Taken Away, La Haine, and Trick Mirror.
A featured article by Kiyonaga and a podcast covering Perfume Genius' Set My Heart on Fire.
Welcome to The Q: your one-stop weekly newsletter of culture recommendations. Can’t find a platform where you can receive condensed, reliable, pop-culture content? Yeah, we can’t either.
Every Saturday morning in your inbox, you’ll find a featured article, a new album, a film, a playlist, a book, and something we found funny that week. Oh, and a 2 Virgins podcast episode, where Sam and Teresa talk about a recommendation while drinking virgin drinks! We also invite a guest onto the show every week (that guest could be you!)
If you didn’t ask for this, you’re welcome. If you did, you’re also welcome! So, without further ado, we present the first installation of The Q.
Featured Article
“Foreigner” by Jack Kiyonaga
“You got on the wrong plane.” She says.
“More like they let me on the wrong plane.” I say.
“How did that even happen?”
“I had a ticket that scanned and everything. It must have been the gods.” I say.
“So you’re on the plane, with the seatbelts and everything, and the grey walls and the person with an ill-fitting collared shirt, and what happens.”
“Well I’m just kind of sitting there, as one does on a plane”. She nods. I continue. “And they are saying all this stuff like “Vamos chegar em São Paulo” and I keep hearing São Paulo, São Paulo, and I’m wondering why they keep talking about São Paulo when I’m going back to the US.”
Album
Taken Away by MoodyMann
Moodymann has the power to transform any room into a nightclub. His music feels like 2 a.m. on a Friday night, right as everything is starting to wind down. TAKEN AWAY is the newest album from the legendary techno producer from Detroit and Moodymann’s new album offers a new perspective on his signature sound. In the last two decades Moodymann single-handedly shaped a convoluted and mysterious legacy.
Film
La Haine, directed by Mathieu Kassovitz
At a glance, La Haine follows three friends who live in the low-income banlieues of Paris. Vinz is an eastern European Jew, Hubert has Caribbean roots, and Said is of North African descent. La Haine not only illuminates the subtle, boiling anger towards the treatment of marginalized populations as a reflection of the self, but also the violence that must be endured as a cornerstone of the boys’ realities. The film is as devastating as it is stylistic.
Book
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino
Ria Chinchankar writes, “Most cultural critiques I read come from niche socialist papers, from publications by disillusioned and rightfully angsty Ivy League alums, or from sources that I consider leftist, not liberal. Edgy, I know. Those writers are the type that turn their noses up at an obnoxiously colorful Aspen Ideas Festival backpack and view a New Yorker tote bag that comes with an online subscription as a gesture of performative intellectualism.
What makes Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino different is that it seemingly spouts from the $4 oat milk latte yuppie urban millennial world.”
Playlist
Florence Almeda’s Cloves features Devendra Banhart, Arthur Verocai, and Diane Tell.
Flo’s favorite track: “In A Manner of Speaking” by Nouvelle Vague
Description: “Cloves is inspired by the sounds of Brazilian jazz music. To me, the title of this one resonates most strongly with the songs in it. Something about the plucked, mellow guitar lines, combined with the fact that my family constantly plays bossa nova music in the house, makes the playlist feel homey, warm and a little musty - just like the smell of cloves.”
Check out Flo’s blog Ultrasound here. “Ultrasound is a site I created to explore different aspects of music and sound. A large part of the site is devoted to curating music in fun and unconventional ways — recently, I’ve been organizing songs by smell!”
Podcast
2 Virgins Episode #1: Set My Heart on Fire, Chamomile Tea, and Fafa Van Ha
On this week's episode, Sam and Teresa talk about Perfume Genius’ Set My Heart On Fire over a cup of chamomile with their mutual friend and legend, Fafa Van Ha.