weirdo cat
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obvious lesson of the week
Turns out that working with adults is a lot different than working with children! Last semester, I was motivating a middle schooler by promising a Play-Doh break and charting homework progress on a sticker chart, and now I’m nagging a smoker and asking really personal questions about the state of one transgender woman’s transition: When did you realize your gender didn’t match your body? When did you first start dressing as a female? The closest experience I have to any kind of counseling is real-talking an 11 year old about how kids in middle school are savage insecure bullies who torment others for their minor quirks, and explaining therefore that her speech impediment might get in the way of her making positive first impressions next year. SO YEAH it turns out adults are complicated heterogeneous baggage-bearing individuals, and not eager-to-please sweethearts OKAY BUT WHY DID THIS FACT SURPRISE ME THIS WEEK?
The new John Talabot album
Listening to John Talabot’s new record is akin to taking a survey course focused on a specific brand of ’00s electronic music. It was a fruitful decade for oft-moody, throbbing cuts that winked and nodded at house and R&B: think Caribou’s “Odessa”, Four Tet’s “Love Cry”, and Junior Boys’ “In the Morning”, all seminal documents of a strain that represented a midpoint between the studio and the dance floor. The fingerprints of Snaith, Hebden and Greenspan leave small impressions all over ƒin, whether it’s the template of soulful male vocals and layered beats on “Destiny”, the disorientation and shifting loops of “El Oeste”, or the straightforward pulse of “When the Past Was Present”. If you’re in the mood to hunt for even more recent touchstones, the fluid transitions and glittering synth patterns of Todd Terje are included too.
It’s a credit to Talabot’s skill that ƒin isn’t overwhelmed by the laundry list of luminaries mentioned above as potential influences. There’s a fine line between incorporating the finest traits of your predecessors and having your material devolve into derivative ooze, and he operates on the safe side of that divide. With that said, the album’s most thrilling moment is its closer, “So Will Be Now…”, the only track where Talabot transcends the echoes of his producer forefathers and manages to craft something that sounds uniquely his. It’s an amalgam of the distinct elements he’s gleaned from other producers along the way that carries on for seven easy minutes, with carefully considered pace and momentum shifts. If Talabot’s next full-length offering can replicate that one instance of stumbled-upon personal style over another dozen tracks, he might one day be mentioned in the same breath as the electronic godfathers he so closely resembles now.
It’s a little funny that when I listened to the album a bunch yesterday that I was thinking of a completely different set of reference points. The most obvious being the post-millennial Balearic-pop sunshine of Air France or Studio and to a lesser degree the twisted vocals I hear on last year’s Jamie XX and SBTRKT releases. Then again, one can find even older touchstones: The frogs on the opening track recalls the swampy breather on the long version of New Order’s “Perfect Kiss” (OF COURSE) or more obliquely the weirdo cool-down-from-a-rave embellishes on ancient Balearic tracks. So I dunno. Great electronic dance music sounds like great electronic dance music.
![thedailywhat:
This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Even though the Super Bowl was officially the most watched TV program in US history, one person at Lucas Oil Stadium was completely invisible to viewers: Miss Deaf America Rachel Mazique.
Mazique, a representative of the National Association of the Deaf, was invited to sign both the national anthem and “America the Beautiful” as Kelly Clarkson, Miranda Lambert, and Blake Shelton belted the words.
Unfortunately, as Mazique was not placed near the singers during the performance, her signing was not shown on television nor, reportedly, on the stadium’s jumbotron.
The University of Texas Ph.D student, who has been an inspiration to many in the deaf community, says she was “very disappointed” at having missed an opportunity “to showcase ‘America the Beautiful’ and the national anthem in ASL on television.”
NAD has launched a petition through change.org demanding an apology from NBC and the NFL.
“I truly hope that this becomes a teachable moment for everyone involved,” Mazique said, “and that American Sign Language renditions of these iconic songs are broadcast in future Super Bowls rather than being a token gesture.”
[dailyherald.]](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lz1fxjsnUQ1qzpwi0o1_500.png)
This Is All Kinds Of Wrong of the Day: Even though the Super Bowl was officially the most watched TV program in US history, one person at Lucas Oil Stadium was completely invisible to viewers: Miss Deaf America Rachel Mazique.
Mazique, a representative of the National Association of the Deaf, was invited to sign both the national anthem and “America the Beautiful” as Kelly Clarkson, Miranda Lambert, and Blake Shelton belted the words.
Unfortunately, as Mazique was not placed near the singers during the performance, her signing was not shown on television nor, reportedly, on the stadium’s jumbotron.
The University of Texas Ph.D student, who has been an inspiration to many in the deaf community, says she was “very disappointed” at having missed an opportunity “to showcase ‘America the Beautiful’ and the national anthem in ASL on television.”
NAD has launched a petition through change.org demanding an apology from NBC and the NFL.
“I truly hope that this becomes a teachable moment for everyone involved,” Mazique said, “and that American Sign Language renditions of these iconic songs are broadcast in future Super Bowls rather than being a token gesture.”
[dailyherald.]
