Monday, 15 August 2011
First Listen: Stephen Malkmus And The Jicks 'Mirror Traffic'
That's a credit to Malkmus and fellow "slacker" iconoclast Beck — who produced the album — because the former's music is not always an easy listen. While his songs are often impeccably arranged with catchy, sing-song melodies, there's always been an off-kilter quality to his music, making it feel like it's about to fall apart. Chord progressions don't resolve where you want them to, he regularly changes keys mid-stream — often only for a few bars — and there's enough dissonance and squawks of guitar noise to give the songs a sneering edge.
Malkmus' lyrics are constructed to be elusive. His oblique stream-of-consciousness songs, with their sardonic wit and hyper-literate descriptions of mundane observations, ask willing fans to parse the lyrics themselves. Malkmus writes lines as much for their encrypted meanings as for the way the words sound rhythmically against his abrupt melodies and messy guitar riffs.
Still, while Mirror Traffic's punchy urgency has the feeling of being loose and unruly, Malkmus and his Jicks are deceivingly turn-on-a-dime tight as a band, thanks to stellar musicianship from Mike Clark, Joanna Bolme and especially Janet Weiss, whose drums give every song a throttling pulse. (Weiss has since left the band to form WILD FLAG.)
Malkmus has said that he and The Jicks were looking for a like-minded ally like Beck for Mirror Traffic. But of all the artists with whom Beck has collaborated recently (Charlotte Gainsbourg, Thurston Moore), here he leaves the smallest musical footprint. Beck practically sits back and lets Malkmus and The Jicks play; there are very few of the production flourishes that have become Beck's calling card, though he likely played a small part in reining in Malkmus' jammier side, and in sweetening the songs along the way. If anything, Beck's influence shows in Mirror Traffic's sonic focus, even as the album presents a variety of microstyles: fuzzy garage rockers like "Tune Grief" and "Tigers," intimate tunes like the solemn folk song "No One Is (As I Are Be)," or the warbling, buzzed-out ballad "Asking Price."
One of the major overarching themes of Mirror Traffic seems to be a reflexive coming to terms with nostalgia and the boredom of adulthood. But "Forever 28" also references a crumbling relationship — "I can see the mystery of you and me will never quite add up / No one is your perfect fit, I do not believe in that s—-" — while "All Over Gently" includes the kiss-off line, "Stay if you want, but don't forget we're through."
Mirror Traffic is about as brutally forward and honest as Malkmus has ever sounded, revealing a new side to the enigmatic songwriter. But it's also an album with plenty of hooks and lyrical surprises.
Michael Katzif @'npr'
Hear 'Mirror Traffic' In Its Entirety
Squelching social media after riots a dangerous idea
In an emergency session of Parliament on Thursday, British Prime Minister David Cameron said that the violence, looting and arson sweeping his country "were organized via social media." He said his government is now considering how and whether to "stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."
On Friday, China's state-run Xinhua news agency published a commentary contrasting Cameron's latest statements with his Arab Spring-inspired speech earlier this year, in which he loftily proclaimed that freedom of expression should be respected in Tahrir Square as much as in London's Trafalgar Square.
"We may wonder why Western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet," Xinhua said. "For the benefit of the general public, proper Web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary."
The Chinese government has been making similar arguments since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered her first speech declaring Internet freedom to be a core pillar of American foreign policy in January 2010. For example, here is Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu responding to a foreign correspondent's question in May about heightened Internet censorship and surveillance: "The Chinese government's legal management of the Internet is in line with international practice."
While perpetrators of crime and violence, such as the kind we've witnessed this past week in Britain, must of course be pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it is critical that both the British government and Internet companies that operate in the U.K. or serve British users proceed responsibly.
Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights...
On Friday, China's state-run Xinhua news agency published a commentary contrasting Cameron's latest statements with his Arab Spring-inspired speech earlier this year, in which he loftily proclaimed that freedom of expression should be respected in Tahrir Square as much as in London's Trafalgar Square.
"We may wonder why Western leaders, on the one hand, tend to indiscriminately accuse other nations of monitoring, but on the other take for granted their steps to monitor and control the Internet," Xinhua said. "For the benefit of the general public, proper Web-monitoring is legitimate and necessary."
The Chinese government has been making similar arguments since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered her first speech declaring Internet freedom to be a core pillar of American foreign policy in January 2010. For example, here is Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu responding to a foreign correspondent's question in May about heightened Internet censorship and surveillance: "The Chinese government's legal management of the Internet is in line with international practice."
While perpetrators of crime and violence, such as the kind we've witnessed this past week in Britain, must of course be pursued and prosecuted to the full extent of the law, it is critical that both the British government and Internet companies that operate in the U.K. or serve British users proceed responsibly.
Any new legal measures, or cooperative arrangements between government and companies meant to keep people from organizing violence or criminal actions, must not be carried out in ways that erode due process, rule of law and the protection of innocent citizens' political and civil rights...
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Rebecca MacKinnon @'CNN'
Torture in the US Prison System: The Endless Punishment of Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier, a great-grandfather, artist, writer, and indigenous rights activist, is a citizen of the Anishinabe and Dakota/Lakota Nations and has been imprisoned since 1976. (Photo: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee)
Your visit to one of America's prisons may last only a few hours, but once you pass the first steel threshold, your perception of humanity is altered. The slammed doors, metal detectors and body frisks introduce you to life on the inside, but the glaring hatred from the guards and officials make it a reality. When you creep back into your own world afterward, you wonder what is really happening to the people who permanently languish behind bars. In June 2006, the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America's Prisons released "Confronting Confinement," a 126-page report summarizing its 12-month inquiry into the prison systems. The commission follows up the analysis based on its findings with a list of recommendations. Topping the list of needed improvements is better enforcement of inmates' right to proper health care and limitations on solitary confinement. Five years after the report's release and despite its detailed and well-researched studies, inmate abuse continues. More recently, news reports from California's Pelican Bay Prison amplified the need for change, but after the three-week inmate hunger strike ended, the torture of solitary confinement continues nationwide.
More than 20,000 inmates are caged in isolation in the United States at any one time. Originally designed as a temporary disciplinary action, solitary confinement has drifted into use as a long-term punishment. This act of inhumanity is a clear contradiction of the Eighth Amendment. During the Pelican Bay hunger strike that rippled into prisons across the country, a 66-year-old man with extreme medical needs, Leonard Peltier, was forced into "the hole" at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary in Pennsylvania...
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Scientists Create Electronic “Second Skin”
A team of US scientists led by John A. Rogers, the Lee J. Flory-Founder professor of engineering at the University of Illinois, has developed an “electronic tattoo” that could make a huge difference in monitoring patients’ heart and brain. The tiny electronic sensor can be attached to skin like a temporary tattoo; it can bend, stretch and wrinkle and not break, says the BBC. The skin-like circuits could replace bulky equipment like wires, cables, monitors, pads coated with sticky gel, are much more comfortable to wear and “give the wearer complete freedom of movement,” says Science Daily.
Electrical and computer engineering professor Todd Coleman notes that these “wearable electronics” can connect a person “to the physical world and the cyberworld in a very natural way that feels very comfortable”:
The patches are initially mounted on a thin sheet of water-soluble plastic, then laminated to the skin with water — just like applying a temporary tattoo. Alternately, the electronic components can be applied directly to a temporary tattoo itself, providing concealment for the electronics….
Skin-mounted electronics have many biomedical applications, including EEG and EMG sensors to monitor nerve and muscle activity.
One major advantage of skin-like circuits is that they don’t require conductive gel, tape, skin-penetrating pins or bulky wires, which can be uncomfortable for the user and limit coupling efficiency. They are much more comfortable and less cumbersome than traditional electrodes and give the wearers complete freedom of movement.
“If we want to understand brain function in a natural environment, that’s completely incompatible with EEG studies in a laboratory,” said Coleman, now a professor at the University of California at San Diego. “The best way to do this is to record neural signals in natural settings, with devices that are invisible to the user.”
What’s more, the tiny electronic sensors can be placed on the throat and are able to recognize differences in words such as up, down, left, right, go and stop. Researchers were able to use them to control a simple computer game but someone with muscular or neurological disorders, such as ALS, could potentially wear one of them circuits and use them to interface with computers...
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Way To Blue - The Songs of Nick Drake (Live Barbican January 2010)
Filmed at the Barbican in January 2010 and curated by Joe Boyd, producer and general champion of Nick Drake, 90 minutes of performance highlights from a diverse but renowned cast of modern day troubadours. Presenting their own interpretations of Drake's songs are Vashti Bunyan, Green Gartside, Lisa Hannigan, Scott Matthews, Teddy Thompson, Krystle Warren, Robyn Hitchcock, Kirsty Almeida and Harper Simon. A celebration of the songs of Nick Drake, the concert features the original orchestrations of Nick's friend, the late Robert Kirby. It includes a house band anchored by Danny Thompson, the legendary bassist who played on Drake's first two albums. Highlights include Teddy Thompson's version of the timeless River Man, Lisa Hannigan's haunting and compelling version of Black Eyed Dog, Krystle Warren's bluesy take on Time Has Told Me, Robyn Hitchcock's psychedelic spin on Parasite and Neil MacColl's accomplished rendition of the classic Northern Sky. During his lifetime Nick Drake found little mainstream success, but since his death at the untimely age of 26 in 1974 he has been revered as one of the most influential and important English songwriters of his era.
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Really looking forward to the Melbourne performance...
Sunday, 14 August 2011
Fresh 'social justice' protests in Israel
At 10pm local time about 70,000 people were mobilised throughout the country, according to police estimates, which did not give a breakdown of numbers in every city or town.
Protest leaders said they were hoping for a turnout larger than last Saturday's, when more than 300,000 people demonstrated in Tel Aviv and other cities calling for "social justice" and a "welfare state".
"The key for us is to show that the people are united, that we live in a single country and that everything must be done to bridge social gaps," said Stav Shafir, a protest leader.
The largest crowds were in the northern city of Haifa, where more than 30,000 protesters turned up, and just over 10,000 gathered in Beersheva in the south, less than the numbers expected by protest leaders.
"We finally hear the voice of the people of the south, not just Tel Aviv," said Adar Meron, a Flamenco dancer and among the first to pitch a protest tent in Beersheva, the capital of the
impoverished Negev region.
At Beersheva's main square, a huge banner read "The Negev awakens". Demonstrators carried banners and placards that read "the south is angry", and "toward a welfare state - now".
Crowds chanted "the people demand social justice", the slogan of the protests since they began a month ago with the appearance of the first protest tent along Rothschild Boulevard in Tel Aviv's upscale district.
Smaller crowds also gathered in Afula in the north, in Galilee, in Modiin in the centre, and in Eilat in the extreme south.
The goal of the latest protests, organisers said, is to expand the geographic and demographic scope of the movement, as so far the middle class has been the driving force behind social justice rallies.
Rapidly growing protest movement
Israel has been gripped since mid-July by the rapidly growing protest movement demanding cheaper housing, education and health care.
An opinion poll released by Channel 10 television on Tuesday showed that 88 per cent of respondents said they supported the movement, with 53 per cent saying they are willing take part in protests.
Under pressure from the protests, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was willing to alter his approach to the free-market economy and meet the demands of the demonstrators. He created a commission to propose reforms and present recommendations to the government within a month.
@'SBS'
Le Révélateur - Bleu Nuit
‘Bleu Nuit’ is made using video feedbacks as basic material. Through various processes of image manipulations, colors emerged from electronic light to create improbable landscapes.
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