24 for 2024
Hello friends,
24 works of art that moved me deeply this year. Unranked and not necessarily all produced in 2024. Mostly music and film.
If you live in Toronto, The Ryōkan Band is playing at the Tranzac (southern cross) Sunday Dec 29th at 10pm sharp. And if you don’t live in Toronto, there’s always this concert film.
Thank you for reading and following this page over the year :)
1. Evan Cartwright performing Frank O’Hara poems at a NYC house show.
2. You Can Can at Wolfe Island Cafe. Every You Can Can show has assembled a slightly different crew of musicians to anchor Felicity Williams and Andrew Zuckerman’s enigmatic project of song-form and sound collage. This time, it was Michael Davidson on Vibes and Sandro Perri on acoustic guitar. Their self-titled album was one of my favorites of last year. Go see them whenever you get the chance.
3. Ryan Driver’s big 5-0 at the Tranzac Main Hall. The whole night was incredible, but perhaps the highlight was Alex Lukashevsky singing Skylark with the Ryan Driver Sextet. Preserved by the vid-kid Colin Medley (AKA half of Memory Volcano)
4. Nature’s Piano by Earth Flower. New group comprised of Ruth Garbus, Sam Gendel and Philippe Melanson. Their whole album is brilliant, but when this song came out I listened to it on repeat for many days.
5. The films of Xu Haofeng. The Martial Arts Auteur of our time. I first saw 100 Yards at TIFF in 2023 (which is now finally available in North America in the last couple months). I spent the year watching what was available of his catalog. Every film is a gem, but Judge Archer from 2012 was perhaps my favorite.
6. Fred Moten & Brandon Lopez at the Music Gallery. There is the fantastic album by Moten, Lopez and Cleaver that captures the spirit of this collaboration, but the live duo set felt different. Massive upheaval rhythm conversation rearranging room sound woah.
7. Bill Wells’ Collected Dreams. 48 perfect pop gems. Bill is someone I was first aware of from his collaborations with Maher Shalal Hash Baz, but this record somehow slipped by and was hipped to me by Thom Gill’s year end list. Follow TG for what’s good.
8. Escape from the 21st Century at TIFF Midnight Madness. A highlight from my brother’s program for TIFF. I saw this with him as a screener and it ignited the same synapses in my brain when I first watched Stephen Chow films as a teen. Sheer fun, mayhem and creativity. A film to watch in a theatre or with a group of friends.
9. Universal Language by Matthew Rankin. The constellation of many things I love about film - indeterminacy, invention, humanity. Very excited to watch this again.
10. Chris Weisman - Masterpiece 5000. Maybe the best record of the year?
11. In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century. Extraordinary translations of Tang poets by Wong May. The long form essay that ends the collection is revelatory. “Poetry warps space; parallel texts converge.”
12. The Cluttertones at Array Music performing “Memory of Light”. I had been fortunate to film the process leading up to, and including, this show. What a brilliant crew of musicians. I’m excited to share a documentary that emerged from this process next year. In the meantime, their record Ordinary Joy from 2014 is still magic.
13. Shabason & Krgovich have made some of my favorite records of this decade. Their new one (which includes contributions from Matthew Sage) includes the brilliant “Joe”. One of my favorite songs of the year. I remember sleepy snake.
14. My Own Yard to Play In (1959). A beautiful poetic doc I came upon in the York University Archive. Its discovery led me to digitize the 16mm print, present the film at the Orphan Film Symposium and meet the film’s editor Pat Jaffe to write an oral history of this forgotten film. Soundtrack by radio-field recording legend Tony Schwartz!
15. Evan Cartwright’s gorgeous song Orpheus, Orpheus. First heard it a few years ago at the Toronto release show for his brilliant record bit by bit. When he later sent a mix of it, I felt inspired to pay tribute to the song with a video. Ev’s a friend and a muse!
16. Poncili Creacion at Music Gallery. Wow. Magical. Go see them if they come through town. A treat to see Karen Ng and Philippe Melanson improvise with them too.
17. 454 & MIKE at Lee’s Palace. After seeing Poncili Creacion, I rushed over to Lee’s for this show. Two of my favorite contemporary hip-hop artists.
18. Rong Weickness - Fievel is Glauque. LOVE!
19. Nap Eyes at Pop Montreal & Nigel Chapman live in Tatamagouche and Halifax. One of my favorite songwriters. Had the pleasure of seeing Nigel play with his brilliant band Nap Eyes in Montreal, as well as a series of solo shows in Nova Scotia that included increasingly lengthy songs. Nigel in rambling unfurled songwriting mode is my favorite. Nap Eyes’ new album The Neon Gate is also one of my favs of the year.
20. Peter Zummo at Tranzac Southern Cross. Legendary trombonist and composer with his T.O band (Josh Cole, Blake Howard, Michael Davidson) + Aline Homzy and John Oswald. Brilliance!
21. The song Donkey’s Life by Thom Gill. This November, Thom and I wrote a existential-christmas-buddhist-karmic-nativity play for the Holy Oak Family Singers to perform. In about two weeks we assembled eight new originals, re-wrote the lyrics to some traditionals, and added a few covers (The Roches and Muppets). One of Thom’s contributions, Donkey’s Life, is one of my favorite songs of the year. Hopefully we will re-stage this next year, or get a recording out of it at some point.
22. Chimneystack Film Society Screenings. At York University I’ve had the pleasure of organizing film screenings with my fellow graduate students that draw from the University’s extensive 16mm collection. We’ve watched over 100 titles in the last year, but a few of the standouts have been Fuji (Robert Breer), Skywhales (Derek Hayes and Phil Austin), Hart of London (Jack Chambers,) Baggage (Alexander Neel feat. Mamako Yoneyama) and Raymond Moriyama’s Toronto. The last film by Moriyama is a CBC production from 1969 unavailable online. Moriyama’s philosophy of design and thoughts on Toronto’s flaws and futures is so prescient - paired with montage of fascinating Toronto footage. Really hope CBC allows this to come out of the vault.
23. Bill Gun’s Personal Problems at The Paradise Theatre presented by Black Gold. One of my favorite films presented by one of my favorite people (Sarah-Tai Black)
24. Beverley-Glenn Copeland at the Rialto for Pop Montreal. Mentor-inspiration-exuberant-joyful-being. The show balanced Glenn in all his seriousness, silliness and absolute love for life and expression.
Happy New Year!
yours truly,
Luka Kuplowsky