The three hundred and ninety-eighth album: #398 Elis Regina - Vento de Maio
It's actually quite nice to have a different type of music to end the year's write ups on (not quite reaching the 400 album marker). It's an album of Brazilian pop music, but that description is mostly because the album covers a number of genres with a pop music bent, giving bossa nova, jazz and funk tracks, and more beyond. It's a variety that works well, with a production that supports each of them individually. Elis Regina's lovely voice supports all of them - a clear sound that feels like that of a Brazilian vocalist, if it makes sense to say so, and the tracks are clearly built around her. I don't think I would have given this album a look normally, but its variety is worth a listen.
The three hundred and ninety-seventh album: #397 Blondie - Parallel Lines
It takes until the second track for Blondie to make their statement here - One Way or Another is such a specifically aggressive sound that it stands out and shakes you up straight away. It's a blast of power that doesn't last, but it shows the lyrical focus and specific song writing that carries through even as the songs themselves aren't always as strong - it's still a good, powerful pop rock album to listen to.
The three hundred and ninety-sixth album: #396 Kraftwerk - The Man Machine
Let's look away from the album's place in history - Kraftwerk's futuristic stylings also predating a lot of simpler later electro pop acts - or how odd it must have seemed at the time. Just listening to the album, there's a lot to unpack on how I feel. There are some really interesting compositions in here, layering more like the works we listen to in the classical recordings than more regular pop songs. There are a lot of moments where it grabs your attention, but also enough repetition of the same elements that it lulls you in - often grabbing you with a change to suddenly remind you what you're listening to. It's never quite ambient, but it doesn't overwhelm you at any point either. And it addresses just enough to have a theme without requiring you to listen to it that much - The Model being the most lyric heavy, and standing out because of that. It is great in what it does - not excluding anything else, but with its own beauty.
The three hundred and ninety-fifth album: #395 Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance
Any type of avant-garde, art rock or similar experimental music will always be more hit and miss than music following the proven formulas. It means that when you start listening, you appreciate the music rather than enjoying it. It's a weird listening, there's somethign to it, but you wouldn't add it to your rotation. It's a fascinating sound, but as many misses as hits for me, sometimes having both in the same track. It's like a piece in a museum - you look at it, appreciate it for a while, but never end up getting the print.
The one hundred and eighty-first TV show: #629 Takeshi's Castle
It feels like Takeshi's Castle was the first of many extreme physical gameshows, followed far later by the likes of (Total) Wipeout. A lot of players start doing a bunch of challenges, often involving falling into water or mud, and the ones who reach the end have a chance to win the prize. Takeshi's Castle was the first, airing between 1986 and 1990 but made internationally famous by the episodes that aired in the UK in the late 90s with Craig Charles' voice over. It's clear that this version is the easier watch for us - it feels like it cuts out a lot of the comedy sketches and explanations, giving it a proper focus on the falls and action you're watching the show for.
It's a fun watch, the difficult challenges making for great TV when they succeed (although apparently the best failures went through each round as well). With that said, there are only so many ways you can fall off rolling logs and dealw ith teh other challenges, and so the 200+ episodes that are available are probably a bit too much to be worth watching, but it's a good show to put on every once in a while for some mindless simple entertainment.
The one hundred and eightieth TV show: #458 2point4 Children
There's something weird for me watching this show - it had a Dutch remake that used the same scripts, but translated and localized. It's still pretty familiar with some of the beats being the exact same - something quite disorienting when I remembered it, with some of the translations being spot on like that.
With that aside, the show is good, The concept is similar - a fairly standard sitcom family - but one that's written more as a British comedy, with less recurring gags and denser episodes with the shorter seasons. It's well acted, with some dramatic turns and a lot more continuity and carry over between episodes, without having to reset at the end. It's a lot of fun and still a great series that holds up after all these years.