Kristina Jacobsen at Sapiens.org provides us with an anthropological perspective on music making and songs circulating coronavirus lockdown in Italy. Especially interesting is the new dynamic between the harder hit North of Italy versus the Southern regions.
The title of the following Vox video is a bit misleading. In fact, the video provides an excellent history on the creation of the fisheye lens and its use in music photography and videos. At the end of the video it even goes into a bit of semiotics, with the images allowing multiple or mediated interpretations for different people.
It took me a while to find the time, but finally started listening to the new Big Thief album, “U.F.O.F.”. The lyrics are as curious as always with short mysterious vignettes filled with names, colours and animals. Overall the albums sounds magical, with some wonderful moments like the screams from the guitar in the song “Contact”. Favorite track of the albums currently is “Orange”.
Agree with this article from the Washington Post on how it seems that so much classical is being promoted as soothing or something to fall asleep too: “This is a deeply unsatisfying way to describe one of our most storied art forms. Even music that is superficially calm and slow can contain depth, tension and difficult themes. The industry sells classical music as a mellow monolith when it is in fact capable of stirring any and all emotions, serving any and all ends — divine and hellish. The way we talk about culture, any culture, shapes how we think about it, so we should not be so narrow in our choice of language.”.