Everything In Its Right Place

Been listening to Radiohead's Kid A, for quite a while. This, after a few pompous recommendations. Will admit I had not previously heard any music by Radiohead. Somehow, this one has had my fullest attention since the first listen.

Some of the incredibly appealing bits in the album feature the lead Thom Yorke playing the Ondes Martenot: a fairly niche instrument, originally invented to transmit radio signals at custom frequencies; whose variants are more popular than the archetype. Played with the usual array of electronica equipment, it makes for a deep aura to envelope the usual frequencies. In some places, to completely replace the conventional bass and create its own. Sometimes, eerie and funereal, sometimes not quite.

Apparently imported from Colin Greenwood's previous occupation as a software engineer were sounds squeezed out of 8-bit machinery. And noticeably, noises peculiar to the then spawn of video games: picture a horde of pixellated racing bikes accelerating at flag-off. All of this, to my surprise, made a revealingly great deal of musical sense, to a cosmetic effect that I had not previously imagined.

Underlying the synthetic sounds and the thicket of intertwined genres, are vocals, mostly faint and weightless. Upon a second listen or a fifth, they will show themselves to be individually profound, even in isolation; and seem to lead the numbers by themselves, above what is sometimes a deliberate din. Occasionally, they are cut-up and offer vague lyrics.

Everything In Its Right Place, which was originally considered for single release, opens with melancholic, ominous chords that are later joined by a feeble beat, and after, also an obscured human voice, which, after a riff or two, gives way to the first lyrics. The broken vocals and the instrumentals recur in a pattern that may well intend to channel the entrapment within urges that comes with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

The National Anthem employs free-style jazz in a cacophony of many. A trumpet works up a mood of insanity and then degenerates into a nonsensical mode, which is at its best arbitrary, at its worst loud, and like the album's title, meaningless. For irony, the last few seconds in fact sound off a recording of Star-Spangled Banner, which seems to vanish from the air, as if annihilated one instrument at a time.

Optimistic, the only guitar-driven song in the album, is titled ironically, with the lyrics and the tune suggesting surrender. Idioteque is an energetic, guitar-less shout about a forthcoming apocalypse, presumably one of technology. Motion Picture Soundtrack, which has been hailed the most by the album's critics, brings the feel of black-and-white animated clips to the harp and a deep bass.

A song by the name Big Foot - The Kid A Theory, found on Youtube, is said to be something of a lost track of this album. Although it beats me as to why, since its two impressive riffs would have pitched it among their outstanding tracks.

How To Disappear Completely, which has my vote for the best track, reportedly comes from Thom Yorke's need for a break from concert schedules, and is themed on a desire to isolate oneself indiscriminately. An orchestra plays to dirge-like vocals and almost glorifies them, amid percussion and guitar, occasionally loud and off-tune.

It may not have moved the billions, but Kid A is right up my list of favorites. What could really draw you in is the spread of genres that arrive at the same place to make profound and unpredictable sense. While folks have moaned that it only makes gloominess look beautiful, I could use that as a compliment. It's a magnificent black monument that has raised the bars for originality and quality; most contemporary bands will have to make do in its shadow.

Godma

A: "So, religion."

B: "Pray, what be the reason to bring this nonsense up?"

A: "So that you congregation of agnosts and atheists may be illuminated. Thank God for religion."

B: "Huh. Shouldn't it be 'Thank religion for God'?"

A: "Aw, funny! I'm up for talking about your views. Through what you call acceptance-talking, you need to be shown the right way."

B: "Jeez, no. I have a gut-feeling you'll gut me."

A: "Being a follower, it is my duty to disseminate faith. I am God, speaking to you right now."

B: "You're talking in delusion and riddles."

A: "That's a lie!"

B: "That's a semantic syllepsis."

A: "Son, you need to diversify your intellect and understand God, for there will be light in your life."

B: "That was a metaphor."

A: "Good Lord!"

B: "Oxymoron."

A: " "Oh you, of little faith, why do you doubt me?" "

B: "Because you aren't for real and nor are you ever to be."

A: "Ah, however catchy that might sound .. "

B: " .. iambic pentameter, yes .. "

A: " .. you still want to leave earth for heaven."

B: "I'll get my DSLR. Is it outdoors, much?"

A: "You're missing the point. The point is you aren't a man of faith. And that we all, with His graces, need to rise above the dirt we were made from."

B: "Faith is not the point. The point is the point. The point is also that since we're all scum anyway, why bother?"

A: "Bother? With unfaltering belief, you shall see Him in every person and thing."

B: "Even that Willem Dafoe guy does not look like Jesus to me. Also, the fiscal growth forecast is bonkers."

A: "All you need is patience!"

B: "But patience was invented by Jews to annoy the Christians. Also, the Christians were invented by Jews to annoy themselves."

A: "Thus spake the atheist."

B: "You know, there's some symbolic self-defeat in those words because .. never mind. Stop poking my peace of mind."

A: "No, you listen! Slowly, you need to let go of your habits of drinking, smoking and playing cards. You must circumvent sin."

B: "You may not play poker but you certainly are one."

A: "So what, then, do you believe in?"

B: "Reasoning."

A: "Maybe your need to reason stems from your doubt, in other words, your lack of faith!"

B: "Yeah. It's like a unicorn, except you don't need to be high to see it."

A: "Child, your lack of faith is like this container of water .. "

B: "And lo, sauvignon blanc."

A: " .. [which] you must populate with only the purest .. "

B: " .. said Hitler to Goring .. "

A: " .. while discarding the unfit."

B: " .. as Darwin would agree."

A: "What?"

B: "Bose-Einstein condensates."

A: "I mean, remain equal with the universe, at the same time .. "

B: "You mean, like Kaldor-Hicks efficient?"

A: "Fuck off."

B: "Phnom-Penh."

Tarantino Unchained

"Alas, we must act as our own bartender."

In the tense moments of Django Unchained, there is a clock that is incessantly ticking in the background. Though it's not the only sight or sound in the scene, it's a rather interesting feature of it.

It has the kind of inevitability and rhythm that becomes apparent and registers more clearly when there's anxiety within but desperate calm on the outside. Not unlike in Chapter 1 of Inglourious Basterds . Or that moment in Kill Bill when the Bride ends O-Ren Ishii and the only thing that moves or sounds for a while is a bucket that plops periodically into a well. The dialogue may well be in medieval Gothic but the conspicuous tick-tock does its job of keeping the tension heightened very damn nicely. It's the detail Tarantino has used to keep his finger firmly lodged on even the reluctant viewer's pulse.

Simply put, Tarantino embodies the reason we end up dissociating from every person and problem we know while watching a film. The reason Tarantino merits a place among the biggest and the best is that he has crossed equivalent milestones and elicited an equal reverence, without engaging in anything on an intellectual level. That being lovable is a prominent portion of his film's anatomy (I don't mean this in a Karan Johar sense). That with Tarantino, there came a whole new manner of telling stories with people's quirks of mind, speech and deliberation.

Django Unchained relies on homages to sphagetti westerns, well brutalized white-black sentiments, street-smartness and one-upmanship, the business end of Texas, stylized violence, a soundtrack meant for pastiche and a heavy sense of Tarantino for its monumental success. And a pinch of German, it seems, was inevitable after Christoph Waltz's previous sensation. The plot has it that in 1858, a ruthless dentist-turned-bounty-hunter allies with a slave to aid him in his business, while promising to free his wife, Broomhilda, from a plantation owner and unite them both at the end of their agreed period. Right there is a nod to a German legend. Affairs get unsavoury when they plot to extricate her from her owner's plantation.

In this film and his previous, there has been a grand uplift in scale. With this have come the consequent delights - pernickety attention to detail and outline at once, opportunities for stunning, painting-like cinematography, and room to pack more-than-usual characters in. He has hinted that these two films may be part of a trilogy, in a loose sense. The common themes are apparent.

Much of the film's claim to brilliance comes from its outstanding supporting cast. Di Caprio plays Calvin Candie, the weirdly debonair plantation owner who is obsessed with Mandinko fights. Samuel Jackson, an old horse, on and off screen, alternates between Calvin's stooge and consigliere. Accents and lines fly all over the place; the actors themselves do not surface in the characters. With the exception of Christoph Waltz, who is aptly himself. Incomplete without his legendary upper-lip.

P.S : One can't help notice the names of some of Tarantino's characters. In keeping with either their peculiarities or his own. Django Freeman. Monsieur Calvin Candie. Bridget von Hammersmark. Beatrix Kiddo. Jimmie Dimmick. Esmeralda Villalobos. Technicalities of a greater act of parody.