111 Star Wars Stories You Can't Live Without: 4. Tales of the Jedi: Knights of the Old Republic!

Buy Tales of the Jedi: The Freedon Nadd Uprising

What’s worse about this one, the fact that it’s only two issues or the fact that it’s so bad you wish it was only one?  ‘Brilliantly’ brings our two plots together as Nomi joins Ulic and his friends on Onderon to put down an uprising by a group so bold they aren’t afraid to call themselves ‘Naddists.’ 

The art is downright terrible.  If you can look at the panel of Ulic lunging at King Ommin without bursting into hysterical laughter, I don’t know what’s wrong with you.  What’s wrong with Ulic?  He is apparently both cross-eyed and constipated, but then so will you be by the time you finish this story. 

MOMENT YOU CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT:  Cay Qel-Droma gets his arm cut off.  Did you think that happened in Knights of the Old Republic?  It did.  Did you think it happened in The Sith War?  It does.  Honestly, why he keeps attaching it, I don’t know.  Those Qel-Dromas never could take a hint. 

*Next time, we’ll jump back into a reference book from this period.  Join me next time for Tales of the Jedi: An Era of Conflict!

Star Wars Reviews!

Matangi (2013) - M.I.A.

Buy Matangi

M.I.A.’s Matangi is perhaps the most abrasive, truly great album I’ve ever heard.  M.I.A.’s talents work together here to create a purposely fractured, aggressively offensive (purely meaning “on the offense”) album.  It’s hard to really talk about the album, but I’ll give it a shot.  The songs are built around really harsh sounds; the percussion rattles and clangs, the vocals are sharp and violent.  Dissonance reigns supreme at various points throughout the album.  Each track is a constantly shifting tapestry; tracks will suddenly introduce a completely new hook with new instrumentation and styling in the last thirty seconds of a track.  Fractured is the way to say it, I think.  It’s sharp, filled with jagged edges, and broken, at times seemingly assembled out of clips of longer songs stuck together at random.  And, yet, in its existence as an assaultive sound collage, it achieves a kind of perfect chaos, a beautiful sense of intensity and viscerality.  If you’re looking for cohesion, beauty or even danceable music, go elsewhere.  If you’re looking for a strange, complicated work of art by a strange, complicated artist, this is your jam.  But be prepared for repeated listens.  It took a while for me to get into the groove, but once I did, it became a great album.  Highly recommended.  4 stars. 

tl;dr – dark, dissonant album is one long, brilliant sound collage; not easy listening by a stretch, but a challenging, wonderful work of art.  4 stars.

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