For an added bonus, look up “In the Air Tonight Live” (posted by Sportadic22) on YouTube and watch the ever-creepy Phil Collins milk the moment for all it’s worth in front of thousands of people.

“Coffee” – Aesop Rock (feat. John Darnielle)
The first time I read the track listing for this song I did a double-take. Why is lo-fi folk singer-songwriting god John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats featured in a rap song? Turns out he’s there to turn what would be a pretty standard Aesop Rock track into something way more awesome. In his typical high and nasal register, Darnielle wails in somewhere around 3:11, singing cryptically about Franzia and vampires and closing the song in a totally rad fashion.

“Olsen Olsen” – Sigur Ros
One of the only truly epic songs I can really think of, this eight-minute long song by the best Icelandic band around really kicks into gear around 4:30 when someone starts plunking out the song’s recurrent theme on a piano, followed by a Phil Collins-worthy drum fill, followed by an orchestra and what sounds like a gigantic choir joining in on that same recurrent theme for a totally rad, totally triumphant minute-and-twenty-seconds before gracefully and gradually falling apart.

“I’ve Seen All Good People” – Yes
The world’s coolest/lamest prog band Yes has a lot of songs with moments that could be considered totally rad, but this 1971 track takes the cake at around 2:44 when the band does what can only be described as a synchronized “doo-doo-doo” over and over again to the melody of the song. Though it’s hard to do it justice in text, listen to the song and you’ll know what I mean. It’s a totally rad, feel-good moment that you listen to on repeat just because it makes you feel so sickeningly happy.

“Tightrope” – Yeasayer
This totally rad moment is simple, yet effective. It happens once at 1:23 and again at 1:36 when lead singer Chris Keating somehow makes the word “nevermind” into one of the most earworm-y things in probably all of music history. I’d tell you this moment is totally rad, but I already did in line 1, so nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermi-i-i-i-ind… (Sorry.)

Illegal filesharing affords curious listeners an immense freedom to discover new bands: the whole risk/reward equation regarding trying new music shifts drastically when you don’t have to pay fifteen dollars for each experiment. This allows the listener in the age of filesharing to listen to innumerable albums which otherwise wouldn’t have been sure enough bets to gamble dollars on. Most music that is made is somewhere between mediocre and trash, and the good stuff is rarely found where you would expect it. Illegal downloads allow people interested in music to slog through lakes of shit without becoming discouraged and giving up before they stumble on hidden gems. And once a filesharer discovers something awesome, he can spread it to all of his friends via what else but online downloads.

Filesharing also erases the problem of getting signed. Underground bands no longer need a record label to distribute their music and no longer need marketing campaigns to get fans far from home. Illegal downloading allows a band to develop a widespread enough audience to tour for without spending a single cent beyond recording costs. And the most prolific downloaders have been shown time and again to go to the most shows and spend the most money on CDs and merch.

So who is filesharing bad for? The most often trotted out and most risible answer is that it’s bad for superfamous musicians. This is absurd, though true. I don’t think a single human being on this planet could work up a tear for a millionaire being denied one more million. People also argue that filesharing is causing the decline of the major record companies. This is also a silly thing to get sad about, though I hope it is true: there is nothing in the history of these companies but the repression of creativity and the denial of profits to successful artists; they are the enemies of music and musicians, and if illegal filesharing does enough damage to destroy them it will only be one more success of this method of musical distribution.

But filesharing is bad for something, and that thing is independent labels. A label needs money to keep on running in a way that is much deeper than the way bands need it: if no records are sold, a band can still play live shows and sell merchandise; there are many bands whose albums are not the primary source of their income, and in fact bands on major labels make very little money from record sales. However, if a label doesn’t sell enough albums, that label closes down. Many independent labels are run by people who care about the music and who see their job to be raising awareness of bands they think are good; independent labels are much more likely to pay their bands a substantial proportion of the profits from their albums.

Though it may be sad to see venerable indie labels closing down and new labels struggling, it does not have real consequences for bands or for listeners. More and more bands prefer to go unsigned and give their albums limited or digital-only releases—with the internet, the major reason to try to get signed—visibility—has disappeared. You can get more people to listen to your music by giving it away than you can by marketing it or by being associated with a trustworthy organization, and, ultimately, if a band makes music for reasons other than getting that music heard, they can get fucked.

It is true that it’s difficult for a band to become financially successful in the age of the internet, but to say that like it’s meaningful implies that before filesharing it was easier, and that is simply untrue. Success is always improbable, if you care about your music you’ll make it whether anyone pays you or not, and many of the most popular musicians of all time never made a cent for anybody but their record company. Filesharing is one of the best things ever to happen to listeners and bands alike.

The first song on The Stooges is called “1969,” and its abrasive, confrontational punk spirit and sound immediately makes it clear that The Stooges are not mourning the end of the 60s. One pictures singer Iggy Pop stumbling through hippie havens, scowling and swearing, subconsciously building the momentum that would explode onto his band’s first record. This was a new kind of rebellion.

Drawing from The Troggs and The Rolling Stones, The Stooges presented a concise, brawny strain of rock that bands have been attempting to imitate ever since. Ron Asheton’s guitar switches from crisp, simple riffs to squealing, screeching, brilliantly discordant solos. Not to be outdone, Iggy Pop announces his arrival by the end of the contemptuous, swaggering first verse of “1969” and needs only the brief 34 minutes of The Stooges to show that he won’t be going anywhere, like him or not (he would probably prefer the latter). The Stooges is a lean piece of punk rock, just as vital now as it was then.

The Strokes - Is This It

In an era where too many people are trying way too hard, Is This It, The Strokes’ debut LP, is effortless. Singer Julian Casablancas’ voice evokes weariness and confidence in equal measures, but it always rolls and croaks at exactly the right times. Guitars and bass toss off perfect hooks, often several in a single song, cause why not if you’ve got a thousand of em. Drummer Fabrizio Moretti puts down such flawless, succinct underpinnings for the songs that you forget that nobody can nail it that well.

These are the kind of skills that musicians earn after tours upon tours and the bruises to prove it. Not these guys. And they’re handsome bastards on top of it.

Perhaps it’s because I looked to Lou Bega and Sugar Ray to define rock and roll for me before this record came along, but this has always been the record against which all others are measured for me. How did a bunch of slacker NYC kids make the best record of the aughts? Hard to explain.

Cloudkicker is a four-piece instro/prog/metal-ish band from Britain, and they’ve put out a slew of EPs in the last few years that are reminiscent of what Pelican could do if they sacked their drummer. Their songs move seamlessly back and forth between sections of gigantic layered feel-good chords and tightly frenetic rhythmically complex headbangers.

The only weakness evident here is structural: while every single riff in these 15 minutes is an excellent riff, there is not much order to them. A riff is played until it is done being played, at which point the next riff starts. The songs aren’t ordered into repeating sections, and there is no sense of build or climax. But Cloudkicker is a pretty new band, and they show clear talent as musicians and riffcrafters. Keep an eye out for their future activities.

Oh, and one more thing: all of their music is free. Go to http://cloudkicker.uk.googlepages.com and download yourself some.

Ethical issues aside, the Drops fare better when they stick to old-time covers. “Don’t Get Trouble In Your Mind” in particular is a fun track, the youth of the players lending it the energy it needs to succeed. This is maybe the best understanding of the record: young people playing music they love with the energy it deserves. But when they stray from their subgenre the results are subpar: “Reynadine” is a real wincer, Tom Waits’ “Trampled Rose” is better left alone, and the only original song on the record, “Kissin’ and Cussin’,” differs greatly from the rest of the album in mood and instrumentation, in addition to not being very good.

But when music is truly great, we are left still in our words. We could talk about, but it would amount to simple praises that would do no respect to the music. So why is it so difficult to discuss great music? It is not, after all, that we are unversed on the subject matter. It is because we were so forcibly possessed by those sounds that words seem unfit to address the experience.

Of course, great music is a language itself—a language of (pure) subjectivity—so, while great music may not be proliferate in the world to any individual’s mind, one may very well meet a person who is moved by his or her own conception of great music regularly. One notices the effect this music has in another’s speech and writing.

In speech, praise can take many forms: stuttering, endless sentences, surprisingly succinct utterances (e.g. “Love it”), grand gesturing, or fluxes in the speed of the delivered verse. In writing, it might take form of some incredible analogy. Often the writer will keep his or her reverence in check and attempt to describe those aspects of the music that were so phenomenal: How the sound was very tight (i.e. fitting to itself), how all the beats seemed to come at the exact moment; tuned to what we might call our being or spirit, the soundness of the structure or execution of it, the sound was well-balanced across the range, et cetra.

Might the difficulty of articulating something beyond these value judgments be a result of the poverty of human language? Or maybe our relatively weak command of this language? There are surely plenty of individuals who are particularly gifted and entertaining to discuss music with, so to say we have weak command might be a bit dramatizing. Even these fluent individuals, though, cannot recreate the intense and deeply-rooted feeling we gain when we encounter great music. It may be necessary to turn to the other arts to speak to the profundity of music. This turning itself is strange—is discourse itself not an art?

Writing and speaking and communicating in general are art forms that can be practiced and mastered—yet they continually speak superficially to the effect of music. Are there some art forms that speak to us more thoroughly? Can a painting, words formed into a poem, a theatrical performance or a drawing approach speaking to the laudability of music? Or would these too prove to be insufficient in communicating our experience? It may be that music speaks to something deeper and beyond human phenomenal experience.

This is consistent with the idea suggested by Schopenhauer that music is inherently nonrepresentational and stands out from other arts in this regard; even if music does have a physical representation (the collision of air molecules) it does not explicitly relate to any physical object. We may argue that we can learn to associate a note or sound with something in the real world, as we do with any language. One might counter that this symbolism in music is not as explicit or concrete as in a constructed language or physical work of art.

Thus, as Schopenhauer might say, we can use the non-representationality of music to escape the representational world or speak to the underlying reality of these objects (Schopenhauer’s Will). In this context, we would say language cannot adhere to music because it speaks to us on a different level. Good music is something that speaks effectively to the real world (the world beyond objects). This idea appears to be in conflict with itself: music both speaks to and provides relief from the underlying reality of the world or the Will. The paradox is relieved somewhat if we understand Schopenhauer’s Will not as some unknowable noumena, or things in themselves, but as experiencing the world beyond objects through ourselves and our all-too-human drives (according to Schopenhauer, primarily through the drive to live and reproduce).

Authors and philosophers have long spoken to the bounds of music and language — namely the terms by which the limits of language are defined. Nietzsche describes some of his early thoughts on music in terms of the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus, each representing, respectively, a sort of structure or semblance; and an intoxication and limitlessness. Nietzsche says “music struggles to inform us about its nature in Apolline images; if we now reflect that music, raised to its highest power . . . it must seem possible that music also knows how to find symbolic expression for its true Dionysian wisdom” (The Birth of Tragedy).

This means that while music can maintain itself in a non-representational and free and transcendental (Dionysian) world, it struggles to speak to the structured, representational (Apolline) world. Nietzsche further exemplified his analogy with Greek practices in theatre-going: the time when the masses came to disband their idea of the individual and join the masses in worship of Dionysus and the universal.

Music can become representational, as can any other language, but it is perhaps some underlying power of music to attach itself to something more profound—the Universal or core part of being—that makes it difficult to speak of in words within structure and convention. No matter how far we push music into an intellectualized process or a social pact, subjectivity will rule and we will continue to speak to this ‘universal’ idea within us all and retire to our comparably weak exclamations.

The section editor, drunken and reeling, clots of spittle and half-chewed food hanging in his beard like butterfly pupas, pulls two rusty and unsolicited pennies from his pocket and throws them in Eric’s face:

It is completely impossible to describe a work of art meaningfully—be it music, film, literature, or work in any other medium. There are only three legitimate uses of the ostensible description of individual works of art:

1) To evaluate the work in relation to the reader’s assumed aesthetic interests; to let a reader know if it is a thing they might want to check out or a thing they shouldn’t waste their time on. This is accomplished by a good review.

2) To clarify something about the work for someone who already has experience with it; to focus somebody’s thoughts on a particular characteristic or quality of a work they’re familiar with. This is accomplished by a good piece of criticism.

3) To describe a personal aesthetic experience derived from a work, disguised as a description of it. This is accomplished by a good literary description of a piece of art.

None of these can properly be said to be meaningful description of the work itself: the first is about the reader’s presumed values; the second takes familiarity with the work for granted; the third is about the writer’s personal experience. In none of them is the actual substance of the work evoked.

This duo has been garnering a tremendous amount of buzz around the blog circuit, gaining accolades for their infusion of standard hip-hop beats and the angelic croon of lead singer Sarah Barthel. If you were in a Starbucks within the past month, they were the download of the week, they just signed to the esteemed labels, Barsuk and Ghostly International (Ra Ra Riot, Menomena, Mates of State, School of Seven Bells), and they’ll be at South by Southwest this March in Austin to support their debut album, “Eyelid Movies,” which has already been designated an NPR focus of the week. They’re from Saratoga Springs, New York, and they recorded their beautifully produced EP in a barn. Radio K is a big fan; they played at our CMJ (College Music Journal) broadcast in New York City and snatched the #8 spot on our annual Top 77 albums of the year.

Small Black

Information about this Brooklyn duo is scarce, but they have been profiled by Pitchfork, Stereogum, and a slew of other websites, especially when Washed Out (touring with Beach House this spring) remixed their gorgeous single, “Despicable Dogs.” Originally known as Slowlands, the band disbanded and then promptly reassembled themselves under their current moniker. Their tunes are filled with ethereal background noise, spacey vocals and shoegazy melodies that take complete hold of the listener. There really isn’t a way to describe what Small Black sounds like. It’s just really great.

A Sunny Day in Glasgow

Let me first admit, in case my subsequent fawning becomes too much, that this band produced my favorite album of last year and one of my most treasured listening experiences. If you haven’t heard of the Philadelphia band A Sunny Day in Glasgow, you aren’t the only one. Only two albums into their career over the span of three years, this group has flown under the radar for quite some time, but their sophomore album, “Ashes Grammar,” was one of the best reviewed albums of 2009. Suffering from severe line-up changes, the band never expected to create what many regard as a landmark album for dream pop, and over the span of 23 tracks, ranging from 15 seconds to 6 ½ minutes, it totally baffles you how this many layers of music can come together so seamlessly. Incoherent lyrics shimmer through dense layers of instrumentation and huge, striking beats, and each song is a completely different experience and idea. Expect big things from these guys; even after a few months since the release of “Ashes Grammar,” their last.FM wall has exploded with a daily stream of listener praise. If you are interested, check out the session they did at Radio K back in November at the “In-Studios” tab at radiok.org.

The band I’m referring to is a little-known hardcore group called Cowards. Somehow, after witnessing their “last” set at the Beat Coffeehouse and being totally blown out of my gourd by their original brand of prog-infused hardcore punk, I’ve scored a ride up to Duluth with the bassist to check out their true final gig as a band. This is going to be the good one I’m told.

As we coast past completely whited-out scenes of forest pines, the soundtrack of our little road trip takes a complete one hundred and eighty degree turn—the washed-out percussion of the first track of Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” pours out the speaker to my left. It is only then that I remember the original prompt that I was given for this article: “why file sharing is wrong.” A bold statement that screw-you-music-industry-we’re-letting-the-consumer-decide masters Radiohead might find laughable. So, you might be able to sympathize with me on why that little doozy had slipped my mind. I love file sharing. Everyone loves file sharing. FREE CONTENT, get your FREE CONTENT right here, all day, every day, on the beautiful new age invention we have embraced called the Internet.

For bands like Cowards, however, free content is not the prettiest combination of two words in the English language. What most people would call “free content”—a self-released four song EP entitled Solitude—that can be mindlessly obtained with a few clicks, is in reality made up of the blood and sweat of three hardworking artists who happen to share the name Kyle.

Yes, file sharing is an amazing tool for small unknown bands to build a fan base by giving away their content. Megastars such as Radiohead also don’t have to worry about file sharing affecting their net worth too much either—they’ve proved that their following is willing to donate a hefty chunk of change. It is the bands stuck in between these two opposite poles of notoriety whose livelihood is essentially ransacked by the Internet pirate.

In an age that saw the major record label keel over and reveal its slowly dying overstuffed abdomen of commercial pap, the music lover was treated to a rapid rise in independent artists willing to create art that challenged their listeners. With Pitchfork and Pandora, we now have more music than our iPods or wallets can possibly handle. That being said, we do not live in a whimsical socialist state that supports the arts. The only way in which musicians will be able to continue to create that original “content” is if the individual consumer throws some bones their way.

Cowards’ last show was held in the basement of Kyle’s (guitar) parents house in Duluth. Nestled shoulder to shoulder in a dingy basement, circle pit included, with almost 70 kids of varying ages and dress was an inspiring and humbling experience. Cowards finished their set, and I realized I had witnessed one of the most energetic and amazing live shows of my life.

For a completely D.I.Y. produced show, the band accepted a good amount of donations as cover. Kids are still willing to pay to see punk rock. Leaving Duluth with this firsthand renewal of faith, I felt that Minneapolis might just feel a little bit warmer upon my return.

It may simply be my aversion to any discussion of morality that marks my distaste for The Machinist. It could also be the high hopes I had for its’ seemingly intricate and inquisitive plotline. Even until the end, despite the better part of my ego telling me precisely what the protagonist’s reality was, I refused to accept the obviousness of the resolution. I was set on a conclusion that I still couldn’t decipher—something I was waiting for the film to show me. Instead the film gives an overdone facsimile of the psychology of guilt, one that questions both the continuity of experience and the ability of the mind to harbor illness.

If I were to concern myself primarily with what The Machinist contemplates, in regard to morality, I would ask myself: is the guilt experienced by the protagonist, Trevor Reznik, a guilt birthed in fear or compassion? Unfortunately, I think it is the former—another idea that repels any preference for the film. The constant depiction of restrictions on life—the hostile workplace, Trevor’s materialistic notes (“Buy more bleach”), paying for sex, portrayal of a faulty police state—tell me perhaps there is nothing more than fear to Trevor’s delirium. Where is the humanity?

The subject matter is not the basis for all my dislike of the film. Perhaps both actors and writers are to blame for several careless, poorly-delivered lines sprinkled through the film. These lines took me from the cinematic moment and continuity that The Machinist requires to get across the relatively lackluster imagery. If the viewer is pulled from the harsh blues that the film is predominately shot in, the few scenes that do not immediately depict these tones (they’re outside, usually on suburban tree-lined streets) lose their effect.

Deniz Rudin

The thing that is the strangest about looking at a person whose skin is stretched so tight around their head that it is basically like looking at a skull is the bits of a human face that are not made of bones: the nose and the ears. Imagine a skull with a nose and ears. It’s eerie.

The brain pan curving up out of the back of the neck, arms like a snowman’s arms and legs long and sharp, the ribcage like lungs, spine running up the back like a lizard’s, like a stegosaur, and from it sprout shoulderblades like wings. Tiny bird’s bones. The uppermost tips of the pelvis clearly visible above the waistline of the pants. And the way it moves: this thing you’re used to seeing held up by a plastic stand in the science classroom moving under its will, like in a video game. The cheeks like big flat blades. This bizarre, otherworldly machinery somewhere down inside most people shown as clearly as it can be shown on a living person.

The body is obviously the star here and if Christian Bale would just keep his mouth shut and let the camera stay silently on him like a fly on a sideshow freak we might have a decent short film on our hands. If only his palms were thin and his fingers long and skinny, his hands like daddy longlegs.

But it is wrong to place the blame on Bale, for he was given words to speak and he did them justice. Though the film claims a Dostoyevsky novella as its main inspiration, the truth is that it borrows so heavily from Fight Club that a convincing plagiarism case could be made, and compared to either piece of source material it is poorly written and constructed, downright idiotic. And though the direction and cinematography are decent and at times better than decent, I feel like the director should not get off without punishment; he chose to shoot this script.

This movie is a passing well-shot work of dimestore existentialism and hollywood surrealism that succeeds only briefly in disguising its essential triteness, and its ending retroactively unravels anything that might have been interesting about what went before.

And the fucking music:
They tried to soundtrack “bleak” with oboes.

Remember Kel Mitchell? That funny bastard who loved orange soda on all of those Nickelodeon shows in the 90s? “Kenan & Kel”? “All That”? “Good Burger”? What the fuck ever happened to that guy? Answer: He’s gone off the proverbial deep end and has begun a new life of making bizarre YouTube skits. This is genuinely crazy stuff, folks. It’s like he’s been on a different planet for the last ten years and the only thing he brought back with him was a batshit sense of humor. Watch the breakdown commence on his YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/mrkelmitchell

I asked as many people as possible to review the same album for this issue. My idea was to showcase the essential and inescapable subjectivity of criticism, and to that end I chose a challenging record: The Purging Trilogy, a two-hour-long avant-guitar album by guitarist Mick Barr. The record is split into three parts: Ixoltion, Sacreth, and Hymns. As I expected, every assertion put forth in one of these reviews is contradicted in another, and above all every reviewer displayed their personal style of criticism.

Pete Noteboom
It’s a massive translucent pirate ship filled with damned souls holding scimitars cutting through the clouds. It’s a gigantic zeppelin exploding in mid-air amid a hail of flaming comets. It’s a young boy watching from the mountains with mouth agape as extraterrestrials decimate his small village with huge futuristic laser beams. It’s the dark matter that holds universes together. It’s high, high above you. It’s exhilarating electric narcolepsy. It’s a new kind of Raga. It’s long, it’s challenging, it’s natural. It’s guitars!!!!!!!!!

Smudge
Mick Barr’s solo effort under the name Ocrilim is almost two and a half hours of mediocre musicianship, slow and self-indulgent guitar noodling, and redundant harmonies. The whole thing reminds me of the posthumous J Dilla record Donuts in that it sounds like pages haphazardly ripped out of a musician’s sketchbook; no song sounds complete. I can only think that the title of this record comes from the feeling Barr got when he finally vomited out all of the musical refuse deep in his gut. The Purging Trilogy isn’t abrasive enough to be noise rock or desolate enough to be drone or doom metal; this is an interlude in background noise.

Andrew Bergstrom
I was very impressed by The Purging Trilogy, a composition from the mind of Mick Barr. Multilayered tracks of guitar grind and shred a wordless tale; the more-than-two-hour-long trilogy sounds like an opera for guitar, and Barr’s insane speed and somewhat spastic playing style evoke the stage performance of Paganini, who played as though possessed. Though it may be difficult to appreciate on the first listen, the album is wonderfully executed, epic and welcome push on the boundaries of music and of art.

Kevin Tully
The set-up of this set of records is simple: it’s basically 2 hours and 12 minutes of one dude playing guitar. Now, I’m totally in awe of anyone that can see a project of that magnitude to completion—that’s fucking impressive, I don’t care what you’re into—but is appreciating this behemoth the same as enjoying it? I understand why people like heavy-handed experimental musicians like Ocrilim, and if this sort of music is your thing then you’re gonna love The Purging Trilogy. It’s just not my thing. I’m not asking for the two hours of my life I spent listening to it back, I’m just saying that I probably wouldn’t do it again.

Angela Sanders
For an album that is over two hours long, not a whole lot happens. The Purging Trilogy is a huge undertaking for the listener, and while I can appreciate Barr’s technical skills as a guitarist, I cannot help but be dissatisfied with the product as a whole. “Ixoltion” and “Sacreth” have a constant drone in the background and not much layered on top of it. “Hymns” had some variety, but the technical aspect had lost its intrigue and I felt like I was listening to my life just hum by. Music should be more engaging than that.

Eric Brew
The Purging Trilogy is like eating processed, organic sugar straight from the packaging. It’s difficult to put into words: it’s absurdly satisfying as it’s being consumed, but in retrospect you realize you probably shouldn’t have eaten it; your tastebuds are shocked. Everything will taste flat for a while. Mick Barr’s sense of timing is incredible, and the depth of his compositions calls for every listener’s veneration of his talent. The structure can also be overwhelming if you pay too close attention. It can feel over-processed, as if Barr were a supercomputer calculating his next lick according to data pulled from an impressionist painting. Barr is obsessed with pattern and arrangement that can be too redolent of sugar and salt crystals at times.

Sam Johnston
In the time it takes to listen to The Purging Trilogy I can listen to “Bad Romance” 27 times, but fate has other plans for me.  With the first searing chord of “Ixolition” the walls of my house are blown down and there before me hovers, impossibly, Ocrilim himself, illuminated only by a thousand orbs of mythical energy floating upward against the pull of gravity.  He reaches toward me and issues a single command, “Take my hand, slave, and let us be free.”  I have no choice but to comply.

Zach McCormick
These songs, while all virtuosic and technical and lofty, aren’t that engaging. Great playing simply does not equal a great album, and this record will only appeal to diehard genre fans, who will probably love it because it’s a masterpiece. Everyone else is going to run in horror away from the mental sandpaper that is layer upon layer of buzzing, treble-heavy guitar constantly switching tempo. If Rachmaninov had been raised in a stoner metal band, this is probably what he would have come up with.

Natalie Heath
If I were to make a movie about a cat trying to escape from a paper bag that has been set on a conveyor belt inching toward some sort of giant smashing device, I would choose Ocrilim’s Purging Trilogy as the soundtrack. And this is no ordinary cat on its way to certain death; this is like the greatest cat, you love this cat, and you care deeply that it escapes. The intensity and scratchiness of Ocrilim’s like 200 guitars would provide the perfect musical narrative for my gruesome cat death movie: the movement of the guitars would correspond to the wild movements of the cat and the whole thing would probably say something really profound about the futility of struggle; I mean, this paper bag is really thick and cats aren’t that strong.

Sage Dahlen
This album could be described as a soundtrack to a torrential rainstorm, or a migraine headache. It’s long, full of self-indulgent, unremarkable noodling with some badass grunge and metal riffs interspersed. (I’ll save you some time: the best track is part 3 of “Sacreth.”) The Trilogy, however, is not long in an I-want-my-life-back way, because it never fully holds your attention. You can troll around on the Internet or make dinner while Mick Barr twiddles his fingers over guitar strings.

Peter Starkebaum
It all starts with a pain-bearing, angst-spiked guitar. In this horror there is an attraction; the notes feel sensitive and bare, like an open nerve being sliced. A sense of relief comes in Sacreth when the percussion grounds the relentless shredding; the album’s chaotic mood finds stability. And then come the hymns like a ghostly reflection of the first two segments, ending the album with a feeling of completeness and distinct direction. The Purging Trilogy provokes perspective and true emotion, but if someone asked me if I enjoyed it, I would have to say that it was like picking a scab: it took some cold shivers and necessary pain to get in to the warm, sensitive and bloody.

Michael Hessel-Mial
I am a tourist. I went to one of those steakhouses where you eat a 64-ounce steak and get a free shirt. I thought it would be easy. Instead, I ate about four ounces and passed out next to the baked potato. That’s how I feel about this album; it’s too damn long. But delicious.

Deniz Rudin
At its best The Purging Trilogy is stark and mythic, gigantic and cold. If you distilled all the high points of the record—the longing of the opening riff of “Sacreth 4”, the meditative grief of the first two perfect hymns, the ecstatic triumph of the melodic sections of “Ixoltion 1”—into one hour-long thing, it would be an absolutely incredible album, but for every piece of the record that I love, there is a corresponding misstep. Mick Barr is possessed of genius, but like most prolific artists he is undiscerning; he churns out two and a half hours of music and in it are both masterstrokes and mediocrities, often within the same song. In The Purging Trilogy Barr shows his potential to craft emotionally affecting music, but he hasn’t figured it out quite yet.

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Watch Mick Barr play guitar:

Beach House loses nothing and gains much on Teen Dream, their debut on Sub Pop. Still present are the lush organs that have defined the band, but they’re brighter this time around. Readily identifiable are Victoria Legrand’s thick vocals, but here they sound more confident, with traces of Stevie Nicks wandering in and out. Beach House are certainly sticking to what they have done in the past, but this album is far more consistent and accessible than either of their previous efforts.

The duo are masters of managing space. Occasionally recalling the auditory parsimony championed by upstarts The xx, Beach House are also not afraid to pile on the layers. “Silver Soul” begins with a riff Sleater-Kinney would have written if Lil Wayne gave them access to his cough syrup stash, and the band adds plodding drums and distorted synth underneath to provide some snug accompaniment. Then, in the first indisputable sign that this album is going to be something special, Legrand repeatedly sings, “It is happening again,” until the song’s conclusion, complemented by crisp “ah ahhs” in the background.

Beach House? Pop? Oh yeah.

Come to think of it, all these new “chillwave” kids on the block could take a lesson from Teen Dream. The whole record is a proclamation that subtle songs can also be triumphant. Whereas Beach House has spent most of their efforts trafficking in ambience up to this point, Teen Dream takes a half step forward, especially as Legrand’s often androgynous voice rises to the forefront toward the conclusion of several songs.

The standout track, if that can be said of a record that exhibits no apparent weaknesses, is “Walk In The Park.” In stark contrast to “Gila,” the best song off of Devotion, “Walk In The Park” shows no hesitation to engage the listener. It’s flooded with nostalgia, from the constant organ to the simple, cheap drums. But instead of letting the sentiment wash over you, Legrand steps into the most engaging melody on the album in the chorus, conceding, “In a matter of time/It would slip from my mind/In and out of my life/You would slip from my mind.” Whether it’s the hard “t” in “matter” or the fact that Legrand finally gives herself the space to sound anthemic, it’s startling to hear Beach House making music this direct.

The Aughts hurled more hyperbole at us than anyone could have asked for, and I hesitate to sully our new decade with more of the same. But what the hell: I think we’ve got a masterpiece on our hands.

Ocrilim - Beautiful guitarfucking.
-Deniz Rudin, Editor, S&V

Scout Niblett
-Peter Poght, Contributor

There is a recent and tremendous surge in the popularity, both general and youtubular, of the self-consciously or “ironically” bad, but people shooting for so-bad-it’s-good generally end up at so-bad-it’s-even-worse-for-trying. In this climate, Bangs’ gigantic and sincere awfulness is just the pick-me-up a serious camphound needs. Check out this fantastic video from Sudan’s finest rapper.

Nile has been absolutely ruining skulls since 1993 with their highly technical brand of death metal. Off-meter blast-beats set the foundation for six-string acrobatics that would make those Shadows Fall lightweights drop trou and shamefully expose their puffy shredless labia. Nile’s guitar solos have been known to cause spontaneous, party-clearing air-guitar sessions, often climaxing in torpedo-esque dive-bombs that quite simply create erections. Nile is further differentiated from their oafish death metal brethren by frontman Karl Sanders’ cerebral lyrics, centering on rites of ancient Egyptian antiquity. Both technically and intellectually, there is unquestionably more to Nile’s brutality than the run-of-the-mill death metal conventions.

However, seeing such eminence in the flesh I was struck by the shtick and limitations of Nile’s genre—halfway through the set I realized that I had seen this all before: a violent, smelly moshpit full of flatlining brainwaves; masturbatory, cookie-cutter inter-song banter; shirts for sale that actually say CAN YOU HEAR US… DEATH TO JESUS; musicians’ faces full of disingenuous anger, as though they aren’t incredibly lucky to be able to travel the world making fucking music.

As quality as Nile’s music is, death metal is a stale genre, as this show reflected. If you want music to engage you technically or to genuinely scare you (a pretty epic “if”), there are a number of heavy bands worth listening to that don’t follow the worn-out death metal formula (1349, Genghis Tron, and Converge all come to mind). But in the end, any night that involves an entire room full of people yelling “CAST! DOWN! THE! HERETIC!” gets a big ol’ hell yeah in my book.

I want to help you, but I can’t understand why you think this movie is so important. You hate nature and spend most of your time at home playing WoW (or at least you used to; now it’s the Avatar video game). If you were really to go to the planet of Pandora, which I don’t think is even a planet but actually a moon, you would be eaten alive in minutes by those big pleather cats, or crushed by that hammerhead Triceratops. Even if you made it to that big tree, how would you feel if some big blue dude showed up at our house and started imitating the way we lived? Watching us from the corner of our kitchen while we drink our coffee every morning, Jane Goodall style? I doubt your idols would be thrilled at the prospect of this.

I’ve tried to understand, I really have. Remember when I bought you tickets to New Zealand, where the movie was filmed? I thought you would love to be as close as possible to Pandora, but you scoffed at me: “The Na’vi don’t actually live on Earth, stupid.” I wanted to respond, “Yes, I know that, honey, but they don’t live on Pandora either,” but I wasn’t ready to talk you down from the roof of the garage while you threatened to jump and be reborn under Eywa.

Your obsession with this fantasy is really starting to get to me. Every night while you sleep in your homemade avatar chamber, I fantasize about cutting off your braid that you try to “link” to the dog with. I dream of better days, when I could kiss you without being covered in blue paint. Every day as I leave for work, I know that I might come home to find you curled up under the tree in the front yard, trying to transfer to your avatar body through the roots. I try to rehearse what I will say to the neighbors, but nothing sounds right.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed – Agorapocalypse

Who would’ve thought ANb would put out an album with an average song length of over two minutes? The world’s fastest grind band slows down a little, with mindblowing results. Absolutely fucking insane thrash trades off with insanely heavy riffs, with the best drum programming in human history. This record has the perfect grindcore mood: pissed off and wild and gross, offensive just for the sake of it, and ultimately lighthearted, playful, and carefree. But what matters most is that this band has finally become more about the music than the spectacle, though they’re still further over the top than just about anybody else.

If you had to decide whether or not this is an album you are interested in based on only one track:
“Question of Integrity”

Andrew Bird – Noble Beast

The most peaceful and pastoral record from the Bird, and also his best-produced. Every track is a lush and constantly-shifting mix of layered instrumentation; each verse and chorus of each song is tracked differently, and though the initial draw of the album is the vocal hooks, it is this diversity of instrumentation that draws you back again and again. An intelligent and skillful album—a treat for longtime Bird fans and first-time listeners alike.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Tenuousness”

Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion

The first AC record to be even in the same ballpark of good as their fans think it is, though it’s not the best album of the decade, or even of the year. The Collective have pulled off a complicated balancing act, creating an album accessible enough to find a wide audience while staying bizarre and complex enough to satisfy their extant fanbase. The album combines organic psychedaelia with partystopping electronics, peppered with field recordings and deep, writhing sounds. This music is thick, wet, and full of life.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“In the Flowers”

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Eating Us

The feel-good album of forever, a huge and bright and primary-colored sound that overwhelms whatever you’re feeling: sublimity by force. The album is sticky and sweet, weapons-grade happiness. Way better than a SAD lamp.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise”

Dälek – Gutter Tactics

Standing on the blacksand beach that is a rap record: beats pound in the ocean like waves beneath which lies a churning underbelly of anxious sound, undulating and nebulous. You can see dimly through the water the shapes of words shimmering like fish. The wave of static breaks, the sky whitewashed with noise.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Gutter Tactics”

Krallice – Dimensional Bleedthrough

No other black metal album is so virtuosic, so guitar-oriented, so consistent. Possessed of both clarity and rawness. Mick Barr’s guitar melodies are catchy without being like anybody else’s. Absolutely mesmerizing, so constant in its energy and speed that it becomes meditative. The record is balls-out no-punches-pulled epic, eschewing the usual gloom and overwrought melancholy of the genre to provide an hour and a quarter of downright ecstatic music, an entire album of huge closing tracks.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
the last two minutes of “The Mountain”

The Mountain Goats – The Life of the World to Come

This record is the first unqualified success of TMG’s hi-fi sound, their first studio-recorded album that is completely unembarrassing in instrumentation and orchestration; the production of this album is spacious and engaging, with huge drums, warm electronics, reverberating piano and subtle violin textures. But as always with this band, the reason to care is the writing. As we’ve come to expect, each song on this record displays beautiful language and emotional subtlety and depth. The record is also a rarity in TMG’s extensive catalog: a well-crafted and coherent unit from the prolific but inconsistent John Darnielle, known for making good songs but not good albums.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Matthew 25:21”

The Paper Chase – Someday This Could All Be Yours, Vol. 1: The Calamities

A deceptive album: totally catchy but genuinely threatening; this is pop music pumped full of infection and disease, accessible hooks with bitterly misanthropic lyrics. Every instrument a little damaged, a little bent. Small touches of violence and discordance throughout every song, a complex patchwork of organic and digital sound. A fluidly-connected collection of sternly epic death marches and barely-controlled cathartics, each one seeping into the next. Producer/frontman John Congleton has come up with brand-new guitar noises, wild and screaming tones twisted out of recognizable shape. This band has a perfect sound, a gold standard for production junkies.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“what should we do with your body (the lightning)”

Ulcerate – Everything is Fire

Witness the percolation of a new style; if this is death metal then all death prior can be considered proto-. This album is beyond new: it is an album from the future. An alien thing come to our planet fully-formed; a melodic system from some other world. Spider-riffs weave webs around each other creating incomprehensible and amorphous rhythms. Many of the record’s best moments are bleak landscapes, but even at its most aggressive the riffing is abstract.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Drown Within”

Zu – Carboniferous

Heavy bass, wild barry sax, pumping electronics and frenetic drumming centered around complex snare rolls. The saxophone used alternatingly for melody, for bassline, for percussion and for insane textures. A unique sound: heavy, intensely polyrhythmic, violent and celebratory, indebted to things like Lightning Bolt and John Zorn without sounding like anything but itself. This is bizarre, surprising, confrontational and meticulously constructed music; an impeccable album for a special breed of listener: those in it for the sound and the rhythm, not for a tune to hum.

IYHTDWONTIAAYAIIBOOOT:
“Chthonian”

15 Albums that I liked a lot:

Afgrund – Vid Helvetets Grindar
Riff-heavy grindcore from Scandinavia.
Anni Rossi – Rockwell
Newsom-y chirping and viola.
Antigama – Warning
Avant-grind. Interesting drumkit.
Augury – Fragmentary Evidence
Prog/tech/death.
Behemoth – Evangelion
The best Nile album of 2009, by just a smidgen.
Bergraven – Till Makabert Väsen
Weird, abstract, quiet black metal.
John Zorn – Alhambra Love Songs
Continuing Zorn’s listenable streak.
Khanate – Clean Hands Go Foul
Their most subtle, least cheesy; very menacing.
Mochipet – Master P on Atari
Dance music that is also listenable.
Ocean Chief – Den Förste
Best traditional doom since pre-hiatus YOB.
S.K.E.T. – Depleted Uranium Weapons
Excellent powernoise, punishing but danceable.
Shining – VI/Klagopsalmer
A real rocker from the suicidal Swedes.
St. Vincent – Actor
Catchy enough for you, bizarre enough for me.
Sunn O))) – Monoliths & Dimensions
Without a doubt the best ever Sunn O))) record.
Why? – Eskimo Snow
The (more) bizarre, poppy(er) flip-side to Alopecia.

5 Albums that other people liked:

Roy Montgomery & Grouper – Split
by Eric Brew

I admit my love for Grouper makes the mention of this album borderline self-serving. I could go either way with the 18-minute track by Roy Montgomery on the split, but Liz Harris’ tracks (playing as Grouper) always captivate me—usually late at night, when I’m on the edge of drowsiness with a small degree of disgust from the day still in my gut. The tracks are (as is most of Harris’ music) brooding, crackling and deep. Her voice, though often indecipherable, is like a drug that, once swallowed, catches onto some part near the inside of your left lung and never leaves—a sort of damage you accept and forever carry.

Akron/Family – Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free
by Pete Noteboom

This album will make you feel like you’re giving birth to magical multi-colored eggs filled with hope, truth, miracles, and everlasting friendship. Akron/Family sounds like a couple indie kids took mushrooms and wandered off into the woods to roast some marshmallows and talk about how seriously intense it is to grow up. On the band’s epic quest to Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free, they wander through the land of dancetastic party plucking and have a gander at the American dream while their collective brain swells with appreciation of The Beauty Inherent In All Things in a breathtaking cacophony of electric light.

The Flaming Lips – Embryonic
by Kevin Tully

It’s hard to believe that the same guys whose last album featured a song called “The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song” and whose stage show is filled with giant balloons and confetti cannons recorded Embryonic. My first impression of the album was that it sounded like if robots with fuzzy guitars soundtracked a James Bond movie. Then I decided that it sounded more like if robots with fuzzy guitars and an evil wizard soundtracked a James Bond movie where the entire thing was just James Bond panicking for no reason. Then I remembered that it was, in fact, The Flaming Lips.

Nomo – Invisible Cities
by Zach McCormick

Those floating, ethereal, percussive tones that drift mystically throughout Nomo’s music are the product of an amplified Kalimba, an African thumb piano. The Ann Arbor, MI band runs such simple instruments through a slew of effects pedals to craft everything from dulcet marimba chords to searing, distorted guitar lines. Calling Nomo an Afro-Funk group seems a woefully inadequate way to describe the band’s incredibly diverse range of influences: thick, complex horn arrangements recall 70’s funk, while reverb-drenched fuzz guitar gives the album a psychedelic edge. Truly one of the most unique and compelling records of 2009.

Ke$ha – Animal
by Sam Johnston

When Ke$ha was done puking in Paris Hilton’s closet, she turned around and puked into my heart, and I’m not sure if I should thank her or not.

Smith posits that the role of the journalist is moving farther away from the old metaphor of “gatekeeper” to the “keeper of the aviary.” What he means is that imminence of social media in today’s journalism media has made “tweeting” and forwarding top stories on social media like Facebook the primary means of news consumption.

“Custom news landscapes” is a concept the program attempts to describe without presenting biased paranoid implications. Of course today everyone has the capability to decide what he or she would like to consume in the news. Newspapers worked the same way. With digital media there is simply more information to comb through, which allows people to “hunt and gather” as Rosenstiel claims. This hunter/gatherer concept of news has made news organizations more specialized, as speculated by Smith who, despite his proximity to the recent Fort Hood shooting, decided not to send a single reporter. Instead he aggregated the breaking news as he always does on his site from CNN. Smith stood firm with his stance as a “Politics and Issues” newspaper, as he defined the Texas Tribune, and stood out of the way of the big news organizations who would undoubtedly have the means to cover the story in a more thorough way.

The concept of “custom news” is also furthering the importance of individual journalists, who have taken an absurd role as living movable monuments in the media today. Just watch the TV coverage of the 20-year anniversary of unified Germany. The anniversary and celebration was not news enough by itself, so I watched Tom Brokaw stand split screen with himself 20 years ago, while both of them talked simultaneously in the present and past tenses. Which was more important, the end of an awful era in German history or the fact that Brokaw was there to break the news? NBC had 20 years to think about it, and they sided with Brokaw. Is this the result of blog culture? The result of “personalized content?”
The problem with personalized news was addressed by a 25-year-old caller who speculated that a lot of people her age ignore the news because it is “too negative.” This begs the question­—what is on this type of person’s “personalized newspaper”? Is the digital news world enabling people who are addicted to avoidance? Conceivably I could create a page of news that specializes in golden retriever puppy and duckling love and be the world’s preeminent expert on soft news. Since the “news landscape” is now customizable, points of view will become much more static while they are reinforced daily by the assurances of custom news stories we choose to read.

No longer can people assume that I’m informed enough to get into an intelligent conversation about the alleged Ampatuan clan massacre of government officials in the Philippines. Instead they’ll have to subscribe to my Twitter page and discover that I’m more interested in how Lou Dobbs is trying to reconcile with Latinos in order to allegedly run for president. And we’ll discuss the allegations, just like the good old days in our little aviary.

Everyone on “The Future of News” agrees that journalism has to change in order to accommodate a new culture with new demands on the industry. I would take this fact further and argue that the necessity of being an informed (albeit bummed out) citizen is now our responsibility, which is exciting. For us normal, concerned, and empathetic human beings the proactive nature of digital news’ “hunting and gathering” gives us the opportunity to explore different points of view that wouldn’t have permeated the editorial or even letters to the editor columns in newspapers.

The premiere was entitled Prostitution Behind the Veil, in which an Iranian woman who fled to Sweden goes back to report on the lives of oppressed women who have no other way of sustaining themselves. Drugs, little children, and condoms scatter the house of two women who struggle to preserve their health and happiness.

The bitter documentary was followed by more cheerful Nordic shorts to conclude the Friday evening on a brighter note. These buoyant shorts were illuminated with friendship and love, focusing in on the varied nature of relationships people tend to have. In The Lake, two women search for a lost artifact in a slow-moving rowboat. As they keep fishing, young lads take their bait and wind up on board, until it gets too crowded. Then one of the ladies jumps into the lake to take her own chance of finding a love boat.

Mr. Mustache, another favorite, is a lovely narrative depicting the quirks of men with facial hair and its importance in their everyday lives. In Little Man, we meet a boy who studies and composes a journal that documents the art of seduction, only to be outsmarted by his female counterpart.
An evening at the Nordic Film Festival left guests feeling appreciative and elated. The heartwarming ambience, however, was counterbalanced by the chilly auditorium. Leaving high expectations for next year, I hope to see Nordic Lights return in 2010. .

Visually, Fantastic is radiant beyond imagination. The stop-motion animation gives it a unique feel; if it had been made with computer-generated animation like a Pixar movie, the cartooniness would have taken over. Sure, The Incredibles received great acclaim in its attempts to mimic a blockbuster, but it could have easily been shot as a live action film.

Anderson took advantage of the animation style to bring the audience closer to the film and perform shots “that you can’t do in live action,” he says in the New York Times’ “Anatomy of a Scene” film commentary clips. “There’s freedom that we got from working this way that I really enjoyed,” he adds. The scenes in particular are done with what-may-seem-cheesy-if-done-wrong Looney Toons-style thematics. A perfect example is when the camera pulls back to reveal the entire cross section of underground tunnels, or the literally confused eyes of Mr. Fox and his friend Kylie.

The story is also one that suits all kinds. Mr. Fox goes out to steal chickens. This plot, however, quickly turns against him. The antagonist farmers go after not only him, but his friends and family as well. There is suspense and anticipation gripping in every scene, while its despondency is kept at a minimum – which was the downfall of last month’s release Where the Wild Things Are. If you can, pony up the money and see this movie in theatres. It is truly fantastic.

Standout tracks include “No One Loves Me And Neither Do I,” “New Fang,” “Elephants,” “Caligulove,” and “Gunman.”

Community derives its name from the location and premise of the show: community college. Perhaps by happenstance, but more likely on purpose, the show’s creation comes at a time when real community colleges are being put into the spotlight—TIME Magazine recently ran an article on the subject: “Can Community Colleges Save the U.S. Economy?”

This is all beside the point: the show is absolutely brilliant. Community takes a cliché and turns it on its head. Instead of having the high school quarterback be dreamy, the snarky lawyer be affluent, the old guy be a kook, and the geeky girl be, well, geeky, what if they were all mixed together in a community college? Now the star quarterback has no luster, the snarky lawyer has no affluent job, the old kooky guy is trying to make new friends, and the geeky girl is trying to redefine herself.

The main character of the show, Jeff Winger, the snarky lawyer, is played by Joel McHale the host of The Soup—a show akin to Entertainment Tonight, except purposefully funny. His goal is the same as the other six main characters’: they need to get their college degrees.

The plot is new and fresh, but what makes the show truly great is the cast. Although McHale plays a significant part, he is able to play off of every other character’s quarks much like Jason Bateman in Arrested Development or Tina Fay in 30 Rock.

The people who know the show are passionate about it. I would say get on the bandwagon, but there are not enough people who know about it yet, so there isn’t one. Enough brilliant shows have been cancelled; let’s not let this happen again. Watch it.

“I’d like people to walk away questioning what it is by their nature that makes them entertained by certain aspects of media,” writer/director James Vogel says. “Why do we as an audience expect to see violence and sex in films, and why are we entertained by it?”

Vogel, and his co-writers and stars, Ezra Stead and Greg Hernandez, clearly put a lot of thought into the meaning behind the film’s graphic images. Their story tells of a screenwriting student who falls in love with a charismatic underworld figure while seeking experience to inform his scripts. The relationship between characters Scott and T.K., who get off on the violent acts they commit, is ripe with barely concealed undertones.

“There exists this kind of tension in gangster films, a homosexual subtext,” Vogel says. “Characters who revel in violence are somewhat fascinated with each other.”

Stead also points to the relationship between sex and violence. “Wanting to kill someone for the experience is like trying to lose your virginity,” he says.

Vogel and Stead met as students at Minneapolis Community and Technical College. Vogel asked Stead to help him write the script and star in the film, and Stead suggested his friend Hernandez for the role of T.K. They shot the film in 16 days for a budget of $8,000.

Though pleased with their finished product, the filmmakers are also eager to hear negative responses. “It’s a very personalized experience and a polarized reaction, and that’s what interests me,” Vogel says. Stead agrees. “We’d rather someone hate our film than just brush it off and forget about it,” he adds.
They hope that the next step for The City will be the festival circuit and distribution. The film will be screened again locally at the Minneapolis Underground Film Festival, Dec. 5 at 7 p.m.

But why is this? Galleries won’t stay afloat on their own – most continue their humble existence on donations and sales of the artwork they feature. Between Minneapolis’s free museums and innumerable art galleries, we’re an art-spoiled crowd – sometimes we need to be reminded of the careful world these galleries exist in.

Franklin Art Works

To your right hang a cluster of old cell phones. Occasionally one will start to buzz, which will grow into a low trembling roar until the entire suspended pile is in a frenzied vibration. But other than that, it’s a bare white room. If you go late enough in the day there might not even be anyone at the reception desk – the whole place might feel abandoned. A slide projector someone forgot to unplug is in a side room with dark wallpaper showing pictures of a woman’s face from various angles, and the pages of a book turning.

Franklin Art Works was built as a silent movie theater in 1916, but eventually served as an adult movie theater, a bicycle shop, and an underground venue before being purchased by Franklin Art Works. The current exposition, primarily of works by Chris Baker (with the exception of Alex Fleming’s projector piece) uses only the main floor, but Baker’s selections are rich enough for his two main works – Murmur Study and Hello World! or How I Learned to Stop Listening and Love the Noise – to leave you satisfied. However, on the second floor is a large performance space, unchanged since the building’s debut as a movie theater.

Chris Baker, a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s MFA program, uses the space excellently, with Murmur Study taking up the bulk of the lobby. Strips of evenly spaced and gracefully hanging printer paper are attached to computers at the roof that feed down into an endless, overwhelming pile of already-printed receipt paper. The computers are programmed to pick up, in real time, tweets from the website Twitter that contain particularly emotional keywords. The result, as in his other piece, is a cacophony of highly personal background noise, in this case beautifully cast into a massive pile of junk on the floor. Hello World! features hundreds of personal video confessions, each tiny and each with an audio track playing. The volume swells but the individual speeches remain indistinguishable. Occasionally an image on one of the individual video squares will catch your attention, but it will quickly change. The works inhabit the bare white space of the gallery well. The small exhibition space packs a lot of interesting material and – being fairly easy to walk through – is an excellent gallery for a quick visit.

Art of This

Like any respectable gallery, Art of This morphs itself to the needs of their featured artist. Within its white walls and behind an unassumingly pale red door, Art of This exists as a small dynamic entity in the midst of an otherwise lackluster region of Minneapolis. The gallery is a small, cryptic presence among the bleak housing and petrol station that draws traffic to this tragic region of Nicollet Ave.

But Art of This’ latest featured artist, Bruce Tapola, has created a barrier between the gallery and its outside world. A lengthy white wall rests between the gallery and its front windows, blocking most of the view the audience has to dull architecture across the street and the delurid glow of passing cars.
Tapola’s work features an eclectic mixture of mediums – from paintings to elaborate structures resembling branches. Photos impaled by smaller bits of wood dangle from the floating structure. It’s a melancholic expression of what the outside world is reticent of. As the audience paces about the space they are subtly reminded of that fateful petrol station outside by a circle hacked out of the white barrier at the front of the gallery. The Au Natural exhibit will be displayed through December 6.

As a non-profit, artist-run space, Art of This depends on art sales, grants, and private donations to continue to feature new media and experimental artwork. The gallery also features unique one-night music shows every other week as part of an Improvised music series.

The Gallery @ Fox Tax

Located along First Ave. in northeast Minneapolis lies a gallery with an identity crisis. Fox Tax, located one block from the bustle of Central Ave., feels just a little hidden. While the name implies it, you might not realize you’re in a tax preparation and advising office when walking into the sleek gallery space.
The Gallery @ Fox Tax is rather business-chic. Its modest sign, huge front windows and minimal furnishings also add to its mystique. White and brick walls frame a collection of black leather couches that look small and ornamental, making the surrounding artwork look even more outrageous.
The current exhibit on display at The Gallery @ Fox Tax is Heavy Petting, a collection of paintings by Rob McBroom that draw on images from the Edward Lear poem, “The Owl and the Pussy Cat.” The pieces each feature a selection of the text incorporated into a vibrant painting of bright, almost garish, colors, along with glitter, plastic jewels, and found objects. The paintings are displayed in sequence, but arguably each portrays a whole story of its own.

Around the corner, another smaller gallery space sits empty, patiently waiting for the next exhibit.
While a small, one-room gallery might not be enough to draw you over to Fox Tax, it might make a nice addition to a day trip to northeast. Neighboring establishments like the Red Stag Supper Club and overwhelmingly cute gift shop I Like You are reason enough to linger around the block and serve as a striking reminder that this part of Minneapolis has threatened for years to become the next Uptown.
At the very least, Fox Tax is quite possibly the most aesthetically pleasing place to have your taxes done. Somehow that alone makes it seem like a good idea.

Sunset’s new album, Gold Dissolves to Gray, was recorded on analog tape, and you can feel it in the sound. It’s one of the warmest records you’ll hear this year. The album rollicks and rambles and rolls along at its own pace, rarely finding reason to push outside the comfortable ambiance of Baird’s contentment.

One of the album’s best songs, “Fishtown,” is really not so different from the rest of the record. It’s anchored by steadily plunked piano chords that hold the song in place when other instruments threaten to wrest control away. Baird sings naturally, as if he’s making up the words as he goes along. Softly toned electric guitar floats above the melody, while acoustic guitar enters with occasional flourishes. When the song finishes, it’s as if it had just floated through your head, nodding hello but certainly not making a disturbance.

You get the feeling that that’s what Baird is looking for in his music. A man with a unique conception of people’s place in the world, he is simply looking to find sounds that fit together.

Baird has talked about working at the Texas School for the Blind and Visually Impaired with lower functioning students who are suddenly invigorated by a Nick Drake or Simon & Garfunkel harmony, as if the beauty and brilliance of the sounds penetrated something deep inside them. On a more modest level, this is what Gold Dissolves to Gray does. Without ever sounding like their trying to, the songs seem to naturally coalesce as new instruments ease into the mix and melodies become stronger.

“Our Dreams Did Weave A Shade” and “Gold Dissolves To Gray” are also standouts, with the former incorporating a friendly female presence to harmonize with Baird, and the latter experimenting with twangy guitar over an omnipresent piano. Both songs feature wandering, nonlinear lyrics that reflect the complacent happiness of the music.

Gold Dissolves To Gray is an album that will slip through the cracks if you don’t give it the time it deserves. But after a few spins, you’ll find a group of songs that would like nothing better than to settle down and make friends.

The thumping drumbeat backed by droning guitar and bouncy synth of the album’s opener “Trichromatic” sets a mood for the entire record. Although the tracks vary, from the gorgeous, expansive landscape of “Interiors” to the fast, loud, horn section of the album’s title track, there is a feeling present in every song that forms Shutter Release into one distinct, cohesive wave of sound. The band’s instrumental post-rock sound is comparable to that of bands like Explosions in the Sky; in fact, one could say that the whole album sounds as if they added synth and a tinge of happiness to The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place. Lymbyc Systym uses the same sort of minimalist-to-epic climax approach that has become commonplace in the post-rock scene; but at the same time, they have found a way to twist that norm and make it their own. This is in part due to the band’s masterful use of electronics on Shutter Release. It is heavy in synthesizer, blips, boops, white noise, and drum machine, but these elements are used in the most tasteful of ways. They are simple, subtle layers and textures accentuating the brilliant lead guitars (both acoustic and electric) and drums that make up the majority of the record’s sound. The band seems to perfectly understand the less-is-more philosophy and uses it to maximum effect.

Shutter Release is not perfect. It has a couple of sore-thumb tracks (namely the quick, chirpy “T-Ball”), which are not bad, necessarily, but don’t seem to fit in with the rest of the album. However, that doesn’t change the fact that Shutter Release is one of the most surprising albums I’ve heard all year, not to mention one of the best.

Personal Best Records was the brainchild of Ian Anderson, who founded local indie label Afternoon Records while he was still in high school. Vader and Salyer had been friends with Anderson for several years, and the two seemed to be a natural fit for the new business venture. “The hope here is that with a little push from Afternoon, they can have the tools and resources that I wish that I had when I was their age…to get their label off the ground,” Anderson says.

Vader and Salyer’s bands (brainy rock outfit The Shoe Shiners and indie-popsters Total Babe, respectively), along with the eight piece electro-influenced We Valedictorians (Salyer’s bandmate Jordan Gatesmith’s other project) will comprise the label’s starting roster. But Vader is quick to point out that “we’re not just trying to release our friends’ bands here.” The owners seem to have a real interest in helping other high school and so-called underage artists, having first hand knowledge of how difficult it can be for bands that can’t rely on alcohol sales at their shows.

Personal Best was intended to be a way for Afternoon to still sign local artists as the main label moved in a national direction. Anderson emphasizes that the label will feature artists from the Twin Cities area exclusively and hopefully serve as a launching pad for relatively unknown bands by providing all of the services a larger label might offer. Afternoon has imparted Personal Best with “the philosophy of halvsies,” an arrangement in which Afternoon will match any amount of money that the band raises for it’s own record, effectively doubling the band’s resources in what can be a very costly process for young musicians. In addition, Salyer (called a “booking whiz” by Anderson) hopes to do in-house booking for all of Personal Best’s bands, while Vader, a sound-engineer who recorded the forthcoming We Valedictorians album, hopes to mix and master all of the label’s records in-house. Personal Best will also take advantage of Afternoon’s national distribution connections to put its bands’ albums in record stores across the country.

Salyer and Vader are aware of the challenge of being 17-year-old managers of a subsidiary of a label that some claim still has dues to pay in the scene, but the two are determined to take their “amazing opportunity” humbly, and plan to forego signing new groups in order to spend the next year focusing on making their three bands as successful as possible.

“We just want to make great records,” says Vader, and with the duo’s outpouring of positivity and charm, you can’t help but believe him.

Eating the Dinosaur is a frustrating book; beyond its scatterbrained and contrarian’s logic Klosterman manages to make a handful of excellent cultural observations. Here’s a list in Klosterman’s borrowed style (RIP David Foster Wallace): a) Back to the Future will never be considered an “oldie”; b) Rivers Cuomo is and always has been a sincere artist; c) Kurt Cobain is nothing like David Koresh (although an entire essay is dedicated to this subject); d) “Millenials” is a stupid word; and e) Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window portrays an wholly unrealistic idea of what it’s really like to be a Peeping Tom, as does reality TV. The problem with Eating the Dinosaur is its resistance to a specific market demographic. NFL fans and those patiently waiting for an (unlikely) ABBA reunion tour are probably not the same people.