R.E.M. - "Leave (alternate version)" (Complete Warner Bros Rariteis 1988-2011 / soundtrack "A Life Less Ordinary")

Amazing song. Quite different from the original.

Chris Isaak - "Blue Spanish Sky" (best of Chris Isaak)

Chris Isaak's at his best.

Shpongle - "Behind Closed Eyelids" (Are You Shpongled?)

Not a musician I need to mention because I've never mentioned him, but particularly the beginning of this song always makes me nod and swing my head in weird ways.

Labasheeda - "Changing Lights" (2015)

• "Leave of Absence" : great instrumental violin track

Weedeater - "Goliathan" (2015)

First grumbled line of the first song of the album, over a drony synth: "I really hate your face / I hate the things you do / I know you don't like me / I'm coming after you"

Quite like Starsailor's "You really have your daddy's eyes / your daddy was an alcoholic"

The rest is just doom sludge crap.

Robert Herrick - "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" (1600)

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may for ever tarry.

The Newsroom (2012-2014)

Great show with awesome dialogues and storyline. True enough, season one was better than two, which kept digressing into love stories a bit too much, but still pretty awesome (the ending of s02e07 (?) where big boss lady is high and delivers one of her finest moments!)

James Joyce, you just can't ignore the bastard

http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/james-joyce-you-cant-ignore-the-bastard

Joyce entered your life very differently in rural Ireland in the early 1980s. Back then, he still existed outside the official system. Too difficult, too scandalous for school. It was still possible for teenagers to read Joyce as an act of rebellion against teachers, government, church. You read Joyce the way you listened to late punk, or early rap.

Our generation formed bands, wrote songs and albums, not stories and novels. The Irish heirs to the verbal exuberance of James Joyce are, by and large, not the writers of literary fiction. They are the great, exiled Irish lyricists; Morrissey; early, good Elvis Costello; Johnny Rotten (John Lydon) of the Sex Pistols and PiL; Shane MacGowan of the Pogues (who spent his pre-London childhood on a farm outside Puckane, only a few miles from our house). MacGowan’s “The Old Main Drag” and “Fairytale of New York” are postmodern pop-stories worthy of Joyce; brutal, clear-eyed portraits of hemales and shemales, destroying themselves with drink in London and New York. “How Soon Is Now” and “This Charming Man” by The Smiths ache with youth’s agonies as exquisitely as Joyce’s story “Araby.” I’d say Joyce, as a man who wanted to be a professional tenor himself, would be happy enough with that legacy.

And language was the hero. That, I got from Joyce.

Lakker - "Tundra"

From Ireland, electro and hints of techno? Good stuff to listen to while coding. Even when coding sucks.

When bad behaviour does a good turn

The value of dark traits is a little more nuanced when it comes to humans. While we certainly won’t thrive as a society with rampant rule-breaking, we might have to embrace our dark side from time to time. Perhaps we need not recoil from our own grandiosity or aggression.

http://aeon.co/magazine/psychology/when-bad-behaviour-does-a-good-turn/

Reindier - "Porcelain" (2015)

Electropop, the 3voor12 says. Quite right. Curious songs. Nice ones. Some weird.

• "My Man" - it has a Marc Almond feel to it

Only Lovers Left Alive (2013)

Slow vampire film in Jim Jarmusch style with an amazing soundtrack by Jozef Van Wissem and SQÜRL. Don't be in a hurry to watch it, but if you're in the mood for slow gothic clips and estranged music, this is the film

Gomorra (2008)

The much-hyper well-deserved film about the maffia (Camorra?) and how it works. No soundtrack. No emotional attachments. This film looks, and it, I guess, a documentary. Slightly chilling. The drawback... when you've read enough press releases, you expect the stark cold killing and it would probably be best watched before being exposed to anything..

Inherent Vice (2014)

Amazing drug-fueled hard psychadelic 70's semi-hippie-noir film starring Joaquin Phoenix. By Paul Thomas Anderson. Definitely something to watch again.

CUT_ - "Chapter One"

First chapter of their upcoming album. Bit MIA-ish, on the edge of cute-girl-pop-beat.

On another "album", named Papaoutai, they covered Stromae's song. Nothing special.

Birdman

Film with Michael Keaton as a Hollywood superhero who is trying to make it on Broadway while battling his own demons.

Very long shots. Music almost solely a drum solo. Intriguing film, not an easy one.

Alabama Shakes

Raw songs, quite the Janis Joplin sound in her voice. Must look into.

Broadchurch

Good police drama solving the murder of 12 yo Danny. With David Tennant, wrestling with ghosts from the past.

Yentl & de Boer - "Toen we nog lang en gelukkig leefden"

Mooi leuk liedje. Wonnen ze niet de Annie M.G. Schmidt prijs mee (dat deden ze met "Ik heb een man gekend")

Zion Train - "Ella's Melody" (Original Sounds of the Zion"

Think DAAU but reggae and slower. Multi instrumentalists and a very relaxed rhythm.