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When members of the Paul Taylor Dance Company took the stage June 6 to open the 25th season of the American Dance Festival in Durham, they carried with them the history of a choreographer whose work over the past 47 years has left an undeniable thumbprint on the modern dance world. But moving beyond that history and into the future proved to require something more than Taylor's stockpile of tradition and technique could offer.
One year, 1,298 albums, 212 interviews and a few benders with Ol' Dirty Bastard (aka Big Baby Jesus) into her career as Recess music editor, Kelly McVicker selects the five standout albums of the year:
Concerts can be so tedious. Every time you hand your cash over to the greasy-haired hipster at the ticket window, you're gambling with the unpredictable, uninsured world of live music. If the artist you've come to hear fails to suck you into that invisible vacuum between your body and the sound, you're stuck bobbing your head listlessly in the heat and smoke, just praying to God they won't come back out for an encore. But since I was feeling rather risky this weekend, and the offerings at Cat's Cradle were especially promising, I decided to take my chances, hoping that a weekend at the Cradle would renew my faith in the art of the live show.
Tonight at Ringside in downtown Durham, local rockers Little Miss Messy will bring their fresh blend of post-grunge rock and pop to the stage, following an opening act by Duke band The Point. Earlier this week, Recess music editor Kelly McVicker got to talk with Miss Messy herself, lead singer Carlotta Valdez, who also happens to be a graduate student at Duke studying pharmacology and cancer biology. The rest of the band (guitarist Dan Hill, bassist Dave Carey and drummer Drew Remaley) are a physicist, an architect and the owner of a construction company, respectively--not bad for day jobs. Doors for tonight's show open at 9pm. Get there early if you plan on sitting down.
Recently, Recess music editor Kelly McVicker got the chance to chat with two members of Rusted Root, masters of the pennywhistle and 15-minute drum solos. With their first album in four years due out April 9, founding member Mike Glablicki and recently reunited vocalist Jenn Wertz talked it up about what it's like to be poor, recovering social activists who just like to drink and make good music.
Perhaps in some far-off place, they have words to describe a voice like this. But after trying for three days here in the good old U.S. of A., I'm still coming up short. Call it heavenly, honey-dipped, sultry, smoldering or whatever--let's just say Norah Jones' voice is one of the more beautiful things you could ever hope to fall upon your ears. Her voice sounds as if she's been loved and left for dead too many times to count, yet somehow survived with her pipes intact.
f your idea of appreciating modern art consists of glancing at the colorful graffiti scrawls on the bridge as you whiz past on the East-West bus, you need to get out more. Lucky for you, there's a place to go. Widely considered the best gallery in the Triangle, Tyndall Galleries in Brightleaf Square is home to works by both seasoned artists and rising stars in the artistic community.
emember that guy from Faith No More, the one in the video who stomps around in the rain all pissed off, headbanging and punching at the camera? Did you ever picture that guy making the kind of music you'd throw on the hi-fi to set the mood for some serious sex? Yeah, neither did I. And that, my friend, is why you and I do not get invited over to Damon Albarn's loft to play video games.
magine yourself in a brand new addition to Disney World--a place called NatureLand, where everything is natural but nothing is real. This is the digital dreamland created by Japanese musician Cornelius on Point, his follow-up album to 1998's Fantasma. Crickets chirp, waves slap, dogs howl and birds sing inside his fake plastic forest of sound, the kind of world where robots go to get it on with birdwatchers as synthetic cicada symphonies hum sex-me-up songs in the background.
hat is it with the British? Their music press seems to have a knack for spotting American talent even before we do, hyping them up until we Yanks sit up and pay attention to the good stuff we got going (e.g. The Strokes, The White Stripes).
f the thought of spending this Saturday night fighting the post-rush frenzy on West leaves you quivering, get yourself over to the Coffeehouse on East Campus, where local rockers WeThePeople will be playing to celebrate the release of their self-titled debut recording.
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Mom hail from Iceland, where they now join the likes of Bjsrk and Sigur R--s in a music scene in which the only identifying characteristic seems to be genius. What the hell do they put in the water over there? Seriously, the foursome--who were all in their teens when Yesterday Was Dramatic--Today Is OK was produced--show a musical prowess that is outright unnerving. Say heaven is a Nintendo game--it would maybe sound like this. Mom exorcise the haunting Aphex Twin, channeling his demons into soundscapes that invite rather than alienate, warm instead of chill. Church bells ring out over complex drillbeats on "Smell Memory," while the ice that freezes out true emotion from electronic music melts away when the wistful chimes of "There Is A Number of Small Things" fade slowly into an angelic, childlike choir. The amorphous mix of live and electronic instrumentation envelops simple melodies within deceptively complex beats. No, you can't always dance to it, but who wants to shake booty when there's all the beauty of the universe to contemplate? At the top of a great year for electronica, Mom have given the rarest of such albums: modern, timeless and joyfully accessible. --Greg Bloom
Ever since Rolling Stone shed its cool and became the official spokesmagazine for Britney and all things tagged for mass consumption, there's been a big old void in the music world. Hip-hop/R&B mags such as Vibe and The Source cover the bling-bling but give little print to the more progressive side of the genres. And Spin has its tongue so deep into its cheek, it looks like a tumor.
When I walked into Cat's Cradle Tuesday night, the Strokes' lead singer John Casablancas was the first person I saw. Staring hazily up at the stage while opening act Cave In pushed through their set, he didn't look like the lead singer of a band that's being hyped as "The Next Big Thing" by music critics across the United States and the U.K. He didn't even look like a rock star.
Have you ever been experienced--in the back of an 18-wheeler?
Hope Sandoval could sing about the junk between her toes and it would sound angelic. So imagine how lovely it is when she sings of memories, longings and other gauzy things. She could probably make you melt with just a few words--that is, if she cared enough to glance your way. Unlike most vocalists who wear their heart in their throat, Sandoval's voice tiptoes around emotion altogether, like it's separated from her soul by more than a few degrees. It has better things to do than pay attention to what she's saying. But despite the attachment disorder, her lyrics are far from vacant. On the title track, over a loop that wavers between a muffled snare and the sound of waves crashing on the shore, she threatens, "I've got a brand new machine/ I'm gonna make myself treat you mean/ I'm gonna spend all my money making you cry." Revenge never sounded so beautiful.
Bullfrog sounds a little like the Beastie Boys back in their jammy-jam days: funky guitars, lots of bass and some horns thrown in to keep it jazzy. You might be tempted to call it fusion, but then along comes Kid Koala acting like he's MixMaster Mike or something, sampling old men talking about frogs and a caffeine freak confessing to his 63-cup-a-day habit. Add MC blurum 13's pleasantly nasal rhymes to the pot, and you've got something the whole cast of The Real World could agree on. Yeah, it's that kind of music, and you'll probably like it. Considering the fact that Kid Koala's been in on some pretty adventuresome projects over the past year (Deltron 3030 and Gorillaz), Bullfrog is a little lacking in innovation. But that's nothing a little Dan the Automator couldn't fix. Come on, Kid, can we get a Gorillaz part 2?
Here at Recess, we get a lot of CDs in the mail. Some are good, some are bad and some just scare the piss out of us. To spare our readers and ourselves the torture of reviewing Norwegian death metal bands, we add them to the dusty stacks-o-crap against the office wall. There they sit, confined to their own special category of spiked-bracelet-wearing and pagan-beast-battling satanic suckiness. But this week, in honor of our favorite holiday, the music editors of Recess decided to dust off the cobwebs and unleash the hounds of hell so that you too may know the horrors that reside in the Recess rejects pile. So hide your Hanson and put away your DMB--we're going over to the dark side.
How's the tour going so far?
Don't let the catchy, TRL-friendly single "Ugly" fool you--Bubba Sparxxx is hard core. Once you get past the first few tracks spit-shined ^ la producer Timbaland on Dark Days, Bright Nights, it becomes clear that Bubba's dirt doesn't just come from pig wrestling. Either he's a white rapper from way down South with something big to prove and only one shot at doing it, or folks in LaGrange, Georgia are just super-nasty.
