SOUNDTRACK: DEAD CAN DANCE-“Children of the Sun” (Live at KCRW, April 24, 2013).
Dead Can Dance are timeless. Their music sounds ancient and modern at the same time. And Brendan Perry’s voice has an unearthly majesty to it that never seems to age.
I’ve known the band for decades (during which time they have broken up and reunited and broken up and reunited). And in all that time, while their sound has changed in subtle ways, the band is instantly recognizable. I’ve never really thought of them as a live entity–they just seem like such a creation of the studio that it would be impossible to do justice to their wash of music live. Of course that was truer three decades ago before it was easy to fit an entire orchestra on an iPod.
You can watch this song on NPR. It’s fun to watch a band with two keyboardists (and Lisa Gerrard on…autoharp?) and see all of them making very different sounds. The only disappointing thing about watching this is that they have so many cool instruments strewn about which do not get used on this song (you can see the whole show here and watch him bust out that bouzouki).
This song is a new one and it doesn’t have quite the ponderous nature as their older material. Which is a bit of a shame, as they were so over the top it was fabulous, but maybe they’re just settling into New Old Age.
[READ: April 20, 2013] Trinity
Sarah brought this book home because it was on YALSA Hub Reading Challenge for 2013. I’m unlikely to do the challenge as I have so many other books to read, but I have already read 5 of the required 25. Not too bad, although since the challenge is from Feb to June and I read a couple last year, I don’t even qualify for some of the ones I DID read. Anyhow, she told me I’d like this and she was right (as usual).
Trinity is the story of the development of the atomic bomb done as a graphic novel.
It outlines how we came to develop and test the bomb and of course, the aftermath of its use. What I liked about the story is that leading up to the detonation of the bomb, the quest for its discovery is presented in a fairly neutral way. Essentially, once it was discovered that we could split the atom, it was deemed inevitable that someone would make a bomb out of it. It stood to reason that if Hitler or the Japanese figured it out before us they would use it on us (since we were at war with them). The intention was that America would be decent and not use it with impunity (which is not to say we wouldn’t use it at all). The book presents that American can do spirit that the forties seem to be all about–a sort of gee whiz, let’s figure this out mentality.
I knew some of the history of the bomb, but there was a lot here that I didn’t know: that thousands of people moved to New Mexico to work on the bomb—housing was put up and families moved in, some 80,000 people in all. And most of the people had no idea what they were working on. It’s hard to fathom that there were thousands of people whose work helped to create a nuclear bomb and yet they can feel neither pride nor shame because they had no idea that’s what they were doing. Weird. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 