The one hundred and ninety-third TV show: #681 Lost
Apparently I forgot to post a write up after watching this a while ago! In short, the mysteries weren't compelling, the outcome not satisfying and ruining in advance what was there, and we just didn't care about most of it. Event TV at the time, but that impact is gone watching it now
The four hundred and ninetieth album: #490 The Gun Club - Fire of Love
There's something that never quite worked with me on Fire of Love - it's decent punk rock, with a heavy blues influence, but it didn't really reach the point of having an impact. It's not loud, it's not big, it just feels like it never quite went anywhere engaging. Not bad per se, there's just not as much to it as I would have hoped.
The one hundred and ninety-second TV show: #412 Red Dwarf
Because I had to get to the best seasons before writing this up (or so I was told), I watched the first five seasons and started the sixth season of Red Dwarf before starting my write up. It's been worth the wait - the first season focused a bit too much around the antagonistic relationship between Lister and Rimmer, while being more of a workplace comedy in an odd, deserted setting. As the show progresses, our protagonists are more capable, they work together better and instead the series focusing on proper SF comedy. It's not hard to draw the comparison to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - if only because the same design lineage is clear with the BBC design department doing similarly good model work - but also because it starts to apply the sci fi conventions and takes it to its comedic extreme, while telling some interesting stories with them you couldn't quite do otherwise. Once it starts properly, around season three or so, it really seeks out its options and becomes a must watch a lot of the time. I've been waiting a long time to watch this, and it has been worth it.
The four hundred and eighty-ninth album: #489 The Human League - Dare
It's always odd when an album's most known track closes the album - Don't You Want Me is track ten out of ten, but it feels bigger. Not that the remainder of the album doesn't meet the same poppy vibes, but it does sound that much darker - the lyrics can be incredibly nihilistic and some of the tracks go for a slow, dark sound that becomes quite threatening. It still doesn't feel like it's a divergence - the sounds mesh well together - but there's more to their tracks here than I expected based on what I knew of the band beforehand.
The four hundred and eighty-eighth album: #488 The Psychedelic Furs - Talk, Talk, Talk
Between yesterday and today, it feels like we've reached a point in the list where we get some good examples of their genres, rather than giving you something outstanding. Talk, Talk, Talk is the standard post punk sound, some new wave influences on top of that, but I never get any real satisfaction or specific moments mixed in the track - a bit too much by the number to be exciting.
The four hundred and eighty-seventh album: #487 X - Wild Gift
Wild Gift feels like a very by-the-books punk album. There's a fair bit of jazz and ska in there - leaning towards some flavour of new wave - but it mostly makes it feel a bit toothless and the album doesn't really have the impact you'd expect from an album like this - the album ends feeling quite bland, which feels bad for what the band is trying to achieve.
The one hundred and seventy-fifth classical recording: #907 Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gruppen
While one of the headline mentions about this piece may sound big - it requires three orchestras, each effectively playing their own piece but interacting with each other - it doesn't feel like that's what dominates when you start listening to Gruppen. If anything, it feels the opposite, where the sparse and disjointed groups of notes (from the name of the piece) often come in on their own, standing alone. I suspect listening to it at home doesn't help with that small feeling - normally the three orchestras would be set up so listening to this piece becomes as much a spatial experience as it is auditory, but it's hard to replicate that (and no, there are no upcoming performances I could attend that would cover this...). It's a fascinating piece in that sense, with an ambition that doesn't quite follow its goal but that remains captivating nonetheless.
The four hundred and eighty-sixth album: #486 Black Flag - Damaged
Damaged is an uncompromising punk album. It's loud, it's angry and it doesn't let up through its 35 minute runtime. It might not always be lyrically exciting and it doesn't sound too different between tracks, but it just gives that pure punk feeling.
The four hundred and eighty-fifth album: #485 Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
Sometimes some experiments work out really well and the combination of Brian Eno and David Byrne working using these forms is where this goes well - the ambient nature of the background of the tracks, combined with the samples as both vague lyrics and more musical content is really nice. It's accessible when it feels this style would normally be a turn off and I found myself listening to the extras of the later releases of the album more than I normally would do.
The one hundred and seventy-fourth classical recording: #724 Sergei Rachmaninov - Piano Concerto no. 4
There's a franticness in a lot of this concerto, a drive that really adds to the impact of the piece. For the first theme, that builds up to this exuberant finish that really brings it back but continues the high energy of the theme with an infectious enthusiasm.