SOUNDTRACK: WE ARRIVE ALIVE-One (2013).
This is the final EP available from the We Arrive Alive bandcamp site. In fact 2013 is the last I can find any information about this band at all. This site, their Facebook page, there’s nothing after mid 2013. I wonder what happened.
For this EP, the band has also grown to a 7 piece Andrew McGurk, Ben Healy, Adam Faulkner, Sean Dexter, Iain Faulkner, Michael Naude, Neil Dexter (still no idea who plays what).
“3 years” opens with some noise and fat propulsive bass and guitar. The song feels more complex, although I’m not sure what the new musicians add to the song. There’s more noise (scraping guitar and whatnot ) that bring new dissonant textures to the song. There may even be horns at the end (it’s a little hard to tell in the din). “Slow Fall” opens with a slow piano and an intricate drum pattern. A slow guitar line plays over the bass before some really noisy guitars are laid over the top. At around 4 minutes the song shifts gear becoming faster and more broody.
The final song start with some ringing chords and a staccato guitar line. I like the way the new guitar introduces a melody to the proceedings. The song really starts to build at around 2 minutes, with some crashing cymbals shortly after. There’s also a pretty middle section (which seems like a ticking clock). The song end with a ringing guitar-and unexpected mellow ending to what I assumed would be a loud buildup to a song.
I’m intrigued by the direction the band went with this EP, although I like the sound of their previous one a bit more. I am also concerned that they’ve broken up. But if they have, they have three great EPs to their name.
[READ: March 24, 2015] Robert Moses
I can’t tell how ignorant I am that I’ve never heard of Robert Moses. I mean his name sounded vaguely familiar, but I would never have known who he was (the master builder of New York City). And I have to wonder if I am not alone. For this book was originally written in French (and was printed in Poland and released in England).
This turns out to be a graphic novel biography of Robert Moses. It’s hard to summarize how incredibly influential Moses was. The back of the book says “From the streets to the skyscrapers, from Wall Street to the Long Island suburbs, every inch of New York City tells the story of one man’s mind.”
If you have seen the (excellent) book Wonderstruck, the mini model of New York City mentioned in the book was created for Moses. New York Bound books describes the model thusly: “The Panorama, a miniature scale model of New York City that was commissioned by Robert Moses for the 1964 World’s Fair, is a 9,335 square foot architectural model that includes every single building constructed before 1992 in all five boroughs, or a total of 895,000 individual structures.” (more…)
I Just Read About That... 