I’ve made some cool improvements to the website as well: added a /now page and a /uses page, made a simple catalogue app for my physical media collection (then wrote about it), added a colophon, and an easter egg for anyone who takes a wrong turn.

See you there.

In this “review” that nobody asked for, I shall make a lousy yet sincere attempt to articulate my thoughts about the much awaited biopic of an artist I revere. If I succeed at nothing else I shall do my best to make it all about me. There are spoilers here, you have been cautioned.

I don’t watch rock biopics.

It is not because I am a stickler for accuracy who is incapable of forgiving the artistic liberties a filmmaker may take with the life story of a musical idol of mine. That would be foolish, because there is no one accurate version of a rockstar’s story, only threads of invention loosely woven together by tiny sprinklings of the truth. People invent stories for themselves, especially in the music business.

No, there is a far simpler, more egotistic reason. Being subjects of my idolatry, musicians like Dylan, Bowie, and The Beatles — to name a few in a long list — occupy a cogent emotional space in my mind. My own personal biopics for each of them, if you like, with my own version of the truth. I don’t like anyone else messing with it.

I hadn’t been planning on watching A Complete Unknown, that is, until I heard the soundtrack. Two of my dylanophile friends had a part to play in it too, and in the days leading up to the screening, I remember sharing my apprehension with one of them. He said, “I have no expectations for the film. I’m just happy to have a film about Bob.”

“Well, I’d rather have no film than a crap film,” I replied.

I’ve said elsewhere that my fondness for Dylan borders on veneration, although I was not part of the generation that grew up listening to him or his peers. Through no fault of my own, I was born too late, and too far away. But I’ve often fantasised about the mythical New York of the 60s — the New York of the beatniks and the conscientious objectors — and what it would have been like to live there. At the centre of the universe. Sobering depictions of the reality of this period, à la Midnight Cowboy, have not quelled my romanticism. A Complete Unknown begins by transporting us to this New York I’ve always dreamed of.

Played by a Timothée Chalamet who hasn’t shaken his Dune-face, Bobby travels to Greystone to meet his bedridden hero Woody Guthrie. He’s met with Woody’s approval, and Pete Seeger’s too. Seeger’s presence at this meeting is fabricated, but it serves the plot, and I have no qualm with it. What then ensues is a story told largely through reactions — reactions of music execs, love interests, and the adoring public to Bob’s songs. This in itself is not a complaint, but I cannot forgive James Mangold for the reductive approach with which some songwriting sequences are treated. Seeing a leaf blowing in the wind may well have inspired a song title, we’d never know, but distilling any work of art to singular moments like these is rather dismissive.

This brings me to another reservation of mine with biopics. Film is a limited medium, with the self imposed restriction of having to follow a sensible plot, with a beginning, a middle and an end. To capture the multitudinous life of an artist who is only just starting out is impossible in such a medium. Impossible, that is, without making a few sacrifices, and making it look like things always follow a clear logical path, when real life rarely unfolds that way.

Would I rather not have had a film made about a personal idol? (he says, as if the world revolves around him.) I wouldn’t say that. In fact I’m glad this film got made, and glad to have watched it. I may also have been unfairly harsh to Chalamet earlier. He’s excellent in this film, and so is the supporting cast. Edward Norton disappears into his role, as ever, and while I believe no mortal can ever mimic the hauntingly angelic quality of Joan Baez’s voice, Monica Barbaro comes close. Boyd Holbrook is thoroughly entertaining as a suave Johnny Cash. Dan Fogler’s Albert Grossman is as sleazy as the real man was infamous for being. Liberties are taken with events (The Times They Are A-Changin' wasn’t played at Newport 64, but it makes for a great moment in the film), characters (Elle Fanning’s Sylvie Russo is a made up character based on Suze Rotolo, out of respect for Bob’s wishes) but I’m not so petty as to not forgive them.

I wouldn’t say I loved the film, but I watched it twice. Once at the local indie cinema I frequent several times a week, and again on the IMAX screen I can only justify the expense for when ‘cinematic events’ happen. This film clearly is one. It deserves to be seen projected. When you visit your favourite cinema to see it, I hope they’d play it loud, because the real gift of this film is the soundtrack, and the fact that Bob’s music is now reaching younger audiences with Chalamet in the role of a worthy custodian. I’m still iffy on rock biopics, and may never see one again, but there is no denying that great music lives on through them. Bob’s music will outlive us all.

Not that I was hoping to, but it is impossible to review this film objectively.

My fondness for Dylan borders on veneration. I had the good fortune of seeing him in the flesh recently, his voice frail, gait faltering, yet somehow in my mind he still transcends the mortal plain and all its restraints. He has been called a great poet, to me he is a myth-maker. His greatest creation, himself.

This film is an intimate portrait of a youthful Dylan, mere months before his Judas-ification at the Newport Folk Festival in July 65. He’s irreverent. He mocks constantly, without much care for who’s on the receiving end, be it reporters, or adoring fans like Donovan. He’s playful, assertive at times, annoying, distant, all of the above. He’s 24 years old here and making it all look very easy.

The film is brilliantly shot and edited, but that is almost irrelevant. What fascinates me more than anything is this moment in history. The British music press, even in post-Beatles England, seems naive and obnoxious, and Dylan is having none of it. And even with the camera right up against his face, he is still a mythological being, constantly pulling back and seeking the refuge of faux-philosophical banter. I don’t think the veil will ever be lifted, and I prefer it that way.

My original review was posted on Letterboxd.

I discovered Wordle a few days ago. After spending some time with it, I’ve come up with a “hack” to maximise the chances of guessing the right Wordle. The strategy is to eliminate the maximum number of characters possible in 4 attempts, and to guess the Wordle right in the 5th (or 6th) attempt.

You may be in the camp that thinks hacks like this take away from the joy of the game. If that is you, don’t read the rest of this post.

Again, the trick here is not to get it right in the least number of attempts, but to maximise chances of success in the 5th or 6th attempt.

The maximum number of non-repeated characters you can use up in 4 attempts is 4x5 = 20. I landed on 4 words that could accomplish this. The words are:

S P O R T

C H E W Y

A D M I X

F L U N K

No characters have been reused here. All the vowels and ‘Y’ have also been used up.

These 4 words will give you quite a good chance of guessing the Wordle right in the 5th attempt. Sometimes, you may not even need to use all 4. And there may be other word combinations like this.

You may still have trouble with words that use the same character twice or thrice. I had trouble with one such word: VERVE. But I did manage to guess right on the 6th attempt.

Using up 20 different characters in the first 4 attempts makes the elimination process a lot easier.

You can test this out on the Wordle clone that gives you unlimited Wordles a day. It’s called Wheeldle: https://wheelsrpgs.itch.io/wheeldle

As an example, here’s my Wheeldle with a 50+ win streak so far. I’m confident I could keep going, but I’m too lazy to continue.

Rogue One is my 2nd favourite Star Wars movie after Empire. I loved it so much when it came out, I saw it three times in the theatre.

I bought the 4K Blu-ray disc a few weeks ago and was pleased to find that the 4K transfer is every bit as good as I had hoped. The movie was shot digitally in 6.5K, which means that fine details are exceptionally preserved — and the resulting image is pretty sharp. The HDR10 grading also makes bright highlights pop and the blacks deep and inky.

In terms of story, the movie speaks for itself.

Verdict: Highly recommended.

I managed to watch my favourite Star Wars movie last week in the highest available quality. It’s of course as good as it has always been. I still think this is one of the best sequels ever made.

As far as the video quality is concerned, the 4K transfer is quite good, albeit with a less-than-ideal amount of DNR applied. Some of the fine detail had been scrubbed out, but it didn’t get in the way of enjoyment. Given the movie’s generally bland colour palette (the ice plains of Hoth, dark forests of Dagobah, and the sterile interiors of Cloud City) the HDR10 presentation was conservative, but made the specular highlights really pop. This is undoubtedly the best the movie has ever looked on home media.

Verdict: Recommended.

A few minutes ago, Apple confirmed the rumours about its Apple Music Hifi offering. According to this press release, the new lossless audio feature, along with support for Dolby Atmos-backed “Spatial Audio,” will be available for subscribers starting next month.

Seeing this, I had a few thoughts — I’ve laid them out below.

1. I’m not sold on Atmos/spatial audio. Apple says that the feature will be enabled on all AirPods and Beats headphones with an H1 or W1 chip, as well as the built-in speakers in the latest versions of iPhone, iPad, and Mac. To begin with, I’m not sure how stereo headphones or phone speakers can reproduce Atmos tracks. I would love to check out some spatial audio tracks played through a full-fledged Atmos system, but I’m not holding my breath. The entire thing sounds gimmicky.
2. It sounds like the entirety of the Apple Music catalogue will be available in Lossless format. I’m not sure how Apple pulled this off. Some masters simply aren’t available in this quality. Hifi streaming services like Deezer and Tidal do not have their entire catalogues in lossless format for this reason. It would be interesting to see what Apple did here.
3. While the Lossless tier offers CD Quality (16/44.1) as a baseline, it looks like they are going to have content all the way up to 24/192. If memory serves right, Qobuz is the only other streaming service that has such an offering. This is something I’m quite excited about, and while I won’t claim to be able to hear the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192, just knowing it’s there feels… good.
4. Apple has confirmed that customers will not have to pay extra to access the Lossless tier. This is wonderful. In Sri Lanka, this means you can access these new features for the same $2.99/month. Other lossless streaming services will set you back a lot more — Deezer by $8.99/month, Tidal and Qobuz by $19.99/month.
5. Apple is using their own ALAC encoding for their catalogue, as opposed to the popular and FLAC encoding used by many other services. I don’t know if this may result in changes in the audio quality — we’re yet to find out.

For now, I’m reasonably excited to test these features in June. I hope Apple won’t disappoint.

Continuing my monthly tradition, I’ve made a playlist of my most streamed tracks on Deezer (and duplicated them on Apple Music and Spotify). Enjoy!

Deezer Hifi (recommended)

Apple Music

Thamara's April 2021 by Thamara Kandabada

Spotify

Deezer’s Flow feature has been great for music discovery. For passive listening (while I’m working on something, doing household chores, etc.) I have Flow running in the background. If I hear something I like, I add the track to a “triage” playlist. When I have free time for active listening, I pick tracks from this playlist, open the albums they’re from and listen to them.

Here are three great albums I discovered this way in April.

Liege and Lief by Fairport Convention

This was my first introduction to the British folk rock band Fairport Convention. This album, released in 1969, has some great mellow tunes that are well-suited for a Sunday evening listen.

Were I to pick a favourite track from the record, I would go with #2, Reynardine. I later learned that this is an old English ballad from the 1800s. Fairport Convention’s evocative rendition will move you. There are more “covers” of old folk songs in this album, and they hold their own.

Apple Music | Spotify

The Libertines by The Libertines

The Libertines had a short-lived career in the late 90s and early 2000s. This self titled album was released a few months before they disbanded in 2004. The tunes here will have you wallowing in nostalgia for the signature 2000s rock and post-punk sound. Tracks like Can’t Stand Me Now, What Katie Did, and What Became of the Likely Lads quickly became my favourites.

Apple Music | Spotify

Grace Slick & The Great Society by Grace Slick, The Great Society

Before she was headlining with Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick was the voice of The Great Society, a band that had a very short career (they only ever released one original single). This is a compilation album of a few recordings with the band before she left to join Jefferson Airplane.

Owing to its roots in the acid rock scene in San Francisco at the time, this album features a number of tracks I thought were trance-inducing, even without any help from Alice. Slick’s siren-esque voice complements the wailing guitar with poise. Even though the recordings are not the best quality, the other instruments don’t hold back. The band was also inspired by The Beatles, and this is immediately apparent in the music.

Apple Music | Spotify

I’ve been thinking about how most of my music consumption has been passive for the past couple of months — except for those few weeks when I was comparing Apple Music and Spotify and was extremely involved in picking the music I wanted to hear. Outside that short stint, the music had been playing in the background while I was doing other work on my computer, cooking, or cleaning. Deezer’s algorithm had been picking the music for me.

When it comes to streaming, I doubt that most people’s experience would be any different. Almost all streaming services have excellent recommendation algorithms built in, capable of feeding you with exactly what you want to hear. There is great value in the convenience they offer. It seems almost counterintuitive not to take advantage.

Without even realising it, playing music this way had made me change a key behaviour: I used to listen to full albums for the most part, instead of individual tracks from here and there. This had turned on its head thanks to autoplay.

The music industry has changed, and it is not surprising that a lot of artists focus on getting hit singles out, not albums. When albums do come out, they are following the release of one or two tracks that had come out months in advance (in the hope that they would carry the album sales.) I don’t necessarily have an opinion on whether this is good or bad. I just know that a lot of music I listen to is quite old, and they’re best enjoyed when complemented with the tracks the artist intended them to be accompanied with (case in point: any Bowie album.)

I wanted to go back to my old ways, and I have. To make sure I don’t end up listening to the same music every time, and to add an element of discovery to my listening, I’ve started to go into the playlists suggested to me by Deezer, pick tracks at random, and play the full album it is from. I also rely on a few friends whom I know have similar tastes to mine for album recommendations.

Here’s something for you to try: The next time you fire up your music streaming app of choice, instead of letting it do the work for you, try and find something you think you might just like, and play it. Play an album in its entirety, instead of letting the algorithm pick different tracks.

The point is to search and play actively, not passively. I’m certain your listening experience will be more enjoyable when you do this more often.

The great thing about this is that your gear won’t matter at all. Audiophiles, especially the snobbish ones, would tell you that you need to keep investing in better gear to improve your listening experience. There are certainly some technical factors that support this argument — listening to a good source over a wired headphone will always give you better quality over Bluetooth, for example — but most often than not, it’s your habits that do the trick.