my review of the experimental theater/dance performance “Illuminations” from the Daily Cardinal newspaper, October 16-18, 1998
Then, earlier this year, she donned an electric-blue bubble dress and a rust-colored puffy wig, and took to a very different kind of stage than she’s used to: The New York Hall of Science, where she spent a month-long residency doing multimedia concerts for adults and tech-science-music workshops for public-middle-school students. “I was kind of thinking of me when I was, like, 8 and what would be the best thing that could happen to me in music school, and the whole thing is kind of designed around that format,” Björk says.
The kids learned rudimentary music theory, played with the apps, then started creating their own songs. Björk’s work paired perfectly with the Hall of Science’s installations—her track “Moon” corresponded to a “Search for Life Beyond Earth” exhibit, for example—so that children could follow their interests to discover bigger ideas. Her audience cheered in their own way, especially after tapping a screen to make a Tesla coil spark. “I am Thor!” shouted a gaggle of 13-year-olds.
my review of the Creeper Lagoon album “I Become Small and Go” from the Daily Cardinal newspaper, October 7, 1998.
Creeper Lagoon
I Become Small And Go
Nickelbag Records
Spin Magazine readers might recognize San Francisco’s Creeper Lagoon from the magazine’s “Heavy Rotation” section. Dubbed “the year’s prettiest puzzle,” I Become Small And Go lives up to critical acclaim.
CL resembles an adult Pulsars and a more-focused Guided By Voices, as most of the songs are fairly serious and fully polished. In “Empty Ships,” the phrase, “sink themselves in blue and chasing” somehow manages to be a catchy refrain. Besides guitar, bass and drums, CL uses 17 different instruments on the album, from flutes to piano to an oxygen oscillator. Somehow, nothing sounds self-consciously coy or out of place. Whether it is the looping drone present on many songs or the Eastern vocals on “Prison Mix,” everything sounds polished and pretty.
Songwriters Ian Sefchick and Sharky Laguna’s lyrics are a metaphoric maze that satisfies the genre-bending music behind them. There are empty ships sinking, crying under a red moon, a girl feeding rotten pears, a judge cheating in spades and a man who made them all blind with the lights in his car. It all makes sense within each song and expresses the dreamlike and often surreal qualities of their music and life.
Creeper Lagoon has sometimes been compared to the exalted My Bloody Valentine, but that’s a little hasty. I Become Small And Go is the band’s first full-length album, and the band has a way to go to match the experimental sonic pallet of MBV. But CL is warmer and clearer, so who cares? The band has made an album of pretty, intriguing songs and is supposedly even more expansive live. CL is, as the press kit reads, “Sonic psychedelic pop laden bliss at your service.”
- Paul O’Mara
“Private James Marshall Hendrix of the 101st Airborne, playing guitar at Fort Campbell Kentucky 1962.” (via Reddit)
"I can’t think of anything more apt to set the imagination stirring, drifting, creating, than the idea—the fact—that anyone you walk past on the pavement anywhere may be a sadist, a compulsive thief, or even a murderer."
— Patricia Highsmith, Observer Magazine (1990)
(Source: wwnorton)
![theatlantic:
The Invisible Borders That Define American Culture
One of the clearest regional differences in the U.S. can found by tracking the words people use to refer to soft drinks, which is in fact the map you saw at the top of this story. Pop or soda, or even Coke, these small linguistic differences are not as small as we might think. While “soda” commands the Northeast and West Coast (green) and “pop” is in between (black), “Coke” reigns in the south (turquoise). These small distinctions can often act as touchstones for larger cultural differences.
Read more. [Image: Samuel Arbesman]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m33cl9VdDM1qcokc4o1_500.jpg)
The Invisible Borders That Define American Culture
One of the clearest regional differences in the U.S. can found by tracking the words people use to refer to soft drinks, which is in fact the map you saw at the top of this story. Pop or soda, or even Coke, these small linguistic differences are not as small as we might think. While “soda” commands the Northeast and West Coast (green) and “pop” is in between (black), “Coke” reigns in the south (turquoise). These small distinctions can often act as touchstones for larger cultural differences.
Read more. [Image: Samuel Arbesman]
