The four hundred and thirty-first album: #432 Holger Czukay - Movies
While Can's music was psychedelic enough, Holger Czukay seems to take it one step further with Movies. At the start, it felt like a jazz rock album, with its almost improvisational nature, but it slowly evolves into its own psychedelic experience, a man's strange vision to tell a story in its songs that feels impenetrable a lot of the time. It's bizarre and unique in a way I struggle to fully describe - an album you truly need to just go into and experience. You may not love it, but it's something I'm glad I've at least heard.
The one hundred and fifty-third classical recording: #43 Giacomo Carissimi - Jephte
As a lovely oratorio, Jephte is nice to listen to. As we're listening out of order, we don't really hear the progression, but as the first oratorio on the list there's something quite attractive in the abandonment of the choral songs, instead giving us more soloists who get to shine in a number of tender songs while the music stays small. It's not the most memorable - in part because the Latin text just doesn't linger as much - but it's still beautifully put together.
The four hundred and thirtieth album: #430 The Germs - GI
As a specifically hardcore punk album (GI) is a bit less accessible than most, although from a hard rock perspective, it feels like a natural development for punk to lean into its harder side. It's something that started coming up as a specific stream in punk earlier, with something like the Sex Pistols feeling harder than other punk bands that followed, and rejecting the pop approach makes sense even from a political perspective.
It's fine for that, but I think it veers too far away from what I enjoy, the shouting nature overpowering the lyrics so they become meaningless and the music becoming too much after a while. I'm probably not the audience - although a few decades ago I might have been - but it does feel like drunkenness will help you enjoy this more than it does listening on an average workday.
The four hundred and twenty-ninth album: #429 Crusaders - Street Life
A jazz fusion album only works as well for me as the fusion part gets its chance to shine. The tracks on Street Life show this off well - while the title track is the longest on the album, its funkier structure with vocals kept me more engaged than the more pure jazz tracks that followed. Night Faces, the final track, probably grabbed me more than the others, bookending the album nicely, but this brought me no closer to appreciating jazz.
The one hundred and eighty-fourth TV show: #815 Party Down
My first watch of Party Down was about a decade ago, encouraged by the presence of Adam Scott, Ken Marino and Jane Lynch among others. The adventures of the employees of an LA catering company - the presence of failed dreams is there - are darkly humorous, in a way that you wouldn't have seen on a regular network comedy. And although the characters are a bit heightened, it clearly draws on so many real experiences (I suspect often by the actors on the show).
The writing is great, with the bizarre situations playing out well and unexpected enough, which is elevated by the amazing cast (I suspect in part put together based on how much they enjoy working together, especially for the guest cast) who play their role to perfection. They all play well off each other, with Adam Scott as the stable center around which everyone else revolves. It works out so well together that I feel I could rewatch this constantly (or at least more often than I have so far)
The one hundred and fifty-second classical recording: #222 Franz Schubert - Piano Quintet in A major, "Trout"
Aside from being well performed in this recording, there's something engaging in its simplicity with this piece. It flows well, the various movements not building as much as they give calmer sections between ones that are more energetic, but the whole stays quite attractive to listen to.
The four hundred and twenty-eighth album: #428 Sister Sledge - We Are Family
Between Lost in Music and We Are Family, it's quite clear what to expect from Sister Sledge - lots of disco music, something to dance to, and an album that instantly brings back the 70s disco scene. The album features some more soulful tracks as well, but the focus for me stays on the disco tracks, which really stand out that well.
The four hundred and twenty-seventh album: #427 AC/DC - Highway to Hell
With the bank holiday giving us a chance to do some extra traveling, I ended up starting the week more tired than usual - and AC/DC's Highway to Hell (together with a good amount of coffee) helped shock me out of that. You've got good and proper hard rock, no fancy tricks or big compositions, but a whole lot of volume on top of well constructed songs. I understand this is the first album of backing vocals (this album convinced me to dive into their back catalogue when this project is over) and it really helps add to the tracks by giving it the extra power it needs. The tracks aren't high art, the lyrics not incredibly insightful, but the simple subjects of the lyrics, wrapped in more vivid imagery, and the straight forward music that builds on that simplicity as well, makes for a really compelling album.
The four hundred and twenty-sixth album: #426 Siouxsie and the Banshees - The Scream
It took me a track or two to realize I was actually listening to an album - the music really ended up fading into the background a bit more than you'd expect from a post punk work. While angry and loud, there's also something dark and subdued about some of the tracks that make it sit in a different place. It's not bad - the vocals are screamed, but work against the raging guitars and instruments, and there are times where it really revs up through the track. Even so, the album never quite managed to reach a point where it satisfied me.
The one hundred and third book: #718 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
I'll be honest, I'm not sure if the list expected me to read the first entry of the trilogy in five parts, or if it expected the full work, but it just seemed right to do the latter. I have, of course, encountered it before - having read the books in both English and in the Dutch translation (which at least had a decent translation of Ford Prefect's name, even if not all of the other choices are as good), listened to the full radio series and I've watched the less stellar movie. Add to that that I've already reviewed both the TV series here and the game on the proper Pong and Beyond, and it feels like writing about the book just makes it full circle.
The books are still great to read. There's a bit of a downhill trend near the end, where the focus on more of an ongoing plot conflicts with the rush to get them out, meaning bits of plot just fizzle out or don't marry up, but the individual scenes often still work. The earlier books are more like vignettes, pulling together only loosely enough to move from one set piece to the next, and those in particular are a delight to read and immerse yourself in as the world gets weirder. It's, at its core, a highly serialized work, and that serialization comes with changes as you can feel it being pulled in all directions, with the Guide interludes especially showing that with their various interruptions, diversions and other notes. The book stands at its peak in the comedy sci fi genre, and it will be there for a long time still.