Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 10! Best of 2011

A mere seven or eight weeks since 2012 began, Paddy and Frank have finally navigated the scheduling difficulties of working multiple jobs on opposite ends of the country and bring you a summary of all the stuff they liked best about 2011. Better late than never! With help from contributors Greg, iDan, Petey Pablo, Sara and Tom, the guys recap the best in music, movies, and life events. Featuring music from Boris, Feist, Graf Orlock, TV on the Radio, Caveman, Real Estate, Girls, and others. As an added bonus, this episode comes chock full of horrible impressions of James Blake and Bon Iver, “best of” lists made by people who don’t even know the Beastie Boys and New Found Glory were still alive, and moon colonies.

Don't forget to "like" us on Facebook, and follow us on Twitter. Thanks for tuning in!

Enjoy!

Episode 9!!!

And we're back! Due to trans-continental and trans-Atlantic moves, the TAT was delayed but we've got our act together and have drinks and tunes to discuss. On this installment, we discuss the merits of a name change and their relation to hallucinogenic drugs and diseases. Moving rapidly into drinks, Paddy details his rediscovery of Washington, DC and the abundance of craft beers on offer, specifically DC Brau. Frank gets sniffy with some Gran Centenario Anejo tequila, Old World Spirits Blade Gin, and shares a prohibition cocktail recipe, The Aviation. In music, Paddy gets into some sludge and stoner rock with Black Tusk and Red Fang while Frank shares the Dum Dum Girls and two unbelievably catchy tracks from French pop act M83.

Enjoy!! Write us and friend us on Facebook as we have now started Spotify playlists for your listening pleasure!

-Paddy K & Frank Chow

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 8

And we're back! After a two-month hiatus due to a cross-country move by Frank and various scheduling conflicts -- damn you, time zones!!! -- we bring you more rage-tastic banter on drinks and tunes. No politics this week as both Frank and Paddy are burned out on the non-movement and broken systems in which they live. Drinks and music are helping ease the pain! Frank discusses Death's Door distillery and the art of sipping -- yes, sipping -- a pint into which you've just dropped a shot of liquor or coffee. No high-fives, no pounding the Jaegerbombs. Paddy talks beer tourism in London and discovers an excellent IPA from Buxton called Axe Edge and then moves on to another one of Cooley Distillery's revival whiskeys, Connemara Peated Single Malt -- smokey! Moving right along to music, the dudes discuss new tunes from Panda Bear, August Burns Red, Touché Amoré and Bon Iver. All this and more in episode 8 of the Trans-Atlantic (and Continental) Throwdown!

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter, and "like" us on Facebook. Discuss! Laugh! Rock the fugg out!

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 7

Note - This week we include the entirety of most tracks, hence the length.

Links:

Cooley Distillery (Ireland), distillers of Tyrconnell Whiskey, which was finished with Anima Negra casks and then purchased by Paddy K at The Celtic Whiskey Shop, who made the whiskey-wine hook-up.

Berkshire Mountain Distillers

Radical Face

Manchester Orchestra

Defeater

Trap Them

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 6

This is Episode 6 a.k.a. Fizzbitch a.k.a. Miracle Baby, because we have so many technical problems and interruptions that this one almost didn't happen! Please bear with us, we do apologize! Today Paddy is sipping on some Harviestoun (Scotland) beers while Frank gets excited about North Shore Distillery and the DMK Burger Bar in Chicago. On the political front, Paddy explains the Irish election system (ranked preferences, not binary choices) and then Frank discusses Wisconsin. Somewhere in the middle we discuss civil rights, democracy and the relationship between them. We also geek out over high-speed rail. Finally, we "meh" out to Radiohead's new track Lotus Flower, get our dubstep on (we think) to James Blake, preview the new Fleet Foxes album called Helplessness Blues, check out the new black metal-inspired band on Deathwish Inc called Deafheaven, and then we get extremely excited about our hometown heroes Darkest Hour's latest album The Human Romance.

Links:

Harviestoun beers

North Shore Distillery

DMK Burger Bar


RTÉ - Irish Election Results Update (Fine Gael and Labour coalition)

Radiohead's Lotus Flower (from King of Limbs)

James Blake

Deafheaven's bandcamp page (free four-song demo)

Fleet Foxes' Helplessness Blues

Darkest Hour

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 5

This week on the TAT, we finally get around to reviewing the year that was 2010. Paddy and Frank go through their favorite movies, music, drinks and events and discuss the lists compiled by their friends and listeners. This includes a top ten film list from iDan, a top albums list from Tom (Colombian Necktie), top albums from Greg in NYC, a grab-bag from Sara (also in NYC) and an assortment of comments from friends and listeners who sent in their comments and best/worsts. The lists are below -- enjoy!

Frank's lists

Drink: Ransom Old Tom Gin, Ransom Small’s Gin, Dry Fly Gin, Hendricks’s Gin, Junipero

Food: Blue 13 – Sinister Kid, Ransom & Ginger, Girl & the Goat – PIG FACE, Ferry Market Building Boccalone – Meat Cup, Alewife – The Baltimore

Politics: Health Care good and bad

Music: albums by Lost in the Trees, Jonsi, Sleigh Bells, Motion City Soundtrack, Kanye West, Minus the Bear, Sufjan Stevens, Twin Shadow, Lydia, LCD Soundsystem (will talk about next episode!)

Honorable Mention: Arcade Fire and Coheed and Cambria

Movies: Inception, The Town, Kick-Ass

Paddy's list(s)

Best Music: albums by Trap Them "Filth Rations" EP, Nails "Unsilent Death", The Secret "Solve et Coagula", Coliseum "House With A Curse", Sleigh Bells "Treats", Arcade Fire "The Suburbs", All Pigs Must Die S/T EP, Surfer Blood "Astro Coast", Dangers "Messy, Isn't It?"

Best Movie: Inception

Best New Brewery: Dungarvan Brewing Co (Waterford, Ireland)

Best All-Around Brewery: Sierra Nevada

Best Beer: Northern Hemisphere Harvest (Sierra Nevada)

Biggest Disappointments: The Acacia Strain "Wormwood", second half of the first season of The Walking Dead (AMC)

Anticipated Albums for 2011: Pig Destroyer, Touché Amoré, Trap Them

Greg in NYC

Top 11 Records of 2010: (no particular order except for the numbered top 4)
1. Sage Francis - LI(F)E
2. The Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
3. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
4. Bad Religion - Dissent of Man
7 Degrees of Stephen Egerton
Danzig - Dethred Sabaoth
Bad Religion - 30 Years Live
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
High on Fire - Snakes for the Divine
Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
Henry Rollins - Spoken Word Guy

Events:
Moving to NYC
Alexander's first word (mama)
Alexander's first step
Christmas wedding in NYC

Movies:
Adventureland (I am pretty sure this didn't come out in 2010, but I saw it in 2010 and it was the most memorable one I saw this year. Very "Garden State" esque.)

Sara in NYC

Best thing I drank: Eagle Rare Single-Barrel Kentucky Bourbon. Straight or in a hot toddy, it is superlative.

Best thing I watched at the movies: Toy Story 3

Best thing I watched at the movies in which someone’s spine got ripped out by an extraterrestrial with dreadlocks: Predators

Best things I watched on TV: Justified and Friday Night Lights

Favorite podcasts other than TAT: The Bugle and Hang Up and Listen

Best short-lived Broadway musical I saw about an American president: Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson

Best sporting moment: Landon Donovan’s stoppage time goal against Algeria

Runner-up: That time we beat Canada in ice hockey at the Olympics.
Achievements in cooking: Tiny apple pies for USA-England World Cup match (see?), successful roasting of a turkey by myself at Thanksgiving
Achievements in bridesmaiding: Both couples got married! One is expecting a baby!
Best invertebrate: Paul the Octopus

Tom (Colombian Necktie)

1. Deerhunter "Halcyon Digest"
2. Cough "Ritual Abuse"
3. Dangers "Messy, Isn't It?"
4. Dangers S/T
5. Deftones "Diamond Eyes"
6. Arcade Fire "The Suburbs"
7. Isis/Melvins Split
8. High On Fire "Snakes for the Divine"
9. Envy "Recitation"
10. Nas and Damian Marley

iDan's Top Films of 2010

10: The Ghost Writer:

Roman Polanski’s past remains controversial, but if we disregarded all work by artists we find personally distasteful, we’d be missing a lot of classics. As it turns out, The Ghost Writer isn’t just an expertly paced, visually gorgeous, occasionally humorous, and extremely well constructed thriller, its plot, setting and characters seem like a reflection on Polanski’s own quasi exile and imprisonment within a very comfortable gilded cage. It’s not going to make anyone forgive him, but it is an expertly made film.

9: How to Train Your Dragon:

The first great animated film by Dreamworks since they abandoned hand-drawn animation in 2003. Fun character designs, some really interesting and amusing creatures, and rock-solid animation bolstered by a fun voice cast (with the exception of the protagonist, whose voice is the one weak link.)

8: Un Prophète (released in the EU in 2009, USA in 2010, so I’m including it)

The Prison film is a pretty distinct genre, but without many quality examples. Brute Force, Escape from Alcatraz, The Shawshank Redemption, and… what? Un Prophète is easily one of the best examples of a prison film, depicting a world of intense hatred and violence. The inescapability of enemies and magnification of ethnic divisions in prison contrasted with the euphoria of the outside world.

7: Four Lions

A comedy about suicide bombers. That’s a tough sell, but it’s well executed here. The four would-be terrorists are depicted with just the right levels of humor, sympathy, incompetence, and repugnance. Delusionally believing themselves to be heroic crusaders, while actually being more concerned with trying to look cool or rapping, the characters become surprisingly sympathetic while remaining both nefarious and stupid. The film walks such a fine line it’s astonishing they get to the other side at all.

6: Inception

It’s going to be on everybody’s list, and perhaps should be higher on mine. Expertly made on every level, a prismatic action film that doubles as an ingenious commentary on the act of filmmaking itself. Also it’s probably the only movie in history that could get away with a “and it was all a dream” ending (if that is indeed what the ending says)

5: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Simply put: The best depiction of how the media-addled generation now in or entering their twenties relate to culture and the world around them. It’s a disorienting, fractured experience, requiring a lightning-fast trans-Pacific visual literacy, and it is perhaps about ten minutes too long, but it’s hilarious and could not be more visually perfect.

4: Carlos: The Jackal

Clocking in at almost 6 hours in 3 parts, with dialogue in ten languages (and a lead performance fluent in five), this film joins 2008’s Che as an epic length study of leftist revolutionaries, but Carlos himself lacked the fame and charisma that make Che Guevara’s shortcomings so easy to ignore. The film shows the glamour of international guerilla operations (including an amazing hour long hostage-taking sequence) while also letting its subject’s narcissism and increasingly flimsy ideology overwhelm his ability to stay ahead of those pursuing him.

3: Shutter Island

An amazing avant-garde soundtrack and a very cleverly constructed script kept this film in my brain long after I’d seen it. A mystery plot that touches on the hidden US history of the MKULTRA anticommunist mind control experiments, the absorption of Nazi scientists into American postwar institutions, and the changing historical role of psychiatry (without being too Scientologist about it). All while Leo once again dusts off his wicked pissah Bahstin accent.

2: City of Life and Death (Released in China in 2009, EU and USA 2010)

This film on the “Rape of Nanjing” during the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930’s opens with a surprisingly bravura and intense action sequence, with Chinese urban guerillas tenaciously wiping out a squad of invading Japanese soldiers. That’s where the effectiveness of masculine bravado ends after an overwhelming and swift counterattack. The remainder of this amazingly shot black and white film depicts an utterly hopeless situation for anyone worthy of sympathy. Mass executions and systematic gang-rape are the only options for the surviving citizens of the conquered city. Some characters with marginal degrees of power appear and offer glimpses of hope — the German John Rabe who was able to shelter many Chinese women thanks to his Nazi party membership protecting him from the Japanese, and (bravely for a Chinese film) a single sympathetic Japanese soldier observing the chaos — but history doesn’t function like a movie. The conquered suffer and die, as it has been for millennia, as it was in Nanjing.

1: The Social Network

Another one bound to be on everyone’s list. It’s probably the only way to examine the internet’s rapid development: go back a few years and focus on the genesis of a single website. While it touches on the theme that our notion of “friendship” has been changed and cheapened by the brainchild of a man with no friends, the film is less about Facebook itself and more about the personalities that drive the internet forward. From privileged Ivy League students who struggle to "own" a concept, to the workaholic programmers that suddenly find themselves in high demand. They are all male in a male dominated profession, all desperate to impress exactly the type of women who never used to pay attention to them, and most importantly, they all understand that the most valuable commodity in this new age is a new idea. If you don’t latch on to that idea first, you lose.

Thanks again for listening and don't forget about following us on Twitter, "Like" us on Facebook and write a spiffy review on ITunes!

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 4

On the 4th episode of Trans-Atlantic Throwdown, Paddy discusses three seasonal beers that kept him happy on his recent trip to the US for Thanksgiving as well as a new addition to the Carlow Brewing family and Frank discusses Dry Fly Gin with a hint of apple, mint and hops -- no, we will not mix appletinis. Somehow, lederhosen are discussed and Paddy relates a totally awesome break-up story. In politics, Paddy sums up the current EU/IMF bail-out situation and the prospects for growth in Ireland while Frank discusses implications and ramifications of the recent tax deal for the Obama presidency. In music, Frank is really into the latest Kanye West album; Paddy tries to keep an open mind. Frank is also digging his winter/Christmas mix that he "inherited" from an old roommate. Paddy is flogging a joke-song by a Limerick rap group hoping to beat out X-Factor for the Christmas Number One. He's also got an album review for Coliseum's House With A Curse and a show review for Arcade Fire's recent gig in Dublin.

Boston Beer Works http://www.beerworks.net/home/index.html

Sam Adams Octoberfest http://www.samueladams.com/enjoy-our-beer/beer-detail.aspx?id=011e3e3f-52b1-4c55-9e05-0417800d7b23

O'Hara's Leann Folláin http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/646/48252

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale http://www.sierranevada.com/beers/celebrationale.html

Dry Fly Gin http://www.dryflydistilling.com/

Kanye's Perfect 10 on Pitchfork http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/14880-my-beautiful-dark-twisted-fantasy/

Rubberbandits - Horse Outside video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8

Coliseum on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/coliseum

Arcade Fire at the O2 (photos) http://www.state.ie/photo-gallery/24639-photos-arcade-fire-the-o2-dublin

Don't forget to rate and review us on ITunes, we need some up there! Thanks again for listening and for the next episode we want you to share your "Lists for 2010." Email us at tatpodcast @ gmail.com with your favorites from music, movies, politics and whatever made you rock \m/. We'll be talking about 2010 and your suggestions for Episode 5!

- Paddy K and Frank Chow

Episode III of the Trans-Atlantic Throwdown

This week on the TAT, Paddy returns to beer-sampling and rekindles an old flame with Goose Island, a brewery with which Paddy has a complicated relationship. Closer to home, Paddy samples a new experimental lager from Porterhouse Brewing Co. called Down'n'Outz. Frank gets into more gin culture, this time espousing the benefits of Hendrick's gin and having a cucumber in your cocktail (get your mind out of the gutter). On the politics front, the Jon Stewart-Rachel Maddow interview is discussed, followed by Frank's hopes for some movement on the DREAM act now that Republicans have won a majority in the House of Representatives. In new music, Frank is loving the "new" Converge album Axe to Fall, which came out a year ago. Paddy launches into a long explanation of why Converge is the greatest band ever -- shockingly, Pitchfork agrees that Converge are awesome. Frank's also listening to a new release from Twin Shadow, which we sample at the end of the show. Paddy's ears have been filled with the deafening rage of The Secret (from Italy) and then Paddy brags on the fact that Colombian Necktie are getting great reviews over at MetalSucks.

http://www.hendricksgin.com/

Beer Nut reviews Down'n'Outz http://thebeernut.blogspot.com/2010/09/blind-tiger.html

http://www.porterhousebrewco.com/

http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/harvest_ale/23.php

www.convergecult.com

http://twinshadow.net/

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/13625-axe-to-fall/

The Secret at Southern Lord http://blog.southernlord.com/?p=248

The Secret on Love Comes Close (blog) http://lovecomeclose.blogspot.com/2010/11/secret.html (complete with creepy goat graphic)

Colombian Necktie review at MetalSucks http://www.metalsucks.net/2010/11/10/freeloader-colombian-neckties-demo/

Maddow v. Stewart at Crooks and Liars http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/rachel-maddow-interview-jon-stewart

Read all about the DREAM Act http://dreamact.info/

- TATPodcast

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 2

TATPodcast Episode 2 Links:

PINTS: Against The Grain
Ransom Old Tom Gin

POLITICS: The Rally to Restore Sanity/Fear.
Buckley vs. Hefner

MUSIC: The Cramps and The Misfits.
Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz

Don't forget you can also subscribe and listen on ITUNES. Rate and review our podcast!

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown on ITunes

TAT on ITunes

WE ARE WORTHY!

We are pleased to announce that you can now "subscribe" and download the Trans-Atlantic Throwdown straight from ITunes. We hope this allows a better experience for listeners. And if you feel so inclined please Rate and Review...be nice!

Currently our logo is not up with the description, we are working with our provider to figure out why that is. Till the ITunes overlords fix it, simply download the latest episode, Go to file "Get Info" then to the tab that says "Artwork, load our logo below and boom it's added to the podcast!

Thanks for listening!

- Paddy K and Frank Chow

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Episode 1

We are still awaiting approval from ITunes. In the interim Buzzsprout allows you to download, or stream the podcast straight from our site! We hope you enjoy.

Quick links from the episode:

Pints - Paddy K recommends, Monteiths Brewery and Sierra Nevada
           Frank Chow recommends, Half Acre and Great Lake Brewing Co.

Politics - The Irish Taoiseach drinks too much, Krugman says Ezra Klein "You are wrong", NJ Tunnel scrapped by Gov. Christie Stupid Edition,11.5 million jobs short, Irish Unemployed 13%, Bonddad Blog with the numbers.

Music - Paddy K has been listening to Boris from Japan, and Colombian Necktie. Frank Chow has been trying to listen to Jimmy Eat World - Invented, Arcade Fire - Suburbs and highly recommends Minus the Bear's latest release Omni.

-Paddy K and Frank Chow

Trans-Atlantic Throwdown Podcast Coming Soon

Paddy K & Frank Chow will be bringing you all things Pints, Politics and Metal in the near future. Check in here regularly for news, hilarity and past episodes.

Chow!