SHARED SPACES, 2019 revision. We know them well. I’m taken to the green and gritty parks we’ve laid upon, venues where music and meaning rings through the ears straight to the core to reverberate, forums for cultivated interests – the more obscure, the better.. they would be nothing if not for collective being. Shared spaces […]
The first track, ‘Invocation’, begins with a reverberation of bells surrounding me before suddenly a cacophony of noise that spans mechanical friction, splices of distant AM radio and undulating feedback startles amidst the serenity. The soothing chimes of the bells have become a distant memory. Soon though, drones via Forrest Marquise’s fiddle and Ian McColm’s harmonium come into focus, recalling that meditative state that the bells invoked. The track proceeds with rising harmonic overtones at the forefront, grounded by Bachman’s drifting melodic guitar lines filtering through. I closed my eyes, absorbed and lying within the noise as it proceeded on its sonic exposition, lasting for over 18 minutes.
We have to solve the opioid crisis. Anyone in 2017 with a fully functioning set of ears heard this phrase, repeatedly. It’s an issue that exploded onto the national stage during last year’s polarizing election season. It was one of several subjects that neither candidate found any common ground on, although, unlike the issue of […]
Have you been paying attention? The used and abused have become the pitiful and dangerous, the dwellers and imitators and clouded judgment. Insane is now sane, idiocy is at an all-time high, the gifted are the least supported. Bigotry, sexism, racism, what is it? We’ve lessened ourselves. There’s no thin line anymore. What is life […]
Too many of us complain that pop music content is nothing but crap. Even though not everybody agrees with that, I think we can all agree it offers a high dosage of mindless content and that it has been, for a long time, present at the top of the music charts in several countries. Why […]
Recently, I saw Incredibles 2 with some friends. It was a nostalgia-laced thrill ride and we left the theatre buzzing, riding a high of reminiscence. The premise of the film, for those that may be unfamiliar, is that there exists in the world a group of humans born with incredible powers. In the prologue of […]
It has been the subject of religious pilgrimages, Western humanitarian documentaries and ruthless colonialism. It’s also a country known for its vibrant culture, its exhilarating Bollywood films and its rich and complex cuisine. In the winter of 2017, I had the opportunity to travel throughout India, the world’s second most populous country. As we emerged […]
My current musical project, electronic pop band Smoke From all the Friction, has been as much an internal development project, as an artistic one. We played a bigger show where we spent a lot of time and preparation trying to create an ambiance in the space that matched the musical performance of vulnerability and self-exploration. After […]
The extremist, bombastic rhetoric of Donald Trump has garnered excessive media coverage and has debatably precipitated right-wing movements across the world, particularly in Europe. The result of these movements in a bevy of European countries has provoked mass comparisons to the notorious rise of fascism over the continent throughout the 1930s and 1940s. But are […]
