Magma Mag

‘Causers Of This’ infects your mind with pure psychedelia, splicing such conflicting sounds as soul, freak folk, hip-hop and electronica, and the result hits you like Animal Collective on a comedown, or Ariel Pink with Seasonal Affective Disorder. Although a mere 33 minutes, ‘Causers...’ is a woozy kaleidoscopic voyage, sending you in and out of consciousness with each splendidly shoddy lo-fi recording. Opener ‘Blessa’ is feather-light dream-pop which hypnotises your ears into complete submission, whereas soulful vocals blend with hip-hop beats in ‘Fax Shadow’, proving Toro Y Moi as quite the chameleon. ‘Talamak’ is the record at its most energetic, as the anaesthetic starts to wear off for a psychoactive dance-off between body and mind.

Call it glo-fi, chillwave, hypnagogic pop or… well, pretty much anything you like

Stylishly soporific, the glo-fi pioneer's debut is a blissed-out masterpiece

the idea that Toro Y Moi isn't really that different from Washed Out, Memory Tapes is basically an ambient Neon Indian, and so forth. This one's a little more difficult because there really are clear aesthetic similarities between these guys. Still, there are distinctions. Looking at Toro Y Moi in comparison to Washed Out and Neon Indian, the main difference is that the latter two put more of an emphasis on hooks. Their songs are generally catchier and more straightforwardly composed. Bundick, on the other hand, is more producer than songwriter. While they might lack the immediacy of a "Deadbeat Summer" or "Feel It All Around", his tracks often have deeper, more interesting layers.

The album starts out strong with a string of tracks that showcase Bundick's range. First two songs "Blessa" and "Minors" exhibit his pop sensibilities, setting a wash of vocals over looped electro-funk instrumentals and crisp drum programming. Here Bundick strikes a nice balance between sticky vocal melodies and the undulating arrangements that feature through the rest of the record. On other tracks in the first half, he takes on genre experiments with similar success-- first jaunty piano soul on "Imprint After" and then sparkly disco with "Lissoms", the album's most propulsive moment. While these songs are all enjoyable, "Fax Shadow" serves as the best representation of Toro's potential. It's the most complex track here, and in its Dilla soul sampling and distorted beat pattern, Bundick shows production skill far beyond most of his peers.

This craftsmanship carries him through most of the album, but begins to fade towards the end. Bundick doesn't run out of ideas at this point, but his balance of arrangement and song feels off. "You Hid" is wobbly but one-note, lacking punch, and the closing title track is too cluttered. If Causers of This stayed consistent through the end, it might be up there with the assured debuts of his peers; instead, it's just a few notches below.

Harris, who worked for the Sunday Times and the BBC when Blair came to power, was once friendly with the P.M. but later soured on his political decisions, especially Blair's support of the Bush Administration's plan to invade Iraq. (With some ghoulishly good timing, Blair had to spend six hours last month defending his Iraq record in the Chilcot Inquiry.) The book, published in 2007, was widely seen as Harris's score-settling.

The Ghost Writer is as comforting in its temperate pace and eerie mood as it is chilling in its plot particulars. Polanski feigns interest in the genre's requisite chases, but he's best at stranding the Ghost in wide frame, on a turbulent island, and tightening the noose around his neck as he gets closer to an awful truth.

From his debut work at the Polish Film School, a one-minute shocker called Murder that showed a sleeping man being stabbed to death in his apartment by an intruder, to his new thriller The Ghost Writer, Polanski has plumbed the themes of isolation, persecution and claustrophobia

If an auteur is a director with an obsessive personal vision — or, in simple terms, a man who keeps remaking his own movies — then Polanski is the very auteuriest. Even if he weren't drawn to pictures about hunted, holed-up men, he could hardly avoid the connection between iconography and autobiography, for his life is at least as notorious as his films. As a child, with his Jewish parents in concentration camps, he survived the Nazis by hiding and running. In Hollywood, his blond starlet wife Sharon Tate was slaughtered by Charles Manson's own Satanic gang. Then, after his great success with the knotty, despairing Chinatown (still his best film), there was his 1977 sexual encounter with a 13-year-old; when he thought he was sure to serve a long jail term, he fled the U.S., never to return. He seemed secure living in Paris, making films in France and Germany, until a visit to Switzerland last Sept. led to his detention on an international arrest warrant. He completed the editing of The Ghost Writer while under house arrest.

The kinship to Polanski's oeuvre is clear enough. The Ghost could be a blending of the director's 1976 The Tenant, in which he starred as a man who rents an apartment where the previous tenant committed suicide and soon believes the neighbors are scheming to force him to kill himself, and the 1999 The Ninth Gate, in which a book dealer sleuths through a antique volume that might be the Devil's autobiography.

this high-grade pulp entertainment is too delectably amusing and self-amused, and far too aware of its own outrageous conceits to sustain such a dolorous verdict

Based on the novel “The Ghost” by Robert Harris, who shares screenwriting credit with Mr. Polanski

Mr. Polanski is a master of menace and, working with a striking wintry palette that at times veers into the near-monochromatic — the blacks are strong and inky, the churning ocean the color of lead — he creates a wholly believable world rich in strange contradictions and ominous implications

a well-made, sleekly retaliatory, pleasurably paranoid tale in praise of enterprising (and also brave) investigative journalists and in condemnation of political skulduggery in general and right-wing Anglo-American collusion in particular.

Meanwhile, at the shoreline, a severely modern, concrete bunker of a beach house filmed on German location tries to distract us from the evident fact that we're really not on Martha's Vineyard. After all, the director, a wanted man in the U.S., can't set foot there

a gripping conspiracy thriller and scabrous political satire, a Manchurian Candidate for the 2010s, as addictive and outrageous as the Robert Harris bestseller on which it's based. Polanski keeps the narrative engine ticking over with a downbeat but compelling throb. This is his most purely enjoyable picture for years, a Hitchcockian nightmare with a persistent, stomach-turning sense of disquiet, brought off with confidence and dash.

McGregor is the journo, never named: cynical, boozy and miserable in the classical manner.

Resemblances to Tony and Cherie Blair are very far from coincidental: both Harris and Polanski have clearly calculated that a libel lawsuit would make for an uproarious day in court, precisely the sort of legal appearance that Mr Blair does not care to make, in fact or fiction. This consideration adds a kind of meta-pleasure to the narrative.

Les Corbeaux, which was first performed in Switzerland in 2010

Les Corbeaux (The Crows), choreographed by Josef Nadj with music by Akosh S, is an enigmatic piece that draws the audience in through its very quietness and concentration.

Les Corbeaux, the pair’s sixth collaboration, is inspired by the countryside of former Yugoslavia

with his finely tuned body, Nadj is a master of balance and can teeter on the brink of a pose to great effect. I wanted more, but tantalisingly he rations his dance moves for the sake of conceptual purity.

George Lewis, Jr.'s self-described bizarre and lonely childhood forms the backdrop for his work as Twin Shadow, and he uses the sounds of the past as a foundation. But while the 26-year-old Brooklynite's music is steeped in 1980s new wave-- he sometimes takes on Morrissey's vocal tone and phrasing, and threads of British bands like Echo and the Bunnymen and Depeche Mode run through his songs-- Lewis does well by this much-revisited era

he mostly sticks with a small collection of synth sounds-- strings, organ, piano, and brass-- along with electric guitar and drum machine.

Grizzly Bear's Chris Taylor handling production,

George Lewis – AKA Twin Shadow – makes synth-led bedroom music that sounds at once thoroughly new wave and thoroughly fresh.

on first impression this is so slick it’s easy to ignore the layers of details

Tyrant Destroyed sets the scene – it’s a loving reconstruction of 80s synth-pop, by a solo artist alone in his room; the music low in the mix, as he lays down a sleepy sounding vocal.

peça que escrevera em 1924

drama familiar inscrito no cenário oitocentista da Nova Inglaterra, marcado tanto pelo puritanismo religioso como pela desenfreada corrida ao ouro da Califórnia.

Raízes que se entranham na tragédia grega – os temas do incesto, do infanticídio e do conflito que opõe pai e filho parecem extraídos das peças de Eurípides e Sófocles – e nas Sagradas Escrituras

Lovetune for Vacuum has been described by certain individuals as "ambient music for torture chambers"

"Sweepstakes thing started a few years ago. I think Jupiter was like, 'Hey man, when we sell the album, we gotta sell something like a baseball card, so there's a chance you can get a rare card or something,'" laughs Famiglietti. "That's where we were like, 'Dude, whoever gets the fucking golden ticket -- we're going to fly him to LA, and he's going to go to Magic Mountain.'" That is in fact the grand prize of the sweepstakes, and other prizes, personally crafted by the band, are available as well. They include everything from posters autographed in blood and locks of hair to intoxicated video chat sessions, astrological consultations with Jupiter's mother, and conference crank calls to prominent indie musicians. Sure, the idea is bound to receive criticism from those who ask, "What does that have to do with music?", and they'd be right. It all has nothing to do with music, but that's just fine, because HEALTH are about the artistic process as a whole. In addition to their sweepstakes, they've also spread their interests to film and fashion, but none of that means that their music takes a backseat to their other projects. All of their projects merely work together in harmony.

The band is also moving forward with their interest in fashion. Anyone who is familiar with HEALTH's T-shirts, which utilize bright colors and clean geometrical designs, will be excited to hear about their upcoming clothing line, for which HEALTH will work with independent designers to create high-quality, hand-sewn, one-of-a-kind items.

HEALTH were a normal band until they invented (or discovered) (or re-discovered) the Zoothorn, which is a permutation of microphone and guitar pedal and which made their entire band sound newly weird.

Is there any band that everyone in HEALTH all equally admire? Jacob Duzsik (guitar / vocals): Animal Collective.

Actually, Television was a big influence when we started.

Someone was listening to your stuff over my shoulder and described your sound as 'robots fucking', would you concur?JOHN: That's pretty cool. I wouldn't have thought that at all, but I suppose its gotta be Robotech style mecha robots fucking. Unless he's picturing this passionate humanoid robot super advanced mind sex....that's a crazy-ass description.

Does the band's creative process vary, or is there a routine?JOHN: The process varies, but the most common method is by diagram. Songs start different ways but usually at some point one of us will bring in a little flow chart with a lot of explanation bubbles, and we walk through it piece by piece. It's extremely inefficient.

I mean, all previous forms of intense music are so old the reaction is built in, no matter how intense the metal or whatever you're blasting, you're mom would throw some devil horns jokingly, if that makes sense. Kids we're playing to were born in the 90s, its totally different upbringing, the way they perceive rock music or just music is completely different than previous generations, but that's also really exciting. Music is exciting right now, 2007 is so much more exciting than 1997. We should all be happy, I'm fucking jealous of young kids now, like green with envy. In '97 I was in my bedroom fucking bummed about how there were no good new bands anymore; I thought music was just over, like that's it. Now I'm perpetually fucking stoked.

Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work

Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work

Kirsten Dunst, who deservedly took home a 2011 award at the Cannes Film Festival for her magnificent work

Presumably filmed in Denmark, and set in a weirdly stateless, featureless location – a sort of Scando-amerika

The montage of images at the beginning is interesting, as are some of the lush, hyper-real tableaux, like the dream sequences from Antichrist

the wedding reception scene is nowhere near as good as Thomas Vinterberg's Festen (the obvious model): it is tedious and exasperatingly redundant

Melancholia marks the major return of the artist’s vitality,

the movie starts off with nothing less than the end of the world: two planets colliding in Kubrickian grandeur to the strains of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde

if Von Trier has gotten there, it is largely due to the vivid yet mysterious presence of Kirsten Dunst