Now Tumbling

I'm moving my blog to Tumblr for the foreseeable future...I need to try something new. You can find it here:

http://purview.tumblr.com/

Beach House - "Teen Dream"

I happened to catch Beach House at the Pabst Theater a few years ago opening for Grizzly Bear...or maybe it was Califone? I don't exactly remember, and it doesn't really matter because I wasn't really impressed (with Beach House that is; Grizzly Bear or Califone were awesome). I just wasn't that into the whole dreamy, shoe-gaze pop deal that was emanating from the man/woman duo onstage, and spent the majority of their opening set shuttling back and forth between the theater and the lobby, loading up on PBR for the set of music I was actually there to see. Beach House was a prime example of the opening set that you don't know is coming, don't want to hear, and can't wait to get over with. I don't remember a thing from their set, other than a lot of recorded loops and vocal swooning.

Flash forward a few years: I still don't like the whole dreamy, shoe-gaze pop scene, and Beach House has released a new record (their 3rd) that is lining the "best new releases" shelves in record stores, garnering good reviews world wide web-wide, and pushing themselves into the collective conscious of American pop music. Sure, why not give it a try? I shunned them once, and I can always shun them again. Besides,that "Norway" song they started playing on 88.9 sounded tolerable and not too shoe-gazey.

Turns out, there is still a lot of swooning, recorded loops, and drum machines, but I'll give them credit for making an album that is completely relaxing and inviting. A "reading album," as I like to call them, one that is peppered with a few good songs to kick back to while you're doing something else: "Real Love"--a terrible title--is a great piano ballad; that chord change on the word "arching" during "Zebra" makes the whole song we worth repeated listens; "Silver Soul" swells back and forth in a just-right, pleasant sort of way. That said, there is probably not much lasting power here; I'll probably forget about Teen Dream just like I forgot who Beach House opened for at the Pabst. But at least we made amends in between. Sorry, Beach House.

"Transverse Temporal Gyrus"

Animal Collective debuted Transverse Temporal Gyrus at the Guggenheim Museum this week...try to decipher the rest of it here.

"Under the Dome"

King's pacing and detail have slowed and withered, respectively, tremendously over the years, and for a book that is 1,074 pages long, Under the Dome exacerbates both of these declines. But there is something to be said about the Dome itself--it contained a mysterious and unknown quality from cover to cover (much like the ship in The Tommyknockers) that made every page worth digesting.

Google Monster

Sketch by Asaf Hanuka depicting Google's plan to scan every book in existence into digital form (via):

Starbucks unleashes the Trenta

American coffee consumers feel they are not caffeinated enough, and Starbucks has heard their cry. The corporate coffee giant is now test marketing a 31-ounce coffee--the "Trenta"--in Phoenix and Tampa in response to customer demand for larger coffees. America, prepare thyself for caffeine.

Depression's upside

Great New York Times Magazine article on how the ruminative tendencies of depression are actually beneficial:

Why is mental illness so closely associated with creativity? Andreasen argues that depression is intertwined with a “cognitive style” that makes people more likely to produce successful works of art. In the creative process, Andreasen says, “one of the most important qualities is persistence.” Based on the Iowa sample, Andreasen found that “successful writers are like prizefighters who keep on getting hit but won’t go down. They’ll stick with it until it’s right.” While Andreasen acknowledges the burden of mental illness — she quotes Robert Lowell on depression not being a “gift of the Muse” and describes his reliance on lithium to escape the pain — she argues that many forms of creativity benefit from the relentless focus it makes possible. “Unfortunately, this type of thinking is often inseparable from the suffering,” she says. “If you’re at the cutting edge, then you’re going to bleed.”

And then there’s the virtue of self-loathing, which is one of the symptoms of depression. When people are stuck in the ruminative spiral, their achievements become invisible; the mind is only interested in what has gone wrong. While this condition is typically linked to withdrawal and silence — people become unwilling to communicate — there’s some suggestive evidence that states of unhappiness can actually improve our expressive abilities. Forgas said he has found that sadness correlates with clearer and more compelling sentences, and that negative moods “promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.” Because we’re more critical of what we’re writing, we produce more refined prose, the sentences polished by our angst. As Roland Barthes observed, “A creative writer is one for whom writing is a problem."

"Stylo"

It's stylish...

The Persistence of Sadness

The Persistence of Sadness by Rafael Rozendaal is digital, interactive art at its finest...click on the rocks (via).

Tacocat

My new favorite palindrome...

New measures of tastiness

A new study of "expert" wine tasters revealed that the tasters rated bottles of wine they were told were more expensive as "better" than bottles that were reportedly cheap. In their defense, though, the study also looked at a neurological component of the tasting:

Since reported tastiness is a poor measure of true taste experience in the era of fMRI scanning machines, the researchers were careful enough to take a peek into their participant's brains as these tasted the wines, and found something fairly surprising: When tasting the wine out of the $10 bottle, the medial orbitofrontal cortex - an area of the brain that is strongly related to experiences of pleasure - showed only very little activity. When the exact same wine was poured out of a $90 bottle however, this brain area showed levels of activation which indicate that the participants were indeed drawing much more enjoyment from the same wine this time around. In other words, the price tag seemed to have a real physiological influence on the taster's taste experience.

"Distinguished" palettes everywhere are screaming.

Atoms for Peace

Thom Yorke. Flea. Nigel Goodrich. Joey Waronker. Mauro Refosco. Coming soon.

Weaponizing Mozart

Britain has starting using classical music as a form of social control in its schools:

In January it was revealed that West Park School, in Derby in the midlands of England, was “subjecting” (its words) badly behaved children to Mozart and others. In “special detentions,” the children are forced to endure two hours of classical music both as a relaxant (the headmaster claims it calms them down) and as a deterrent against future bad behavior (apparently the number of disruptive pupils has fallen by 60 per cent since the detentions were introduced.)

One news report says some of the children who have endured this Mozart authoritarianism now find classical music unbearable. As one said, they will probably “go into adulthood associating great music—the most bewitchingly lovely sounds on Earth—with a punitive slap on the chops.” This is what passes for education in Britain today: teaching kids to think “Danger!” whenever they hear Mozart’s Requiem or some other piece of musical genius.

I wonder how this will affect their eagerness and interest in learning to play an instrument? An unfortunate Pavlonian side effect may be occurring here.

"Scissor"

Liars literally getting stoned on a boat...

"The Hurt Locker"

I loved how the onscreen intensity of disarming bombs was transferred to the viewer. I learned quickly not to hold a drink during most of the scenes in this film.

10 billionth iTunes song dowloaded

Georgia native Louie Sulcer downloaded the 10 billionth iTunes song recently, making him the winner of Apple's 10 Billion Songs Sold contest:

Sulcer’s winning purchase was, ironically, Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way,” which Sulcer downloaded for a mix of Cash songs he was making for his son. Having never heard the song, Sulcer listened to iTunes’ 30-second preview and bought the track, unaware that Apple was even having a contest celebrating their 10 billionth purchase. “I really liked it. It had some really good pickin’ in it. So that’s how I got to that song,” Sulcer says. Sulcer, a father of three and a grandfather of nine, was introduced to iTunes three years ago by an old friend at a high school reunion who taught him how to use the digital music service to load up on his favorite country songs of the 1960s.

Also included on the Apple web page announcing the winner was a list of the top 25 most dowloaded songs ever on iTunes. It is truly a list of shit, and an unfortunate barometer of where music tastes are aligned in the world today. Thankfully the landmark download was from a respectable artist.

Talking "Zaireeka"

Matthew Perpetua recently sat down with Pitchfork's Mark Richardson to discuss his book on The Flaming Lips' Zaireeka for the 33 1/3 Series--I especially like this exchange:

Matthew Perpetua: One of the things I really liked in the book is how you write about how we listen to recordings, and how that’s transformed over the years with technological advances. But one thing never really changes — we tend to listen to music alone. Listen, as in focused listening, not just being in a room while music is on in the background. Do you think Wayne et al were thinking about this when they were making Zaireeka, since the record is something that can’t be heard alone?

Mark Richardson: Yes, I think the social aspect of it was there from the beginning, as it grew out of the Parking Lot Experiments. That was always to be a “happening” of a kind with multiple people there. The genesis of Zaireeka was, “How could we make a recorded version of this?” Had the technology existed then to make it 8 channels that you could listen to yourself, I am not sure they would have gone that way, because the idea of getting together with friends was really important.

I find it interesting that Richardson implies that "getting together with friends" may not be as important anymore. Not necessarily in the sense that you don't want to hang out with your peeps, but because a drastic overhaul in technology now makes music an instant gratification process that locks you in the dome of your iPod earbuds, alone. Zaireeka was a bulky, time-consuming experiment (I tried it once and it was work), and I think music listeners in general today would be less likely to have the motivation to purchase a CD, much less attempt to listen to four at once on four different stereos. Yet another example of technology driving social interaction, only this time, it's in a direction opposite to all the sharing and Facebooking and tweeting.

(Perpetua and Richardson also discuss briefly how Embryonic is fitting into the band's current creative narrative, something I looking forward to as their April 21st Riverside appearance draws near.)

Avatar and mascots

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Eugene Kane finds connections between Avatar and the issue of using Indian mascot names at schools. I'm all for critical thinking and applying media to the world around us, but I think the whole Avatar-impacting-real-life thing has gone way too far.

Holidaying Horrors

From a series on Anthony Hibbert's photostream...he also has a cool blog.

"Shutter Island"

Rarely can a movie that is based on a book stay true to said book without adding some stupid Hollywood element or storyline that ruins key narrative and text-based flow. Shutter Island, however, succeeded in staying true to Dennis Lehane's literary vision word for word. Cawley was a little more pleasant in person than on page (I finished the book about 24 hours before seeing the film, so the characters were fresh for comparison; unfortunately, though, seeing trailers ruined some of the visual development that constitutes one of the joys of reading), but otherwise, every line, every scene, and every dark asylum corner resonated well between the two often-in-conflict mediums of entertainment.

Also, good use of foreboding piano notes, Scorcese.

Neurosonics live

You've seen their studio work, now see them live (via):

Curling explained

The sport of curling explained via infographic (via).

Four Tet - "There is Love In You"

Clean beats and technicolor: they dominate There is Love In You like steady rain dominates a flat sidewalk while it's still sunny out. These components are delivered in a steady, unwavering supply that reveal a kaleidoscopic mist of rainbows after bouncing off your eardrums. The listening pleasure is all in the reflection. Electronic music of this ilk isn't impressive because of complex composition or avant garde manipulations; rather, it succeeds simply by being steady and colorful. And absorbing.

To be sure, Kieran Hebdan has gone mostly linear here. Compared to his past forays into progressive lo-fi or crumbling free jazz(tronica), There is Love In You (love the title) finds Hebdan scaling back in favor of a direct, straightforward vein to the heart of what electronic music is founded upon: a crossroads of repetition and addiction. In the week I've owned this album, I've probably listened to"Love Cry"--a track that is so perpetually pleasing, you mentally try to find ways to extend it long after its 9 minutes have finished up--18-20 times. The individual components of the track build together in simple ways that you would probably expect, but engage you in a much more critical listen. It just has a way of grabbing your attention in a crisp, clean way. Imagine the pastel spheres that dot the cover art starting to shift rhythmically--like bacteria in a dish--and you might understand what I mean.

"Running From the Cops"

Sloooow motion...

Dead academia

The Atlantic discusses The Grateful Dead as an early model for social networking theory:

As the band’s following grew, the notion that it might have something to offer scholars, particularly in the social sciences, became somewhat less far-fetched, though still not without professional risk. In the late 1980s, Rebecca G. Adams, a sociologist at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who studies friendships formed across distances, noticed deep bonds between Deadheads. The bonds seemed to belie the idea, then popular among leading social thinkers, that communities based on common interest, whose members do not live near each other, lack emotional and moral depth—that Deadheads might belong to what sociologists call a “lifestyle enclave,” but couldn’t possibly form meaningful relationships. Adams brought a class on tour with the Dead—an opportunity, she thought, to teach classical theory while letting students study a cutting-edge contemporary community.