It’s a terrific program across the board, as I’ve already mentioned, and I’ll never get to them all. But here are my top 15 picks:

1. The Tree of Life - I’m putting it first because it’s almost too obvious. You wouldn’t have needed me to tell you this one was worth checking out even before it won the Palme d’Or. But I’ll tell you why I’m especially keen on Terrence Malick’s fifth feature in 38 years. These days so many films we’re supposed to care about, arthouse and otherwise, are all about darkness and chaos, seemingly designed to smother hope or the thought of anything good – Black Swan, Snowtown, everything from Von Trier. But more and more Malick seems intent on using his monumental talent and vision to inspire and create wonder. “A movie without spiritual values is like useless information,” according to Turkish director Semih Kaplanoğlu. (And really, the same sort of criteria applies to virtually everything else on this list.) Beyond that is the sheer scope of the thing. I’m going into The Tree of Life expecting no less than a life-changing experience – it reminds me of when I was a kid, diving into Kubrick and Coppola films at school. As Roger Ebert points out, Malick is one of the few filmmakers left who sets out to create a masterpiece every time.

2. HERE – I’d be psyched about this one even if it wasn’t the debut feature of an old friend of mine from film school, Braden King. I’ve followed it throughout its production and after, and have been dying to see it on a big screen for a long time. Bias aside, everything I’ve read and heard about HERE indicates that it might signal a step towards the future of film. Its creators bill it as a “multi-platform motion picture” – one whose story, a riff on the romantic road movie (it’s the first American feature shot in Armenia), unfolds across not only the narrative of the film itself, but in a series of art installations, in the performances of an associated musical collective, in photography and digital media. It’s meant to be an evocative and gorgeous film as well – which, knowing Braden, won’t surprise me.

3. The Future – Six years ago I went into Me and You and Everyone We Know not expecting much – mainly because of my antipathy for the art scene in general and performance art in particular. But Miranda July totally won me over from that point forward. There’s just something so sweet and positive and real about her stuff. It’s the opposite of pretentious. And though it always seems like she’s not even trying, I have a feeling that lurking behind the deer-in-headlights demeanor is a canny genius – whose second feature is likely to be very good indeed.

4. 13 Assassins – Takashi Miike’s name is virtually synonymous with quirky genre films with a truly sick sense of humor (e.g., Audition). But the word on 13 Assassins is that he’s gone straight (well, sort of) and crafted a rip-roaring tribute to Kurosawa’s samurai epics with a dash of Tarantino’s violent fun. In other words it sounds like it could be my favorite movie ever.

5. The Forgiveness of Blood- I haven’t seen Maria Full of Grace, Joshua Marston’s award-winning debut. But I’m curious about his follow-up, not only for the kudos it’s been getting, but for the fact that it’s set in Albania and is in Albanian. I just think it’s cool that an American indie director has made two features, and neither of them are in English. Why don’t more English-speaking directors do this? (Well, other than the obvious reasons.) Anyway, this is the kind of cinema I’m interested in lately – stories about regular people, made with mostly nonprofessional actors, set in unlikely places that I don’t know much about.

6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams – I resisted wanting to see this one for a long time. I’m very much against to all the 3-D bullshit being rammed down our throats, and I was determined to hold out even in spite of Werner Herzog. But the more I heard about it, the more I realized I have to see this. Not only are the reviews of the total experience of this film glowing across the board (if anything, this is probably the kind of thing 3-D is actually good for), but at the end of the day it’s hard for me to resist any doco about human prehistory, which is one of my favorite set of mysteries to ponder. It could be the cheesiest Discovery Channel production and I’d be all over that. But it’s not – it’s Herzog.

7. Win Win- Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent was one of my favorite films of the last decade – and his follow-up, The Visitor, was very good too – both of them low-key, heartfelt, funny and original stories about people who seemed absolutely real. Working for a big studio in a more straightforward comic vein, it looks like he’s gone upmarket a bit – but I can’t imagine he’s sold out his style or his way with characters and dialogue. I’m expecting great things, especially with Paul Giamatti’s formidable talents aboard.

8. A Separation – An eerie and wrenching family drama about marriage and social boundaries in contemporary Iran, Asghar Farhadi’s debut About Elly was one of the best films of 2009. This one, his second film, won the Golden Bear at Berlin, while the cast took an acting award as an ensemble. Last year’s Golden Bear winner, Kaplanoğlu’s Honey, became my favorite of the year. And lately I’m obsessed with just about any independent cinema from Iran. I don’t think we can go wrong here.

9. The Arbor – Clio Barnard’s account of the tragic life of British playwright Andrea Dunbar has been described as one of the best documentaries of the year, with an original approach that features a cast lip-synching to recorded interviews interwoven with archival footage and excerpts from her plays. As a bonus, it screens with Tiong Bahru, the latest film in the ongoing Civic Life project, a wonderful series of short films produced in collaboration with local communities – Singapore in this case. (Both of these films were shot by Ole Bratt Birkland.) I’m fresh off taking a workshop the other night with Joe Lawlor, one of the Civic Life directors – great guy with a great vision about sharing film and filmmaking with people all over the world.

10. Letters from the Big Man – It’s directed by the award-winning Christopher Munch; it’s said to have amazing cinematography – having been shot on the Red camera by Chris Sweeney; it’s set in the big woods in my beautiful home state of Oregon; it stars Lily Rabe, who is Jill Clayburgh’s daughter, whose name suggests one of my favorite vegetables and who looks really good in hiking gear; it’s about Sasquatch; and it’s meant to be an original take on the local legend with environmentalist overtones. Take your pick – there’s plenty to like there, but actually the Sasquatch part is enough for me. Potential downside: apparently Bigfoot is not portrayed as a mysterious figure stalking in the background, but as a regular character with closeups and everything. So this could end up being a festival-circuit Harry and the Hendersons.

11. The Troll Hunter – Another reworking of an old legend in a woodland setting, this is a Blair Witch-type fakeumentary about a government search for the fabled monsters in the remote wilds of Norway – and believe it or not it’s getting bang-up reviews. From the buzz I’ve heard, and from how quickly the sessions sold out, I reckon it’s one of the most anticipated films in the festival. Something about a well-executed Scandanavian thriller about trolls must transcend genre boundaries and appeal to all sorts of people – including me I guess.

12. The Mill and the Cross- Lech Majewski’s meditation on Peter Bruegel’s 1564 masterpiece The Procession to Calvary is “the closest a feature film has ever come to being a painting” (according to Festival Director Clare Stewart). Apparently the production design and visual effects are jaw-dropping, and I’m especially interested in seeing how the religious element is handled. Bonus: it’s one of two films in the festival starring Rutger Hauer, who plays Bruegel here and a very similar role as the titular character in Hobo with a Shotgun.

13. Le quattro volte – Of all the films in the festival, this is the one that’s hardest for me to picture what it’s going to really be like. Apparently it’s an exploration of Pythagoras’ philosophy of soul transmigration by way of a visual celebration of human, animal and vegetable life in a quaint Italian village. I hear it’s a joyful cinematic experience that’s been winning audiences over since it debuted at Cannes last year. It sounds a bit like Stan Brakhage, a bit like The Tree of Life. (And on that note: it all remains to be seen, but I’m already starting to look for points of connection between some of these visually bold, experience-based, spiritually-minded films on my list.)

14. Position Among the Stars- Dutch director Leonard Retel Helmrich spent 12 years following an Indonesian extended family made up of both Muslims and Christians, sharing a roof together and living on the borderline of poverty; the result is supposed to be an intimate, beautiful, and stylishly unorthodox doco. Something about everything I’ve heard about it reminds me of Brillante Mendoza’s Lola, a narrative set in the slums of Manila which is one of my recent faves.

15. The White Balloon – I’m particularly excited about all the films in the Jafar Panahi/Mohammad Rasoulof retrospective – they’re taxing my FlexiPass like no other single program – but I didn’t list any of the others here as I wanted to focus on newer films. But I’ll include The White Balloon, Panahi’s beloved 1995 debut, as it’s screening at the State Theatre in a brand-new print, recently purchased by SFF. I’m just starting to discover all of Panahi’s amazing films, and I just can’t imagine a better way to see this classic – about nothing more than a little girl’s quest for a goldfish – for the first time.

This year’s program is especially strong. OK, full disclosure: I worked at the festival, editing the program guide – but I’m not only being loyal. As the confirmed titles crossed my desk one after the other, I kept saying to myself, “Damn, this is a strong program.” Great opening and closing films in Hanna and Beginners – both smart and edgy but chock-a-block with star power and appeal. A strong competition featuring new work from Terrence Malick, Miranda July and Joshua Marston; Tran Anh Hung’s adaptation of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood; Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation, which won best film at the Berlinale; and two Aussie titles (Toomelah and Sleeping Beauty) that premiered at Cannes.

Lots going on in the “pathways” (SFF’s experience-based program sections): choice picks from names like James Marsh, Errol Morris and Tom McCarthy, as well as promising genre fare (Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins, Brazilian thriller Elite Squad 2, a new take on Jane Eyre). I’m really psyched for Freak Me Out, which looks to be a world-class selection of midnight fare. Two great retrospectives covering the Hollywood melodramas of Douglas Sirk and the big-hearted social realism of Iranian auteurs (and political captives) Jafar Panahi and Mohammad Rasoulof. And like chocolate sprinkles on top, we see relatively minor entries from the likes of Martin Scorsese and Werner Herzog in the back half of the lineup. Hey, it’s a strong program.

I’ve taken in an assortment of these films, and already have a few favorites. But there are many more I’m keen on. It’ll be hard to go wrong. My FlexiPass is already shot, how about yours?

So here’s my highly personal, totally unscientific semi-insider’s preview. The first part covers the films I’ve seen and recommend. The second, to be published a little later, lists the ones I’m most looking forward to.

The film I’ll be bothering you about the most is Kelly Reichardt’s gorgeous minimalist western Meek’s Cutoff, screening in Take Me on a Journey. Reichardt is already responsible for two of my very favorite films of recent years, Old Joy and Wendy and Lucy; but with her third feature I believe she’s come into her own as one of America’s great directors. This breathlessly quiet, utterly entrancing tale of settlers lost in the Oregon wilderness in 1845 is deceptively powerful; like no film I’ve seen recently it makes the landscape of history come alive as visual and even mystical experience – putting Reichardt, in her unassuming way, in Terrence Malick territory.

And its foregrounding of the lives of the women, the long-suffering linchpins of history, is revelatory. Hidden inside their bonnets, they endlessly perform their tedious chores – building fires and doing dishes, straining to hear the men’s whispered plans – and we realize that even nowadays movies don’t often show us what daily life is like for ordinary women. Michelle Williams’ lead performance is really something, given how little dialogue there is, and much of it mumbled – but as she and her companions drift through the dust like pastel ghosts, her compassion, intelligence and determination to survive become tangible things.

The next film you absolutely should not miss is the Korean thriller End of Animal, the debut feature from Jo Sung-hee, which didn’t Freak Me Out so much as it simply astonished me. Though essentially a variation on the apocalyptic road movie, End of Animal is just a bloody brilliant piece of filmmaking regardless of genre or category, and would have been contending for awards at major festivals if there was any justice.

Beginning with the simple premise of a cabride through the country and a disjointed conversation between the driver and his passengers before a sudden breakdown, the film only slowly reveals a world gone all wrong – and never bothers to explain why. The protagonist is a hapless young pregnant woman trying to reach her mother’s home; as she struggles across a cold, lifeless countryside, she keeps encountering people whose behavior makes no sense – other than the certainty that they all mean her harm.

The constant grinding suspense is achieved not with shock, but with uncanny editing (the best I’ve seen lately) and a screenplay that works smalltalk, non-sequiturs and forboding hints into a downward spiral of riddles and dark religious symbolism. With very little blood and gore and none of the flashy transgressions of other horror films, End of Animal is quietly brutal and disturbing – and ultimately, very sad – because of the way it unravels our expectations along with its pitiful heroine’s hopes at every turn. Keep an eye on Jo; I predict he’ll do great things before he’s pressed into service by Hollywood to do Green Lantern 4 or whatever.

Another road movie, but a far less threatening one, Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip is a cutdown version of a BBC series screening in Make Me Laugh. Winterbottom’s films are frequently as entertaining as they are diverse, daring and incredibly prolific, and he doesn’t let us down here.

His Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story was a high point of the last decade – a loopy literary-adaptation-within-a-film, a surreal and sarcastic meditation on men’s sexual and creative drives. Well, Winterbottom and his backers must have felt as I did that star Steve Coogan’s rambling improvised dialogues with Rob Brydon were some of the most priceless parts of that movie, because they committed to an entire project of nothing else but.

In The Trip, Coogan and Brydon play fictionalized versions of themselves on a restaurant tour of northern England’s Lake District. All they do is drive around the staggeringly beautiful countryside, eat gourmet food and talk. The wall-to-wall conversation is just a platform for an inexhaustible stream of puns, put-downs, impressions and hilariously spacey arguments. It’s hard to say whether the whole thing is one giant pisstake, and if it sounds self-indulgent, it is. But I didn’t particularly want it to end, and I often laughed so hard it hurt. Winterbottom crafts the off-the-cuff material into something surprisingly touching and elegiac; he’s just too good a director to make anything feel like a waste of time. I submit this is a new kind of entertainment: as sharp as the best independent cinema, but as soothing and disposable as a Food Network series.

Egyptian indie Microphone is likewise a refreshingly loose blend of narrative and doco. A canny tribute to Alexandria’s underground scene, it plays in Sounds on Screen, but covers a lot more conceptual ground than just music. Director Ahmad Abdalla and producer and star Khaled Abol Naga established a fresh take on urban storytelling with their previous collaboration, Heliopolis, one of  2009′s best first features. Microphone has the same rambling patchwork structure and unforced romanticism, but a more youthful focus.

The plot, such as it is, concerns an architect who escapes the dissatisfactions of his job and lovelife by wandering the streets, chasing after young graffiti artists, musicians and guerilla filmmakers like a fanboy. The story and dialogue are always being interrupted by doco-style glimpses of things going on all around – bands practicing, artists hitting up walls, people just hanging out in the street. Similarly the style is always changing, from verité to joking pastiches of classic Egyptian cinema. It’s not always clear how it all relates – in fact, it’s a mess, but a terrific mess. There’s such a sense of place and history; Abdalla is skillful and inclusive in depicting all kinds of people – yuppies, street hustlers, conservative Muslims – sharing metropolitan spaces and destinies, and his sheer joy in filmmaking and the power of art and music is contagious. Abol Naga’s low-key charm keeps it all together.

Meanwhile, it’s impossible to forget current events in Egypt – as in the scene where an impromptu hip-hop show in the street is cleared away by cops. Microphone was completed last year, before the January uprising, but the undercurrent of frustration with the system is unmistakable.

Sacrifice, (screening in Love Me) from famed Chinese director (and SFF Jury President) Chen Kaige, is a richly designed historical drama very much worth your while. It begins as the epic (and somewhat confusing) account of a power struggle between feudal princes, but settles into the story of one ordinary man caught up in it all and the awful price paid by his family. It’s a melodramatic tale of Chinese honor and vengeance told like a Shakespearean tragedy.

Cirkus Columbia, directed by Danis Tanović (screening in Fire Me Up), is a black comedy set in a bucolic small town in Herzegovina on the eve of the Bosnian war. One of last year’s better films, it’s by turns unsettling and strangely sentimental. Tanović, who’s made a career of documenting the conflict, wryly but affectionately observes all the romance and detail of the lives and dreams his characters cling to, with the tension mounting almost imperceptibly as their country slides inexorably towards a nightmare.

Plenty of good documentaries on offer of course. Of the ones I’ve seen, the most compelling (and best-named) is Shut Up Little Man! An Audio Misadventure. Though a local production competing for the FOXTEL Australian Documentary Prize, it debuted at Sundance, and its topic is very American. Director Matthew Bate investigates a lurid underground history: two post-collegiate punks living in a rundown apartment in late-80s San Francisco made secret recordings of the semi-destitute alcoholic geezers next door, whose outrageously profane rants bordered on a kind of performance art. When the two distributed the tapes to record stores, they never imagined what a phenomenon their prankster art would become, or that their unwitting subjects would become cult heroes. The recordings are undeniably funny, but the film argues pretty effectively that these guys heralded a new age of vulgar, intrusive media, given that reality TV and viral videos are now part of everyday life. Shut Up Little Man! is at its best when it shifts away from running jokes and talking-head history to document the now-middle-aged pair’s efforts to find out more about the actual lives of their subjects. The results are all too human and quite sad.

My Reincarnation (screening in Take Me on a Journey) is an unusually intimate study of the sometimes-troubled relationship between a Tibetan Buddhist master and his Italian-born son over the span of 20 years. Director Jennifer Fox’s heroic commitment and thousands of hours of video pay off in a film that’s rich and nuanced but remains entertaining and light on its feet. As with any good doco, the shifting destinies of its characters play like a drama, and in honestly exploring the question of what it is to live a spiritual life in the west, it’s pretty inspiring.

Exporting Raymond (screening in Make Me Laugh) has to be the most randomly watchable and fun doco I’ve seen this year. Directed by and starring Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond - a show I’ve always hated – it covers the unlikely endeavor to turn that long-running hit series and touchstone of über-suburban American values into a Russian sitcom. Oddly compelling stuff, for whatever reason. Our man bumbles around a dank, forbidding concrete bunker of a TV studio in Moscow, avidly trying to communicate to his unfriendly new colleagues his grand vision of universal comedy – and they never really get it. But Rosenthal, whose schtick can be roughly described as Larry David lite, comes across as a thoughtful and decent bloke, and his misadventures prove disarming and funny – a hell of a lot funnier than his TV show.

I’ve seen three titles in Free Panahi and Rasoulof: A Tribute, but they’re three of the best films I’ve seen recently. Gesher, produced by Rasoulof and directed by Vahid Vakilifar, won a new directors’ prize at Abu Dhabi Film Festival (where I also work) last year; I’ve already praised it on this page and elsewhere. The story of migrant laborers who live in abandoned natural-gas pipes in the blasted-out “manufactured landscape” of a gas refinery on the Persian Gulf, it’s a wonderful blend of Iranian naturalism and striking postmodern visual artistry.

The other two present contrasting aspects of Panahi’s keen vision of everyday life in Tehran. Crimson Gold is a grim and melancholy portrait of a pizza deliveryman and small-time thief with mental problems. He rides all over town, interacting with the rich, the poor and the desperate, making friends and getting himself into odd situations. He’s gregarious, in his awkward way, even touchingly generous, but also filled with resentment and desire  - and all the while he lurches towards a violent tragedy. Far from nihilistic, it’s actually quite poignant in a way a more straightforward drama couldn’t be; Panahi’s compassionate worldview is discernible through the exploitation and chaos.

Offside, about young women who violate the regime’s strict social laws by dressing as boys to sneak into Iran’s 2006 World Cup qualifying match with Bahrain, is Panahi’s most popular film, and deservedly so. I saw it earlier this year at SFF’s special screening in protest of his imprisonment, and it was the best experience I’ve had at the movies in a long time.

I’ve never seen narrative and documentary combined so naturally – it really was filmed at that match, and it’s not easy to figure out how Panahi planned and pulled it off. And I’ve never seen a more eloquent representation of the idea that it’s possible to defy your government and yet love your country wholeheartedly at the same time. The passion shown by these girls for their beloved Iran and their team – even as they are carted away to jail by soldiers (who are presented as sympathetic characters) says more about the regime’s injustice than angry polemics ever could. The wave of emotion – equal parts sadness and joy – that surges up as the film reaches its climax is difficult to defend against, especially in light of Panahi’s fate. I cried, and so did everyone else I was with. And Offside earns bonus points in my book for getting cinephiles and hipsters all over the world to actually sit and watch a sports film.

Coming soon: Part 2 of my SFF preview, listing the 15 films I’m most looking forward to.

20 F@#%ing Years of Planet E

I love the sleeve design:

A number of tunes on the album have Youtube or Soundcloud links embedded in the review. But since I also mention several Carl Craig and Planet E classics that didn’t make the album, but were a huge influence on me back in the day, I thought I’d link them here. I’ve also thrown in a few more favorites for good measure.

Even a short playlist of old Planet E tunes (or new ones for that matter) quickly becomes a pretty formidable collection – the range and quality of this music never ceases to amaze me. I don’t get tired of it – there’s nothing quaint or kitschy about it. In that sense it has much in common with the timelessness of classic garage and house. In general this compilation really brings out how huge C2 and Planet E have been in my life.

69 – “My Machines”

Quadrant – “Hyperprism”

Paperclip People – “Throw”

Paperclip People – “Throw” (Basic Reshape)

Paperclip People – “The Climax”

Maurizio – “Domina” (C Craig’s Mind Mix)

Moodymann “I Can’t Kick This Feelin’ When It Hits”

Innerzone Orchestra – “Bug in the Bassbin” (Street Mix)

Recloose – “Can’t Take It” (Carl Craig Mix)

I respect the Doors’ contribution to rock history. I’m still amazed by “Break on Through” and “The End” (even if I sometimes suspect Francis Ford Coppola has a great deal to do with the impact on me of the latter). I can see why their leader’s persona was so astonishing and captivating when he first arrived on the scene – coming out of the mid-20th century, when people generally kept their shirts on while singing in public, his shamanistic performance art and primal outbursts must have been like a hot knife through butter. It probably had to happen.

But I think a lot of their music was kind of lame – almost like lounge music. (I mean, really – “Touch Me”?) And Morrison’s lyrics are OK, but not really poetry (as his fans always maintain), and his poetry was pretty bad. And then he OD’d in a bathtub.

So I won’t be mewling about his grave in Paris anytime soon. But now that we’ve got that established, take a look at this video:

Quite apart from the fact that he’s exactly, eerily right about the way music would evolve a few years after his death, what I really like is that in 110 seconds he basically covers every kind of music that’s ever mattered to me, from American roots music to rock and electronic and hip hop, and ties it all together. I mean, how often do you hear someone talking about country and electronic music in the same breath? Yet that summarizes my entire music experience; it’s something I think about and puzzle over ever day, but have hardly ever found someone I can share it with. Always wondering how to explain why I hear similar things going on in the sounds of Gillian Welch and Boards of Canada, not to mention all the other kinds of music I’m passionate about from Handel to Chicago house. And yet, here it is, as plain and simple as you like, from the mouth of Jim Morrison – before it ever happened. Talk about breaking on through.

So yeah, just this once, in the words of my friend DJ I-Cue who first posted this video: “Jimmy knew the deal.”

The page’s title refers to the device, basically a pole with nine cameras attached, that is Google’s weapon in its ongoing campaign to photograph… well, everywhere and everything.

In the last few years Google has dispatched a fleet of vehicles armed with the nine-in-one cam all over the world in an attempt to get as much visual data of our planet’s streets and byways as possible. Thanks to this endeavor, surely the largest photographic project in history, we can now access images of every imaginable corner of the world – and plenty of unimagined corners.

9 Eyes’ “curator,” Jon Rafman, combed through the all-but infinite archive of images on the Google Maps’ Street View function (along with other Street View blogs) and selected images for their artistic or documentary value. The results are spellbinding: a sequence of randomly made, ingeniously selected images cascading down the page one after the other with no context, no explanation, each one revealing something beautiful or bizarre or breathtaking.

After a while, the cumulative effect made me laugh out of delight and disbelief – and once or twice I even felt tears jump into my eyes. It has something of the effect of Koyaanisqatsi, the majesty and mayhem of our shared destiny presented nonjudgmentally. It seems to tell a story. But it’s a weird story.

“Google Street View is the greatest photographer ever – when paired with a good editor,” wrote a friend of mine. Rafman has brilliantly curated this project as if he was dealing with the work of an artist – or indeed, many of them. The “show” alternates between grim photojournalism – prostitutes, paramilitary forces, hostile baby gangsters on prosaic street corners – and glimpses of staggering beauty. Some of the images have the fascinating industrial forms and postmodern juxtapositions found in the work of Andreas Gursky and Edward Burtynsky. Rafman also cleverly includes lovely rainbows of digital noise to illuminate his collection.

I can’t even begin to imagine all the work that went into the editing.

Mistakes make for some of the most interesting photos. The random framing and lighting of a camera test or a drunken snapshot reveals an object or room in unexpected ways. Candids let us study weird, unselfconscious body poses. Examples have only proliferated in the digital age. I’ve often thought such photos would make a great show; 9 Eyes is the logical progression of that idea. Google Street View is a database of millions of candids.

It’s something to see some of the things that we think of doing in the street. Look at how many people are laying down in these pictures – some for good reasons (they’re hurt, or they’re drunk), but with others there’s no guessing. They look like characters in an absurdist film.

At times, a particular quality of light or movement will make a person or object seem unnatural. In one photo a group of little girls running towards the camera look like they’re floating above the ground. Some of the images are so inexplicable they seem to be dreams.

Other things you see a lot of on 9 Eyes:

• animals
• car accidents
• guns
• people flipping off the camera
• people under arrest
• people scaling walls
• prostitutes
• Segways

I love how in many cases there’s no obvious way to tell where in the world these things are taking place. It’s a testament to the underlying unity of our civilization: how similar are the corporate plazas, how similar are the ghettos.

Questions:

• Did the Google drivers (or technicians or whatever they are; I can’t imagine they’re well-paid) ever stop to help the many accident victims seen here?
• Can Google’s photographs be used as criminal evidence?
• Did the drivers ever sneakily alter or improvise their routes to purposefully photograph something crazy or beautiful? Is it all really random?
• Come on, how the hell did they get that snapshot of the gorillas?

The lack of text on 9 Eyes is one of its strengths, but Rafman provides thoughtful commentary on his creation at Art Fag City:

IMG MGMT: The Nine Eyes of Google Street View

It’s a great supplement to the gallery, with some photos that didn’t make the cut, and captions that shed different light on the images.

At the heart of his project, as Rafman explicitly states, is the question of whether any one company or entity has a legitimate claim on fabricating our vision of our world. Are all of these prostitutes and victims and people and animals doing strange things what the world really looks like? If there’s something funny or disturbing here, if it seems like art, or a hallucination – is that just a trick of the process? Is this our world, or just the world as Google sees it?

Or actually, since we’re at one more remove, is it just the world as Jon Rafman sees it? Never mind, I’ll take it for now.

More information on each screening here:

Sydney screening

Adelaide screening

Melbourne screening

Completely aside from the protest, I’m psyched about seeing Offside. I’ve recently become fascinated with Iranian cinema – the Iranian new wave is widely regarded as one of the most happening things in film right now, and from what I’ve seen so far I believe the hype. Panahi is one of the key figures in the movement. I’ve only seen one other of his features, Crimson Gold (2003) – and by the way it’s really good – so I can’t comment extensively on his work at this point.

It also happens that Panahi supervised the editing of two of my favorite films of last year: Orion (directed by Zamani Esmati) and Gesher (directed by Vahid Vakilifar). I interviewed both of those young directors while working at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival; Esmati in particular spoke at length about how much Panahi’s mentorship meant to him.

Offside (2006) which won the Silver Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, is known as Panahi’s most accessible film. It’s a comic story about young women who disguise themselves as boys to sneak into a soccer stadium (where no females are allowed) to watch their beloved Iranian national team play a World Cup qualifier. Comic, maybe, but it sounds like the plot leaves plenty of opportunity for commentary on the status of women in Iran – in any case, the film was shot on the run.

For me, Iranian cinema + soccer = win/win.

Meanwhile, check out Panahi’s most recent work, the short film The Accordion (2010). It’s good. It’s packed with symbols of the Iranian protest movement, yet it has a light touch and is a great little piece of filmmaking on its own.

(Note: there isn’t a complete version with English subtitles on Youtube. These ones are in French. But those who don’t speak Persian or French should be able to follow along just fine.)

While you’re at it, sign the petition demanding that the government of Iran free Panahi.

Roy Ayers @ The Basement, Sydney, 20/2/11

I had issues with the show, as you’ll see from the review, but still it was a treat. Since then, I’ve naturally been revisiting Roy’s old tunes.

Here’s a classic, one of those primal creations that sounds as fresh now as it must have back in the day, thanks to its bulletproof groove and off-kilter, melancholy orchestration:

I love these kinds of Youtube videos, where you just watch the record spinning on the turntable. Having spent a lot of my life staring at records while they play, I’m right there with the fans who upload this stuff.

“We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” is from one of my favorite albums: Roy Ayers Ubiquity’s He’s Coming, released in 1971. I first got it when I was living in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. I was broke, and trying to make it, baby – and I can’t explain how much its lyrics and atmosphere meant to me. The sound of it takes me right back to the smell of the brownstone I lived in, the sound of the kids playing and the roosters crowing in the back.

I love the non-sequitur quality of these lines:

Days have passed
And all the queen bee’s drones are dying

I don’t think Roy anticipated colony collapse disorder. I’m not sure what it means, it’s just a funky lyric. I was disappointed when he left that line out of the song last week – as if it would have been too weird for the occasion.

Here’s another one from the same album. Righteous lyrics, an arrangement that just keeps building, an incredible bassline. Try to listen to “Ain’t Got Time” without feeling something:

“What war?”

By the way, the “he” in the album’s title refers to that he. You know, the one who makes the whole thing happen. Same goes with “He’s a Superstar”:

I was listening to this the other day, and got to wondering, what happened to this kind of music, this kind of message? I take it for granted that gospel is a part of soul, but now if someone released a song like this, it’d be a big deal. But back then you got direct affirmations of faith in the music of Stevie Wonder, the O’Jays, Curtis Mayfield, all the heavy hitters. That is some of the best music ever recorded, documenting a profoundly urgent epoch in American history, revolutionizing black culture and inspiring people everywhere – and it was powered by faith. So what the hell happened?

Oh, well. It’s a question for another day. By the way, on the same album, Ayers/Ubiquity do an instrumental version of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” from Jesus Christ Superstar, which was still new at that time. Maybe that’s where Ayers got the concept for “He’s a Superstar.” In general I don’t have much to say about the phenomenon of that musical, as I’m not too familiar with it. (I don’t really do showtunes. Sorry.)

Moving on to another era, can’t forget about this one, probably my favorite of all:

There’s no other record like it. How can I wax poetic about that percussion, that bassline, the tension between the sweetness of the track and the weird drama of the layered vocals? Just listen – and try to keep from knocking over stuff in your living room while dancing.

Like much of  Roy Ayers’ music, “Running Away” was ahead of its time, or out of time – I’d say 1977 seems unbelievable, but I think it would seem unbelievable no matter what year it came out. Not only does it foreshadow house, but it kind of is house in a way, just as “We Live in Brooklyn, Baby” is part and parcel of hip hop. It’s fitting, because Roy went on to record house in the 90s.

Speaking of that, here’s the original version of “Sweet Tears,” which later became a hit when Roy collaborated with Masters at Work/NuYorican Soul on a reworked house version:

Just to be pedantic, the remake:

It’s pretty cheesy – it threatens to collapse into disco house, which was never my thing, and it can’t even come close to matching the smoking-hot vibe of “Running Away” – but I like it anyway.

And just to end things on a completely different note, here’s Roy in electro/R&B/smooth operator/comedian mode in 1984:

Trust me, I wouldn’t post a tune with the phrase “poo poo” in the title if it wasn’t worth your time.

Kevin Saunderson rages against rip-offs

These Italian hacks, who roll under the name Supernova, sampled and looped the hook from Reese & Santonio’s “The Sound” (produced by Saunderson and released on his label, KMS Records) without permission, and without adding much of value of their own, and are passing it off as a piss-poor original tune called “Beat Me Back.” Saunderson’s vengeful response was to take Supernova’s tune and guerilla-upload it to SoundCloud, offering it for free in order to circumvent its sales. (He’s also offering “The Sound” for free, I imagine to increase its distribution and visibility in hopes of educating younger generations.)

Here’s the classic Derrick May mix of “The Sound”:

Here’s the Supernova hack job. (I apologize that you have to look at the cheesy photoshopped picture of President Obama and Colin Powell, apparently the work of “DJ Beatmaster B,” who uploaded this track. But anway, it kind of says it all about the culture of bad club music.)

Here’s the letter Saunderson posted on his site explaining his actions. I love the way he attacks the pirates while yet defending the practice of sampling:

Dear friends, fans and members of the music industry,

Today I’m giving away as a free download one of the productions I am most proud of: “The Sound” by Reese & Santonio. I recorded “The Sound” back in 1987 and released it on my own KMS Records label. It was a massive hit at New York’s Paradise Garage and in Chicago and of course Detroit. Once it hit the UK it became one of the earliest Detroit anthems all around Europe, a huge underground record across the globe – a true desert island techno track. It is such a special record to me because it was one of my first really successful productions and I hope that you all will enjoy this free, fresh digital download of my original 1987 version.

The reason I have decided to give this track away for free is because of a situation that recently developed involving the unauthorized sampling of “The Sound” by Italian producers Giacomo Godi & Emiliano Nencioni (Supernova) in their release “Beat Me Back” on Nirvana Recordings. It came to my attention that they are licensing and selling, with considerable success, this track which is nothing more than a continuous loop of the main hook from “The Sound.”

For me to hear “Supernova” taking an extended loop of “The Sound” and claiming that this is their own original composition and production is both dishonest and disrespectful. My first thought was that they were perhaps naïve, but as they have apparently been recording together since 2002 this seems unlikely. In any event this is completely unacceptable; we cannot continue to let this kind of wholesale ripoff go unchallenged and tolerate “artists” who completely sample recordings, add nothing of their own and then release the results as their own work.

I have a huge affection for sampling – it’s how some of the most inspiring and groundbreaking tracks of our times were created. We’ve pretty much all sampled records at some time, and cleared the sample so we can use it on our releases, but it is just not cool to take someone else’s music, create a big old loop of it and then put your name on it, and try to have success entirely off the back of another artist’s efforts. This really has got to stop. For this reason, I have uploaded the Godi/Nencioni version of “The Sound” to SoundCloud so that you all can download this for free if you so wish. These producers and their record label should not be profiting from my back catalogue… This is not their track to sell.

Is it really such a crime that they ripped off Saunderson’s record? Am I not usually philosophical about sampling, even when it’s unauthorized? True, the history of dance music is filled with unauthorized samples and steals and ripoffs, and some great sounds have resulted. Think about all the great hip-hop breaks from the old days, when samples weren’t necessarily licensed. Take the entire history of reggae – there have been so many brilliant reggae “versions” (“borrowed” instrumentals with new vocal tracks) because there are no copyright laws in Jamaica.

But that argument breaks down when you consider that the spirit of hip hop and reggae is innovation – adding your own twist to a classic record or break and passing it on. Being part of a culture that’s shared outside the bounds of music “ownership.” So even though I have issues with the idea of “copyright,” and even though I’m a fan of a lot of pirated music, I’m on Saunderson’s side here. What sucks about the Supernova track isn’t so much that it uses a sample, it’s that it does it in such a lazy and boring way. Sampling (even without permission) is much more justifiable if you’re going to do something new, add to the culture. If I had a nice recording studio and an Italian record contract, I’d sure as hell do something more creative with it. This is just nightmarishly bad club music that has no sense of history, no regard for the culture. And at the end of the day, crap music or not, why didn’t they just get permission?

So these clowns deserve everything they get. And I just love Saunderson’s in-your-face protest. My first thought when I saw this story was, Middle Eastern dictators, Tea Party governors – and now, Eurotrash dance producers.

Check out Kevin Saunderson’s website, where you can find the download of “The Sound” (as well as the link to the guerilla SoundCloud track of “Beat Me Back,” if you happen to be interested).

As a parting shot, and hopefully to erase the Supernova track and the photoshopped Obama from your mind, here’s another supreme classic produced by Saunderson – Inner City’s “Do You Love What You Feel”:

This is what a fan video should be. Simple but powerful concept, well-executed. No still photos of Gillian, no random footage of somebody’s high school reunion, none of the typical stuff that makes other fan vids so cringeworthy. The highway footage is endlessly watchable – as hypnotic as the song is. I imagine it would be even better projected on a large screen in a dark room. It’s just an unexpectedly brilliant piece of minimalism. About the only bad thing I can say is that edit of the 14-minute song is slightly awkward. (And now that the time limit on Youtube videos has been increased to 15 minutes, it’s also unnecessary.)

Here’s another outstanding fan video of another haunting tune by another alt-country queen, Emmylou Harris (who, by the way, is mentioned by way of tribute in the lyrics to Welch’s tune). I found these two videos on the same day and they make great companion pieces. This is the title track of Emmylou’s 1995 album Wrecking Ball, a Neil Young cover with hazy, shimmering production by Daniel Lanois.

The footage was shot in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina. Again, the element of restraint is very important – no voiceovers or clips from news footage, no explanations, nothing to break up the spare, elegant construction of the film. And the complete lack of human subjects lends an awful, apocalyptic undertone to the scenes of this calamity. That Young’s lyrics are vaguely (if darkly) romantic, and quite abstract in any case is actually perfect. If there was a more literal interface between word and image – say if it was a blues song about a flood – it wouldn’t work quite as well; it wouldn’t have the same aching atmosphere.

We’ve got nowhere to hide
We’ve got nowhere to go
But if you still decide you want to take a ride
Meet me at the Wrecking Ball

But wait. The really cool thing about this video is the “fan” in question is Cinqué Lee, Spike’s brother! No wonder it’s so spot-on! I looked, and could not find any link or any other reference to this project online. I’m pretty sure he just made a great short film and decided to set Emmylou’s music to it and put it up on Youtube. Even better, his user name is Jedi26. I love the internet!

Electronic music has often been a domestic phenomenon, at its best produced on secondhand equipment in ambitious kids’ bedrooms. But as it’s evolved over the past 20 years or so, it’s become domestic in another sense: no longer limited to imagining future worlds or utopian dancefloors, but increasingly reflecting personal lives and intimate settings. The laptop-driven noise symphonies of Fennesz, the refracted/desaturated beats of Boards of Canada, Four Tet’s folktronic psych, Herbert’s found-sound groove – this is the work of musicians who seek inspiration in their kitchens, their friends and families, their summer vacations in the country. It’s the real indie: made by and for people at home. The accessory and the lifestyle have become one and the same.

This homey vibe is epitomized by the suddenly-hot Gold Panda. Read any article about him and you’ll get the same idea: he’s a normal guy named Derwin from London. His checkered employment history (nonchalantly working in a sex shop because he was desperate, getting fired from HMV) is often used as a lead. In interviews like this one, he’s almost too humble, going on about how he’s thankful to have some success with his “hobby.” His sampladelic new album Lucky Shiner was recorded in rural Essex, in a cottage owned by his elderly aunt and uncle. It’s all as if to say that we shouldn’t feel threatened by him – he’s not a rock star, he’s one of us – and a nice guy, too. Yet there must be something special about him because Lucky Shiner is one of the most damned listenable albums to come to light recently.

Many of the (overwhelmingly positive) write-ups on Lucky Shiner are charmingly clueless about electronic production, often breathlessly highlighting the process of sampling itself – as if it’s something new, as if Gold Panda is the first one to sample his auntie talking or some exotic stringed instrument over a funky beat. The technique is fine, but that’s not what makes Lucky Shiner so good: it’s Panda’s aptitude for inhaling a wide range of sounds into his music, moving confidently through different styles and tempos, nimbly chopping up influences, reconstituting them into something organic and refreshing.

“Snow and Taxis” is an uptempo track that moves with the lithe grace and melodic repetition of The Field’s post-minimal techno. ”Vanilla Minus” starts as a Daft Punk-style loopy house track before expanding into something as achingly atmospheric as Orbital in their heyday. With its cascading vibraphone sounds and choppy drum patterns, ”Same Dream China” doesn’t bother hiding its debt to Four Tet.

Gold Panda isn’t quite as accomplished as most of these influences. But that’s all right; it’s a sound that’s thrillingly in-process. This is what the electronic music revolution is all about: discovering genius and beauty as an experiment, a pastime, a daily habit. There are awkward moments, rough patches, but the music is very light on its feet – quirky, adventurous, ultimately uplifting. His enthusiasm and overriding love of music – the joy of discovery as he puts the sounds together – are palpable, the strongest qualities on Lucky Shiner. There’s some of the cheeky experimentalism of Four Tet or Squarepusher, but the compositions never stray so far into glitchy beat-bop and noise that they neglect music: most of the tracks have melodic basslines and lovely tinkling keyboards, and there’s a fine atmospheric swoosh reminiscent of Kompakt’s Pop Ambient sound.

Even better, Panda’s got a great instinct for dynamics: his tracks often rely on one element – one sampled vocal or one breakdown – that doesn’t repeat, or doesn’t repeat the same way. This tantalizes the listener with possibilities, creates fascination, makes you want to hear it again, makes the music more lifelike. It’s an underrated skill perfected by many of the greats including Hank Shocklee, Derrick May and 808 State, but it’s funny how many modern producers – with their perfectly layered, perfectly repeating tracks – seem to have no idea of its importance.

And, yes, the pastoral, folktronic, groove is in effect here, with many acoustic instruments incorporated into the mix. “Parents,” the album’s third track, is simply a sweet-sounding folky guitar interlude that would fit on any indie-rock album. It sets an appealing tone and ices the whole package as a fantastic home listen. Or maybe something to rock on your headphones on a walk in the woods; like such an excursion, this is music that’s relaxing and bracing at the same time. And it’s probably what its creator had in mind while working in that country cottage. We should all thank Derwin’s aunt and uncle for their contribution to our personal soundtrack.