My true holiday music selection this year is turning out to be Polish composer Abel Korzeniowski’s score for A Single Man. The film goes wide tomorrow and is very worth the price of admission, full of eye-popping 1960’s elegance and texture. Forget however you feel about designer-cum-director Tom Ford; this is a beautiful film, even if every detail seems meticulously staged.
Abel Korzeniowski’s score celebrates strings to a dreamily nostalgic degree as the film tracks a day in George Falconer’s (Colin Firth) life eight months after the sudden death of his partner Jim (Matthew Goode). It’s classical, but tie-loosened and unstuffy, filled full with moments of sweeping sorrow and triumph. There is also the addition of some Etta James (“Stormy Weather”) thrown in the middle to really take you back. Goosebumps.
No Christmas music here—this is what I’ll be listening to.
It’s the dead of winter, y’all, but you’d never know it while listening to the latest release from Tycho. I’m not a big fan of Christmas music, so I always try to discover instrumental alternatives around the holidays, pleasing background music for wrapping gifts or having drinks. That said, “Coastal Brake” is not holiday music by any expected stretch (unless, maybe, that holiday is the Fourth of July). It’s a foamy visit to the seashore, a saltwater splash for the headphones complete with drippy bleeps, bloops and sighs. I’m having a SoCal Christmas this year; the temperature has dropped some, but there’s still plenty of sun and that’s reason enough for this.
Tycho is Scott Hansen, a San Francisco artist and musician. What’s especially pleasing about his music is that it is always accompanied by stellar visuals. He designs all the posters and packaging to support his releases—with everything damn fit for framed display. There’s clothing, prints, music and lots of other design-y goodness over at the site he runs, ISO50.
Bask in the warm glow of my ten most favorite albums of 2009! In no particular order, they are:
1. Patrick Watson: WOODEN ARMS
2. Florence + The Machine: LUNGS
3. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: IT’S BLITZ
4. Bon Iver: BLOOD BANK
5. The XX: XX
6. Silversun Pickups: SWOON
7. Phoenix WOLFGANG AMADEUS PHOENIX
8. Jon Hopkins: INSIDES
9. Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson: BREAK UP
10. Lusine: A CERTAIN DISTANCE
It is a sure rarity for me to be doing something creative without headphones on and music blaring. The ten albums above are maybe not the best of 2010, but they are my favorites. They’re the albums that I found myself going back to time and again, the ones that stuck fast in my head.
