On April 6, 1993, Makome M’Bowole, a youth of Central African descent, was shot in the head at point blank range while handcuffed to a radiator in a Paris police station. The police called it an “accident.” There had been hundreds of these so-called accidents since the 1980s around Paris and its low-income suburbs – known as banlieue districts. Needless to say, these senseless deaths at the hands of bonehead cops repeatedly led to rioting and birthed an unbearable tension between immigrant youths and the police.

This volatile banlieue society is captured in Mathieu Kassovitz‘s landmark 1995 film, La Haine. An eruptive and stylistically beautiful film, La Haine looks at one day in the life of three kids from immigrant families living in a working-class banlieue housing project outside of Paris. Vinz the Jew (Vincent Cassel), Saïd the Arab (Saïd Taghmaoui), and Hubert the African (Hubert Koundé) are all recovering after a night of heavy rioting. During the previous night’s chaos, a friend of the boys, Abdel,  was shot by a cop and is in critical condition in Paris. One other possibly explosive thing happened the night before: a cop lost his gun. And Vinz found it.

The three friends travel from the projects to central Paris getting in various mixes with police and other youths along the way. Early on in their journey it’s easy to see that race doesn’t mean a damn thing to these kids. While it may mean everything to the police and the society who has marginalized them, Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd are unified in their alienation, resentment, and anger. Vinz may be the most angry – he fantasizes about blowing away a cop and now he’s got the gun to make it happen. Hubert, whose boxing gym was destroyed in the night’s riot, is the most level-headed – a product of having to be the man of the house at an early age. And Saïd is stuck on the fence.

While the three actors have gone on to successful careers, they were unknown at the time. Vincent Cassel is now one of the most interesting actors working today. Saïd Taghmaoui has been in a ton of movies and TV shows, including Lost. And according to one of the special features on the Criterion Collection‘s Blu-ray release, we can all thank Hubert Koundé for coining the word “parkour.” Kassovitz, an accomplished actor in his own right, appears in the film as a skinhead, because what’s a movie about urban race relations without a skinhead.

Kassovitz shot the film in a style reminiscent of the Italian realists but with lots of flare thrown in. Think Luchino Visconti if he’d watched too much MTV. The style never takes away from the substance though – instead it emphasizes the scope and sprawl of the projects and Paris. From the legendary opening shot of the molotov hitting the earth to the crushing close-up of Saïd that closes the film, La Haine is a visual feast. The stunning helicopter shot over the projects while a DJ cuts KRS-One’s “Sound of Da Police” is the only helicopter shot in film history that’s worth a damn.

It’s a very funny film too. There’s an unshakable sense of humor that develops out of oppression and Kassovitz injected his film with perfectly timed bits of comedic relief. But no amount of humor can crack the power of the images onscreen. As fun as it is to watch Vinz, Hubert, and Saïd take the piss out of one another, the clock is still ticking. From the moment Vinz shows off his newly acquired revolver, it’s apparent this day isn’t going to end well.

The Criterion’s release features a wealth of special features, including a fantastic feature length documentary about the making of the film and its legacy. That one feature is worth the price of the disc alone. The actors and Kassovitz explain how they lived in the projects for two months in order to be accepted by the residents and not be seen as intruders with cameras. Their discussion on the Cannes experience is infuriating. The amount of misrepresentation thrown upon La Haine almost seems like a joke – every moronic media droogie portrayed it as promoting violence and 100 percent anti-police. There’s also a feature in which sociologists discuss the film’s banlieue setting, an introduction by Jodie Foster (who championed the film in America), production footage (in color!), deleted scenes, and commentary by Kassovitz. And, of course, the wizards at Criterion gave it the best high-def transfer possible. Black and white never looked so crisp.

10 years after its release, the sun hasn’t set on La Haine. The riots in the Paris suburbs in 2005 brought the debates put forth by the film back into the public conscious. Kassovitz got into a heated back-and-forth online with minister of the interior Nicolas Sarkozy, who infamously referred to he rioters as “scum.” You can read transcripts of the exchange over at the Criterion’s website. The La Haine Blu-ray is out now and is also available in a 2-disc DVD edition.

Beach House – Bloom (2012) [Sub Pop] // Grade: A-

Though it’s not my favorite of their albums, one of my favorite moments in Radiohead’s catalogue comes near the end of Hail To The Thief‘s opener “2+2=5.” I remember how the first 2 minutes or so sound very much like something from Amnesiac, and you think “okay, I know what I’m in for.” But then the song hits a crescendo and breaks out into this messy, vicious guitar song that signified a real paradigm shift in that group’s music. The opening section, however, is what makes that moment work. Bloom, Baltimore dream pop (ugh) duo Beach House’s new record has a similar moment, though unfortunately it comes 5 songs in.

That’s a pretty large issue, but I like the back half of Bloom so much that I can’t help but reward it. Not that opening lineup “Myth,” “Lazuli,” “Wild,” and “Other People” are bad, but they’re boring. They sound like B-sides from Teen Dream, to be honest, and I felt like I was 20 minutes into an album with nothing of note to latch on to. But, as “Other People” comes to a close, the sounds street noise take over the mix. Curious. Then, just as the album skips to “The Hours,” bringing the street noise with it, Victoria Legrand whispers something (literally, the word “something”) very quickly and then Bloom launches up into the stratosphere in a way the band hasn’t done before. The song has drive and chug almost like a 90s Brit-Pop track, and Legrand turns her smoky, droll voice into basically a vamp. It’s the sound of tangible growth, not just arbitrary change, and it fuels the utter success of Bloom’s back half.

There’s a real swagger to these songs, which are more tuned to dancing around your bedroom in front of your mirror than huddled under your sheets scribbling in a journal. “Wishes” has enough grandeur to fuel a pretty serious prom ending, and I mean that in the best way possible. Epic closer “Irene” is thunderous and vast, incorporating the rare Alex Scally vocal wonderfully to fill out spaces the Legrand’s considerable pipes can’t cover. In case you can’t tell, I was pretty thrilled by the end of Bloom. So much so that I’ve forgot about it’s opening. Is that really how they used to sound?

Here We Go Magic – A Different Ship (2012) [Secretly Canadian] // Grade: B+

Starting as the solo recording moniker of former painter and current falsetto-powered Luke Temple, Here We Go Magic became known for their guitar-bouncing and ambient-bred indie experiments almost immediately after their S/T debut album dropped in 2009. Following it a year later with the even more accessible Pigeons, the band’s sound spread and grew more confident; memorable tune “Collector” likely shared at least a few playlists with an act like Local Natives. Sketched from the impacting, sometimes wandering solo work of Temple, HWGM sounded somewhat stuck in a sense of transference that came from simply piling riffs, harmonies or instrumentation atop a basic song skeleton to create something buoyant. This structure made perfect sense considering the project was changing from solo act to full-fledged band.

The story then of their new record is a good one. Having apparently been some of the only attentive and dancing fans at the band’s before-noon Glastonbury set a few years back, Thom Yorke and Nigel Godrich proved adamant fans of the group. The band befriended the pair soon after, sharing nights across Europe and hitting a point where the Radiohead producer suggested he help with the next album. So, with Godrich in place, the band decided to do something different the third time around. Where Pigeons sounded fun and seemingly more off-the-cuff, the aptly-titled new offering, A Different Ship approached the group’s very process of making and recording and how certain production changes can impact the overall takeaway. Where Temple would build and build upon ideas and demos, the band changed that- Godrich was cited as helping them to learn the “limits of the sound palette and how to let the space breathe.” Noticeable for its changes, Ship shows the the band under a different spell.

The sound is wrapped up in diversity: Krautrock sprinkles, powerpop, heydey psych, dusty Americana, baroque pop, folk, etc. Here’s an overview: A good choice for the first single, the contagious “How Do I Know” is carefree and well-backed by pastoral shimmer; “Made to be Old” reminds of The Sea and Cake; Opener “Hard to Be Close” resurrects certain forces like Jeff Buckley or a more close-to-home act like Grizzly Bear and the following tune “Make Up Your Mind” mixes Costello and Talking Heads over a sprightly, empowered few minutes. HWGM’s big-time fans come across too. The aptly-named “Over the Ocean” may be a bit blunt on Radiohead’s sitting-at-shore-staring-into-the-sea sort of relaxation, but it does the record well. Another hint at this, “Alone But Moving” is a sparse, synth-undertoned affair. One of the record’s best moments, “I Believe In Action” sounds like it might not work at all: Temple’s yearned falsetto, this time taking a lulling choral approach, above Soweto-spiced guitar and samples firing from some interstellar transmission, the tune is celestial, dancy and delicate all at once. It’s near the end though, where “Ship” earns its keep for the year. Like The Beatles did on Revolver (and how, perfectly, the last episode of Mad Men closed) with “Tomorrow Never Knows” HWGM sounds lost in itself under that spell, on the powerful title track and 8:15 closing tune that recounts a strummed tale of death and the afterlife- “She’s on another ship for heaven, got a ticket there from Lucifer himself” Temple sings.

Released this week for the Secretly Canadian label, this 10-track set is grand and shows a much more individualistic side to the group. It’s the power held in the song, that few-minute journey as opposed to the shiny record as a whole that they harness so well. Throughout the set, Temple and his bandmates teeter and drift from slow-going waves of synths and twang, to afro-sourced guitar and sonic shimmers and for whatever reason, the sense that the edge is near seems to loom; Not a suspenseful release per se, it’s certainly got these elements. In the Radiohead sense, these well-understood moods seem second nature, but in supporting heartily his techniques, Godrich applies his touch well. I know, I know, a producer at his status is notable, almost so much that it you might seemingly find the need to dredge up comments in the absolutes, comments about how the band was only being able to make Ship because of who was manning the decks. Not worth the steam in that direction I’d say- Give it a chance. While it plays with a noticeable balance between a diversion and the band’s past, its depth and more so, the downright accessible charm, is what gives the band’s latest such strong contention in the race one of the year’s best offerings.

Like a cockroach struggling to climb out of a toilet, Playback never reaches the top of the bowl. Michael A Nickles‘ film nearly manages to be a decent thriller, a decent horror movie, and a decent teen slasher, but looses its hold and drowns in implausible plot developments and sequences that are nonsensical even for a low-budget gore film. Playback does have some positive things going for it and it’s a perfect pick for a rainy Sunday evening while you’re waiting for Thrones to come on, but it’s sadly an all together forgettable film.

Aspiring filmmaker Julian (Johnny Pacar) is working on a project about some infamous murders that occurred in his small town back in 1994. He quickly discovers that his police lieutenant mother is covering something up and that the house where the murders took place is still standing. He also learns there was a baby found at the scene and that the guy who committed the wretched murders was a descendant of Louis Le Prince, the man who many argue is the true father of filmmaking. He’s a real guy, and his “Roundhay Garden Scene” is the oldest surviving motion picture.

Not only is the “Roundhay Garden Scene” historically significant, it also possesses anyone who watches it because Le Prince was actually the Devil! Didn’t see that coming, did you?! Julian’s gas-huffing acquaintance Quinn works at a local TV station and watches Le Prince’s film while doing research for Julian. He becomes instantly possessed. The rules of possession in Playback are baffling. Quinn can take control of other people, use them to do his dirt, but he has to be two floors above or below them. He can also possess through cameras and TVs, I think. What starts out as a fun, teen hijinks horror movie quickly gets bogged down in goofy possession nonsense.

There are some diamonds in the toilet though. The editing is top-notch and honestly saves Playback from being wholly unwatchable. It’s paced well and shot with skill. I was worried during the opening that a majority of the film would be found-footage style, but there’s hardly any of that. Phew. The acting isn’t terrible either. I would watch 90 minutes of Alessandra Torresani doing her taxes if given the chance. Christian Slater gets a small role as a pervert cop who diddles himself to footage of the girls’ locker room, shot on the down low by Quinn. His role amounts to nothing more than “Oh hey, it’s Christian Slater” and it gave them a recognizable name to put on the DVD cover.

I don’t want to sound too harsh. Playback is fun to watch, and like I said, it’s a perfect Sunday afternoon movie. I actually enjoyed the moments of the teens hanging out being all cliche more than the actual “scary” parts. This sort of death-by-video has been done better before (even Playback cites The Ring) but it’s probably been done worse too. So if you’re stumped next time you’re at the Red Box or on Netflix, give Playback a shot. That way if someone ever asks “Whatever happened to Christian Slater?” you’ll be the most knowledgeable person in the room.

Playback is available now on DVD and Blu-ray from Magnet. The disc includes a couple behind the scenes features, which include actual insight into the film, rather than being glorified promos like most behind the scenes are nowadays.

White Hills – Frying On This Rock (2012) [Thrill Jockey] // Grade: D+

Hyperactive bands always make me suspicious: with a dozen official albums plus live recording and EPs and bootlegs and splits in less than 10 years, White Hills probably do not get much sleep. If you have read any of my previous reviews, you may be aware that I am not the biggest fan of psychedelic genres, let alone the psych-rock which has seen such excessive co-opting in the last few years that it has come to mean absolutely nothing. White Hills play just that: super psychedelic, noodly space rock that repeats itself ad nauseam and has zero effect on me or my brain.

This record lasts about 40 minutes, with two tracks clocking in vastly over 10. They are all built pretty much on the same formula: Take a couple of riffs, play them out, add sound effects, wah-wahs and stuff. With vocals on top if you will. End. Case in point, the second track called “Robot Stomp.” Let’s say the title is meant literally, and the track is meant to sound like a robot’s stomp: it does have a certain mechanical quality, as the power chords are played together with the cymbals giving a very metallic pummeling sound throughout the track – and everything else kind of sounds like robot noises as this cartoon robot stomps through a crowd of mechanical ants or something. Sure. And? It’s just a linear walk in a linear park dedicated to line art.

Let’s say it is meant ironically: maybe this song is meant to stomp your head like a robot, and the additional layer of things such as minor notes and modulated voices being played in the background act as some kind of soundtrack to the stomping – that is not a substitute for being loud, my friends. It’s just fuzz. And at the end I wonder: where is the release? Is it the end of the song? It’s pretty abrupt. What happened? Did the robot reach the end of his path? Is that what the sound effects are meant to convey? Or is my mind supposed to be blown by the crappy melody at the end? Is my head supposed to be stomped out by now? I don’t know. I really don’t. But my head is intact, I can tell you that much.

Sometimes, there is a little interlude, like right in the middle of “Song Of Everything,” where a new-agey voice exorts me to open my mind. Pretty sure my mind was already open (that’s 30 minutes into the album and I wouldn’t have made it this far if it hadn’t been for open-mindedness) so that kind of pissed me off. Luckily, the blow was softened by a minute-long wall of sound that followed and made me all but forget about the missed opportunity for my chakras to relax. It just eased me into an acceptable last track that of course lasted way too long shows a good amount of exertion in torturing their instruments and attempting to transport the listener.

But it ultimately failed – for me at least. Mostly because of the drumming of I Write a Thousand Letters (Pulp on Bone) I’d say: not because it’s bad, but it was so reminiscent of your standard heavy metal song ending that I just kept wanting this song to end. And after about 4 minutes, it hit me: if that album were condensed into a single track, that track would probably be a pretty good one. That’s all I could think of for the last 9 minutes of the album’s closer. This bored me to no end. LITERALLY. No end.

I was never into hardcore but my ex-girlfriend in college was. She was into all those bands with “blood” in their names and local Boston groups like Suicide File. I tolerated it – anything was better than Morrisey, her other love – and I even liked a few. My favorite parts were, of course, the breakdowns. All of them. Any of them. Breakdowns make me want to do push-ups and bang a chick – at the same time! The Raid: Redemption is like a bunch of hardcore breakdowns strung together with some flimsy exposition thrown in between. I couldn’t care less what was going on in between the breakdowns – just fast forward the verses and get to the throwdowns.

Here’s the inconsequential plot briefing: in Jakarta, a staggering amount of baddies are holed up in an apartment building, lorded over by ultimate scumbag Tama (Ray Shetapy), who resides at the top floor. A SWAT team arrives led by Rama (Iko Uwais), who can be seen in the film’s opening doing a plethora of badass stuff like praying and beating the stuffing out of a heavy bag. The SWAT team must fight their way up to the top of the tower, but on each floor resides more and more baddies armed with guns, knives, machetes, etc.. And they ALL know martial arts!

It’s essentially set-up like a video game, with each floor being another level until you have to fight the boss, Tama. There’s even a mini-boss! There are some twists and double-crosses along the way, but all you need to know is that there are a bazillion jaw-dropping fight sequences. Believe me, you will not see better choreography, camera-work or raw physical prowess in an action movie this year. Once the SWAT team enters the tower and the first trigger gets pulled, there’s a kinetic energy that never lets up. This movie is alive and it wants to kill you. The martial art of choice is the traditional Indonesian art of Silat, which I don’t think I had ever seen before director Gareth Evans‘ and Iko Uwais’ first collaboration, Merantau. Silat focuses on a lot of joint manipulation, which is infinitely more intense to watch than just a bunch of kicks to the face. Plus, everyone in the film is super tiny and scrappy, which makes the fights all the more interesting.

The mini-boss battle I mentioned earlier is unreal. It’s two-on-one with Rama and an ally taking on Tama’s number one fighter. There aren’t enough positive adjectives in my thesaurus or hyperbole in the universe to convey how sick this rumble is. It’s a solid three to five minutes long and over that time it escalates to reach a beautiful ballet of brutality the likes of which you may never see again. People in my theater cheered when it was over. I can’t wait for the home release so I can watch that fight on a loop.

My only problem with the film is minor considering what I assume the aim of the film is, but it did keep it from reaching the next level of action-movie greatness. When the SWAT team first enters the building and long after, everyone is wearing the same thing. Call me racist or whatever, but I couldn’t tell who was who, therefore I didn’t care about anyone who got killed (and A LOT of SWAT gets killed). That’s what keeps The Raid from being more than violent eye-candy to me. In the best action movies, like Die Hard and Leon and many others, we get emotionally invested in the fiction. All I gave a damn about in The Raid was the action because that’s all they let me care about. But that’s cool with me. They went for raw, visceral entertainment and they knocked it out of the fucking park.

The Raid: Redemption is playing in select U.S. cities. Go see it or else. Gareth Evans’ previous Indonesian martial arts throwdown Merantau is currently on Netflix Watch Instantly. Stream it or else.

THEESatisfaction – awE naturalE (2012) [Sub Pop] // Grade: B-

On “QueenS”, which essentially functions as the big single of THEESatisfaction’s awE naturalE (not easy to type, by the way) sounds quite good, but features a lyric repeated ad nauseam that I think sums up my problems with the record: “whatever you do, don’t funk with my groove.” And no, I’m not calling it out for wordplay. It’s the sentiment behind it rather: “hey listener, we’re here doing our cool thing and you better not mess with it.” They also implore the audience to “check their swag at the door.”

But, let’s be honest considered they’re a fringe pacific northwest bizzaro afrofuturist R&B outfit, I think most listeners came to the party knowing what we were getting into. We’re not here to fuck with the groove. But we would like to enjoy it.  That’s the frustrating thing about the album is that’s it’s so close to being fantastic, but it continuously holds the listener at arms length. Frequent collaborator Shabazz Palaces, despite being objectively weirder and less accessible, didn’t have that problem because they thrust their audience into the arcane world of Black Up without remorse, a trial by fire where you realize that, yes, everything may look and feel completely different here you can still breathe the air.

Identity is a theme that runs deeps through awE naturalE, confronted by far the best on “Needs” where banal but relatable problems (procrastination, etc.) are put in the context of a lounge song from another world. But where the record makes vague and sort of standoffish proclamations about what things are and are not seem shallow, which is a shame because the music is anything but.

CFCF – Exercises EP (2012) [Paper Bag Records] // Grade: B+

Purely through nomenclature, Canadian CFCF asks you to consider his latest release Exercises as something different than just a set of songs. Looking at the tracklisting (“Exercise 1″ “2″ and so on) I was reminded of my ill fated sojourn into the world of piano where, as I’m sure was the same for many of you, my Mother, with good intention, required me to play for some years. Being a petulant youth I abandoned it as quickly as possible, but more than any particular song I remember the exercises. Not scales or anything, but the ones that came in books like The Suzuki Method, arcane little collections of notes that worked like a spell, unlocking not any melody or aural pleasure but instead training some invisible muscle.

For the most part, the contents of Exercises evoke that same feeling of “you may not understand now, but trust me, it’s helping.” Though Ryuichi Sakamoto is an obvious (and stated) touchstone, Exercises eschews the sparkling drama that accompanied that artists best work, paring his tender keyboard melodies down even further and then filling out the rest of the space with cloudy atmospherics that indicate CFCF has been paying more attention to the current Montreal music scene than you might initially guess. Only two tracks really up the BPM, and they are, oddly, probably the album’s best and worst tracks.

Let’s start with the bad news (which, to be honest, isn’t that bad anyway): the second exercise, subtitled “School”, takes a twinkling piano and then buries it under overly busy click-clack, drum machines that sound like they wandered in off of a whole different project. It’s not an uninteresting sound per se (though what initially feels like depth reveals itself to be merely clutter) but here it sticks out as underdeveloped and a little easy. Then there’s the real left hook, “Exercise 5 (September)”, odd because it’s the only cover on the EP (of the David Sylvian song of the same name) and also the only non-instrumental track. It’s gorgeous and vigorous and it very much reminds me of James Blake’s “Limit To Your Love” cover, a similarly surprising track that for a while became his calling card. But I have to imagine that, consider the dressing around “Exercise 5″, which sits comfortable in the center of the EP, that without it’s bookends it wouldn’t be half as great. I’m not 100% sure why, but it’s definitely helping.

OFF! – OFF! (2012) [VICE] // Grade: B

Accompanying their stream of the album, SPIN ran an interview with hardcore legend and OFF! frontman Keith Morris that reflects the creative energy put into their first proper LP. Morris is, more than anything, easily distracted. This is a man who’s head is clearly full of ideas, and as his answers expand into paragraphs he very quickly (and by his own admission) loses the plotline of his own thoughts. I imagine it’s this tendency to “space out”, as he says, that keeps all of the songs on OFF! comfortably under the 1:30 mark, and most clocking in at appreciably below a minute. I must say, in this age of bloated albums, 16 tracks in 16 minutes is a might appealing listen.

But stacking it up against last year’s truly excellent First Four EP‘s release, I honestly can’t help but be slightly disappointed. A big part of my huge enjoyment of that record was the element of surprise, as OFF! seemed (at least to me) to pop up out of nowhere, a hardcore supergroup from my dreams that suddenly and inexplicably became reality. Suddenly I was listening to Morris sing about pissing in the punch bowl and failing to stop thinking dark thoughts and yes, it was fucking awesome and it made almost everything that came out around it seem overmanicured and plasticine.

While still very enjoyable, this album as of now is just not grabbing me in the way First Four did. At times the shortness of the tracks seems more like a game the band plays with themselves as opposed to a natural byproduct of the music, coming off less as full fledged (albeit very short) songs and more like introductions that lead to nowhere. I want to love this record, and maybe as I sit with it more I will come to, but for now it’s got me wondering whether turning down the laser like focus might lead OFF! to somewhere unexpected but maybe pretty cool.

Niki and The Dove – Instinct (2012) [Sub Pop] // Grade: B+

I don’t know much about the geology of Sweden, but sometimes I wonder whether the whole country, water supply included, is secretly built on top of a slowly dissolving cache of crystalline MDMA. From ABBA to Robyn and now Niki and The Dove, Swedish music has a long and fruitful history of reaching right into your brain’s pleasure center and wringing it out like a sponge. When its working, which is exhaustingly often, Instinct is accomplishing this with aplomb. Look no further than opener “Tomorrow” (a track ordering that took some major cojones), which wastes almost no time before rocketing up into the stratosphere. Instinct starts with a climax and then just keeps on pushing.

From “Tomorrow” into “The Drummer” and then “In Our Eyes”, Niki and The Dove have crafted a first act of such high and happy quality, it seems almost inconceivable that they could continue pumping out these ecstatic hooks (made all the better through slightly left-of-center production). By the time the comparative mediocrity of “The Gentle Roar” rolls around, you very well might be happy for the break. This is the type of album that can make a night of partying (especially if you’re a couple anything deep) seem like it could go on forever.

Many of the songs, actually, address that particular feeling in their lyrics. But in the harsh realities of life, that feeling will very suddenly burn away. Everyone knows that exact instant where the night is over, and everyone’s going home, even though just seconds earlier it felt like nothing was wrong in the world. Instinct refuses that transition. It’s escapist pop that, instead of whisking you off to some foreign place, transports you to the most fun portions of your own life.