Is it too early to proclaim SOUND team's Movie Monster the album of the year? Do I have to wait until it comes out on June 6th? Deconstructed, none of the album's eleven songs have any super-complicated parts, yet they're consistently engaging. I've already sent two blathering emails to Mulley/Nina about this subject, but to recap:

3/10 - Listened to "Don't Turn Away" after finding a link on ILYBICD's website. Not blown away, but intrigued.
3/31 - Listened to "Your Eyes Are Liars" which immediately became one of my favorite songs of the year.
4/29 - Listened to "Movie Monster," which is good and dark and different.
5/9 - Listened to a radio session where they performed "TV Torso," then began to scour internet for said song.
5/10 - Saw a video of them performing "TV Torso" and only became more desperate to find it. (from mp3blogz0r)
5/11 - Downloaded the album
5/12-present - Loving the album

The Goods:

SOUND team / "Handful of Billions" (yousendit)
Most of the songs on this album are built on very basic sounds--some guitar stabs, a simple drum beat, ambling basslines, heavy reverb, quick back-on-forth guitar, organ. This one has about eight or nine different parts, and I'm not sure what the hell the lyrics are about but there about six of those different parts where I want to yell along.

Live performance on WOXY

******



It's hard not to at least like the idea of an album that Pitchfork describes thusly:

"Orchestra of Bubbles is a collaboration between Ellen Allien, proprietor of Berlin's excellent Bpitch Control label, and Apparat, co-director (alongside T. Raumschmiere) of the Shitkatapult imprint."

Bpitch Control? Shitkatapult??? This is why I'm proud to have a German passport. As it turns out, I've really liked the couple songs I've heard from this album.

Ellen Allien & Apparat / "Do Not Break"

******

Movie notes:

1. The Da Vinci Code: pretty good, certainly not as bad as the foreign press made it out to be. I had low expectations though, seeing as how I had not read the book.
2. Watched Just Friends out of boredom and it was a pretty good waste of time. Ryan Reynolds and Anna Faris are funny.
3. For some reason I think I want to see Oliver Stone's World Trade Center, even though I had no interesting in seeing the very well-reviewed United 93.