The News Review:
- Indie Virtuosos – Music – New York Times
- Shake rattle and roll
- Speaking the good word: Unorthodox youth pastor spreads the message
- About a girl – Music – Entertainment – theage.com.au
- To find Blacksburg’s music just listen
Indie Virtuosos – Music – New York Times
New York Times – Mar 11, 2007
This would have been a familiar occurrence if she were knocking out punk rock bar chords or plucking an airy folk melody. Stern’s hands moved swiftly along the fretboard like pale spiders her fingertips hammering the strings to create a looping rush of notes which combined with the recorded guitar and drum tracks from her iPod into a cyclone of vaguely heavy metal-ish rock. She wore Gap-style street clothes a long-sleeve pink T-shirt and jeans and mostly watched her hands as she played. But at one point a pink pick clutched in her teeth she tipped her small ski-jump nose in the air closed her eyes and lets her blond hair fall behind her in a classic snapshot of guitar-god nirvana… Brownstein whose punk-influenced band showed a hint of this new expansiveness on “The Woods” its 2005 farewell set. She added that if you put in an elaborate guitar solo “or can play at a certain speed or a certain level that’s no longer antithetical to interesting art. ” “And I think that with the mainstreaming of a lot of indie music people are looking for something that has an oddity to it” she continued. “I think that virtuoso playing is polemical in some ways. People either find it really appealing or they’re turned off by it.
Shake rattle and roll
The Age – Mar 11, 2007
Skiing and snowboarding in Japan is out of this world. n myfirst day in Japan I’m sitting in a chairlift five metres above thefreshest deepest snow I ever thought possible. The first thing younotice here is the lack of noise (except in the areas where theyplayed piped Japanese punk music to shock your senses). TheJapanese are a modest quiet lot. Unlike Australians you won’thear them shouting to their friends about the jump they justmade. We hike for a couple of minutes through waist-deep snow noddingpolite hellos to the few deeply tanned Japanese riders near us. It’s hard to strap in with so much snow especially when your wholebody is shaking with anticipation and cold; it can get to minus-20and beyond.
Speaking the good word: Unorthodox youth pastor spreads the message
Greeley Tribune – Mar 11, 2007
n his left calf is a large vintage microphone with the calligraphic word ‘Preacher’ scrawled across it. The members of the church he founded in Tennessee bought it for him as a birthday gift which made sense because asis was held in a tattoo parlor. The parishioners were the city’s homeless punks hippies and goths. He’d met some of them on his own forays into poverty. As a freshman at Milligan College in northeast Tennessee Tencza passed out food to the homeless. The students made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and brought them into town. n one trip a man screamed at Tencza… but we stay outside the bar saying ‘how awesome is this party?’ ” He then asks the youth group to talk about God’s grace. As everyone breaks up they form small groups around the room and punk music blares over the speakers. The basement looks nothing like the bottom floor of a church. It has a bar with soda and water for sale flat screen TVs and a drum kit and guitars with green gel stage lights. The kids lounge on couches and around cafe tables. And they actually talk about God’s grace.
About a girl – Music – Entertainment – theage.com.au
The Age – Mar 11, 2007
So we like to findher and meet her in our songs. And though Pocket Symphony’s melancholy tone and subdued pacemight suggest an unhappy period one in which the perfect girl hasproven elusive Dunckel says the opposite is true. “We are a little bit selfish so we do the music for ourselvesand I think it is a way for us to calm down” he says suggestingthat the richer and more rewarding their lives the quieter theirmusic. Going by this rule Pocket Symphony is the result oflife at its most fulfilling as it’s easily the duo’s most sombreeffort yet. “This one is the most melancholic” Dunckel admitssounding perfectly content with the idea. “There is a fascinationfor death; it’s more gloomy and religious. Mannered guest appearances from Jarvis Cocker and the DivineComedy’s Neil Hannon (who also both appeared on CharlotteGainsbourg’s Air-produced album from last year 5:55) areundeniably engaging but do little to cheer up proceedings… “This was onehell of a party nobody got to go to bed but this morning after’skilling me and I have to rest my head” Cocker intones. Which could easily serve as a metaphor for Air’s career. Releasing its first singles in 1995 Air seemed at first theplayful vanguard of a French electronica invasion followed soonafter by the less subtle likes of Daft Punk Cassius and DimitriFrom Paris. But as this scene grew to become perhaps the mostinfluential and successful dance-floor movement of the past decade(still thriving now with huge French producers such as Justice andBusy P) Air gradually distanced itself from its electroniccompatriots. “We were in this movement we knew all these people” Dunckelreflects. “We used to go to the same clubs we used to apply the sameeffect treatments to our music. The only thing is we were not doingdance music more music for chilling out.
To find Blacksburg’s music just listen
Roanoke Times – Mar 11, 2007
jpg) no-repeat; width:400px;}Sunday March 11 2007. She will be 60 this year and has been very active in music and art for almost 40 years. In the 1970s she created “The Handphone Table” a table that plays music via a method called “bone conduction. ” To hear the music that is playing in the table you sit at it with your elbows on the table and your hands over your ears. The sounds seem to come from inside your head. The table now travels around to various museums… at the Lyric Theatre reggae artists Sol Creech and the ever-popular Kind at Champs the WUVT alumni homecoming show in Haymarket Theatre Curious Strange at Attitudes and punk stoner doom and electropop at various house venues. And that’s just a sample of what is going on. The house venues bubble behind the scenes like Stroubles Creek running under downtown Blacksburg. I helped organize and host shows at a Blacksburg house from local acts to bands from Georgia New York and Japan. Fifty of those shows were probably repeat performances by Johnny No-Friends the Spiral Joy Band and Hideki Tojo but it was a lot of music nonetheless.