Music 2020

 

2020 Music

And might as well do a best music list as well. Again, only things heard the first time this year (to the best of my memory). Though I mainly listened to WREK and for some reason a lot of electric Miles.

Acid Mothers Temple - Magical Power From Mars

Fiona Apple – Fetch the Bolt Cutters

Black Midi - Schlagenheim

Brotzmann | Mengelberg | Bennink - 3 Points and a Mountain​.​.​.​Plus

Miley Cyrus – various covers released as videos this year

Deer Tick – Divine Providence

Bob Dylan - Rough And Rowdy Ways

Etoile de Dakar - Once Upon a Time in Senegal: The Birth of Mbalax 1979-1981

The Ex - 27 Passports

Globe Unity Orchestra & Guests - Baden-Baden '75

Half Japanese – Invincible

Mahotella Queens - Izibani Zomgqashiyo

Boban Markovic - Golden Horns: Best of Boban i Marko Markovic Orkestar

The Mountain Goats - Transcendental Youth

The Mountain Goats - Goths (Deluxe Version)

Newen Afrobeat - Newen Plays Fela

Nublu Orchestra - Live at Jazz Festival Saalfelden

Run the Jewels – Run the Jewels 3

Jo Stafford - Swingin' Down Broadway

Peter Stampfel And The Bottle Caps - Demo '84

Taylor Swift - Folklore

VA - Agrim Agadez

VA - Egypt Noir: Nubian Soul Treasures

VA - Excavated Shellac: An Alternate History of the World's Music

VA - The Ecstasy Of Gold - 23 Killer Bullets From the Spaghetti West - Vol. 1

VA - Live from Festival au Desert, Timbuktu

VA - Love is a One-Way Traffic: Groovy East Asian Chicks 1960s-70s

VA - Protobilly: The Minstrel & Tin Pan Alley DNA of Country Music 1892-2017

VA - Spiritual Jazz

VA - Strain Crack & Break: Music From The Nurse With Wound List V1

VA - The Strange Sounds of the Bloodstained Films

Books 2020

 Books 2020

I’ve done a movies list for the longest time but just realized that oddly I’ve never done one for books. Same rule – read for the first time January 1 to December 31. This year I read about half the usual amount and much of that leaning towards a lighter side. But here are the top picks for best alphabetically.

And if I had to choose just a handful it would be Aickman, Elkin, Hurston, Jackson, Krasznahorkai and Shane.

Robert Aickman - Cold Hand in Mine (1975)

Martin Amis - The Information (1995)

Mike Carey et al - Lucifer, Books Three & Four (2005)

Leonora Carrington - The Complete Stories of Leonora Carrington (2017)

TJ Clark - The Painting of Modern Life: Paris in the Art of Manet and his Followers(1984)

Julian Cope - Krautrocksampler: One Head's Guide to the Great Kosmische Musik - 1968 Onwards (1995)

James S.A. Corey - Persepolis Rising (2017)

Evan Dorkin & Jill Thompson - Beasts of Burden: Animal Rites (2010) & Volume 2: Neighborhood Watch (2019)

Lauren Elkin - Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London (2016)

Al Ewing & Joe Bennett - Immortal Hulk, Vols 1 to 6 (2018/19)

Michel Fiffe - COPRA Round One (2013)

Penelope Fitzgerald - The Bookshop (1978)

Jonathan Fitzgibbons - Cromwell's Head (2008)

Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)

Shirley Jackson - We Have Always Lived in the Castle (1962)

Jerome K. Jerome - Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889)

László Krasznahorkai - Satantango (1985)

Donna Leon - Quietly in Their Sleep (1997)

Kevin M. Levin - Searching for Black Confederates: The Civil War’s Most Persistent Myth (2019)

Sara Levine - Treasure Island!!! (2011)

Adrienne Mayor - Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology (2018)

Randall Munroe - How To: Absurd Scientific Advice for Common Real-World Problems(2019)

Megan Kate Nelson - The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (2020)

Angela Saini - Superior: The Return of Race Science (2019)

Robert Scholes & Robert Kellogg - The Nature of Narrative (1966)

David Seabrook - All the Devils Are Here (2002)

Janelle Shane - You Look Like a Thing and I Love You: How Artificial Intelligence Works and Why It's Making the World a Weirder Place (2019)

William Makepeace Thackeray - Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero (1848)

Ivy Noelle Weir & Steenz - Archival Quality (2018)

Martha Wells - Network Effect (2020)

G. Willow Wilson - The Butterfly Mosque: A Young Woman's Journey to Love and Islam(2010)

John Woolf - The Wonders: The Extraordinary Performers Who Transformed the Victorian Age (2019)

Movies 2020

 

Movies 2020

As I’ve done for years (decades?) with anything seen for the first time from January 1 to December 31 eligible. First batch “best” - second “honorable”.

As far as I’m concerned La Flor is the peak. It’s the only film I’ve seen in years that as soon as it finished I wanted to watch it again. (No Bluray scheduled but it’s currently streaming on Criterion Channel.)

La Flor (Mariano Llinás 2018)

The Terrorizers (Edward Yang 1986)

The Balloon (Yuzo Kawashima 1956)

Our Daily Bread (Mani Kaul 1970)

Cock and Bull (Cao Baoping 2016)

Guilty Bystander (Joseph Lerner 1950)

Venom and Eternity (Isidore Isou 1951)

One Cut of the Dead (Shinichiro Ueda 2017)

Blood on the Moon (Robert Wise 1948)

Don't Torture a Duckling (Lucio Fulci 1972)

The Witch Who Came from the Sea (Matt Cimber 1976)

Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (Kim Ki-Young 1978)

#QuarantineMob Rocknmob “In The End - Linkin Park” (Petr Sterlikov 2020)

Day of the Outlaw (Andre de Toth 1959)

Antrum: The Deadliest Film Ever Made (David Amito & Michael Laicini 2018)

The Bird with the Crystal Plumage (Dario Argento 1970)

Blonde Crazy (Roy Del Ruth 1931)

Bone Tomahawk (S. Craig Zahler 2015)

Django (Sergio Corbucci 1966)

A Fool (Chen Jianbin 2014)

The Forbidden Photos of a Lady Above Suspicion (Luciano Ercoli 1970)

Gilda (Charles Vidor 1946)

The Hellbenders (Sergio Corbucci 1967)

Holy Motors (Leos Carax 2012)

India Song (Marguerite Duras 1975)

Jojo Rabbit (Taika Waititi 2019)

The Miracle of the Sargasso Sea (Syllas Tzoumerkas 2019)

Mission: Impossible: Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie 2018)

The Nude Vampire (Jean Rollin 1970)

Our Town (Yuzo Kawashima 1956)

Pirotecnia / Mute Fire (Federico Atehortúa Arteaga 2019)

Rocknmob Moscow “I Was Made For Lovin' You – KISS” (Eugene Zhamoydik 2019)

Sun in the Last Days of the Shogunate (Yuzo Kawashima 1957)

Suzaki Paradise: Red Light District (Yuzo Kawashima 1956)

Union Depot (Alfred E. Green 1932)

Wind (Marcell Iványi 1996)