Bloc Party made a huge splash in 2005 with the release of their incendiary debut album, "Silent Alarm." Drummer Matt Tong's technical chops and hyperactive punk syncopation drove the band's raw instrumentals, while singer Kele Okereke wailed his way through the electrifying freshman effort.
Octogen, the pseudonym of Scotsman Marco Bernardi, has released his awaited debut album "2five0nine," an incursion into the microhouse music genre that is bound to make ears smile. The album showcases his confident blending of wee little bite-sized drum samples into delectable textures. Compared to his EP releases, Octogen manages to inject surprising amounts of emotion into the usually stark "drill-and-bass" backdrop.
An artist's creativity begets more than simply inspiration for new work. Artists always seem to find crafty ways to survive and even flourish under repression. In Poland's early Communist regime, art was confined to Soviet ideals, and artists who diverged from regulations faced censorship. Within this atmosphere, some resilient artists turned to a medium both economically viable and privately sustainable: that of pinhole photography.
After Chicago-based Fall Out Boy's apparent overnight success with their 2005 hit "Sugar We're Going Down," the band has ruled over what's left of the pop-punk genre with an iron fist. Beyond record sales and popularity, the band has developed, somewhat ironically, a huge cult following that idolizes bassist Pete Wentz as the immaculately conceived prophet of "the scene."
It may just be a trick of the eye: A combination of the larger-than-life cartoon backdrop and an ambient sense of child-like wonder combine to make it seem like you've shrunk when you enter Animation, the 6,000 square foot interactive exhibit at the Museum of Science, Boston. Then again, tricks of the eye abound throughout the exhibit hall because, after all, that's exactly what animation is.
If you are a musician who has suffered a break up, depression, death in the family or other similar misfortunes, you very well may be weeping at the core of your heart. But great emotion always, without fail, catalyzes great songs. Just ask Eric Clapton ? la "Tears in Heaven."
One of the Museum of Fine Arts' newest exhibits brings Italy a little closer to New England, showcasing many notable Renaissance sculptures. "Donatello to Giambologna: Italian Renaissance Sculpture" features works done by some of the greatest masters of the time, artists considered near equals to the revered Michelangelo.
The progression of rock 'n' roll over the past half century is as much a testament to scientific discovery in the field of recording music as it is to musical creativity. Ever since the first guitarist plugged in so he could hear himself over the drummer, rock music and technology have tussled like two kids in the back of a cramped car on a road trip. Since then, for every egghead behind the scenes who thinks he can apply what he learned in science class to making music, there's some dimwit booing from the audience, acting like rock's got some purity to protect.
"The boundaries of vision have never been more fluid. We are now able to see in ways that we never have before, from the cellular to the cosmological, from the digital to the virtual."
Documentary photographer Edward Burtynsky presents the world as one that is permeated by tensions, including the struggle between industrialization and progress and the worry that the inexorable pace of advances in technology may not be wholly beneficial. His work deals with such omnipresent themes as the destruction of the environment and the presence man has imposed on nature. The difference between Burtynsky's work and purely documentary work is that he imbues his pictures with a sense of epic beauty rather than one of pure devastation and wrongdoing.
You don't need to know anything about Sloan to see why they named their latest album "Never Hear the End of It," containing an amazing 30 tracks and 74 minutes of nonstop pop rock. This monster album takes weeks for one to fully absorb and appreciate and as one of the first releases of 2007, it certainly sets a high standard for what's to come this year.
Perhaps it's when the opening track fails to present anything remotely coherent or, for that matter, anything remotely musical, that the Wolf Parade fan begins to have doubts about this album. Or maybe the realization sets in later, as the disappointed fan flicks off the last track in disgust and returns to the straightforward and familiar ground of "Apologies to Queen Mary" (2005).
As far as personalities, Ghostface Killah has to be one of the most interesting emcees in hip-hop. With a menacing moniker ripped from "Ninja Checkmate"'s (1979) lethal villain and an often brutally punishing flow, it would seem easy to pigeonhole the Ironman as a rough-and-tumble rapper, a gritty, salty vet that you wouldn't want to piss off.
When Incubus released "A Crow Left of the Murder" in 2004, it was met with mediocre reviews, some saying it reflected maturity and others claiming it was the beginning of the end. The band's new album, "Light Grenades," picks up where "Crow" left off, which will either be good or bad news depending on what the listener thought of the band's previous effort.
It's a busy Monday night at Tufts, and students are filing into Brown and Brew to crack open the books. The study mood was set by a local pop/hip-hop radio station playing a club mix.
Amidst hip-hop's incessant braggadocio, few rappers have as thoroughly earned their right to talk as Jay-Z. Journalists have made careers out of chronicling Shawn Carter's now 10-year tenure as an artist, from the hustler wordplay of the still-astounding "Reasonable Doubt" of 1996 (still one of the best debuts in hip-hop history) to his 2001 opus "The Blueprint" (still one of the best records in hip-hop history).
Over the past year, the hip-hop airwaves have been dominated by "trap-hop," a rap subgenre in which self-proclaimed dealers-turned-rappers glorify the selling of cocaine with clever metaphors like trap-hopper Young Jeezy's "I sling so much white/ it'll hurt your eyes."
Ever since printmaking became an art form over 500 years ago, it has been used as a quick, easy and cheap form of communication. Just as other publications like newspapers and pamphlets flourished with the introduction of the printing press, the means for communicating among artists, between social movements, between the maker and the viewer were made so vast that artistic prints entered a realm oil paintings were incapable of.
In the wake of Blink-182, the world seems a bit lost as to in what direction pop-punk is supposed to go. The former Blink members - Mark Hoppus, Tom DeLonge and Travis Barker - have all found new groups, but as of yet, none have come close to filling the void left by their former '90s juggernaut.
Dave Grohl has everything a rock star could want: cred as the drummer for Nirvana, his own band and a sweet beard. After five consecutive platinum albums (two of which were double-platinum), the Foo Fighters needed some way to commemorate their success. Instead of doing a typical "greatest hits" compilation, Grohl opted for a live album, this time: "Skin and Bones." An accompanying DVD will be released Nov. 28.
