65 looks like an impressive number, but today it’s not. whereas the 66 songs from yesterday represent just over 5 hours of music, today’s 65 only amount to 3.5 hours. this is partially because the severed dreams soundtrack is only 33 minutes for its 22 songs, while mahler’s 6th from yesterday clocks in near 90 minutes but counts as only 4 songs. in any event, i did hear some worthwhile music.

• fantastic plastic machine [beautiful]
• elbow [alseep in the back]
• elliot goldenthal [batman forever]
• christopher franke [babylon 5: severed dreams]
• ultralounge bossa novaville

Ah, the bossa nova…. it, and to a lesser extent samba, are among my favorite forms of music, so it’s surprising that i don’t have more of it in my collection. nevertheless, it should be no surprise that i’m highly enthralled by bossa novaville, no.14 in the ultralounge series. nineteen super-smooth and relaxing tracks that can’t help but take the edge off whatever’s on your mind.

of course, this is ultralounge we’re talking about, a product of capitol records. it’s designed, packaged and presented to appeal to boomers and retro-culture hipsters alike without being in the slightest way offensive. despite the marketing schtick, the music is quite effective and at the very least, acts as a launching pad for further explorations into the various genres it resurrects. les baxter alone almost justifies the series’ existence.

also in today’s roundup: a somewhat disappointing score for batman forever. beyond treatments and re-workings of danny elfman’s batman theme, nothing here really jumped out at me. about half the tracks got the boot.

and a quick note about elbow: the group is from the UK (manchester, specifically) and i’ve heard them referred to as equal parts radiohead and coldplay. which is sort of true, if radiohead wrote more ballad-type songs and didn’t enjoy rocking out as hard, you might get the mellow stylings of elbow. i guess that’s where the coldplay reference comes from, but elbow is not nearly as insufferable.