The Wake

This summer I had the opportunity to take a time out of a day working at Sherwin-Williams and talk to Opeth co-founder, guitarist Peter Lindgren. For those shamefully unaware of Opeth (and if you are unaware of them, you should be ashamed!), Opeth has been one of the biggest forces in metal in recent years. They have combined the brutality of death metal with soft, melancholic parts, to create something that could only be Opeth. However, on the bands most recent album Damnation, they explore more fully the soft progressive elements of their music, leaving out all death metal. We began by talking about the band’s latest effort Damnation. In the past Opeth, has written albums with average song lengths of around eight minutes, while on Damnation they tend to clock in around five …

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Hidden in Plain Sight is a documentary dealing with the controversial School of the Americas, which trains Latin American soldiers in the United States. It’s a powerful film that shows the viewer testimony of individuals victimized by soldiers who had been trained at the facility, pictures of those unable to speak after such soldiers were done with them, and seemingly dubious testimony from United States military personal. The film is certainly well-edited, has a top notch narrator in Martin Sheen and presents an undeniably important issue. But the positives of the film end there. Although surely a powerful film, I feel it is greatly flawed. Those defending the school and those attacking it are certainly not given equal time. The film contains long segments of commentary from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens and …

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Twin Cities based Aesma Daeva has to be one of the most unique metal bands around. They merge together elements of classical, progressive, and metal music with female operatic vocals. The band has just released its third album The New Athens Ethos, which boasts an improvement from their first releases Here Lies One Whose Name Was Written in Water and The Eros of Frigid Beauty. Melissa Ferlaak performs beautifully on vocals. The guitar playing (John Prassas and Earl Root) on The New Athens Ethos is first-rate, a balance between classical and metal style. What truly makes this album great is the addition of the occasional trumpet (Kaylynn Brown) and flute (Andrea Vieth and Michelle Zeien), adding a certain level of class. The album also allows for sparse parts, where a wall of sound does not …

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Is Fran Healy depressed? The sound of his band Travis is an embodiment of catchy, melody-driven and upbeat choruses, but in their latest album 12 Memories, their distinctive sound is blended with mellow and sadly-depressing lyrics. Battling feelings of jealousy towards mainstream Britpop bands like Coldplay, Travis contently accepts its demotion with a grin. In the opening song “Quicksand,” frustration as a second-rate band is accompanied by an orchestra of violins and cellos. “Take me away take me away/ Or I’m never gonna get away/ But it makes no difference to me/ It’s just the sound of one more rock star bleeding.” Healy is feeling victimized, yet disregards the criticism. Travis touches upon controversial themes such as war and the events of September 11 in “Beautiful Occupation” and “Peace the F*** Out.” Two incredible …

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Two years ago, rock n’ roll was dead. Then along came five, young, and hip New Yorkers who busted onto the music scene carrying a “who gives a s*** mentality” behind them. A tightly knit group of friends, The Strokes reinvented the New York music scene with a blend of raunchy, emotion-soaked lyrics with two treble-heavy guitars, root-note bass lines and a steady drum beat.They’ve done it again. Filling in as the poster-band for American rock n’ roll music, The Strokes followed the roots they crafted in their stellar debut, Is This It?, with their latest release Room on Fire.Fans looking to see a change in sound will be disappointed. But that is a good thing. The Strokes basically continued It This It’s tradition by producing a 33 minute album with 11 songs, all bordering …

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Stretching around Williams Arena along University Avenue and Oak Street, two enormous, single-file lines of people stood waiting in anticipation to get the chance to purchase one of the last 200 tickets available to see popular left-winged author/director Michael Moore.Originally, 5,200 tickets were available for the lecture at the University of Minnesota’s Sports Pavilion on October 11, but 5,000 sold before the show, leaving an entire mass of bodies out in the rain, praying for the chance to see the dynamic speaker express his personal feelings about his beloved America.“You should see the line around the block right now,” Moore said in a press conference before the lecture. “In fact, there are two lines going around the block. They can’t get everybody in here. We probably could have filled this place up twice over tonight. …

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There are a few things that rarely occur in one’s life: seeing Halley’s Comet, finding one’s true soul mate, and seeing the band Rachel’s perform live. Fortunately, I can say I have finally experienced the latter after many years of waiting, and it was everything I expected it to be and more. In order to effectively understand why I am so drawn to the band and just exactly who they are, allow me to give you a brief history. The group was formed in early 1991 when guitarist/bassist Jason Noble met violinist Christian Fredrickson in the Louisville, KY area and a startling connection was made; they took their name from Noble’s car, which was named Rachel at the time. Noble, who was no stranger to indie rock, played in the seminal outfit Rodan, which was …

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There is a musical note fit for nearly every human emotion. Life’s ups and downs just wouldn’t be the same without melodies and rhythms to accompany them. Celebration? Music is the star. Tragedy? Music consoles. And exactly one year after the untimely death of one of Minnesota’s most beloved senators, thousands agreed that music, as a metaphorical shoulder to cry on, never sounded so sweet. “I want to remember October 25, 2002 as the day the music died, and October 25, 2003 as the day when people who’ve spent their lives attending anti-war rallies and teaching kids and championing local music and independent films got together via the great big antennae of music and took another shot,” wrote Twin Cities writer, Jim Walsh, in an e-mail calling for participants in the first ever Wellstone World Music …

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Though their logo states “Come for the eye candy, stay for the music,” Possibly Bailey has a large fan base who come for the music; well, maybe they come for the eye candy, too. The band consists of four University of Minnesota seniors: Ryan Rentmeester on lead guitar and vocals, Rob Johnstone on rhythm guitar and vocals, Ryan Muetzel on bass and Dave Hansen on drums and percussion. Describing themselves as “funk jam,” their music is influenced by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ben Harper, and 311 among others. Inspired by Harper’s beats and Hansen’s experience in a steel drum band, the group integrates congas and bongos into their sound. Possibly Bailey has been performing together for a little over a year, though band mates Rentmeester and Johnstone have been playing together since high school. Muetzler …

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The life of skateboarding legend Mark “Gator” Anthony reads like more of a made-for-television movie than a documentary. A young kid from a broken home decides to take part in a counter culture and ends up bringing that culture into the public arena only to forget where he came from. The difference from a television movie and the real life of Anthony is a far more tragic ending than could not have come from the minds of most Hollywood writers.Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator is the real story of Mark “Gator,” as told by documentary filmmaker Helen Stickler. Stickler uses extensive on-camera interviews with several people who were close to Gator to recount his rise to fame and eventual incarceration for rape and murder. Also, phone interviews with Gator himself are used throughout …

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Hip hop culture oozed from every orifice of First Avenue in downtown Minneapolis as the Seven’s Travels Tour made its way back home to Minnesota. The Oddjobs and the Rhymesayers Entertainment crew, consisting of Musab, The Micranots, DeeJayBird and headliner Atmosphere, spun, freestyled, and rapped to a full house for their second hometown show in as many days.The Brooklyn-by-way-of-Minneapolis rap group The Oddjobs gave a tone-setting performance that left the crowd eager for what was to come, coming out energetic while making sure that the audience knew they are still a product of the local hip-hip scene, taking time to pay respect to former Senator Paul Wellstone. Rhymesayer Musab followed The Oddjobs by playing a mixture of danceable pop songs and self reflective raps. Not to be outdone, veterans The Micranots brought the audience to …

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Much of the work that has been presented so far at Emerging Digerati has been web-based. If you’re like me, you’ll spend the weekend in your jammies, digging these phat websites instead of reading your fat Mass Communications Law textbook.• www.digidiva.net/uc/old/UnoffComm
In her project titled “Unofficial Communication,” Collette Gaiter explores those unsanctioned, often unsigned messages that we often walk past because we don’t ascribe authority to the communicator. “Not all unofficial communication is illegal. However, it is the ubiquitous illegal urban graffiti that gets the most attention,” Gaiter writes.• www.ruinedeye.com
Art graduate student Kessie Wheelock’s work is presented on this extensive website. It includes texts and images on the theme of the human eye, as well as The Museum of Make-Believe, which showcases personal objects that belonged to fairy-tale characters with explanations of the research …

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Perhaps you’ve seen the Matrix-y blue posters in university halls and found them slightly vague: “EMERGING DIGERATI A showcase of UM students’ new media work.” Digerati is a millennial twist on the word literati, which referred to the elite class of educated people, often in the aristocracy, before wide-spread literacy. As someone who is electronically inept, I did not think these events would interest me. I’m “idigerate.” As it turns out, new media is a broad term including things like electronic music, artwork that reaches its audience via websites, and digitally recorded documentaries or animations. And Emerging Digerati is a series of presentations where students and faculty present really cool stuff that they made with new media.Of course, presenters are hoping for feedback from fellow techies or artists, but anyone can go and watch.The network …

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Jonny Greenwood has a lot of talent. With Bodysong, Greenwood’s debut solo release, he proves just how much talent he has. Frolicking in music genres such as jazz, rock, avant-garde, classical, and electronic, Greenwood constructs a makeshift sculpture out of these conflicting elements, sounding like Ornette Coleman covering an Autechre song with Philip Glass conducting. Speaking in binaries, there are two corollaries to this mode of songwriting: (1) the opposing elements synthesize into something unique and fresh, or (2) the hyper-eclecticism ends up sounding fragmented and misguided, like a song with an identity crisis. Luckily, Bodysong is the former. The album was recorded as a soundtrack for a dialogue-free documentary of the same name. Directed by Simon Pummel, the documentary is a visual collage, compiling sourced images spanning the past 100 years. However, without having …

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My friend Perry’s stereo was broken last month. For some reason, the bass on the album he was listening to was not playing through the speakers. His roommate Alec, a good friend of mine, decided to test another CD to see if it was perhaps some glitch exclusive to Perry’s CD. He grabbed Elliott Smith’s fifth full-length album, Figure 8. When the sparkling guitar and complimentary piano hits of first track “Son of Sam” kicked in, Alec and I suddenly realized just how long it had been since we had heard the album. Within a couple minutes, Alec had fixed the stereo and we were able to hear the CD’s full splendor. Instead of switching back to Perry’s CD, we listened to the next few tracks, continually expressing our astonishment at Smith’s songwriting abilities. It’s …

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