2022: Music, Books, Films and Television

Music: Albums

• Beach House: Once Twice Melody (****)
  
• Brian Eno: FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE (***)
• David Bowie: Moonage Daydream - A Film By Brett Morgen (****)
• Debit: The Long Count (***)
• Katia Krow: The Observer Of The Idle Spectacle (***)
• Kikagaku Moyo: Kumoyo Island (***)
• Oliver Coates: The Stranger (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (****)
• Porcupine Tree: Closure/ Continuation (*****)
• Russian Circles: Gnosis (****)
• Zguba: Znój (****)

 

Music: Concerts

• Jeff Beck: The Sage, Gateshead, 02/06/2022 (****)
• Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: O2 City Hall, Newcastle, 03/05/2022 (****)
• Nine Inch Nails: O2 Apollo, Manchester, 20/06/2022 (*****)
  
• Porcupine Tree: OVO Arena Wembley, London, 11/11/2022 (****)
  
• Sigur Rós: O2 Academy Brixton, London, 10/11/2022 (*****)
  

 

Books

• Kingsley Amis: Lucky Jim (****)
• David Byrne: How Music Works (*****)
  
• Maureen Callahan: American Predator (****)
• Helen Cresswell: Moondial (***)
• John Grisham: A Time to Kill (***)
• John Grisham: The Chamber (****)
• Guesdon & Margotin: Pink Floyd: All the Songs (****)
• Dara Horn: People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present (***)
• Anne Kavan: Ice (**)
• Michael Mann & Meg Gardiner: Heat 2 (***)
• Daphne du Maurier: The Doll: Short Stories (****)
• Daphne du Maurier: Echoes from the Macabre (****)
• Daphne du Maurier: Frenchman’s Creek (***)
• Daphne du Maurier: Jamaica Inn (***)
• Daphne du Maurier: Rebecca (****)
• Haruki Murakami: After Dark (***)
  
• Haruki Murakami: Sputnik Sweetheart (****)
  
• Nicholas Pileggi: Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family (***)
• Michael Pollan: How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics (*****)
• Chil Rajchman: The Last Jew Of Treblinka (second reading) (*****)
• Richard Rashke: Escape From Sobibor (***)
• Elie Wiesel: Night (second reading) (****)
• Oscar Wilde: The Happy Prince and Other Tales (****)
• Oscar Wilde: A House of Pomegranates (***)
• Rosalind Wiseman: Queen Bees & Wannabes (***)
• Stefan Zweig: Beware of Pity (second reading) (*****)
• Stefan Zweig: Memoirs of a European (****)

 

Films

• The Banshees of Inisherin (***)
• Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes (****)
• Drive My Car (***)
  
• In the Court of the Crimson King: King Crimson at 50 (****)
• Licorice Pizza (***)
• Moonage Daydream (*****)
• Operation Mincemeat (***)
• The Stranger (****) 
• The Tragedy of Macbeth (***)
  
• White Noise (***)

 

Television

• Better Call Saul, Season 6 (****)
• Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (***)
  
• How to Change Your Mind (***)
• Louis Theroux: Forbidden America (****)
• The Man Who Fell to Earth (***)
• Meltdown: Three Mile Island (****)
• The Midwich Cuckoos (***)
• Once Upon a Time in Londongrad (****)
  
• Star Wars: Andor (****)
• Stranger Things, Season 4 (***)
  

2021 Reading

• Iain Banks: Transition (****)
• Anthony Bourdain: Kitchen Confidential (****)
• Vincent Bugliosi & Curt Gentry: Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders (*****)
• Alan Dean Foster: Alien (***)
  
• Alan Dean Foster: Aliens (****)
  
• Alan Dean Foster: Alien 3 (****)
  
• Daphne du Maurier: My Cousin Rachel (****)
  
• Mark Frost: The Secret History of Twin Peaks (second reading; ***)
  
• Mark Frost: The Final Dossier (second reading; ****)
• H.R. Giger: Giger (****)
  
• Thomas Harris: Red Dragon (third reading; *****)
• Thomas Harris: The Silence of the Lambs (****)
• Frank Herbert: Dune (second reading; ****)
• Rick Moody: The Ice Storm (****)
• Haruki Murakami: First Person Singular (***)
  
• Stephen Morris: Record Play Pause: Confessions of a Post-Punk Percussionist (****)
• Chuck Palahniuk: Fight Club (***)
• Adam Steiner: Into the Never: NIN and the Creation of The Downward Spiral (***)  
  
• Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (***)
• Various: Star Wars: From a Certain Point of View (***)
• Various: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back: From a Certain Point of View (****)
• Stefan Zweig: The Collected Novellas of Stefan Zweig (****)
• Stefan Zweig: The Collected Stories of Stefan Zweig (***).

2021 in Television

• 01. Fargo, Season 4
• 02. Only Murders in the Building, Season 1
• 03. Turning Point: 9/11 and the War on Terror
• 04. Squid Game, Season 1
  
• 05. Line of Duty, Series 6
• 06. Inside No. 9, Series 6
• 07. Time
• 08. The Bambers: Murder at the Farm
• 09. Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer
• 10. Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel.

2021 in Film

• 01. Saint Maud
• 02. The Power of the Dog
• 03. Sound of Metal
  
• 04. Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain
• 05. Dune
• 06. Mortal Kombat
• 07. Last Man Standing: Suge Knight and the Murders of Biggie and Tupac
• 08. The Card Counter
• 09. The Dig
• 10. Worth.

 2021 films I have yet to see:

• Censor.
• The Father.
• The Velvet Underground.
• The French Dispatch.
• Drive My Car. 
• Ghostbusters: Afterlife.

2021 in Music

• 01. Pan Daijing: Jade 
• 02. Jon Hopkins: Music for Psychedelic Therapy 
• 03. Gazelle Twin & NYX: Deep England 
• 04. Danny Elfman: Big Mess 
• 05. A Winged Victory for the Sullen: Invisible Cities 
• 06. The Grid & Robert Fripp: Leviathan 
• 07. Ulver: Hexahedron 
• 08. Nala Sinephro: Space 1.8 
• 09. David Bowie: The Width of a Circle 
• 10. MONO: Pilgrimage of the Soul.

Honourable mention: 

• Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders & The London Symphony Orchestra: Promises 
• Blanck Mass: In Ferneaux 
• King Crimson: Music is Our Friend (Live in Washington and Albany, 2021) 
• Katia Krow: I've Called Off the Search, I Know Exactly Where You Are 
• Zombi: Liquid Crystal.

7thSun: new E.P. 'static. odourless. invisible.'

2020 in Review

Albums:

• David Bowie: ChangesNowBowie (*****)
• Rival Consoles: Articulation (****)
• Ulver: Flowers of Evil (****)
• Dextro: An Hour is a Sea (****)
• Nick Mason's Saucerful of Secrets: Live at the Roundhouse (****)
• Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts V: Together/ Ghosts VI: Locusts (****)
• Roger Eno & Brian Eno: Mixing Colours (****)
• The Pineapple Thief: Versions of the Truth (****)
• JARV IS: Beyond the Pale (****)
• Brian Eno: Film Music: 1976-2020 (****)

 

Films:

• Dark Waters (****)
• Secrets of the Saqqara Tomb (****)
• The Trial of the Chicago 7 (****)
• Greed (****)
• Soul (****)
• The Hater (****)
• The Lighthouse (***)
• Mank (***)
• Rebecca (***)
• The Personal History of David Copperfield (***)

 

 Television:

• Star Wars: The Mandalorian, Season 2 (*****)
• Better Call Saul Season 5 (****)
• Trial 4 (****)
• Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich (****)
• How to Fix a Drug Scandal (****)
• The Sinner, Season 3 (***)
• Inside No. 9, Season 4 (***)
• The Pharmacist (***)
• The Innocence Files (***)
• Unexplained Mysteries (***)

 

Reading:

• Haruki Murakami: Kafka by the Shore (third reading: *****)
• Alexandre Dumas: The Count of Monte Cristo (*****)
• Christopher Isherwood: Mr. Norris Changes Trains (second reading: *****)
• John Kennedy Toole: A Confederacy of Dunces (second reading: *****)
• Laurence Rees: Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution' (*****)
• Irvine Welsh: Trainspotting (fourth reading: *****)
• Hanif Kureishi: The Buddha of Suburbia (second reading: ****)
• George Orwell: Coming Up for Air (****)
• Michael Finkel: True Story: Murder, Memoir, Mea Culpa (****)
• George Orwell: Burmese Days (****)
• Haruki Murakami: Wind/ Pinball Two Novels (****)
• Louis Theorux: Gotta Get Theroux This (****)
• Voltaire: Candide (****)
• H.G. Wells: War of the Worlds (***)
• Alice Walker: The Color Purple (***)
• Oscar Wilde: Lord Arthur Saville's Crime and Other Stories (***)
• George Orwell: A Clergyman's Daughter (***)
• Charles Dickens: The Christmas Books (***)
• Haruki Murakami: The Elephant Vanishes (***)
• Robert Sabbag: Snowblind (***)
• Iain Banks: Complicity (***)
• J.G. Ballard: The Drowned World (**)
• Heinrich Boll: The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum (**)
• Stephen King/ Richard Bachman: The Running Man (**)
• Sam Shepard: Seven Plays (**)
  

2019 Reading

• Chil Rajchman: Treblinka: A Survivor’s Memory *****
• John Grisham: The Innocent Man *****
• Philip K. Dick: Confessions of a Crap Artist (second reading) ****    
• David Lynch & Kristine McKenna: Room to Dream ****
• Dorian Lynskey: The Ministry of Truth: A Biography of George Orwell’s 1984 ****
• Elie Wiesel: Night ****
• W. Somerset Maugham: Of Human Bondage ****
• George Orwell: Homage to Catalonia (second reading) ****
• Shirley Jackson: We Have Always Lived in the Castle ****
• John Grisham: A Painted House ****
• Haruki Murakami: After the Quake ****
• P.D. James: The Children of Men *** 
• Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 ***
• Graham Norton: Holding ***
• George Orwell: Keep the Aspidistra Flying ***
• Ian McEwan: The Child in Time ***
• Arthur Koestler: Darkness at Noon ***
• Philip K. Dick: Mary and the Giant (second reading) ***
• Dashiell Hammett: Red Harvest **
• Albert Camus: Exile and the Kingdom **

2019 in Television

Television of the year, 2019:

• Chernobyl
• Tell Me Who I Am
• Star Wars: The Mandalorian
• The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance
• Louis Theroux:
• The Night in Question 
• Mothers on the Edge
• Surviving the Most Hated Family in America
• Line of Duty: Season 5
• Unbelievable
• True Detective: Season 3
• When They See Us
• The Devil Next Door.

Honourable mention:

• David Bowie: Finding Fame
• The Last Czars
• Stranger Things: Season 3
• Game of Thrones: Season 8.

In a strong year for historical dramas, HBO’s miniseries Chernobyl was an atmospheric piece of filmmaking that managed a balanced portrait of tragedy and institutional incompetence. (Its occasional liberties with historical accuracy were disclosed and justified in the epilogue.) Meanwhile, Netflix dramatised the 2008–2011 Washington and Colorado serial rape cases in Unbelievable; and the streaming service also released When They See Us, which was based on the 1989 Central Park jogger case.

Tell Me Who I Am was the year’s strongest documentary: a British film about Alex Lewis’ amnesia, his complicated relationship with his twin brother Marcus, and the final shocking revelations about their childhood. Louis Theroux made three more documentaries about sensitive subjects on the BBC; and the bizarre court battles of suspected concentration camp guard John Demjanjuk were documented in The Devil Next Door. (Demjanjuk’s court appearances had already been discussed in some depth in 2018’s more satisfying The Accountant of Auschwitz, about Oskar Gröning.)

2019 saw the reboot of Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal via the prequel series Age of Resistance: a bold undertaking that expanded on the show’s mythology in an inventive manner, while maintaining the dark tone of the 1982 film. Later in the year, the Star Wars saga launched its first live-action series The Mandalorian, which follows the adventures of a bounty hunter in the period following the events of the original trilogy. The series maintains a restrained Western-flavoured tone, while expanding on the universe but staying respectful to its core elements (a feat that The Rise of Skywalker catastrophically failed to achieve).

BBC police drama Line of Duty entered its fifth series in a typically bold manner, but was ultimately a little dissatisfying. Disillusionment with the last season of HBO’s Game of Thrones has been well documented, but the show did manage one final spectacular battle in the episode ‘The Long Night’. True Detective returned, and while it failed to match the quality of its first season, the third instalment was a significant improvement on the second one and more in keeping with the original tone.

2019 in Film

Films of the year, 2019:

• Once upon a Time in Hollywood
• Us
• Burning
• Doctor Sleep
• Midsommar
• In Fabric
• Joker
• Marriage Story
• Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
• The Favourite.

Honourable mention:

• The Dead Don’t Die
• El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie
• Toy Story 4
• Avengers: Endgame.

David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard both explore the darker sides of the Hollywood film industry. However, Quentin Tarantino’s Once upon a Time in Hollywood is, in many ways, a heartfelt homage to his childhood in 1960s Los Angeles – and the prevailing sense of innocence before Charles Manson dominated the headlines. Being a Tarantino film, it’s not short of dark humour or violent scenes, but for the most part it is a restrained portrait of a specific period in time – and one that adopts a refreshingly respectful attitude to its historical characters. 

There is nothing retrained about Jordan Peele’s Us, in which a family is terrorised by their twisted doppelgängers, but the film is a thrilling exploration of duality and oppression (which also manages some surprising belly laughs along the way). However, there is little relief to be found in Ari Aster’s Midsommar, in which a young group of friends take part in an ancient Swedish festival of an increasingly sinister nature. The film chooses an original setting in which to explore a disintegrating relationship. And the damage that divorce can do to a family is explored in the surprising Marriage Story.

South Korean filmmaker Lee Chang-dong adopted Haruki Murakami’s short story ‘Barn Burning’ into 2018’s Burning, which was released in the UK this year. Despite relocating the Japanese story to Korea and making the characters younger, the film establishes a very Murakami-esque sense of mystery, and maintains a subtly disquieting tone throughout.

It’s unlikely that Mike Flanagan’s Doctor Sleep will be discussed and analysed for as long (and in the same depth) as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, but the film addresses the conflicts between Kubrick’s film and both of Stephen King’s novels in an inventive manner. The members of the cast all turn in fine performances, and the cinematography effectively evokes the original film’s atmosphere while managing to achieve something unique.

While Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman was a profound disappointment, Todd Phillips revisited the themes of King of Comedy and Taxi Driver for a very different kind of comic book movie in this year’s Joker. It’s not without its flaws, but Joaquin Phoenix gives a fantastic central performance – and the film offers a refreshing contrast to the market dominance of Marvel.

Meanwhile, Peter Strickland delivered another effective giallo homage in the form of In Fabric – a darkly comic satire on mass consumerism about a haunted dress from a mysterious department store.