“The World Is a Business”
In the final moments of the 1976 film Network, we find one of the most perspicacious and prescient comments on global capitalism in quite possibly the entire history of Hollywood. The film itself is a...
View ArticleClément Belio’s Contrast
Although 99.9% of the articles I write are political, every once in a blue moon (or yellow moon, doesn’t really matter to me what color the moon is), I write about music. Well, here is my ridiculously...
View ArticleHighlights and Quotes from Jean-Luc Godard’s Pierrot le fou
Jean-Luc Godard once said “My aesthetic is that of a sniper on the roof.” I am huge fan of Godard’s work. I believe many of his films embody the ideal combination of aesthetic experimentation,...
View ArticleReview: Tigran Hamasyan – Mockroot
This review is published at Can This Even Be Called Music? Being a musical genius is hard. Not in the, “Oh, I’m a musical genius, I’m so oppressed, pity me” sense, but rather in the sense that one must...
View ArticleSchoenberg ‘Ice Cream Truck’ Is the Best Thing Ever
Arnold Schoenberg revolutionized music. There is no other way to articulate this fact—Schoenberg instigated a musical revolution. 12-tone serialism, or dodecaphony, the style of atonal composition the...
View ArticleVeil of Maya’s ‘Mikasa’ Marks the Official Death of Djent
UPDATE (19 May 2015): Veil of Maya’s latest album Matriarch is now out. I just finished listening to it all, and, I must say, I am glad I wrote this review. My criticism of “Mikasa” is equally true—if...
View ArticleDemocracy Now Plays Schoenberg
I watch the US news show Democracy Now every single day. It is the best US daily news program, in my view, and I have turned watching it into a quotidian ritual. In between segments of the show,...
View ArticleRapper Prodigy Releasing Album Titled ‘The Hegelian Dialectic’
Rapper Prodigy, of the hip hop duo Mobb Deep, announced a new album. Its title? The Hegelian Dialectic. New album “The Hegelian Dialectic” https://t.co/sPnqUvnuVs — PRODIGY MOBBDEEP (@PRODIGYMOBBDEEP)...
View ArticleHypermetric Asymmetry in A-WA’s ‘Habib Galbi’
A hit song has been sweeping across Israel and the Middle East: “Habib Galbi,” by A-WA, a group of three Yemenite Jewish sisters who combine traditional Yemeni-Arabic folk music with electronic dance...
View ArticleThe serious politics behind the Renoir Sucks at Painting movement
(This article is published in Salon.) A 19th-century French impressionist artist who perished almost a century ago is the world’s leading aesthetic terrorist; you just don’t know it. Fortunately, the...
View ArticleTranscription: “Moor” by Every Time I Die
A transcription of the song “Moor” by Every Time I Die. Download the pdf here. (DISCLAIMER: I do not own the rights to this song. I transcribed it for educational purposes.) You can listen to the track...
View ArticleAsymmetric phrase groupings and meter in Regina Spektor’s “The Trapper and...
To anyone familiar with my compositions and avant-garde proclivities, it likely comes as no surprise that I am not a fan of singer-songwriter music (to put it mildly). Yet, of the myriad...
View ArticleAsymmetrical Hypermeter in The Contortionist’s ‘Reimagined’
“Reimagined,” by the American progressive metal band The Contortionist, may at first sound like it is a straightforward pop song. Compared to much of The Contortionist’s material, the song certainly is...
View Article“The World Is a Business”
In the final moments of the 1976 film Network, we find one of the most perspicacious and prescient comments on global capitalism in quite possibly the entire history of Hollywood. The film itself is a...
View ArticleClément Belio’s Contrast
Although 99.9% of the articles I write are political, every once in a blue moon (or yellow moon, doesn’t really matter to me what color the moon is), I write about music. Well, here is my ridiculously...
View ArticleHighlights and quotes from Jean-Luc Godard’s “Pierrot le fou”
Jean-Luc Godard once quipped, “My aesthetic is that of a sniper on the roof.” I am huge fan of Godard’s work. Many of his films embody the ideal combination of aesthetic experimentation, language,...
View ArticleReview: Tigran Hamasyan – Mockroot
This review is published at Can This Even Be Called Music? Being a musical genius is hard. Not in the, “Oh, I’m a musical genius, I’m so oppressed, pity me” sense, but rather in the sense that one must...
View ArticleSchoenberg ‘Ice Cream Truck’ Is the Best Thing Ever
Arnold Schoenberg revolutionized music. There is no other way to articulate this fact—Schoenberg instigated a musical revolution. 12-tone serialism, or dodecaphony, the style of atonal composition the...
View ArticleVeil of Maya’s ‘Mikasa’ Marks the Official Death of Djent
UPDATE (19 May 2015): Veil of Maya’s latest album Matriarch is now out. I just finished listening to it all, and, I must say, I am glad I wrote this review. My criticism of “Mikasa” is equally true—if...
View ArticleDemocracy Now Plays Schoenberg
I watch the US news show Democracy Now every single day. It is the best US daily news program, in my view, and I have turned watching it into a quotidian ritual. In between segments of the show,...
View Article