What are you listening to/watching?

[opipik]

I'm currently listening to music in various Lakes-Plain languages.
Sga Rijde Band - Karijfe I Trorire (Dabra)
Anthoneus Treido - Wesari Toite (also in Dabra)
Gerson - Kegso (also in Dabra, but in a different dialect)
FERWAP - Hueco Kyaki (Kaiy?)
FERWAP - Hesai Huarawa (Sikaritai)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=te0uWcpYrPE (Papasena)
Suateig Voice - Do Ekidarig Wrig Fogsai (Doutai? Probably also Dabra or Kaiy, though)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8J8rnlLINRY (Iau)
Tamoso Group - Sadi Tv (Iau)
Tamoso Group - Sio Ditybv Boy Ae (Iau)

[Man in Space]

Meshuggah – “Clockworks”

This is incidentally my favorite music video of all time.

I'm currently listening to music in various Lakes-Plain languages.

I had no idea that was a thing.

[Man in Space]

The final two songs from this King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard set, “Hypertension” and “Magma”, are positively sublime. (The rendition of “Self-Immolate” in the first half is utterly fantastic too.)

[Reyzadren]

Mercenary - Anthem for the Anxious

[Man in Space]

Mad Max: Fury Road: Blood and Chrome Edition

[Visions1]

Got into Guqin. It really calms me down.
https://soundcloud.com/peiyouqin/olu-wangji

[Man in Space]

FindMyName – “Show Me Your Back”

[Man in Space]

SAY3AM & Staarz – “Broken Trust”

[Visions1]

https://soundcloud.com/mshhkhbvshh/sets/ufx5d2nc3zyu

Most songs begin with a mawwal lasting say 2~3 minutes, then proceed to the actual poetry (it seems some of the poems are much longer than sung here, which is fair - but this is something I'd listen to for hours).
Still trying to figure out the maqamat.

[Dormouse559]

Schmigadoon!
Severance
Rebel Moon

“Schmigadoon!” made me so happy; there were so many times I was grinning ear to ear like the musical nerd I am.

“Severance” clearly has a deep amount of thought put into gaming out its premise, with the exact kind of existential horror that I enjoy. Plus, it draws out the suspense perfectly.

The backstory of the main character in “Rebel Moon” should have been the first movie in this series, which would free up time in this entry for any character and relationship development at all.

[Salmoneus]

FWIW, the second season of "Reacher" is much, much better than the second. The first is carried by charismatic performances, but is almost laughably bad in its writing at times (it's basically a neoconservative's literal wet dream with most of the sex taken out - it makes 24 and Jack Bauer look liberal). The second has actual believable characters, suspense, action, a plot, and so on.

----------

On the historic side, I watched four old things recently:

Lost Girl (rewatch) is actually really good, much better than you'd expect. It was better than when I first watched it - I think because I knew not to get my hopes up and so its failures to be what I thought it should be were less annoying. That said, I only watched the first four seasons, not the final one, which I remember hating, and it's definitely downhill from the second on. It works much less well as epic arc than it does as quirky episodes - in part because I didn't feel the writers actually knew where they were going most of the time, so they just made it up as they went along. It had to evolve, but I think it evolved too fast and left them with nowhere to go.

Alphas (rewatch) is... interesting. Not as good as I remembered, but worth watching if you like that sort of thing. It's interesting because it takes a very different approach to superheroics - it's much less interested in superheroism than it is in office bickering. Particularly in the first season, everyone is on edge and out of their depth and it has a more fly-on-the-wall feel than most shows. It struggles, however, to form an interesting season-long arc, and really the introduction of a Big Bad in the second season weighs the whole show down. It worked better as what it started as. However, its best episodes are very good.

Orphan Black (rewatch, only two seasons) is frustrating. When it's good, it's great. The first season is great. The second, much less so. The first season work like 24 - every episode ends on a cliffhanger and the viewer never knows what's really going on. The problem is, that's not sustainable - eventually you know what's going on (and it's actually all revealed surprisingly quickly). On the one hand, it gets annoying that they keep trying to introduce yet another layer into the conspiracies, and on the other hand it doesn't really build tension in the same way - the watcher is left more comfortable than before, which makes the episodes more leaden. And the constant implausible excuses to get Maslany to act as one-character-acting-as-another are much more intrusive once you've already seen the party trick.

Fringe (new watch) is amazing! Admittedly, not always in a good way. It's a constant alternation between really brave, brilliant storytelling, and incomprehensibly bad storytelling. It's very clearly the successor to Alias, with a lot of the virtues, and more importantly flaws, of that series: a Whedonesque whiff of girl-power misogyny, an obsession with (narratively useless) prophecies, a refusal to plan anything more than a few episodes in a row, and a general approach in which the plot exists only to get the characters to emotionally interesting scenes. That delivers a lot of amazing scenes, and some amazing episodes, but it also constantly frustrating because plots don't actually go anywhere in their own right - the entire show feels like set-up with no payoff. And most annoyingly it has the largest idiot ball in TV history, as characters totally ignore, for entire seasons at a time, things that should have been both mind-blowingly amazing to them and actually essential to the plot. Something will happen or be found that lets the characters do X in one episode, and then there'll be two years of characters trying and failing to do X while ignoring the fact they already know how (/have the resources) to do X... until suddenly out of the blue someone will say "oh, we could just abc, that would do X, wouldn't it?" and the audience is left screaming YES YOU FUCKING IDIOT YOU COULD HAVE DONE ABC ALL ALONG. And even when I understand why the show doesn't want to let them do abc as a shortcut they could at least fucking give a pretend reason in-show, instead of just hoping the viewers forgot about it (until suddenly they need to remember it). It's really annoying!

It does, however, feature probably the best acting performance (taken as a whole) in the history of cinema and television. Which kind of carries it.

[Man in Space]

Primus – “John the Fisherman”

[Khemehekis]

Primus – “John the Fisherman”

Ha! I live in Primus' hometown (El Sobrante, California).

[Visions1]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Shenren_Chang.ogg
It's beautiful

[Man in Space]

King Crimson – “Starless”

[Salmoneus]

I rewatched the first season of The Americans. It's an almost perfect season of TV. It shows what the show is about, but is still accessible to a wider audience (it's more episodic and action-packed than some of the later seasons were). Watch it!

But now I'm rewatching the second season, and... holy fuck, it's even better. Way better. Yes, way better than "almost perfect".

In my memory, this was one of my least-favourite seasons, because I didn't like the resolution of the season-long arc... but on a re-watch, I realise how little time is actually spent on that arc anyway, and how amazing everything else is. Practically every episode would be the best episode ever of almost any other TV show. Every episode, I think "oh wow, I didn't know that was going to be THE episode" - you know, the spectacular one every season with the amazing character development scenes and the major plot twists - but no, every time the next episode is just as... much. It's absolutely packed with brilliance.

The only downside is that we're only in season 2 and already the amount of sheer unrelenting human misery is at apocalyptic levels. It's never gratuitous or mopey - it's not one of those shows that goes around in circles with people being depressed for the sake of it, all this misery is either directly related to the (propulsive) plotting or is in the service of genuine character development. And there's more humour than I remember. And it's so beautiful and complex. But yeah, there's so many people being so unhappy for so many different reasons!

[Visions1]

https://archive.org/details/lp_songs-of ... m-horowitz
They don't make albums like this anymore. Reminds me of other old Jewish stuff from the 20th century - books, music, architecture, art styles, etc. I'm going off what my Bostoner friend has told me partially.
Highlights include:
I think 2 is my favorite. It could go down in the melody, but instead goes up... So lovely.
3 is a ridiculously popular melody in the Tri State Area, probably in a lot of places.
9 was used by a famous Jewish kids' singer. In fact a lot of this sect's melodies are borrowed by others.
10 has an arrangement that shows what sound like Celtic influences. Another favorite contender.
11 is for when the groom and bride walk down the aisle.
13 sounds like a well-known melody from the Old World.

Like all albums, listen in order. But, you can jump around too. Please note that this album is midcentury, and hence they had more limited recording capabilities.

[Khemehekis]

@Visions1: Are you Jewish? (My IRL surname is Landau, so . . .)

[Visions1]

I like Jewish music a lot. I picked up a knack for it at some point.

[Arayaz]

I'm also Jewish, but I hadn't heard of "Jewish music" as a genre... sure, there are songs about Jewish holidays, but I didn't think of it as a genre, y'know? Just as a potential subject matter.