Tag Archives: Dance

Human Traffic – the dark side of nostalgia.

artworks-000012771526-uf3yol-original

If you mute a movie and it looks infinitely worse then it’s a bad film. I can’t recall who said this but it’s a reasonable proposition. Such is Human Traffic (1999), a truly garish and ugly remnant from the late nineties, a poor man’s Trainspotting (1996) that on a 2018 viewing comes across as a student film cobbled together over a weekend. Like any nostalgic longing, it’s best just consigning these matter to the past where they belong.

In 1999 I thought this was the shit; now it’s just shit, a pilotless, plotless, theme-less advertisement for ecstacy, executed with the craft and subtlety of a sledgehammer and featuring some of the most irritating and insipid ‘characters’ in a British movie ever. I’ll never handle a floppy disk again, and I’ll never watch Human Traffic (1999) again.

Good tunes, though.

Tagged , , , , ,

Avicii: True Stories.

Tim Berg, a.k.a. Avicii, especially after his ‘sudden’ death, always reminded me of Roy Batty in Blade Runner (1982) by the sheer *supercalifragilisticexpialidociousNESS* of his output coupled with his ridiculous youth, and the fact that he simply … looked like him.

20130630_015308_167927

‘The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long – and you have burned so very, very brightly, Roy.’

The documentary Avicii: True Stories (2017) is a captivating watch, but mostly for all the wrong reasons. A shy lad reaching optimum capacity, he frequently appears on the verge of complete physical and psychological collapse.

A true artist – not one of these self-aggrandising nincompoops who chucks the moniker around with casual abandon – is more than capable of pushing the envelope to such extremes that the dangers become one of mortality. Avicii, whether one is into so-called ‘EDM’ or not, can be ascribed the term ‘artist’. The tunes are simply awesome, an autodidact’s fantasy.

Now, take me back to the Eurotrip summer of 2011, with Levels the daily opera to all activities.

‘Oh, sometimes. I get a good feeling, yeah ….’

Tagged , , , , , ,