slowly stirring rhythmic bullets of melody into the murky soup, and piece to piece moving from Flying Saucer Attack-scale assault sonics to compositions comprehendible as indiscreet but discrete songs. And then, perhaps as microcosm of Carles’ thesis, they suddenly devolve from art futurists to retro-funk cracked frat-pop in their final three selections. Finally joining full in, the neck-high crowd of striped shirts and too-shiny faces emerges exultant from its steady nod-hop forbearance to prototypical party gyrations. And the ghost of Art of Genres Past claims another too-serious dweeby trio for its spectral mantel.

Oh, and Caribou were great.

Any film adaptation is automatically a mixed blessing: the chance to see some beloved story translated from a book/comic/radio show/TV show/videogame to the big screen, counterbalanced by the risk that it will get fundamentally ruined in the process. Of these, the trials of moving from books to movies are probably best established—massive plot compression, reduced complexity, characters that don’t “look right,” jettisoning of descriptive language—but comic adaptations are a much newer phenomenon with their own pitfalls. To begin, one might argue that Watchmen is only the second true conversion (what in videogame terms might be called a “total conversion” from mod culture), following Frank Miller’s Sin City, with most other superhero and even explicitly comic book movies often closer to “inspired by” or “featuring characters from” than outright transfers from actual comic runs or specific graphic novels[1]. Even previous efforts to adapt Alan Moore in League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, From Hell, and V for Vendetta, and Watchmen director Zach Snyder’s previous outing with Frank Miller’s 300, diverged quite widely from the source material. By contrast, Sin City was almost a shot-for-shot remake of the Dark Horse series. But even it suffered in the process of combining multiple short story arcs into an attempt to create a coherent longer film, and from the innate limitations of the flat-affect noir patois in which it was composed. Watchmen was conceived first as a 12-part comic run and then collected as a graphic novel, ostensibly providing a more linear narrative to put into a film script. Once the initial jitters that the material would be handled indelicately had passed (Snyder went out of the way to reassure fans), the more apropos question became: does Watchmen even work as a movie? With Snyder’s Watchmen, we have a vastly ambitious attempt to convert what has been called an “unfilmable” work into celluloid. How well viewers think the effort turned out is breaking down along traditional party lines, with mainstream critics bothered by its structure, pulp excesses, and even its slavish devotion to the text (cf. the first two Harry Potter films); and fans thrilled to see familiar scenes brought to life. At the risk of rehashing overchurned ground, I think the movie succeeds and fails precisely by those measures and your ultimate enjoyment will be determined how much you give credence to each. Let’s start with the structure.

Western film is primarily built around the three-act format, and most preceding superhero movies have conformed accordingly. Certainly many other films successfully break out of this, so the fact that Watchmen is not traditionally arranged is not inherently a fault. But while written as a holistic story, the narrative in Watchmen is far from linear. Among its most striking features are the overlapping metastories, like the Tale of the Black Freighter and excerpts from Hollis Mason’s Under the Hood memoirs, which often serve dual purposes via juxtaposed panels in a fashion that is hard to replicate outside the comic book page, let alone achieve even within it (another example might be limited passages in Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, such as stories-within-stories told by Cain & Abel). Most of that is stripped away in the movie. (To compensate, both have been produced separately for a DVD release; it will be interesting to see if they’re reintegrated on the eventual Watchmen expanded DVD.) Even so, the Watchmen comics were episodic as well as progressive, and with that carried over to the movie, it certainly helps to know the story already to help follow along with the many historical flashbacks, individual backstories, alternate-historical allusions, and psychological layering that fill around the throughline investigation of the “mask killer” by Rorschach. I can certainly empathize with new viewers becoming somewhat bewildered by the sequencing, such as the origin story for Dr. Manhattan coming quite close to the movie’s conclusion. Yet with my fuzzy recollection of the comic’s order, I mostly found myself curious if I could remember which came next, and Rorschach’s progress was helpful in providing a reference timeline.

The pulp excesses are another element likely to polarize audiences. Moore’s great conceit was to imagine a world where ordinary people became costumed vigilantes (with the notable exception of Dr. Manhattan, who was neither ordinary nor particularly costumed), and the consequences that would follow. What kind of person puts on a mask and goes out at night to fight crime? The first generation are mostly disillusioned law enforcement, but the cadre gradually expands to include the fame-seeker, the psychopath, the fetishist. The following generation, represented by most of the members in the Watchmen, adds to that inheritance (the daughter of the first Silk Spectre is expected to take on her skintight latex mantle); hero worship (the second Nite Owl is an avowed fan of the original, Hollis Mason, and visits him weekly to share stories of the ‘golden age’); and hubris (Ozymandias, who models himself after pharaohs and idolizes Alexander the Great). All of this leads to subverted motives, so when we see the ‘heroes’ in action, the result is often disturbing and extreme. The disillusioned Comedian is a grizzled veteran of wars, grinning around his everpresent cigar as he lays waste to the Viet Cong, then shooting a pregnant lover; who summarily disperses an anti-vigilante mob on the eve of the Keane Act becoming law by attacking protesters and firing into the crowd. Yet perhaps the most wanton violence is by the unlikely duo of washed-up, pudgy Dan Dreiberg and kittenish, moorless Laurie Juspeczyk as they take evident delight in the adrenaline-pumping, sex-charged brutalizing of a gang who follow them into the quintessential dark alley. Limbs snap, faces contort, and the newfound lovers shyly grin at each other as they resume a long-dormant pastime. Their later explicit coupling in the hovering Archie (complete with fetish overtones due to their crusading outfits, a point about marginalized sexuality made more directly in the comics where Dan is almost impotent without his suit, and characters like Hooded Justice and Silhouette are portrayed as closeted homosexuals) is almost redundant, but itself reminiscent of all that comics were feared to portray in the run-up to the Comics Code era: glorified violence, unbridled sexuality, and immoral horrors. By contrast, Rorschach is glibly referred to as a psychopath, yet he gives a very lucid depiction of his descent into violent reprisal while recounting the story of the kidnapped girl to the prison psychologist, and even though he treats suspects and enemies brutally (in some of the movie’s harshest scenes) his motivations are always clear and tied either to his outright survival (the boiling oil, defending himself in the cell) or the pursuit of the “mask killer” (interrogating Moloch and the Pyramid delivery goon). The overall effect of ‘heroes’ in action is one of moral ambiguity, a lurching and uncomfortable turn from the typically clearcut stories of the likes of Superman and Spider-Man, who always have external forces to blame for lapses of behavior (Kryptonite, alien symbiotes). When the Comedian finally breaks down in the bedroom of his former archenemy Moloch at the appalling demands of ‘the list’ that have unhinged even him after years of war and covert action, or when he has a brief moment to dote on his secret daughter before being scolded away by Sally Jupiter, you get a complex portrait of a very flawed but ultimately remorseful man who knows he will die violently, friendless and alone.

At the other extreme from the sordid pulp, we have the philosophical development of the series’ one true ’superhero’ in Dr. Manhattan who is clearly struggling to retain any vestige of humanity as he experiences the dissociation from any of the innate human limits (lifespan, linear time, location, normal senses, being subject to climate) and following his break-up with Laurie loses any tangible connection with human experience. This struggle of the superman among mortals is a compelling theme that has been taken up many times since Watchmen’s publication, including notable examples in the Ultimate universe with the re-imagined Hyperion (an alternate take on Superman); the breakdown of Supershock in Brian Michael Bendis’ series Powers; and even the barely-controlled rage of Mr. Incredible at his insurance job or sitting in traffic in Pixar’s The Incredibles (which, along with Powers, also picked up on the theme of public backlash, and with the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it picture of Dollar Bill gunned down when his cape is caught in a revolving door, the earliest example for Edna Mode’s famous exhortation, “No capes!”). The loneliness, isolation, and eventually detachment of a godlike figure among mortals makes for a compelling story on its own, but it suffers from being intermingled with the down-and-dirty lives of his fellow crusaders. And while the flat, dull intonation of much of Dr. Manhattan’s dialogue, combined with its dehumanized syntax as in his final TV interview, clearly are meant to convey the separation from the passions that rule normal human speech, it can come off as simply wooden and unengaging when put to screen. More expansively, precisely because we are meant to see the Doctor as an almost otherworldly and unempathetic character, the only time we can sympathize with his condition is when he is tormented by portions of his past such as his failed relationship with Janey Slater. This makes it ultimately hard to accept his abrupt return to Earth after simply observing Laurie’s discovery of her parentage, and semblance of conscience as he reacts to the human wreckage resulting from Veidt’s plan.

Finally, the question of veracity to the original text. I will certainly admit to being taken in by the naïve form of the argument, “the only way to honor the source material is to translate it exactly;” my evolution on that point has been explored here before. And having moved from that initial simplification, I have to hedge against hypocrisy if I would now find fault for someone doing what I once would have demanded. I do think that Sin City was weaker for being an exact duplicate of the graphic novel, because it offered few of the benefits of the film by going so far to make the visuals match the stark ink portraits of Frank Miller. A clear position on why Watchmen suffers similarly for its exactitude in treating the graphic novel as storyboard is offered by CNN’s Tom Charity, who lauds the innovations brought to the story such as its flashback credit sequence, which ranks with the Alex Ross painted vignettes that retold the whole of the first Spider-Man during the opening to Spider-Man 2, but seems to harbor particular umbrage with the description of Snyder’s work as ‘visionary’:

“Snyder — whose previous films were a remake (“Dawn of the Dead”) and another scrupulously faithful comic book adaptation (“300″) — is more in the line of a fancy photocopier, duplicating other artists’ imagery with a forger’s intensity. A visionary transforms the world. Snyder slavishly transcribes what’s set down 5 inches in front of his face.”

To be fair, that’s precisely what Snyder promised the fans. Where the cracks show is in the slippage between mediums, where comics and film fail when they try to solve the same problems the same way. Modern films have developed a complex visual language for dealing with time-jumping narratives, but still struggle to join parallel stories (split-panels work much better in comic form than split-screens). Pacing between the two formats is very different, and momentum diverted in comics (e.g. devoting an issue to a backstory) is much more detrimental to maintaining interest in film; comics after all often take at least a monthly pause between issues. And Charity is right to pick out that the omnipresent fear of looming nuclear devastation that was commonplace when Watchmen was first published in 1986 requires some translation in a day when biowarfare and terrorism have replaced the Soviets as the doomsday spectre. Yet it’s worth considering a comment made by Snyder (the last in a long line of attached directors) about how the project originally came to him:

“When I got the project, what the studio had in mind was a PG-13, two-hour movie where [the bad guy] gets killed in the end,” says Snyder. “Then it’s sequel-able and you’ve got a ‘Fantastic Four’ franchise called ‘Watchmen.’ “

Just mull over the notion of Watchmen being treated with anything like the calculated disregard heaped upon the stalwart Fantastic Four property (apparently a reboot is already in the works to take advantage of the ‘dark is the new hip’ aesthetic brought about by Nolan’s Batman relaunch). A sequel, even – maybe featuring the child of Nite Owl and Silk Spectre investigating the stories from Rorschach’s journal! Just as I’m willing to accept Count of Monte Cristo with Jacopo recast as comic relief as an acceptable tradeoff to the execrable off-axis indulgence of the Depardieu miniseries, so a faithful retelling with appropriate tweaks can meld the best of both worlds. And credit must be given to the production teams who brought the many sets and costumes off the page in a manner that was both true to the line art and still realistic. Hero costumes in particular require special attention so that the gleeful disregard for gravity, human physiques, and the behavior of textiles often employed by comic artists to make their figures more exciting is translated into believability. The Minutemen-era costumes look suitably homemade and cheaply constructed, especially the ludicrous wings worn by eventual padded-room resident Mothman. The updated costumes of the second Nite Owl and modern Comedian are emblematic of the Batman Begins-style exoskeleton, while the critical inkblot cloth effect of Rorschach’s ‘face’ is immaculately done (go Frank!). Dr. Manhattan is, yes, naked, very blue and glows, but kudos to the effort put into his reconstruction sequence shown in flashback as he regains control over his component molecules and literally pulls himself back together. Only Ozymandias looks like a ponce in his costume, which is perfectly fine with me since that’s still better than he looked in the comic with those metallic gold leggings; he’s sinister only when hooded and disguised during the assassination of the Comedian, with an intensely tight fight choreography that plays on his exotically triangular upper torso. Even the ludicrous purple suit he wears during the meeting with the oil executives is a nice nod to the reigning fashion in 1985 (also check out the Nagel print in the Comedian’s bedroom). My least favorite effect, incidentally, was Tricky Dick’s nose which was frankly distracting and no doubt a nuisance to act behind; unlike Ocean’s Thirteen, the nose does not play. The sets are perhaps most remarkable in how effortlessly they fall into the background; compare with the many look-at-me layouts typically found in comic book movies. The Batcave. The Fortress of Solitude. The Baxter Building. Green Goblin’s lair and military lab. Apart from Ozymandias’ Antarctica fortress, which is really just an amalgam of Egyptian monuments to flatter his ego, and his V-topped office tower that demonstrates his business wealth, Dan has the most elaborate ‘lair’ and it consists of a dank basement entrance to an abandoned train platform. And while some moments dragged and some transitions felt abrupt due to following the comics closely, the payoff was those scenes both major and minor that reminded fans of the highlights from reading. My particular standouts were quick shots of the Bernard and Bernie duo at the newsstand which figure in the Black Freighter storyline, including Bernard embracing Bernie protectfully as the integration field explosion hits them; Rorschach’s brief prison stay; and Nite Owl’s return to action. Extra geek fun was spotting two Eureka regulars playing Moloch and Seymour (the intern at the New Frontiersman at the end).

Which brings us to the controversial changed climax. What, no giant fake space squid? Heresy! Actually, this always struck me as the weakest part of Veidt’s strategem – it made the usual grand conspiracy mistake of overcomplicating the deception, which vastly magnifies the opportunities to uncover it…shame on you, world’s smartest man. The squid required simultaneous belief in massive extraterrestrial cephalopods, hostile intent by an alien race, and indeterminate future attacks in order to rally humanity to a common defense. The discursive turn in the movie to put the blame on Dr. Manhattan – already persona non grata due to the radioactivity cover story – neatly sidesteps most of the belief gap. People were already becoming uneasy at the prospect of a superbeing with near-limitless power; in fact, he was the suggested impetus for the massive Soviet stockpiling of nuclear weapons and the steady progression of the Doomsday clock towards midnight. Essentially the only people not already afraid of Dr. M were Americans, and the cancer scare and his subsequent removal to Mars worked to undermine that. Cue integration field generators in key cities that can duplicate the emissions known to be unique to Dr. Manhattan, and we have a plausible scenario that not only achieves the same end as giant space squid marauders but neatly taps Dr. M as the common enemy, neutralizing him as a threat to the scheme. Which leaves wishy-washy Dan who bows to the inevitable after an ass-kicking, and Rorschach.

Perhaps the best way to summarize the movie is with Rorschach himself. He is brutal but methodical, does what he believes to be necessary and never shrinks from ugly truths. He has faults aplenty, tempered by virtues like loyalty and commitment to justice. And when the greatest practical joke of all has been played on humanity by the smugly sociopathic Veidt, he alone remains devoted to his principles even in the face of the clear utilitarian argument for staying silent. He chooses death over capitulation: “No compromise, even in the face of Armageddon.” This stance has had terrifying consequences when applied to events in our world, simplifying complex situations into black and white and acting without regard for consequences or higher authority (or, ultimately, immanentizing the eschaton). But in the case of Watchmen the movie, which makes no compromise for ratings (moving to R doubtless lowered potential gross earnings), remains loyal to the original work, and commits to the nuanced themes that Moore raised which challenge many of the assumptions in the whole of the genre, we can feel the same guilty admiration as for poor unyielding Walter Kovacs.

[1] Many times comic book movies have drawn from specific issue details, from origin stories to the incorporation of elements from God Loves Man Kills into the second X-Men movie. However, these are usually a pastiche with significant variations from the source material – for example, in X2 William Stryker is a minister with a private religious agenda instead of a military officer working under government authority.

Featured Selections

Apoptygma Berzerk, You and Me Against the World (14)

Apoptygma’s Stephan Groth met stiff scene resistance in shifting from earlier, harsh attack EBM to the kind of epic synth rock exhibited here to great effect. Naturally, cries of ’sellout’ and fan rebellion were followed by the album achieving runaway success, particularly in Tokio Hotel-loving Germany. Anthemic, crashing chords tear the roof off with tracks like “In This Together” and the gripping “Cambodia.”

Asobi Seksu, Hush (12)

Asobi Seksu return with more immaculate, Lush-esque twee dreampop.

Autechre, Amber (11)
-, Incunabula (11)

Before they got self-consciously experimental to the point of becoming ‘difficult’ music, Autechre put out some wonderfully melodic IDM in Incunabula and Amber, which would be followed shortly after by Tri Repetae.

Scooter, Jumping All Over the World (24)

It’s Scooter. Jumping All Over the Place is pretty much self-descriptive.



See Also

Apples in Stereo, The Discovery of a World Inside the Moone (12)
-, Let’s Go! (5)
-, Velocity of Sound (11)
-, Her Wallpaper Reverie (15)
-, Tone Soul Evolution (14)
-, Look Away (5)
-, Science Faire (13)

A Camp, Stronger Than Jesus (1)

Ace of Base, Wheel of Fortune 2009 (2)

And One, Frontfeuer (5)

Apoptygma Berzerk, Welcome to Earth (13)
-, 7 (10)
-, Apocalyptic Manifesto (12)

A Shoreline Dream, Recollections of Memory (10)

Beirut, March of the Zapotec & Realpeople: Holland (11)

Belle and Sebastian, The BBC Sessions (14)

Gavin Bryars, Amjad (17)

Claire Voyant, Time and the Maiden (13)
-, Time Again (13)
-, Love Is Blind (10)

Clannad, An Diolaim (14)

Download, Charlie’s Family (9)

Faith & The Muse, Annwyn Beneath the Waves (14)
-, Elyria (14)
-, The Burning Season (12)

Faunts, Feel.Love.Thinking.Of (10)

Front 242, Pulse (12)
-, Still & Raw (6)
-, Headhunter 2000 (9+8)
-, Re-Boot Live ‘98 (12)

Grizzly Bear, Yellow House (10)
-, Friend EP (10)

Gus Gus, Need in Me (4)

Jean Michel Jarre, Oxygene (6)
-, Equinoxe (8)
-, Les Chants Magnetiques (5)

Cevin Key, Music for Cats (13)

Kill Hannah, Hope for the Hopeless (10)

Ladytron, 604 Remixes (13)

LCD Soundsystem, 45:33 (2)

LFO, Frequencies (14)

Love is Colder Than Death, Mental Traveller (12)

Timo Maas, Subtellite (1)

Nightmare Lodge, Blind Miniatures (8)
-, Tentacled (10)

Nightmares on Wax, A Word of Science (15)

Old 97’s, Hitchhike to Rhome (13)

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart, The Pains of Being Pure at Heart (10)

Plateau, Spacecake (16)

Polygon Windows, Surfing on Sine Waves (11)

Praga Khan, Not Strictly Rubens (10)

Ratatat, Mirando (2)

Rhea’s Obsession, Between Earth and Sky (11)
-, Re:Initiation (14)

Robert Rich, React (11)

Gabrielle Roth, Jhoom (5)

Sabres of Paradise, Sabresonic (8)

School of Seven Bells, Iamundernodisguise (2)

Scooter, Jump That Rock (4)

Tindersticks, The Hungry Saw (12)

M. Ward, Hold Time (14)

Wendy & Lisa, White Flags of Winter Chimneys (9)
-, Girl Bros. (13)

soundtrack, The Count of Monte Cristo – musical (13)
-, Coraline (12)

various, Artificial Intelligence (10)
-, Bytes (11)
-, The Evolution of the Groove (9)

Free

Giant Brain, Thorn of Thrones (1)

Melissa Giges, Evident (1)

The Rosebuds, Sweet Beats Troubled Dreams (10)

various, An Introduction to Truth & Soul (12)
-, eMusic Sampler Vol 2 (13)
-, The Wages of Syntax (18)

Spoken Word

Anais Nin, Delta of Venus (4)

Basil Rathbone, Sherlock Holmes – The Unfortunate Tobacconist/The Paradol Chamber (2)

While it may seem confining at first, cars can be effective acoustic spaces, as many have discovered singing along their radio. Vehicles with slightly rounded roofs, sloping rear windows and decent insulation and window seals create a bit of a natural fishbowl, allowing sound to rebound without directly reflecting; the closed space also helps amplify volume like that other favored personal stage, the shower stall. This can make for a rich, warm enveloping sound that makes you feel in the midst of the music rather than having it broadcast at you. And a London cab, with its traditional double-seat rear seating and slightly bulbous non-rectilinear frame, is upon reflection a bit of a rolling sound booth. And so the Black Cab Sessions are formed of the simple expedient of musicians limited to what they can hold and play in a back seat while slowly navigating the streets of London.

Part of what makes these so affecting is that they are by nature a hybrid experience of casual and professional. Traveling musicians can get swallowed by the stagecraft and perfectionist minutiae of soundchecks, but here you strip all that away and, in the most unguarded moments, see through to the experience of the music beneath in its raw form. Some of my favorite highlights so far include the spontaneous grins of Amanda Palmer (of Dresden Dolls) from behind her ukulele and Annie Clark (of St Vincent) from behind her electric guitar as they seem to catch themselves in the joy of the moment; Lykke Li breaking out a miniature percussion ensemble of handclaps, shaker, finger cymbals and sleigh bells to supplement a bullhorn and accordion while Li herself wriggles dance moves in miniature; Jens Lekman exuding a solid calm as he solemnly plunks out his “Black Cab” on what I suppose is a finger piano (which, I kid you not, just came up on rotation in my iTunes…a song I didn’t even know I had); the transposition of synth-heavy duo The Raveonettes to an acoustic rendition of “Dead Sound” bounded by telltale British sirens and other traffic noise; and Ane Brun’s adorable sniffling. In each, you can see the performance against the mundane backdrop of the city (most are shot in daylight) as normal life continues around them. As cynical and removed as I sometimes find myself from the purity of music as a personal act of expression in a crowded, noisy world, the Black Cab Sessions are an unassuming remedy.

Media Aside:
The videos themselves are also a successful example of the long-heralded ‘independent media’ in that the creators at Just So Films are a trio of filmmakers “who understand the vast opportunities presented by the online environment” and have created a new property that builds on unscripted performance, handheld cameras, cinéma verité production, and online distribution while promoting both established and upcoming musicians to reach hundreds of thousands in over 150 countries. Contemporary visions of the future often trade on images of hundreds of simultaneous TV channels – even in farcically dystopic vistas like Mike Judge’s Idiocracy and Richard Kelly’s Southland Tales, or the dour Babylon A.D. – with many apparently serving as direct-from-the-people communications. With YouTube long entrenched, the rise of CNN’s iReporters, and independent ventures like these Sessions, a future without the traditional gatekeepers of broadcast media seems ever closer.

[Thanks to Neil Gaiman's Journal for the tip.]

And so I’m befuddled that Wolfram last week launched a Home Edition of its flagship product at the economically tonedeaf price of $259. Seriously? Compare to the varying student Editions, which start at $45 for a Semester Edition license and top out at $140 for a full Standard Edition student license. Of course it compares favorably to the Professional Edition which runs a steep $2,495, but then, how many of those are actually sold to individuals instead of institutions? In the same way that Adobe Photoshop Elements relates to the professional Photoshop and the Creative Suite packages, Wolfram is offering their core tools enhanced with some common-interest tutorials (Decorate Easter Eggs with the Riemann zeta function! Explore the parameterization of Valentine hearts!) And yet they effectively price the average household out of the market, even were we not facing a severe recession and hence curb on extravagant spending.

It might make some sense if this were intended to act as an introductory version of the product for prosumer applications, like Final Cut Express does with the full bundle of Final Cut Studio. But they go so far as to restrict the Home Edition for purely non-commercial home use, stating that it “is not licensed for commercial, nonprofit, academic, or government use.” So what kind of armchair data analyst are they really trying to reach with this expensive yet license-restricted package?

eMusic Feature

Saddle Creek Essentials

Featured Selections

Andrew Bird, Noble Beast (12)

Andrew Bird continues to veer further away from his swing jazz roots with the Bowl of Fire while continuing to produce consistently pleasing pop/folk concoctions, with trademark violin, whistling, and lyrical flourishes to challenge The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy.

Client, Heartland (12)
-, Untitled Remix (12)
-, Xerox Machine (6)

Not as immediately infectious as preceding albums Client and City, Heartland takes a few listens to gell, but ultimately still delivers the retro synthpop with a bit more Gary Glitter stamp and stomp, particularly the Alice Cooper-esque “Lights Go Out” and their cover of Adam Ant’s “Xerox Machine.” The Untitled Remix includes primarily mixes from Heartland plus collaborations with Douglas McCarthy and fellow synthetes Replica.

Stoa, Silmand (13)

More silky-swoopy neoclassical darkwave from ex-Hyperium act Stoa.

Maria Taylor, Lynn Tweeter Flower (11)

Both Taylor and fellow Azure Ray bandmate Orenda Fink get several older solo releases added (below), while Lynn Tweeter Flower represents the latest output of AR’s more straightforward half.



See Also

AFX, Analogue Bubblebath (4)

Duplicate.

Antony and the Johnsons, The Crying Light (10)

Apples in Stereo, Fun Trick Noisemaker (13)

Attrition, Kill the Buddha! (11)

Azure Ray, Hold On Love
-, November (6)
-, The Drinks We Drank Last Night (3)
-, New Resolution (3)

Big Country, Rarities IV (12)
-, Rarities VI (16)

Bola, Mauver (4)

Bon Iver, Blood Bank (4)

Boomkat, A Million Trillion Stars (14)

Bright Eyes, Letting Off the Happiness (10)
-, Easy/Lucky/Free (5)
-, Four Winds (6)
-, When the President Talks to God (1)

Bunnygrunt, Action Pants! (8)
-, Jen-Fi (16)

Crystal Method, Bones Theme – Remixes (3)

Cut Off Your Hands, You & I (12)

Cyberaktif, Nothing Stays (4)
-, Temper (3)

Dälek, Gutter Tactics (11)

Eden, Return to Innocence (12)

Excessive Force, Gentle Death (13)
-, Conquer Your World (12)

The Faint, Danse Macabre (9)

Orenda Fink, Invisible Ones (10)
-, Bloodline (3)

One half of Azure Ray.

Gravity Kills, Gravity Kills (11)
-, Guilty (11)

Gus Gus, Lust/Porn (2)

Hilt, Journey to the Center of the Bowl (16)

Hood, Compilations 1995-2002 (20)
-, Structured Disasters (18)

Icon of Coil, Machines Are Us (14)
-, The Soul Is In The Software (10)
-, Uploadedandremixed (14)
-, Serenity is the Devil (10)

Cevin Key, The Ghost of Each Room (10)
-, The Dragon Experience (11)

Kristeen Young, That’s What It Takes Dear (1)

Love Is Colder Than Death, Oxeia (14)
-, Teignmouth (13)

Modern English, Beautiful People (6)

Mogwai, The Hawk Is Howling (10)

Repost?

Mos Def, Audio 3 (24)

My Brightest Diamond, Shark Remixes Vol 2 (4)

Gary Numan, Jagged (12)

Of Montreal, Jon Brion Remixes EP (5)
-, Mad Decent Remixes (3)

The Pica Beats, All Mysteries Solves Themselves (12)

Planet P Project, Planet P Project (16)

Psykosonik, Unlearn (10)
-, Silicon Jesus (6)
-, Welcome To My Mind (7)

Jorge Reyes, Tomani (8)

Rilo Kiley, The Execution of All Things (3)

Sister Machine Gun, Addiction (5)
-, Not My God (5)
-, Wired/Lung (5)

Maria Taylor, 11:11 (10)
-, Time Lapse Lifeline (1)

Other half of Azure Ray.

The Timelords (KLF), Doctorin’ the TARDIS (5)

Toyko Police Club, Elephant Shell Remixes (5)

X Marks the Pedwalk, Drawback (12)
-, Retrospective 1988-1999 (14)
-, Freaks+ (14)

Xorcist, Insects & Angels (12)

The Watson Twins, Southern Manners (8)

Wildbirds & Peacedrums, Heartcore (12)

Free

Mars Laser, Free Music from Mars (10)

various, Builder Vol 1 (4)
-, Relay the Fallback (9)
-, Supraphon Selections (14)

Spoken Word

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2)

Anais Nin, Henry & June (4)

Ayn Rand, Anthem (12)

Tribute Corner

Amonn-v2, New Year’s Day (1)

Vitamin String Quartet, String in the New Year (12)
-, Performs the Hits of Rock Band (12)

Major additions this month from the Metropolis Records back catalog, featuring Darkwave/EBM/Industrial acts like Clan of Xymox, Combichrist, Covenant, Haujobb, KMFDM, Suicide Commando, Velvet Acid Christ, VNV Nation, and Wumpscut.

Featured Selections

Cranes, Cranes (11)

Cranes choose their eighth album to go eponymous, four years after Particles and Waves. Alison Shaw’s child plaint remains a constant in their dream pop repertoire, backed with the familiar strumming of Jim Shaw, and accompanied by the bell-like tones from their more recent outings.

Gotan Project, Live (24)

As it says on the tin, live renditions of Gotan Project’s electronic-flecked nuevo tango add spice and uncertainty to their more battened-down studio versions. The album covers material from their tours supporting La Revancha del Tango and Lunático, plus two orchestral reworkings.

Sigur Rós, Med sud I eyrum vid spilum endalaust (11)

Translating as “With a Buzz in Our Ears We Play Endlessly,” the fifth release by Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Rós adds more upbeat whimsy than earlier Hopelandic laments and includes their first song in English, “All Alright.”

Hector Zazou, L’Absence (11)

A companion album to Strong Currents, featuring some of the same featured female vocalists (Nicola Hitchcock of Mandalay, Caroline Lavelle, Emma Stow) plus others including actress Asia Argento, and a rare male voice by the French singer Edo. Sadly, among the last of Zazou’s collaborative efforts before his untimely death late last year.


Special Star Wars Copyright Challenge

Boba Fettt, Meisters des Universums (16)


See Also

Air Miami, Sixteen Songs (18)
-, Fourteen Songs (14)

And One, Bodypop (12)

Repost.

Apoptygma Berzerk, Harmonizer (11)
-, APBL2000 (13)
-, Singles Collection (13+18)
-, Soli Deo Gloria (14)
-, Kathy’s Song (6)
-, Black (10)

At the Drive-In, This Station Is Non-Operational (18)

The Breeders, Last Splash (2)
-, Off You (3)

Bright Eyes

Anne Clark, The Law Is An Anagram of Wealth (12)
-, To Love And Be Loved (10)
-, The Smallest Acts of Kindness (12)
-, Unstill Life (13)
-, Psychometry (19)

Holly Cole, Baby It’s Cold Outside (13)

Noel Coward, Sings Sail Away And Other Coward Rarities (26)

Cut Copy, Far Away (7)

Gigi D’Agostino, L’Amour Toujours II (15+15)

Danú, Think Before You Think (13)

Decemberists, 5 Songs EP (6)

Duplicate.

Deerhunter, Weird Era Cont (13)

Eels, Blinking Lights and Other Revelations (17+16)

Repost.

Faithless, A Kind of Peace (4)

Forthcoming Fire, Ekhnaton (14)
-, Illumination? (14)
-, Je Suis (12)
-, Watching Rome Burn (11)

John Foxx, Cathedral Oceans I & II (11+10)

Frightened Rabbit, It’s Christmas So We’ll Stop (1)

Hybrid, Symphony (4)

Jega, Geometry (13)
-, Spectrum (16)
-, Type Xer0 EP (4)

Juno Reactor, Transmissions (9)
-, Luciana (1)
-, Beyond the Infinite (8)
-, Bible of Dreams (8)
-, Shango (9)
-, Labyrinth (9)
-, Gods & Monsters (9)
-, Pistolero (7)
-, Masters of the Universe (5)
-, Hotaka (4)

Ken Kase Group, Extended Play – No Waiting (5)

KRS-One, KRS-One Digital (20)

Ladyhawke, Paris Is Burning (6)

Daniel Lanois, Rockets (10)
-, Here Is What Is (18)

Malicorne, Nous sommes chanteurs de sornettes (Malicorne IV) (10)
-, Quintessence (11)

M.I.A., Mausen (6)

Alannah Myles, Black Velvet (11)

Michael Nyman, MGV & Piano Concerto (9)

O’Death, One (5)

Rasputina, Frustration Plantation – Bonus Disc (9)

Duplicate.

Rilo Kiley, The Execution of All Things (12)

Steve Roach & Eric Wøllo, Stream of Thought (19)

Rocket From The Crypt, Group Sounds (13)
-, R.I.P. (20)

The Silent League, Aeroplanes (4)

Smile.dk, Party Around the World (6)

Toyko Police Club, Elephant Shell (11)

Laura Veirs, Two Beers Veirs (5)

Veruca Salt, IV (14)

Wumpscut, Music for a Slaughtering Tribe II (14)

soundtrack, Anne of Green Gables – Off Broadway cast (16)

Free

BLK JKS, Mystery EP (4)

Spoken Word

The Kama Sutra – Abridged (4)

Tribute Corner

Amonn-v2, A View To A Kill (1)
-, Be Bop A Lula (1)
-, Justify My Love (1)
-, Venus (1)
-, Anybody Seen My Baby (1)

Dan McKie vs Orbital, Halcyon Again (3)

Hampton String Quartet, The Off White Album (14)

Los Straitjackets, Smells Like Teen Spirit (1)

Featured Selections

Au Revoir Simone, Reverse Migration (13)

Remix collection of the entirety of 2007’s The Bird of Music, with “Sad Song” and “The Lucky One” both earning double dips. Some tracks are actually more stripped down rather than built up, such as the spare Slow Club mix of “The Lucky One” which concludes in a rousingly messy chorus round.

Lisa Hannigan, Sea Sew (10)

Longtime musical partner of Damien Rice, Irish sweetheart Hannigan was set free amid some untoward drama, but confidently breaks out on her own on Sea Sew. The album enjoyed early success with the leadoff single “Lille.”

Ladyhawke, Ladyhawke (12)

Kiwi Pip Brown plunders the dusty chest of 80s pop and pulls off the new-new wave secret soundtrack to a John Hughes film that never was.

Ulrich Schnauss, Goodbye (10)

Schnauss moves on from his homage to 70s space rock like Tangerine Dream to epic 90s shoegaze like Slowdive and SoulWhirlingSomewhere, right from the aching swell of opener “Never Be the Same” with its crashing synth waves under blissed out vocals. Music for dreams to ascend into.

See Also

4 Clubbers, Secrets/Sonar (2)

Christina Aguilera, Just Be Free (12)

Asobi Seksu, Me & Mary (2)

Tracy Bonham, In the City + In the Woods (11)

Carla Bruni, No Promises (11)
-, Comme si de rien n’était (14)

Bush, Zen X Four (9)

Cobalt 60, Elemental (12)

Cujo, Adventures in Foam (18)

Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castle Remixes (4)

DJ Spooky, Collected Ambient Tracks (12)

Final Fantasy, Plays to Please (6)

Fisher, She Kissed Me (1)
-, Remind Me (1)
-, Closer (1)

Folksongs for the Afterlife, Put Danger Back in Your Life (11)

Repost.

Johann Johannsson, Forlândia (11)

The Handsome Family, Last Days of Wonder (12)
-, In the Forest of Missing Airplanes (3)

Hybrid, Fall Out of Love (8)

Katzenjammer Kabarett, Grand Guignol & Varietes (12)

Lacuna Coil, Visual Karma – Live at Wacken 2007 (12)

Cyndi Lauper, Shine (5)
-, Shine Remixes (6)

Lovespirals, This Truth (9)

Malicorne, Le Mariage Anglais (10)
-, Colin (11)

Material, Seven Souls (10)

Mediaeval Baebes, Miracle (3)

Ingrid Michaelson, Be OK (11)
-, Slow the Rain (9)

Lisa Miskovsky, Still Alive (Theme from Mirror’s Edge) (11)

Gary Numan, New Dreams for Old (19)
-, Scarred (12+10)

The Orb, Vuja De (7)

Plastic Bertrand, Dandy Bandit (11)

The Postmarks, By the Numbers (12)

Rajna, Duality (12)

Rasputina, Frustration Plantation – Bonus (9)

The Raveonettes, Wishing You a Rave Christmas (4)

Robert, Sourde Et Aveugle (12)

Shallow, CD Laser Lens Cleaner (6)

Stars, Sad Robots (6)

Miriam Stockley, Second Nature (10)

aka “The Voice of Adiemus”

Suicidal Tendencies, Suicidal Tendencies – remastered (12)

Taras Bulba, Sketches of Babel (10)
-, Peyote Moon (12)
-, Basta Cosi (3)
-, Von der Wahrheit (3)
-, Shiva Diva (3)

Throbbing Gristle, Thirty-Second Annual Report (9)

The Tiger Lillies, The Little Matchgirl (12)
-, Die Weberischen (14)

Trance Mission, Obsession (10)

Trentemøller, Remixed (5)

Vanilla Ice, Vanilla Ice Is Back! – Hip Hop Classics (12)

John Williams, Raiders of the Lost Ark (22)
-, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (22)
-, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (19)

New Musical Cast, Phantom of the Opera (13)
-, Mama Mia! (12)
-, Valley Girl (12)
-, Valley Girl Singalong (12)

soundtrack, Boom Blox (18)
-, Dead Space (17)
-, The Marvelous Wonderettes (12)
-, Need for Speed Undercover – Paul Haslinger (19)
-, Saw V (12)
-, Were the World Mine (12)

Free

various, BBC Music Magazine Sampler (13)
-, Deep Elm Sampler No. 8 (16)
-, Fiscal Apocalypse 2008 (15)
-, Mint Records Ridiculously Late eMusic Sampler (7)
-, Redeye 2008 Holiday Sampler (13)
-, So Indie It Hurts: ROIR Rocks Volume 1 (11)

Spoken Word

Sherlock Holmes (Sir John Gielgud) – Doctor Watson Meets/The Final Problem (2)

Value

Fear Falls Burning, Fear Falls Burning + Nadja (6)
-, Frenzy of the Absolute (6)

Kronos Quartet, Plays Holmgreen (4)