In-Flight Entertainment

From the music review archive of lala dot com. Original posts by user newinfinity

Ada
Adaptations #1
Five stars

This is my first review. I love music more than anything. I want to share my favorite music and my memories with others before it all disappears. And maybe I can meet some cool people too. My mom says I need more friends my own age. So that's why I'm reviewing Ada it's really good maybe you'll like it too.

Jet Set Radio
Original Soundtrack
Five stars

I remember as a kid when we'd drive home from the airport there's all these fences along the highway covered in graffiti. We'd be stuck in traffic and I'd sit in the backseat staring out. I didn't know anything about graffiti but it looked so cool. Jet Set Radio is this cool game where you roller skate around Tokyo in the future doing graffiti.

I've never played it but people always talk about it online so I ordered the soundtrack on .jp. I would listen to it everyday. It just sounds cool like you're in the future and doing backflips and stuff and in control of your own life and have a lot of friends. My favorite tracks are Let Mom Sleep, Yellow Bream, Electronic Toothbrush, Moody's Shuffle and Grace & Glory.

Serial Experiments Lain
Cyberia Soundtrack
Five stars

These songs aren't actually in the anime they are like inspired by the show. Kind of a rip off. But actually the songs are good so it's not. I sit alone at lunch and listen to this CD on headphones in the concrete courtyard between the admin building and the auditorium. I imagine myself at a club like in Lain when they go to Cyberia. I've never been to a club but I bet it'll be good.

I imagine myself there in the dark and my favorite track Antidepressant comes on and everyone goes crazy and it feels like home somehow. I don't know if I'll do drugs like Lain. I don't want to cause permanent damage to my serotonin levels. They're bad enough already. I recommend this CD.

Bob Dylan
Blood On the Tracks
Five stars

My best friend at summer camp the year after 7th grade was Megan. She told me I had to listen to Blood On the Tracks. Megan was a year older than me and so cool. I didn't listen to music at all back then it was even before I got the Jet Set Radio Soundtrack.

Anyway I always remembered this and finally one day last semester for some reason during lunch I walked to the music store near school and bought Blood On the Tracks.

After finishing my homework around 9pm I lay down in bed with headphones and listened to the whole album just staring at the ceiling. Without getting up I started the album over and listened to the whole thing again. And it's beautiful. I don't even know. I had no idea music could be like this. Just the music and the emotion and sadness in his voice and story and images and symbols in the lyrics.

I knew I had to get like way more music. Thank you Megan.

Dr Dre
The Chronic
Five stars

When I bought the CD at Tower Records I had to get the old guy behind me in line to say he was my dad since they wouldn't sell it to me without parental approval. Anyway that was a long time ago. When I opened the case tonight I saw the cd was at a weird angle in the case. I know my mom listened to it. I hope I don't get in trouble.

These Arms Are Snakes
Oxeneers
Five stars

I'd never heard of this band or any of their music when I bought the CD. I just liked the art. Kinda blurry abstract photo of an arm or something. And I liked that they were so obscure I'd never heard of it. Cool.

I can't remember what I thought the first time I listened. But then I listened a bunch more times and I loved it. That actually happens a lot. The first time I listen to an album I don't like it that much, then I listen 20 more times and I love it.

I wonder if the music I love isn't so much an organic result of my taste in music or whatever, or what I enjoy the first time I hear it. Instead my favorite music is just what I thought was cool enough to listen to over and over until I started to like it. Shrug.

Anyway I know this is a great album because every single track has been my favorite track on the album. First it was 2, then 11, then 4, then 6, then 8, then 1, then 7.

Joni Mitchell
Blue
Five stars

So beautiful and sad but in the way that it's kind of perfect and happy too. Like when she sings her camera was stolen by a guy I guess she was in love with and she's not mad. She's just moving on and grateful for the memories.

I want to listen to this on the way home from the beach at dawn when I'm 22. By then maybe I'll have a lot of close friends, and they'll love the same music as much as I do and we'll hang out all night talking and having fun.

Isolee
We Are Monster
Five stars

This music is perfect. I heard it playing at a cool techno record store and immediately knew I had to get it.

A couple weeks later I told a friend about it and they were like oh Isolee yeah I just listened to that they got Best New Music on Pitchfork. Wtf. Kind of mad that I was listening to Isolee before it was on Pitchfork but I don't get anything for it. The first track I heard in that record store was My Hi-Matic.

DJ Koze
Kosi Comes Around
Five stars

I listen to this with the lights off in bed. The pillow kinda pushes my headphones off a little. I use a sweatshirt to cover the LED display and power lights on my CD player so it's completely dark. The darkness makes the space around me distort until I can't tell if I'm lying down or standing.

The subtle textures and sounds of the songs become super amplified and I am inside the music. My first ever oblivion.

Kompakt Records
Total 6
Five stars

Got this because it's the same label DJ Koze is on. This is cool music and there's a lot of it because it's a double album. Good value. Maybe when I go to college next year I'll be playing this loud in my dorm and someone will hear and and come by and they will like the music too and we can be friends.

Black Crowes
The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
Five stars

My friend Jaime told me I had to listen to The Black Crowes. He's seen them like 40 times in concert and basically wants his band to sound exactly like them but like more psychedelic. Jaime owns the record store near my high school and I go hang out with him during lunch sometimes.

He's so cool. I know he's not really my friend like we don't hang out except when he's working and I go to the store. And underlying our entire relationship is the fact that I spend most of my money at his store, that I make doing scoreboard for the volleyball team games. But I still like him a lot and I hope he likes me a little too. Great album. Thank you for the recommendation Jaime.

Xiu Xiu
Fabulous Muscles
Five stars

I am typing this review on the family computer. I type in Word so that when my parents walk by it looks like I'm doing homework, then I copy paste it into the browser and post the review when they are in another room. This is a good album.

Junior boys
Last Exit
Five stars

Philosox recommended this to me on the Planet Z forums. Months later a girl at school I don't like was telling everyone she loves this band Junior Boys. Now when I listen I can't help but think about her and remember the times she was mean to me. So I don't listen anymore. I DM'd Philosox and asked for a new recommendation.

My Bloody Valentine
Loveless
Five stars

Made a lunch date with a classmate. We'd make a CD-R, and make lunch, and bring them to school for each other. I gave him a copy of Loveless and a tofu hummus sandwich with brussel sprouts. He gave me The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner by Belle and Sebastian and a cranberry tempeh sandwich.

We sat under to the pine tree next to the science building. It was fun. We actually kept making food for each other and trading lunch pretty regularly. We got really close. Then kinda drifted apart for some reason.

I chose Loveless for that first exchange because it's just amazing and doesn't sound like any other music. It's blurry and vague. It's sad and yearning. But also totally rocks.

Catherine Wheel
Ferment
Five stars

I was hanging out with my friend in her older brother's old bedroom, looking through his stuff. On his shelf of CDs I saw Ferment and was like omg I love this album. I didn't know Trent likes shoegaze.

We started listening on Trent's old CD player, and anyway my friend totally didn't like it. She was like I'm surprised you like this music it sounds really mainstream. Wtf. That kinda hurt. I still like Catherine Wheel. Five stars.

Noveller
Red Rainbows
Five stars

This is an album I never told anyone about. After Junior Boys and Catherine Wheel, I didn't want to deal with the social/emotional connotations of music I loved being affected by things out of my control. Noveller would be my secret. And it still is.

I never told anyone. And of course telling secrets to strangers on the internet doesn't count. It's beautiful, lonely music. My dad overheard me listening and asked if my speakers were broken. The secret is self preserving, even those who stumble upon it turn away. You can try if you like.

Rent
Original Broadway Cast
Five stars

I would never listen to this. It's just not cool music. Too mainstream I don't like it. My mom loves this soundtrack though. The Seasons of Love song is her favorite. When her mom died, she listened to it over and over. When her cousin who is 2 years older died, she listened to it over and over. And it helps her feel ok. And that's cool.

Tracy Chapman
Tracy Chapman
Five stars

I'm going to live somewhere else next year. I don't know where yet. I've heard people say when you go somewhere new you can be anyone you want. I don't want anything impossible like a million dollars. Just something a little different from now.

And I want to be myself. Anyway I love this album. Tracy Chapman feels wise and powerful and in control of her own life but in a way that's realistic and almost attainable. Maybe I can get there.

Portishead
Dummy
Five stars

I got this in a holiday music exchange on a forum. I like it. Sounds like music my friend's cool older sister would listen to. Though I guess now I'm a year older than the last time I ever saw her. Fun to exchange music with a random stranger. I sent them an Isolee album.

Pretty Girls Make Graves
Good Health
Five stars

I remember playing the song Bring It On Golden Pond loud in my dorm room and it felt so good. Then my neighbor from two doors down came and asked me to turn it down, and I turned it down.

The guitarist from Pretty Girls Makes Graves has a photo in the liner notes of the These Arms Are Snakes album, that's how I decided to get Good Health. I want to go to Seattle so badly. I've never been and never met anyone from there, but when I listen to this music I can almost see myself there in the future.

Maybe I'll go to a lot of concerts. Maybe I'll ride my bike to work. Maybe I'll have more friends in real life than online. Maybe I'll live near the library. Maybe I'll live just in the moment instead of in the future.

Tricky
Maxinquaye
Five stars

I just went through a messy breakup. We weren't really dating and kinda hadn't talked that much since we hooked up over winter break but anyway. I realized I had to move on. Or try at least.

Sunday morning after an entire week of working in the library until 7am, I woke up before dawn for some reason.

I sat on my dorm room floor with a cup of ginger tea and my headphones on listening to this, all 64 minutes of it (I play Aftermath twice). No scrolling through FB, no Twitter or Instagram. Just me, the music and the view of the cafeteria bathing in the sunrise.

I noticed how the clouds turn 4 different shades of grey in the 15 minutes it took for the sun to rise, then settle on a pale blue colour while they separate and dissipate into a pure blue sky.

I just sat there and thought.

Processed.

I realized I won't have too many mornings like this in my lifetime. Precious time.

Moving on.

William Basinski
The Disintegration Loops I
Five stars

Wow. Just found out this site is shutting down soon. Haven't logged on in years, but as soon as I got back to the homepage I was able to type my password without even trying to remember it.

Things changed over time and I just stopped logging on. A lot was because I moved to college. I only wrote three reviews after high school. I guess I was busy making friends irl and I neglected you all. I was lonely in high school, and coming on here helped me feel connected to people who love music as much as I do. People who live inside the music.

I went to a techno club a couple months ago, alone. I do that a lot now that I'm 21. Anyway I was dancing in front of the speaker the whole time. Later, a German guy who could barely speak English came up to me when I was getting water and just said "I can tell, you live inside the music."

He's right. And I think he'd be right about anyone reading this too. When we listen we find ourselves there already. Or we project ourselves, our identity and hopes and fantasies, into the music and the world it creates. The music as we listen, contains our past and present.

Maybe the lyrics say perfectly what I feel and felt and know. The emotion in the voice, how they stretch the words and pronounce a new way I never thought to, is perfect. Or I listen and the music is a memory of every time I listened before, alone or with friends or with strangers at a show. And I listen and envision my future, dancing at the show, free.

This website contains myself, certainly. I logged so many albums that formed and influenced me. But this site doesn't contain my future. You do. Philosox, motor9000, pooky, arrrahoy, invertebrate404, dustslug, donna888karan, mercuryingatorade, splatexplode, afaik4l, mariasangria, jjtan2250, cantsleep2, werewarg, poitiernorsegod, shrimpchips. I've talked to all of your, either here or Planet Z or irl too.

And none of that is over. See you soon.