The Wake

Finals week is coming and with the catchy acronyms comes the realization that many of us have fourteen plus weeks of learning to do before December 17th. Long hours in the library are tedious at best, but the deafening silence can make any extended stay at Walter downright unbearable. If you need a theme song to your finals study experience, look no further than the Kruder & Dorfmeister remix of “Useless” by Depeche Mode.

Finding its place in the first half of the stunning K & D Sessions, “Useless” is a slice of downtempo bliss that even those unfamiliar with the genre will appreciate. With a beat that deftly tiptoes the fine line between overwhelming and shallow and a bassline that is fluid beyond all words, “Useless” is a song that radiates calm …

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let’s be honest…we have been spoiled with good weather. now, as winter is biting hard and finals are drawing near, any cause to smile is a good one. here is one i found…enjoy!

the muppets sing queen’s “bohemian rhapsody”

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
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j48UVaBoR60

I cannot fully describe how excited I was to read about Kyp Malone (TV on the Radio) stepping out to make a solo album.

Under the alias of Rain Machine, Malone’s album “Rain Machine” dropped on September 22, 2009, and was met with high praise. While Rain Machine shows ties to TV on the Radio’s albums, “Rain Machine” is more than capable to stand on its own. The overall sound of the album is natural and strikingly experimental. While the two ideas seem ironic, the sound Malone creates is earthy and harmonic.

The album is introduced with isolated pieces of percussion and develops into the first single off the album, “Give Blood”. Malone’s falsetto carries through each song…you can finally hear his full range. It is well impressive. …

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Four of the first six short films screened at the festival have smoking in them. My film, A Living Contradiction, is the fifth being screened. The camera’s subject matter is a runner. I knew I should’ve had the runner smoke. Fuck.

I am going to predict the outcome of the film festival. The judge’s selection for best short film will be Liška. This film festival was no contest. Liška had plenty of room for improvement [to the filmmaker: The pauses at the end of the film were poorly placed and too frequent. The cigarette falling from the girl's mouth fell all wrong. Do this shot over. The acting by the filmmakers on the bus ride was atrocious] but no other film was composed well enough to compare.

I couldn’t force myself to sit through the long films. …

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Everyone wants to write a book. It’s a glorified prospect - you write a book, you must be bright. And in the digital age it couldn’t be simpler (to be bright). At this very moment, if I wanted, I could upload a text document containing any of my own writings, submit it to a self-publishing company such as iUniverse, LuLu Enterprises, CreateSpace or Xlibris and hold a hardcopy of it - sans editing - in a few days time.

The attraction to publish through one of these companies is clear: it’s cheap and quick (like couscous). Little to no upfront costs and one can have copies made for friends and relatives by Tuesday. The author has a great deal of control over the process with no need to worry about storage space for unsold copies; …

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After abstaining from coffee for a few weeks, yesterday’s caffeine craving was well overdue. So I got my sugary fix at Mapps over on West Bank and soon afterwards I knew it would be a good day. In addition to a wakeful buzz, though, I also experienced an enlightening moment. I was sitting down on plump leather couch cushions, reclined and relaxed, enjoying what was probably Putumayo Latin American Dance Party. There weren’t very many people at the coffee shop, so tuning into the background music was inevitable. Merry mandolins were trickling in synch with other acoustics against beating Conga and bongo drums. The vocalist sang away foreign verses that I couldn’t understand, but I hoped the serenade was chronicling some romantic fiasco.

In this midst, I contemplated more and more. Or could it be …

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I am not qualified to review this album. This becomes clear almost immediately as I begin listening to it. It simply is not made for me. I know how to listen to death metal, I know how to listen to rock and roll, I know how to listen to hip-hop and I know how to listen to post-rock, but while I listen to Antony and the Johnsons it makes me tense how vocal-centric the whole thing is. I think, “Where is the drumbeat? When are the instrumentals going to do something interesting? Where is the rhythm?” Which if that kind of stuff makes you uncomfortable while listening to this record, clearly you don’t know how to listen to this kind of music. Because it’s all about Antony’s voice.

Which brings me to the …

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How to know exactly what this album sounds like without listening to any of it:

Band named after a Gorguts album.
Fancy-sounding science-word album title.
Song titles all about outer-space stuff.
Fretless bass.
Ex-members of Necrophagist.

Boom. Reviewed.

I got all excited about that last little bit of information, but really all it means is that there is flawless shredding on this record. The stuff that makes Necrophagist such a standout, their neo-classical melodicism and listenably technical songwriting, that’s all Muhammed Suiçmez.

Speaking of which, when is that band’s new album coming out? I bet it’ll be better than this one. Not that Obscura is bad, they’re undeniably solid. Just they’re about the least progressive “prog-death” band I’ve ever heard. Nothing will surprise you here if you’ve ever heard Gorguts or Death or Cynic.

So I guess if you’re nuts about prog-death, you …

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Vitesse. French for “speed”. Who remembers Vitesse? The Chicago duo comprised of Joshua Klein and Hewson Chen? After taking a music composition course together at the University of Chicago, Klein and Chen released four wondrous indie synth-pop albums and then seemingly disappeared. The collaboration between the two became difficult; Klein (an editor for satirical magazine, The Onion) would visit Chen (a law student at Vanderbilt University) over weekends to collaborate and record music together. The process, despite its successes, couldn’t sustain itself as the two found their musical aspirations and relative geography diverging. It has been several years since Vitesse’s last release so I sought to find what the two artists are working on today.

Chen started a project with his girlfriend and Vitesse-contributor Celeste Alexander called “Fiber Study”. The duo found it difficult to produce …

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Unfortunately, my interview with Toki Wright yielded far more points of interest than my 500 word limit would allow. Not wanting to just lose all the great things we talked about, I decided to post the rest of the interview here. Enjoy!

Toki Wright on Obama:

“[The economic crisis] has always been there in the urban community, and now its an issue for the entire country to have to deal with. Food shortages, the prison system, violence… Unless these conversations happen, unless we work together as people, we can’t expect anything to change. The good thing about this past election is, whatever side of the issue you were on, people were speaking up. I’m a Barack Obama supporter. …

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Bruce Campbell made this movie one time called Evil Dead. Enough people watched it to warrant two more progressively ridiculous sequels, Evil Dead 2 and The Army of Darkness. The dude who directed them went on to direct the Spiderman film franchise. The dude named Bruce Campbell went on to play Bruce Campbell in the new film “My Name Is Bruce”.

Bruce’s character Ash from the Evil Dead series holds a special place in the hearts of nerds everywhere, special enough for Campbell to have continued to have some sort of a career in film. He has …

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Hello all. Hope you had a good break. Mine was decent enough, filled much more with mashed potatoes than with any sort of cultural writings. But now it’s back to work, so here’s a bunch of things that are going on soon:

There was quite an influx of bad business going on when the Republic National Convention stormed our humble little city, not the least of which include the 18 felony cases stemming from the protests and the persecution of the RNC 8 under the Patriot Act. The lead prosecutor in the felony cases is Susan Gaertner, who is holding a fundraiser for her 2010 DFL nomination at the Minneapolis Club. Friends of the RNC 8 and …

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Last night, I caught the band Dub Trio at the Varsity Theater. I don’t wish to wreck any reps here, but Dub Trio have a profound fondness for Celine Dion and listen to her Canadian warbles backstage to prepare for shows. Take that however you will, but that is the case.

Their sound is far from that of the pop diva, but I was not actually terribly surprised by the band’s fondness. Dub Trio is indeed a trio who perform dub music, of sorts, but the amount of sounds stuffed into the band’s repertoire is such that there could be some Titanic soundtrack stuck way in there. A quick description of the group would be “dub meets metal”, and …

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As December approaches, it’s getting to Christmas special season. Last night I went to Bryant Lake Bowl to attend one of the most infamous Christmas specials of all time, the Star Wars Holiday Special. Technically, this is not a Christmas special, as it takes place a long time ago in a galaxy without a Jesus or a Santa Claus. This is a “Life Day” special, centering on the sacred Wookie Christmas equivalent which, from what I could tell, involves nothing other than being in a house and turning on devices. Oh, and dressing in robes and walking into the sun while singing. Uh, yeah. But this holiday is revered in Wookie culture, and …

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