It’s been asked and echoed for almost two decades now. And yet, the conversation has yet to leave the table. Hundreds of musicians have declared it so. Even Gene Simmons, the epitome of “rock icon,” has officially declared Rock ‘n’ Roll dead.
What’s to say about them? Honestly, there’s not too much to say. Not traditionally a “band,” but they operate in the same way as one – each member bringing something to the table, approaching the content from a different angle with a different viewpoint. But what about them that sets them apart? Well, the best way to become an object of obsession, is to give yourself some shade of mystery. Not knowing too much about an artist is key to feeding this fire. You look at Aphex Twin who people say owns a tank and a submarine and used to live in a bank vault. Whatever you don’t know about an artist, your mind somehow magically fills in the missing spaces. And that’s where Boards of Canada’s image comes in.
There was once a German experimentalist composer by the name of Karlheinz Stockhausen in the mid-20th century. He believed that man harnessed an inner power to reach the next phase of human existence through off-beat, arrhythmic music. He refrained from dabbling in symmetric, accessible 4/4 beats in favor of more complicated time signatures and melodies in order to explore this phenomenon, revealing that once humans wrapped their heads around complex rhythms, we’d be able to adapt and hear different rhythmic patterns in nature, thus bringing us to a new level of heightened awareness in hopes to make contact with the higher beings who created us.
The 2004 Sundance Film Festival marked a huge year for independent film. It was a year that saw the premieres of Saw, Garden State, Super-Size Me, Napoleon Dynamite, among other notable titles. And yet, the winner that year came out from nowhere. A film with a budget of $7,000 about two amateur scientists who accidently invent time travel, which 80% of takes place in a garage, was the film that took the top prize. It was awarded to a 30ish year old former software engineer, Shane Carruth, who later admitted that he didn’t even plan on attending the closing ceremony that year. It was a year that began to show the increasing accessibility to resources young filmmakers now had, and Primer was the film that celebrated the true spirit of independent film. You can only imagine how giddy they were upon accepting the award.
John Maus is….
It seems like every year for the past 12 years, the same thought runs across the minds of every rock music fan: will we be getting a new Tool record? Every year since 2008, two years after they released their last record 10,000 Days, the band has teased in one form or another that they’re working on new material, despite these rumors being shot down by their own band mates (Rolling Stone even released a timeline of the new record’s progress). However, 12 years on, Tool fanatics are still barking up the same tree, starving for a glimpse of something new and ready to devour anything tossed to them.
Alexander Payne has always had a fruitful eye toward action and reaction. His characters embody a lust for what they might miss in their lives, or might be missing already. From About Schmidt to his latest project Downsizing, all of his characters find themselves at a crossroads or a sea change in their lives, afraid to take any steps in any direction.
The early 2000s was a ripe time for the music industry, with physical record sales plummeting and piracy and trading websites like Napster on the rise, it was an unprecedented time for music. One where no one really had an answer to, forcing record companies to scramble and close up any loopholes they could find. However, the joke was on them, because soon enough those file sharing and streaming services would eventually become the preeminent way of consuming music.
It’s easy to judge something by its cover. It’s easy to merely see something on the surface and just write it off or dismiss it, such as the fate of a lot of non-mainstream music. It’s as if there’s only a small window for music that people will tolerate, and not force them to stretch beyond their means or step out of their comfort zone, now thanks to suggestive streaming services like Pandora that recommend you music you might like. They tend to pigeonholed you in a musical box that caters to your niche genre, which sounds like a great idea for a streaming service, but actually could be debilitating to one’s music taste. Only the curious and patient dare to listen to new types of music they’re not usually exposed to. However, fans of one particular genre have been caught up in this struggle for decades.