l’avante-garde
Archive for November, 2009
Sunset – Gold Dissolves To Gray
Sunset frontman Bill Baird is not impressed by your iPhone. Baird is interested in what he can do, what he can feel. He makes an effort to swim in the creek by his house daily and he’s always on the lookout for a quality watering hole to dip into. Pictures of him always tend to take place in the woods or on the beach. But before you dismiss Baird as another goddamn hippie with a guitar, you owe it to yourself to check out the sounds that come out of his admittedly abnormal head.
Sunset’s new album, Gold Dissolves to Gray, …
Lymbyc Systym – Shutter Release
“You know why they’re good? Because they’re brothers – they understand each other, man…” Thus began a conversation I once had with a friend about brother-bands. And, although he was referring to the Bee Gees (seriously), upon listening to instrumental post-rock band Lymbyc Systym’s new album Shutter Release, I finally know what that guy was blathering about. Lymbyc Systym consists of Jared and Mike Bell, two brothers from Arizona, but from the way Shutter Release sounds, you’d swear the band couldn’t possibly be just a duo. I haven’t heard such a …
Local Upstart Label Gets a Precocious Kid Brother
Shane Vader and Clara Salyer engage in the proudest of high school band traditions for their weekly meetings: the Taco Bell run. Over what may well be the most questionable of foodstuffs, the two discuss life, music and, most importantly, their record label: the recently established Afternoon Records subsidiary Personal Best Records (and yes, they are aware of the irony of their acronym relative to their age).
Personal Best Records was the brainchild of Ian Anderson, who founded local indie label Afternoon Records while he was …
Chuck Klosterman: Eating the Dinosaur
Chuck Klosterman’s new book, Eating the Dinosaur, is a series of fragmented cultural studies essays that reads like a mix tape. The logic in all of the essays relies on the reader’s previous knowledge of Klosterman’s work in order to get to his admittedly convoluted points. About an eighth of the book is Klosterman’s apologies to the reader for the “irrelevance” (a topic that is discussed thoroughly in the essay “ABBA 1, World 0”) or farfetchedness of the theses he presents. It’s a quirky book that only Klosterman could have written …
Brute Heart – Brass Beads
Teleportation via the turbulent twist in sound waves may be possible. As one jams to Brass Beads, the debut record conceived by innovative MSP locals Brute Heart, a journey unfolds. One moment the traveler is suspended in an ethereal space of ambient female vocals and lush reverberation – wading in dense plasma and soothing waters. Then, in a flash of spectral flames, they’re pummeled with passionate, sporadic viola patterns and pulsing rhythm-dancing disjointed steps in an ancient world or howling and thrashing around some blazing forest fire. Throughout the album, the vocals …
His Smile
He was nothing but a smile, the kind of smile that slid on and off every couple of minutes without any reason; just two rows of orthodontically ordered teeth that created a contagious pandemic of unwarranted happiness. Lucy could already feel her lips beginning to part. She hated it. How could he be the happy one? After all he had gone through with the cancer, he was still the one with the smile. Even the nurses left his room in a better mood. And now, when there were no more options, she was just supposed to pretend that everything was …
Getting News Ten Mouthfuls at a Time
News aggregators are the middlemen in an Internet filled with producers and consumers. You want news about horse races? Grisly murders? Escaped orangutans? News sources create and aggregators provide. The purpose of a news aggregator is to consolidate news content in one place, much like a newspaper with its multiple unrelated sections. However, most aggregators display the content instead of producing it. Ideally, a news aggregator scours the web for the quality content and leaves the junk to rot. In practice, the process often breaks down into a jelly of mediocrity.
For a crash course in aggregation, let’s head over …
Heartless Bastards Can Still Manage to Endear…
On Saturday night I went to the Wolfmother gig at the State Theater … and was pleasantly surprised by one of the opening acts – Heartless Bastards.
The quartet has an older, garage band sound with a hint of psychedelic (they are definitely channeling some sonic youth). Their heavy guitars fill the soundwaves with further vibrations from the drums to make a Southern/rock/blues combo that brought the audience to their feet.
Their new album entitled The Mountain is raw, powerful and passionate and entirely worth checking out.
“Nothing Seems the Same” video
What’s that goop growing in the water?
So you say you’re sick of all the bullshit on TV. Pets that can talk, progress on the bill on drying paint, that kind of thing? Well, sink your ass into that booth, Mr. PBR, because I’ve got some cool stuff for you to read. It’s got intrigue, adventure, and oh, also, it’s about algae.
So I suppose everyone’s entitled to their own interests, but let me tell you, algae do it for me, and I’m going to tell you why. First, algae were among the earliest forms of life. Rather than killing …
The Outdoors…From Space
Farmers in the Upper Midwest, and Minnesota in particular, are on the forefront of technology today with widespread implementation of satellite data to allow for better crop management. Far from the satellite images used by Google Maps et al., which may be several years old and out of season, farmers have access to new data continuously throughout the growing season. NASA’s Earth Observatory reports that an ever-increasing proportion of farmers have found themselves dependent on monthly updates from satellite imagery. They are of particular interest in the organic farming community. Organic farmers, while making a concerted effort to …
The War on Moons
Scientists recently shot a bus-sized rocket into the moon in a search for evidence of ice and water on the moon.
The moon bombing commenced at 6:31 a.m. central time, and did not deliver the explosion that was expected by NASA, and that most of the amateur astronomers were watching for.
The Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, known as LCROSS, began by orbiting around the earth, then shooting a rocket into the Cabeus crater of the moon. The first rocket was followed by a second that slammed into the same area of the moon. The Cabeus crater is 60 …
2012
This November marks the release of 2012, a Roland Emmerich movie seeking to capitalize on our decade’s hysteria du jour and general unease. Originally slated for July release, it was quietly pushed back to a timeslot thought to be more favorable. 2012 seems to embrace all of the cliché cheesiness that has characterized its director’s career. The trailer features a nearly incomprehensible series of calamitous events worldwide, with seemingly no central theme or purpose rather than “blowing stuff up real good.” It’s the ultimate culmination of Hollywood’s years spent driving home …