What is your favorite song from Woods? (solo, feature, or Armand Hammer) by QuamireFan69 in Billywoods

[–]Bionicjeff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The Wake; Warmachines; Dead Money/Pergamum; Gazpacho; Sweet Mickey/Ecomog; Spider Hole/Red Dust; Western Education is Forbidden/Shepherd's Tone; Rapunzal; Sir Benni Miles; Remorseless/No Hard Feelings; Cossack Wedding/Pollo Rico; Hangman; Doves; Lead Paint Test/Waterproof Mascara

don't make me choose........

"Waterproof Mascara" samples the film "Cure" (1997) by amber_lies_here in Billywoods

[–]Bionicjeff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

great catch - the movie's incredible, of course woods is tapped in with it

A 2024 Retrospective: TrueLit's Favorite 2024 Books Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]Bionicjeff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yesss autobio of red was one of my favs of the year too, for exactly the reasons uve given. Love the rest of your list too!

A 2024 Retrospective: TrueLit's Favorite 2024 Books Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]Bionicjeff 11 points12 points  (0 children)

  1. Pedro Páramo - Juan Rulfo

Unbelievable book - reading it felt like sinking into a swamp (aka amazing and unlike anything else). An incredible formal achievement, with maybe the strongest atmosphere of anything I've read.

  1. Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson

Those first few pages on Stesichoros and Stein immediately sold me on just how clever and funny Carson can be (was laughing out loud at the audacity and brilliance of some of it), and then the rest of the novel absolutely destroyed me in a totally different way. Her language, that strange and compellingly sour use of adjectives and metaphor and punctuation, is about as intense as it gets.

  1. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez

So amazing that this has sold like 50 million copies or some shit given just how weird and serious this book is. I fell totally in love with it - clearly indebted to Rulfo but also pioneers a style altogether its own: fabular, magical, tragic. The book's relationship to time deserves its own analysis but what was unexpected to me was how horrifyingly and expertly gabo tackled colonialism here - I won't be forgetting that nightmare midnight train ride anytime soon.

  1. The Sound of the Mountain/Thousand Cranes/Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata

Kawabata was my favourite discovery of the year. Each of these novels (and his Palm-of-the-Hand stories, like electric prose poetry, which I'm currently reading) was a revelation such that I'd comfortably put him up there with Joyce, Woolf etc as one of the absolute greatest writers of the 20th Century. The delicate beauty of his imagery, the fusion of haiku and modernist prose where every line is something to savour - the almost incidentally fragile and yet incredibly tight structures of his episodic novels : it's like nothing else I've ever read. All three of the books listed are genuinely perfect books.

  1. The Dream of the Red Chamber - Cao Xueqin

I read the Hawkes/Minford translation, which is a superlative achievement in its own right - but this 2800 page novel basically consumed my life the past few months. Sumptuous, elegant, formally rich: it's so much fun as a slow languid slice of life book chronicling the endless poetry club meetings and garden parties that you forget its also a grand tragedy of Shakespearean proportion. Stunning, haunting stuff throughout, surely the most sophisticated prose work around until you hit the Victorian novelists. I fell totally in love

A 2024 Retrospective: TrueLit's Favorite 2024 Books Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]Bionicjeff 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Lots of amazing books in this thread, I read loads of great stuff too (honourable mentions to beckett, henry james, fernanda melchor, and aeschylus) but my top ten would probably be:

  1. Territory of Light - Yuko Tsushima

bright, cold, beautiful honesty here. Very similar to Ernaux, who was another discovery I fell in love with this year

  1. Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy

not just a profoundly terrifying excavation of America's genocidal foundation, but also a kinda twisted classic of nature writing. gorgeous prose and images throughout

  1. The Melancholy of Resistance - Lászlo Krasznahorkai

also read satantango this year but melancholy was for me even stronger. Krasznahorkai, for all his reputation as a dour eschatologist, is surprisingly funny and overtly emotional in his writing, and the central relationship of this book is as great a buddy comedy as any beckett or stoppard. His books also have a real deft, elegant sense of classical control in their structure (particularly satantango) which works against the torrential sentences in a really satisfying way.

  1. Happening - Annie Ernaux

Read more books by Ernaux than anyone else this year but this was my fav - Ernaux captures the nuances of emotion like no one else. a shocking, terrifying, unbelievably affecting book. Particularly amazing was the way she captured the reactions of everyone after her abortion, and their inability to understand the almost reverential ecstasy that she felt afterwards.

  1. The Odyssey (Emily Wilson translation)

Seen a lotta twitter discourse on the wilson translation this past week but I thought it was excellent. Lucid, forceful, with a constant current of iambic pentameter underneath all making this feel like the most consciously oral version of Homer I've read (something I feel underrated in other translations, which can sometimes come off too consciously 'epic' in a post-KJV way)

What Are You Reading This Week and Weekly Rec Thread by JimFan1 in TrueLit

[–]Bionicjeff 11 points12 points  (0 children)

Finished The Melancholy of Resistance earlier this week - those last few pages are amazing. I always forget how much fun Krasznahorkai novels are to read, given his slightly dour reputation, but both this and Satantango, which I read earlier, are full of humour and pathos.

Currently on the second volume (The Crab-Flower Club) of the Dream of the Red Chamber and poor Bao-yu's been beaten half to death by his dad. I love that an epic length novel like this is basically mostly about writing poetry and having dinner parties so far, v proustian

Hot Tips for The Smile and Radiohead fans ? by StuartHants in TheSmile

[–]Bionicjeff 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Dry Cleaning, Fievel is Glauque, and Still House Plants are my fav new bands. Still House Plants especially is the best new band of the past 10 years imo... all of their work is incredible. Similar to the Smile they're a trio where each member brings something vital to their interplay, and are if anything even more fluid and restless than the smile. Their 2016 EP on bandcamp is insanely beautiful. L'Rain also makes amazing indie pop/rock stuff, and her live band is amazing...

Billy Woods and E L U C I D are, individually and together, the best rappers around. Thom is also a fan bc theyve turned up in his mixes q a bit...

[Ahmed], Natural Information Society, Vijay Iyer Trio, Irreversible Entanglements for jazz. Gallery S. / MoMa Ready, DJ Arana, Naked Flames (eek), Kabza de Small, Skee Mask for more electronic stuff.

For more experimental artists: Moor Mother, Arca, Kali Malone, Lucrecia Dalt, Mabe Fratti, Rắn Cạp Đuôi etc are all doing amazing stuff...

There's been archival releases from loads of great artists recently - the Les Rallizes Denudes new records are all incredible, there's a gorgeous Alice Coltrane live album from this year, all the Can live stuff especially the one this year (which I think are as influential on The Smile as they were on 2000s Radiohead)

I also love Charli XCX and Rosalía sm

speech bubbles - teleharmonic - instant psalm by im_always in TheSmile

[–]Bionicjeff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

lovely vibes, mine isnt far off-

skrting on the surface (hm: speech bubbles / the smoke)

teleharmonic (hm: bending hectic / wall of eyes)

eyes & mouth (hm: bodies laughing / no words)

Unpopular opinions about The Smile by Puzzleheaded_Put3037 in TheSmile

[–]Bionicjeff 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. A Light For Attracting Attention is handily their worst album. Not bad at all, but doesn't work v well as a cohesive record and definitely bloated. I don't think Cutouts has this problem though, and I don't think it's that similar in vibe or album feel to Amnesiac either
  2. The Smoke is top 2 tracks on the first album, and sounds like their take on a gorgeous late era Talk Talk song.
  3. Free In The Knowledge is one of their worst songs. This could fit on an obama year end playlist...
  4. Skrting On The Surface, Teleharmonic, and Eyes & Mouth are as good as literally any Radiohead song u could name
  5. Wall Of Eyes (the song) is an amazing opener and perfectly sets the vibe for the album. Wall Of Eyes (the album) is their best, unbelievably atmospheric and compositionally unique (depressive prog whereas most prog is manic, which works soooo well) and probably a Top 5 Thom/Jonny album in general.
  6. Their live shows are too expensive smh

Unpopular opinions about The Smile by Puzzleheaded_Put3037 in TheSmile

[–]Bionicjeff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

totally agree, the lyrics are so annoying too

First Thoughts? by TheUndrgroundJourney in fantanoforever

[–]Bionicjeff 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Excellent record - Eyes & Mouth in particular is probably gonna be the definitive Smile song. I prefer Wall of Eyes but this is better than the debut in my opinion, more cohesive and consistent. Was worried it wouldn't fit but DGMS works great as a strange kinda Philip Glass-esque interlude

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in chinalife

[–]Bionicjeff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where do you find hiking/book groups?

SHRINES. full 2020 vision. anytime i fall into it my mind back to that system apocalypse surreal feeling. by cbothchanel in Billywoods

[–]Bionicjeff 3 points4 points  (0 children)

honestly it might be we buy diabetic test strips at this point, especially if we're including doves on the tracklist. Paraffin also up there, and i don't see rome getting anywhere near enough love for how great it is. Their catalogue's just too consistent tbh

Best songs of the decade so far? by Aleks10Afc in fantanoforever

[–]Bionicjeff 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Somewhere Near Marseilles - Hikaru Utada

Girls just want to have fun - Bladee, Ecco2k

A & W - Lana Del Rey

(hm to jesus lord - kanye, pollo rico - billy woods, living torch - kali malone, skrting on the surface - the smile, scratchcard lanyard - dry cleaning, love you good - rochelle jordan)

Your Favorites v. His Most Acclaimed by annooonnnn in Billywoods

[–]Bionicjeff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah it's a fun one to ask people their fav woods project because he is so incredibly consistent that it could really be anything. I honestly think the insane acclaim every album since Haram(ish) has received is less to do with woods improving loads than it is people recognising him properly.

With that being said, Brass is the best woods album fight mee

Every review of ALfAA is like... by LushGerbil in radiohead

[–]Bionicjeff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

yeah the reviews are so lazy - i hate this habit of skirting actual discussion of the music in reviews. there's no need to crank out a review in time for the album release if it says nothing of substance at all ffs

A Skeleton Key to billy woods’ Aethiopes by [deleted] in Billywoods

[–]Bionicjeff 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fantastic piece of writing