Beyond Shutter Island

Last night, Netflix sent along a copy of Shutter Island. I had forgotten that it had entered the queue -- we have a practiced tendency to preload the thing based on particular actors or directors without too much other information. As Leonardo DiCaprio is one of our favorites, he becomes a "first-round default". Before we sat down to view the thing, Kim looked up a few reviews and stayed with me to watch only rather reluctantly, now expecting only violence and scariness and little else.

The music turned out to be, by far, the best thing about this movie. I was taken by surprise when we started hearing the likes of Max Richter and Brian Eno, and it just kept coming -- stuff by John Adams, John Cage, Krzysztof Penderecki, Morton Feldman, Lou Harrison and more. And it was all interwoven into the film with a very subtle touch. Really interesting was a mix by Robbie Robertson that played during the final credits roll, overlaying Max Richter's On The Nature of Daylight with (the late/great) Dinah Washington's rendition of This Bitter Earth.




This Bitter Earth / On The Nature of Daylight Mix

Captured: America in Color from 1939-1943

The Denver Post's always-interesting photo blog recently published an array of color photos, taken between 1939 and 1943, by photographers commissioned by the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information. See them all on the Denver Post's Plog.

The photo at left was done by Jack Delano, one of the famous FSA photographers recruited by Roy Stryker to document the Great Depression, its aftermath and other Americana. As such, Delano was on the same team as the likes of Dorothea Lange and John Vachon (Vachon, interestingly, was "rediscovered" recently when a series of his very rare Marilyn Monroe photos from the 50s was published this year). I also find it interesting that Delano was also a composer of music.

Back Again, The Society of Sound and Afro Celts

After a 4,000 plus mile July auto/photo trip from Oregon to/through Idaho, Montana, South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah and back, I am ready to return to home bound life and new music listens.

Hoping not to sound like a commercial, I just made a foray into the Society of Sound (sponsored by the highly-reputed audiophile British loudspeaker makers, Bowers & Wilkins (B&W). I had often heard of the Society of Sound as being a source of 16-bit and 24-bit lossless digital music of extremely high quality through blogs, Stereophile, etc., but I have finally got around to starting a three-month trial membership, which lets me download selected samples. If what I downloaded and heard last night is a good indication of what can come of a full subscription (I think it is only about $60/year), I'm pretty much getting right in line.

One of the files I grabbed was a 10-minute piece called Mojave by Afro Celt Sound System (a group I used to hear often on a public radio New Age program whose name escapes me at the moment). Absolutely stunning running through my Xonar Essence sound card into my old Sennheisers. (And today I received a UPS package from John Grado, containing my Grado cans fresh back from repair by Grado Labs, so I have to try that configuration, too.) And I heard just the 16-bit FLAC version, so can't wait to hear a 24-bit version. You can get a little taste of some of Afro Celt's music -- including a lower-fi version of Mojave -- on its MySpace site. Or check them out at the Society of Sound blog. Great stuff. Btw, it appears that the Society of Sound album is a special remix-remastering available nowhere else, at least in this particular compilation.