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Setting the Stage: Modern Life Is War may just be the most accessible hardcore band of all time. To the cultists of heavy, that might sound like a bad thing; a big appeal of punk and metal subgenres is their inaccessibility to the larger music culture, a secret shared by weirdos in sweaty basements all across America. Modern Life Is War succeeds in being both a band you can lose your teeth to and a gateway into melodic hardcore music. They are proof that we can have both. Their show on Saturday, September 15th, in Denver, Colorado, also marked the reopening of the Marquis Theater, a venue near and dear to my heart which has been closed for a short period due to renovations following their acquisition by Live Nation. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried about this transition. Would they book less punk shows? Would they put a barrier in the front of the room to prevent stage diving? Would they even still have pizza? Why won’t anyone think of the pizza?! The rumors I had heard of the new Marquis resembling a Chili’s turned out to be unfounded. Aside from the security who would pat me down every time I reentered the venue and the worrying lack of pentagrams, they preserved more of the original venue than I had expected. Small victories. Taking the Stage: I’ve grown to expect less from bands that are nearing their second decade, and rightly so. Who can really expect bands to permeate the same energy that they did when they were 16, but Modern Life Is War is one of those bands that proves to be above growing old. As soon as the first song began, the stage exploded in movement; bodies climbing on top of bodies, elbows being sent in semi-calculated orbits and large men pacing around the perimeter of the pit, two-stepping and stomping and throwing their weight into their fellow concertgoers. As is with any good hardcore gig, the crowd participation contributed to overall quality of the show rather than hindering in it — good ol’ non-malicious violence. A fine line that hardcore in the past few years has struggled to maintain, but was a centerpiece in almost all of the bands’ conversations onstage. The setlist was a good mix of classics off of their 2005 album, Witness, new releases and deep cuts including sharing the stage with Faim lead singer Kat Lanzillo, whose history with the band runs deep. Her participation made the entire set feel like friends reuniting — it gave me a moment of nostalgia that didn’t belong to me, a feeling that outside of this moment, the band refused to indulge in. Modern Life Is War’s live show and their new music never gives you the option to look back, only to throw yourself forward. Solid support: The show featured an strong local lineup. Line Brawl, a band that instills visions of hockey fight compilations and two-stepping through parking lots, played a fast, aggressive set and it maintained that energy throughout. Faim (pronounced Femme), a female led hardcore punk outfit which seamlessly blends violently wailing vocals with well structured beatdown hardcore progressions and vocal melodies. Existing somewhere between hardcore, grind and crust, Call of the Void play unforgivingly dark music, and with one of the most consistent sets of the night, they are quickly becoming one of Denver’s strongest bands. The opening lineup was consistently strong and optimistic with their stage banter. All touching on the point of accessibility in hardcore, and how in part Modern Life Is War’s music had helped shaped those ideas in them. Source

With Oscar season beginning to rear its starry-eyed head, Amazon Studios is hoping for some early awards buzz for Beautiful Boy, their upcoming indie drama starring Steve Carell and Timothée Chalamet, showing off the pair’s considerable talents in a new trailer. Directed by Felix van Groeningen (Broken Circle Breakdown), Beautiful Boy adapts Nic Sheff’s memoir of the same name into a sensitive awards-season tearjerker, telling Sheff’s (played by Chalamet) true-life story of meth addiction and the efforts of his father (Carell) to help him through. The trailer puts the two actors front and center, with clips of anguished outbursts amidst heartfelt moments of tenderness. “I had such grand plans,” Carell’s concerned dad says in the trailer. “He’d graduate from college, do something amazing. And now I just want him to not die.” Beautiful Boy recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last month to enthusiastic praise, and no small amount of awards buzz for Chalamet, Carell and Maura Tierney, who also co-stars as Chalamet’s stepmother. The two leads are no stranger to Best Actor Oscars consideration, either; Carell was nominated for 2014’s Foxcatcher, while Chalamet is fresh off a nod for last year’s Call Me By Your Name. Beautiful Boy comes to theaters October 12th. Watch the trailer below. Source

With LeBron James now firmly planted in LA, the long-rumored Space Jam sequel is finally coming to fruition. According to The Hollywood Reporter, James has recruited a pair of big name talents to join him on the project: Black Panther director Ryan Coogler will produce the film, while Terence Nance, creator of HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness, will server as director. (Read: Projecting Space Jam 2’s Monster Squad) “The Space Jam collaboration is so much more than just me and the Looney Tunes getting together and doing this movie,” James told THR, “It’s so much bigger. I’d just love for kids to understand how empowered they can feel and how empowered they can be if they don’t just give up on their dreams. And I think Ryan did that for a lot of people [with Black Panther].” Production is scheduled to begin in 2019 during the NBA offseason. The original Space Jam, released in 1996, starred Michael Jordan and the cartoon cast of Looney Tunes. Rumors of a sequel starring James have run rampant for several years, with a number of different directors and writers having been attached to the project. At one point, Fast & Furious director Justin Lin was set to direct, but those plans have obviously changed. pic.twitter.com/Ay6wRaB915 — SpringHill Ent. (@SpringHillEnt) September 19, 2018 Source

Listen and subscribe via iTunes | Google Play | Stitcher | RSS Welcome back to another episode of This Must Be the Gig, the podcast that gives you an all-access pass to the world of live music! On this week’s episode, The Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne dials in to chat with host Lior Phillips about what it’s like to roll around in a giant ball on top of festivalgoers, seeing The Who as a kid, the prospects of a vinyl record containing Miley Cyrus’s urine, and much, much more. This episode was brought to you by our friends at Vivid Seats. Listen above and subscribe now to keep your finger on the pulse of the live music world. Follow the series on Facebook | Instagram | Twitter Source

John Carpenter is all the rage right now. What with 4K restorations, original scores, vinyl reissues, and a full-fledged European tour, the Master of Horror is experiencing a resurgence on par with another horror maestro, Stephen King. This week, Carpenter sat down with Consequence of Sound, and let loose an interesting tidbit: He says Shudder may be interested in turning his 1987 cult classic, Prince of Darkness, into a television series. While discussing the horror streaming service, Carpenter admitted, “We’re talking to them about doing a theme,” to what he wouldn’t disclose, adding: “And maybe doing a show for them. What would you think about Prince of Darkness as a TV show?” (Ranking: Every John Carpenter Movie from Worst to Best) Naturally, we expressed our interest, calling the idea “bad ass,” to which he added, “Well, maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.” When pressed for more details, he immediately went mum, saying: “I’m not going to tell you. I’m not going to tell you.” It’s not much, but it does jive with more recent acquisitions from Shudder. If you recall, the streaming service is currently working with The Walking Dead‘s Greg Nicotero in bringing King’s Creepshow anthology to their service, so Carpenter is certainly on brand for them. It’s also ripe source material: Starring Donald Pleasance, the 1987 original followed a vicar and a crew of nerdy students, who investigate a sinister-looking cylinder at a Los Angeles church that may or may not contain the Devil himself. We’ll have to see. In the meantime, stay tuned for our full interview with Carpenter, which will appear in both our Halloweenies and Filmography podcasts, the latter of which will be devoting an entire season to the Horror Master. Source

As a pilot, I’ve gotten to witness some pretty amazing things. Deep orange sunsets, holes in the clouds with my city peeking through them, rain clouds releasing their wrath on the towns below, and full blown rainbows as the sun peeks up at the horizon. Becoming a pilot is hard work, and I balance this out by making sure to make time for my two other passions: writing and festivals. Today, I merge my three passions into one creation; the story of the day I flew my dad’s plane (a Cessna 150) solo, over Electric Daisy Carnival in Orlando, Florida at sunset. The date was Friday, November 10th and the time was 4:12pm. “N3424Victor, cleared for takeoff, runway 25 at Orlando Executive”. Full throttle, 50 knots, pull back on the yoke, and I’m in the sky. As I reach 1,000 feet I look down and see Downtown Orlando, with Lake Eola gleaming in the distance. My city. I was not dressed in my usual flying attire, however. I was decked out in festival gear, as today was rave day, & I was making it to REZZ’s main stage set no matter what. As I pass downtown, to my surprise, I look down next to Camping World Stadium, and I’m able to see kineticFIELD in all its glory, from 1,500 feet up and circuitGROUNDS with the pyrotechnics. I glance at the clock and it’s 4:22, exactly 30 minutes until REZZ’s set. As I overfly the stadium, I’m filled with a sense of awe, and a sense of peace, knowing that 50,000+ people were having the time of their lives below me, one of these people being one of my favorite people on this planet, my brother Evan. I wondered if they saw me up there. If just one tiny ant of a person poked their heads up out of the crowd and witnessed me, suspended in mid air glory, cruising along through the sky. I wondered if they knew I was one of them, and that I was right where I belonged. I wondered if they understood the impact electronic dance music has had on my life, and all of the tiny little coincidences that have happened along my electronic journey to get me where I am today. I wondered if there was one person down there, just one, who had precisely the same taste in music as me; someone who would completely understand my favorite songs, someone who just gets it. 4:35, 17 minuets until REZZ’s set, and time to head back in for landing. The sunset illuminated kineticFIELD as I glanced back one more time. I was ready to become grounded, immerse myself in the force of REZZ, and relax, because from this moment in time, there’s nothing, nothing of importance for me to do except- land the plane……and then relax, lol. Thanks REZZ. I tied down the plane & switched vehicles swiftly as I navigated the dreaded streets of Downtown Orlando on festival night. I really do belong in the sky, I think. Less traffic. I ran through the turnstiles & scan my wristband, with massive bass pumping through my veins. 5:16pm. I was late, but it was time. I stood in front of main stage by myself, taking in the beauty that surrounded me. I looked up in the sky & saw a Cessna 150 at 1,500 feet, and I wondered if they saw me down there… The post The Time I Flew My Plane Over EDC appeared first on EDM Maniac. Source

Huge news has just been released that will surely catch the attention of Ibicencos. Not too long ago, Carl Cox mentioned wanting to bring Space Ibiza back to the white isle, and this news proves he wasn’t messing around. He will be teaming up with Space, along with Dave Browning, Pepe Rosello, and Juan Arenas to recreate the Space Ibiza brand. Space is a way of living the music, which is part of our shared experiences in the most vibrant moments of our life. The roots of Ibiza extend to new destinations with the joy, passion and enthusiasm for this adventure, to return to our house, the island.” – Pepe Rosello Carl Cox claims, ”Space club Ibiza, has always been my home for the last 20 twenty years, and now to pave the new way for the future of Space is really exciting, and now forming a partnership with Pepe, Juan, and Dave Browning, to run the newly formed team, it feels solid in the way that we are a family team, and I feel we can bring everything back to where it belongs.” “We already have some exciting news for next year, and we will tell you all more about that nearer the time. But for now I am very happy with my new role for Space, and I can happily fly the Space flag high.” The 4 partners feel as if they have a duty to carry on the legacy and make sure that many generations to come are able to experience something that thousands of people would say shaped their lives. At this point, members will not confirm nor deny a new venue being built, but they are sure that something is in the works to recreate the “best club in the world”. It’s safe to say this is one of the bigger news stories to break on the island and were all looking forward to what’s next. The post Space Ibiza Announces New Partnership with Carl Cox appeared first on EDM Maniac. Source

Music making can be an endless vortex of being pulled in 100 different directions creatively. The places to learn from other musicians, artists and producers online is so vast that it can have your head spinning as to where to start, but don’t worry we have you covered with some of our top rated production communities to check out so you personally don’t have to do the hard yards! r/AdvancedProduction Starting off in one of the stronger places to pull your information, is the Reddit subreddit r/AdvancedProduction. What makes this such a strong contender is just the quality of questions asked. With top posts of the week sitting on the question, “An important look into when you need to tune your kick drum. Article starts off basic, but explores some deeper concepts.” which goes into why tuning your drums is the spine of a song and when you should or shouldn’t do it. A personal point of interest found on this subreddit is the discovery of a thread titled ‘what were the biggest “aha” moments of your career‘ which reveals, in the comment section of the thread, a video that is like the Bob Ross of mixing music which you can check out " target="_blank" rel="noopener">here and it’s surprisingly informative. r/Audioengineering Next on the list is r/Audioengineering. This beast of a subreddit is a little more in depth in terms of what you might need to know as a producer, and is more geared towards an engineering platform but still one that you will like to know about no less. Here, you’re likely to learn about things like why the plugin Pro-L is good for bus limiting and a 7 step process on how you can get ?t" target="_blank" rel="noopener">this effect that was used in Phil Collins infamous video. r/MusicTheory We have kept it hot so far and we will continue that trend with the subreddit r/MusicTheory. Music theory is something that artists are likely constantly progressing on, with a community of people to have your back on how to get around some of the trickier parts of being an aspiring artist which you’ll wander how you did without it. You will learn interesting little gems like why repeating a song over and over will make you anticipate and tire your ears so you won’t want to listen to it anymore – amazing! r/Drumkits r/Drumkits finds its place in this list as a personal fave and one we are sure a lot have probably tried at least once. If electronic music is something you follow it is very likely you will find one of your favourite producers drum-kits posted on the site. Personally found a Noir Sounds kit on here years ago and haven’t looked back! Splice Last on this extensive list could be one of the best out of the lot. Win win situations are what drives good websites, and the website splice gives the artist a chance to sell their sounds and producers the benefit of exposure to a variety of intriguing sounds, all available through credits that your $18 monthly subscription includes. Another good thing that this website has cleverly done is that they have made a downloadable desktop app that has all the same features as the website and lets you download right into your DAW, no hassle at all. Not stopping there; the site gives you the advanced ability to search by BPM – do we even need to continue writing about this or are you not on the website already. After finding the right tools here, you could be releasing music on your own label in no time! If your sources for music production lessons are sorted, say no more! Learn more about on tips to using Ableton Live to perform music… live! That’s it for now but is there any other sites you recommend for good information on music? If so give us a comment below. Source

This may be a guy you haven’t heard of, but lets change that. Jerome Blazé hails from Sydney and makes some very dreamy and mature music at just 19 years old. Last year we were taken by surprise following the producers single release ‘Bloom‘, that drew some big comparisons to the likes of Madeon and Porter Robinson. Now a year on he has released his debut EP and its darn right gorgeous. Just six songs long this is the soundtrack to warm Spring day, rich with a range instrumentation and held together with fluid synths. Piano sounds feature heavily throughout the EP as Blazé whisks us away, deep into our thoughts. A more beat driven taste is Aura, perhaps one of our favourites tracks off the EP featuring euphoric builds and haunting backings making for a dream-like listen. Another standout would have to be Fade Into, with vocals from fellow Sydney based artist Ivy-Jane Browne. Check this one below along with the ultra artistic music video.’ With abilities beyond his age, ‘Perspective‘ is very unique to anything else out there at the moment and well worth wrapping your ears around. You can stream it in full here. Let us know what you think! Source

Blood clots have sidelined Travis Barker for most of the year, forcing Blink-182 to postpone its Las Vegas residency as well as cancel a string of US earlier this months. According to TMZ, Barker believes medical malpractice is the reason for his ongoing health issues and he’s now filed a lawsuit against the medical center he says is responsible. In June, Barker was diagnosed with blood clots in his arms and was briefly hospitalized after developing further complications, including a staph infection. According to Barker’s lawsuit, his health issues began after receiving a routine MRI at the Medical Imaging Center in Santa Monica, California. Barker alleges that he was to be sedated before the procedure, but technicians were unable to find a vein and stuck him at least 40 times in the arms with a dirty needle, causing him to suffer nerve damage and develop a staph infection. Additionally, Barker has filed a separate lawsuit against the school bus driver who crashed into his vehicle in Calabasas, California in July. Barker’s 14-year-old son, who riding with his dad at the time of the accident, is also part of the lawsuit. Source

Patrick Gräser’s brand of techno is one of no compromise. For Answer Code Request (ACR), the feeling an emotion behind the music is what drives everything (throw in a little bass for good measure). The Berlin techno star’s story is one that is well documented now. His rise from anonymity in 2011 has taken him to become one of the most flexible and unique DJ’s, producers and live acts to grace stages worldwide. Patrick’s artistry comes from a belief that is one is to make quality and new music, then one must be true to themselves. He’s quite vocal about not conforming to the 4/4 format that dominates the techno landscape. Techno has always been about the sounds of the future, a non-stop evolution of electronic sounds. Patrick embodies this as he wants to show people something new and different, that techno can be about so much more than straight, grooveless beats. One tool that Patrick utilises in his production method is to use sounds from his musical past and reinvent them for today’s audience. If you’ve seen ACR perform before, you’ll notice he uses a lot of broken and breakbeats mix through his set. The ebb and flow through periods of more relaxed, even euphoric sounds through to hard driving and groovy beats broken up by different rhythms is one the hallmarks of his sets. In February this year, Patrick released his second album titled Gens under the Answer Code Request moniker. To find out more behind the artistry behind it and his performances, I had the pleasure of chatting to him over skype. What a wonderful modern world we live in. ACR: Of course there was more pressure, I wanted to finish it earlier actually. It was a long process. I travel and I have family. I always wanted to finish it earlier but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time for this type of experimental music to be released again. I thought, “okay, this is the second album so I’ve got to be more experimental, creative and get into sound design. It’s not music just for the dance floor. It’s not just for people going into Berghain, I want to catch another audience too. You can listen to this album in the car or somewhere else. I always kept that in my mind. The pressure was there because the first album, I think, was really good. Its normal that there is a lot of pressure to follow up with a strong second album. FS: For Gens you wanted to reply upon what was inside you rather than on other music for inspiration. ACR: I wanted to try something new with old ideas. I had some old ideas from previous tracks I’ve made sketched in my head and I wanted to bring some of those back but reinterpreted for today. I wanted to show people today some of the sounds from my musical past. FS: knbn2 stands aside from the other tracks on this LP as its tone is quite light and euphoric, backed by an energetic break-beat. The texture of the bass reminds me of ‘Escape Myself’. What were you trying to express with this track? ACR: I went back to the 90’s with this one. I reminds me of my older times playing drum n’ bass. I wanted to use some older ideas from the past and use them to show people today. Knbn2 is actually the initials of my kid’s names. FS: That makes a lot of sense because the vibe on this track, in particular, was quite nice and euphoric. ACR: Yeah. This track was maybe the most powerful one on the album. It was the first track that we put out 2- 3 weeks before the album was released and had a lot of good feedback from fans and colleagues. FS: What I liked about it was that it was refreshing to hear that amongst other darker tracks. Do you think that people might forget that place that these kind of vibes have just as much a place in techno as the darker sounds? ACR: I love to producer the darker stuff sometimes. I think the second album wasn’t too dark but people thought it was when they listened. No, people don’t forget about it. The thing now is that we’re seeing all these DJ’s harder techno now. Sometimes I miss the groovy part of techno, not just straight 4/4 beats. People may have forgotten about the groove. DJs play hard-hard-hard techno, and people want it even harder but in the end, it’s not my type of style. I want to play everything I like, such as a broken beat track for example. For me as a DJ, its necessary to play not only dark music. FS: I agree. I feel like the flavour of the month or the trendy sound in techno right now is to just play very straightforward techno. There’s no variation in the music that these DJs play. I think you’re right in saying that people are forgetting about the groove. ACR: Exactly. You have to keep the vibe going through waves of highs and lows. At some big festivals, you can’t play the sounds that you want to show the people. Because some crowds want this type of techno, you cannot play the sounds that you want to play. It can be difficult for DJing. FS: Do you find that sometimes at these types of shows that you have to play more accessible techno to keep the crowd energies or do you usually do your thing and see what happens? ACR: When I start (to play), I start. I will see how the crowd is but you need to focus on how the crowd is dancing. You can just feel it, you can feel what direction to take the set. But I want to show my style not just play straightforward, hard and banging techno like every other DJ. I sometimes play the harder stuff but I need my groove! FS: You bring a blend of different sounds to your sets. You’re not just playing hard and some other sounds. ACR: Sometimes I play a bit softer, a bit moody. This is what I need! Last week I played in Istanbul with Marcel (Dettmann and the people were waiting for us. You could play anything and the crowd was so happy about every track. They don’t get quality techno so often there so they were happy for anything. It’s good in those situations because you can build up something special for the people. FS: Ambient pieces are placed all through your album. How would you state the importance of ambient music in techno? Do you think that ambience place in techno is overlooked by those that think 4/4 beats are what define the genre? ACR: I think people have forgotten about ambient sounds in clubs. In the 90’s all clubs always had an ambient floor. I wonder why clubs don’t have this anymore. The music in these rooms was really interesting and special for the people that just wanted to relax. On new years eve in Berghain, ambient music plays in the Halle space. I could play there for 3-4 hours. It’s always interesting music to just listen to. People might have forgotten that you can actually just listen to this music. I think it’s necessary to play this ambient music for the people. Therefore I wanted these types of tracks for my album to show people that techno isn’t just about banging kick drums. Ambient you can play anywhere, at a cafe in your headphones or in your car or at a club. FS: Do you remember what you felt after the album had been released? Was it a sense of relief or had your mind already moved onto the next project? ACR: I was happy when the album was released because all the pressure was released. Just before Gens came out, there were lots of interviews and media around it. I put a lot of energy into this album but you just don’t know what to expect when it comes out. After it came out I was already thinking about the next project. I’ve just moved into a new apartment so I need to settle into that, get some new gear to make some new sounds and then think about making an EP. I think it’ll be a bit more dancefloor oriented. You never know, I might work on music so much that I could have another album on my hands. Maybe not next year but the year after. FS: What’s your creative process when you make music? Do you think about making an EP or an album specifically? ACR: I don’t think about whether the track I’m making is for an album, EP or a dancefloor. After I’ve made a track I think “that would be cool for an EP’ or “that sounds like an album track”. I’ll make a track, save it on my hard drive and revisit it in a few weeks. If I like it then I’ll leave it then, make some more music and then come back to all these tracks a half a year later and then decide what to do with them. Then I might choose which tracks to make an album out of. The second album wasn’t really a concept album. I was more thinking about putting some tracks together. Some people work track by track by track and work towards a concept. I had something like 20-35 tracks and just choose the 12 best tracks and put them together. FS: Does that kind of creative process take the pressure away from writing music for you? ACR: Yeah you feel the pressure when someone tells you that you have to work on music. I just try and clear my mind and work without pressure. When you work without pressure its the best. FS: It would be hard to work especially when you have kids and touring a lot. ACR: Yeah. I find my time when they’re at kinder or when I’m on a plan or in a hotel room. Whenever I find the time really! FS: Do your kids like music? ACR: My daughter is only 2 years old so she’s still small. My son is 6 years old but he’s more into other music (laughs). On the drive to kindergarten, he was singing to The Killers on the radio. He already knows the lyrics. I sat there thinking “wow, not bad”. They pick up stuff so fast. It’s unbelievable, I wasn’t like that when I was his age. He’s very smart. We’ll see, I don’t want to push the music onto them but we’ll see. He’s still small! FS: Do you remember what you were listening to when you were his age? ACR: I was living in East Germany so there wasn’t much music available. I was listening to 80’s rock and the pop music at the time so I can’t quite remember. FS: I’m always interested in how people name their productions. What’s your method when you were naming your tracks from Gens? ACR: Most of the names on the album are Latin. They have a personal meaning to me and I wanted to try and tell a story with each track. There are some other names that aren’t in Latin but they still have meaning to me. ACR: I think if you are relaxed, you have more time. You might do something in your studio and you feel unpressured so the sense of how valuable your time is just isn’t there. You might come back to the studio the day after you made you track and think “ppfftt, what is this?!”. I work under pressure. I travel, I have a family and other things to do. When I’m in a rush I can just work fast because I have to. Your brain goes into a different mode. I just have to finish something. When I do something cool I try and bring it to an end quickly to capture the idea. Sometimes when I come home and I feel like working on something, I just do it because I know I don’t have much time. It makes it more fun when you leaving producing music until you feel it’s the right time. When you sit in your studio every day, you’re not so motivated or inspired because that energy and emotion behind the music just aren’t there. I know many people who sit in the studio every day. They have so many toys to play with but they never finish anything. I have to finish something because I’m so happy to work on music when I have my time. It helps when you give yourself time to feel the pressure to get in the studio to work because you’ll get in there and you’ll be effective. The best example is people post videos often of their music equipment in the studio but in the end, where is the music? FS: You came to Australia in 2017 for Pitch Music and Arts Festival. What was the experience like for you personally? Had you played in a similar setting around the world? ACR: Yeah that was great! Personally, it was the first edition of the festival so it was exciting to go into the bush and see it. It was so far away and out of the city. When I come to Australia it’s usually just Sydney and Melbourne. Personally for me as a fan of travel, you want to see more from the countryside and nature. But as a Dj you don’t get to do that. Its ‘fly-in-and-out’. It was so cool to see how they build the festival. Sometimes the first edition of any festival has its issues, but not this one. Pitch was so organised and professional. The crowd was great. I got to play my sound and people were really happy and receptive. FS: I was in the crowd watching on and you ended up playing overtime as Rodhad was late to his set. For that extra hour, you really applied more pressure on the crowd with some harder music. One particular moment which I feel really hit the crowd was when you played “Surface Noise” by Planetary Assault Systems. What goes through your head in these situations when you’re told you get to play overtime? ACR: It’s a strong track! It was good for me to play longer and show more. 1-2 hours playing at a festival, you can’t really show people a story. It’s just a bit short and it’s not always easy when you play at a festival but the set was really cool, especially when it started to rain. We had to bring back the decks in the DJ booth because the rain was falling on it. I planned to bring the vibe down towards the end of my set. You’ve got the last track in your mind but then I got told I could play longer so I had to think about it to bring the energy back up and take the set to the next step up. FS: When you play your set, what percentage of the music you play is your own productions? ACR: Sometimes. Because I play my live set, I try not to play my own music constantly. I’ll play my own music if it’s exactly the right moment to play that kind of track. If there are other tracks that might fit better into then the mix then I’ll go for that, but sometimes people want to see you play your tracks. People hold up their phones with a message on the screen saying play this! Of course, they want to see you play your tracks so of course, I’ll do it. FS: I respect your passion to not conform to what is trendy in the techno scene at the moment. What would be some advice for the next generation of producers that are thinking about making music a career? ACR: They should be true to themselves first. They should do what they feel like inside. I think it’s better to make what people want, keep true to yourself and do what you like. Do just follow the hype. Also, try to be a good selector so you can do something special. FS: Do you think that things like social media take away from being true to yourself and people just follow what’s trending? ACR: I have to do social media because people want to see it and you have to show them something. But I think it’s making things not about the music anymore. It’s all about the person. People show so much from your private life but not from your music. People are forgetting about the music. It’s annoying when you play somewhere and people are just on their phones filming sets but they’re not enjoying the music. They just want to post something. Things like social media can destroy the music. I don’t get it when DJ colleagues are mixing but they also have to film at the same time. Answer Code Request is playing this weekend in Australia with a show in Sydney on Friday 21st September at Charades Club and in Melbourne at Xe54 on Saturday 22nd September. Source

If you haven’t heard, the United States has been having a spot of bad weather recently, and what does bad weather mean you might ask? Every weather reporter in the country attempting to find new ways to report that rain is falling from the sky at an alarming pace. The following video made the rounds on social media for being pretty fucking hilarious, but it also points to the sensationalised nature of reporting in the world today. So dramatic! Dude from the weather channel bracing for his life, as 2 dudes just stroll past. #HurricaneFlorence pic.twitter.com/8FRyM4NLbL — Tony scar. (@gourdnibler) September 14, 2018 In the video, reported Mike Seidel is doing his absolute best to make a meal of things. “We’re in one of these (rain) bands. This is about as nasty as it’s been, we had some bands like this last night, and then the eyewall this morning …” Then a bunch of people on the timeline deservedly starting shitting on the situation, leading The Weather Channel to issue a response. Stupidly harmless, I guess, until you think about it. They are purposely trying to deceive their viewers into thinking the storm is worse than it is. Pretty disrespectful stuff from the Weather Channel. — Charles in Charge (@5GearsInReverse) September 15, 2018 Don't let the truth stand in the way of a good story . ¯_(ツ)_/¯ — 555|STi (@555STi) September 15, 2018 “It’s important to note that the two individuals in the background are walking on concrete, and Mike Seidel is trying to maintain his footing on wet grass, after reporting on-air until 1 a.m. ET this morning and is undoubtedly exhausted,” the network said in a statement. Umm, I’m not entirely sure how much that would impact things, but there’s no way a multi-billion dollar television network would lie to us, right? Source

This years Electronic Music Conference happening November 14th and 15th is shaping up to be a biggie for the industry as a whole with keynotes, workshops and sessions with both local and international speakers that ultimately looks to help grow, support and educate the Australian scene! The first round of speakers included BBC Radio 1 personality Gilles Peterson, Blond:ish, SASHA, Greg Wilson and more in what will be certified gold insight straight from the professionals. Gilles, who attended last year slung praise at the conference saying it “…was one of the highlights of my year. An event celebrating the growth of electronic music and beyond in Australia is much needed to keep inspiring the next generation of musicians and producers in a country which has been making giant strides globally. EMC has followed up with the announce of EMC Academy, a value friendly option for aspiring producers and artists looking to learn just what it takes to get started in the electronic music scene or hone their craft to shift that career into fifth gear. It’ll feature EMC STUDIO, Tech & Digital, Artists & Managers and Events & Touring breakout streams. EMC Studio looks to be the real kicker of the Academy with the focus on ‘…the creation of music with two-days of production and songwriting workshops and masterclasses hosted by inspiring producers, songwriters and engineers’. Who’ll be delivering the goods? Local legends Human Movement lead the charge with another Stoney favourite and immensely talented producer Mickey Kojack in the flanks, while Red Bull Academy alumni BRUX, mastering guru Klaus Hill and more will round out the list of teachers for the intensive journey. Might seem like a lot to digest, quick rundown below EMC Pro = Access to the speakers/keynotes/sessions and everything offered in the EMC Academy w/ tickets starting @ $189 here EMC Academy = Access to Tech, Events & Touring and Artists & Managers streams as well as EMC Studio w/ tickets starting @ $99 here Catch you there! Source

Last week was a doozy as we took a moment out from classic club clangers to hit some more soothing electronic that saw plenty of people remember the ultra catchy ‘Dance The Way I Feel’ from British synth-pop trio Ou Est Le Swimming Pool. It prompted another think about some nostalgic goodness of the ethereal electronic kind and it’d be hard to pass up M83s ‘Midnight City’ taken from the whomping double-album 2011 release ‘Hurry Up We’re Dreaming’. The French producer knocked this one out of the park with a sprawling four minute emotional rollercoaster filled with piercing vocal chops, soft droning verses and snappy drums that’d make any soul feel very, very alive! The music video wasn’t bad either, cop this masterpiece below. Source

photo credit Imagine Music Festival The excitement for this weekend’s Imagine Music Festival 2018 (IMF) is giving us those pre-festie feels. To keep the hype going, you can now join the ImagineNation and Bud Light on a golden ticket hunt. Winners will be eligible to claim VIP upgrades, Bud Light party packages, merchandise bundles and much more. It has never been a better time to buy Bud Light. photo credit Imagine Music Festival 2018 As you prepare and buy all the Bud Light you possibly can, make sure to download the IMF2018 Official app so you do not miss any features. For instance, you will not want to miss IEssence at Imagine Festival (Breathe-Dance-Meditate). Also, check out the other nuances of Imagine Music Festival. The daily schedules were just released, so start planning your unique experience. photo credit Imagine Music Festival 2018 Get a sneak peak of the main stage and listen to a few select tracks from the lineup. photo credit Imagine Music Festival 2018 photo credit Imagine Music Festival 2018 These artists will be your soundtrack as you wander through fantastic atmospheres filled with mind-bending circus performers, mermaids, sea creatures, live painters, art installations, vendors, camping and more, creating an unforgettable 360-degree experience. Scope the festival map to get a feel for the layout of the aquatic paradise. photo credit Imagine Music Festival photo credit Imagine Music Festival photo credit Imagine Music Festival 2018 We can expect great weather all weekend long, perfect for enjoying the Splash Pool and for rocking your steezy umbrella hat for shade. Don’t worry there will be cabs to keep your from walking too much in the heat. photo credit Imagine Music Festival photo credit Imagine Music Festival Elevate your experience by enjoying an exclusive escape at the VIP Island by Oceania. photo credit Imagine Music Festival Take a break from the crowds, grab a drink and relax at our lounge or get an up close view of the stage. VIPs can beat the lines with express entry into the venue, private air-conditioned trailer restrooms, and other fun, and exclusive activities. Bottle Service is available throughout the VIP Island so grab some friends and get a table. -Imagine Music Festival Tickets are selling out faster and as of tomorrow ticket prices go up. Voted Top 20 festival in the world by Fest300, and Top Ten Emerging Music Festivals by USA Today, Imagine Music Festival will be the place to be this weekend. Pick up your pass and learn more details on the official Imagine Festival website. Follow Imagine Music Festival 2018: Facebook Twitter Instagram Official Website The post Your Imagine Music Festival 2018 Kit: Schedule, App, Map and Tips appeared first on EDM | Electronic Music | EDM Music | EDM Festivals | EDM Events. Source

Quickly becoming a household name, Newcastle up-start Mall Grab has been flattening dance-floors with a run of non-stop global touring and slickly sampled club rompers to boot. After a debut Essential Mix late last year and more recently announced as a headliner for island party Output and coastal jaunt Last Dance alongside Motor City Drum Esemble, he’s delivered once again for a romping Boiler Room effort. The opening track is a hat-tip to his birthplace and really kickstarts his output of high energy movement and sounds as part of a ‘funraver’ for the restoration of South Bank skatepark in London. Will be good to see the lad back on home soil soon! Source

The Grinch, the upcoming CG animated remake of the beloved children’s special (no, not the Jim Carrey one), just got a musical upgrade thanks to Tyler, the Creator. In the new trailer for Illumination Entertainment’s latest kid’s flick, you can hear Tyler’s remix of the original theme, “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch.” As a hip-hop accompaniment to the titular Grinch’s (Benedict Cumberbatch) attempts to steal Christmas from the do-gooders in Whoville, it doesn’t quite gel with the fantastical environment, but it’s not a terrible track as these things go. You get that money, Tyler. According to Deadline, Tyler has more songs in his Christmas sack for The Grinch, including one called “I Am the Grinch.” Here’s hoping Benny Cumbies doesn’t have to sing any of them, especially with his wonky American accent. They also report that Pharrell Williams has been cast as the film’s narrator, further cementing his status as the Charlton Heston of our time. In addition to Cumberbatch, The Grinch also features voices from Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury, and more. The film opens November 9th. Watch the new trailer below. Source

This year’s Pathway to Paris concert took place last Friday at the Masonic in San Francisco. Headlined by Flea, Patti Smith, and Bob Weir, the event’s mission was to focus on “the potential for cities to push for, achieve and go beyond the climate targets highlighted in the Paris agreement.” Flea, who has performed at Pathway to Paris in the past, including the 2014 inaugural event alongside Thom Yorke, took the stage for a mesmerizing, 15-minute solo set. The entire performance consisted of the Red Hot Chili Peppers rocker recording and then looping various live bass and trumpet arrangements. The focus and technical skill are a sight to behold. “Happy in my heart I had the opportunity to play for for Pathways To Paris this weekend,” Flea tweeted out on this morning. “I love trees, water, air, bluebirds with those little crowns on their heads.” Watch Flea’s full set below. Toward the finale segment of the concert, Flea resurfaced to join Smith onstage and play the bass. Find that footage below (scroll to the 47:00 minute mark). Happy in my heart I had the opportunity to play for for Pathways To Paris this weekend. I love trees, water, air, bluebirds with those little crowns on their heads. “Stop messing up the grounds they’re the only ones around” – Captain Beefheart. https://t.co/Vmx471xZnz — Flea (@flea333) September 17, 2018 Source

Massachusetts metal outfit Killswitch Engage are that much closer to wrapping up their eighth studio album, according to an Instagram post from vocalist Jesse Leach. Accompanied by a picture of Leach and guitarist Adam Dutkiewicz, the singer wrote, “So many years, so much music and much much more to come. We are legit an ‘odd couple.’ On paper our personalities clash, but in life it works, it clicks and it’s genuine. More vocal tracking for KSE in the next three days. We are chipping away at a massive stone. I’m about half way through 21 songs. Then of course figuring out which songs make it to the album.” He also says that there will be another album from Times of Grace, the side project he and Dutkiewicz started in 2007 that released a sole studio album in 2011. That band dropped some footage from recording sessions for the follow up LP late last year, but no release date has been set. This fresh Killswitch Engage news arrives on the heels of recent announcement that the band had signed with Metal Blade Records. The label is all set to release the new album in the U.S. next year, with Columbia/Sony Music Germany handling the European release. Metal Blade CEO/founder Brian Slagel said, in a recent announcement, “I have been a huge fan and friend of Killswitch for a long time, so it is truly an honor to be able to work with them. So happy to welcome them to the Metal Blade family.” Dutkiewicz echoed that excitement with his own statement: “I’m very excited to say that Killswitch Engage will be joining forces with Metal Blade Records and Columbia/Sony Music! Super stoked to join the ranks with a long list of many epic metal acts, as well as a team of excellent human beings who truly have a genuine love for metal music. Here’s to an awesome future with awesome labels!” Killswitch Engage will take some breaks from the studio to close out the year with tour dates in Australia with Parkway Drive and a run of U.S. shows that includes make-up gigs for concerts the band had to cancel when Leach underwent surgery on his vocal cords. They’ll be joined on that stateside run by Born of Osiris, Crowbar, and Death Ray Vision. Metallica’s Top 5 Songs Tool’s Top 5 Music Videos Behemoth's Top 5 Songs Alice in Chains' Top 5 Videos Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy” Annotated Video Source

As I try to review or explain— or even summarize — Assassination Nation, I keep coming back to a list of the things that it’s not. It is definitely not, for example, a feminist film. Although it might flirt with notions of justice and social issues in its explicit spectacle, it’s not exactly a subversive film, either. Despite a few vaguely encouraging girl power moments toward the end, there’s really not anything close enough to a message — or even a coherent thesis — that makes you feel like the dizzying, colorful, hyper-violent explosions of America’s id onscreen are working toward any greater purpose. Or point. And yet it’s not a purely debased work of exploitation or provocation, either. It certainly feels that way in the film’s opening moments as writer/director Sam Levinson gleefully flings his audience and characters into an extended trigger warning (yes, that’s what the film itself calls this segment) that tears through brief scenes depicting topics ranging from toxic masculinity to transphobia. It’s an introduction that might be aiming for irony, but feels just lurid enough to inspire genuine concern that the action you’ve just been winkingly warned about might not skewer these issues, so much as indulge in them. Once each of these incidents actually starts to unfold in the context of the story, though, there’s always something about them — be it in the conversation between the characters, or in the way the events themselves are portrayed — that suggests Levinson was is at least attempting to do something more with Assassination Nation than put a bunch of fictional representations of vulnerable people who do actually suffer this kind of violence through the same old shit, purely for the purposes of entertaining those who don’t ever have to consider or fear these problems. I’m going with “attempting” as opposed to anything stronger here, because I am sure that I haven’t missed any deeper meaning in this film. Another thing that Assassination Nation really isn’t is subtle in its storytelling. Four teenage girls who live fraught but potentially survivable lives in a comfortably middle-class suburb quickly find themselves the target of brutal mob violence when a hacker begins to expose’s the town’s digital footprints and secrets. While the first hack begins schadenfreude-listically enough, with a right-wing anti-LGBTQA politician being exposed for his own hypocrisy, further exposures aren’t so morally clear-cut. Soon Lily Colson (Odessa Young), the unofficial leader of the group, becomes one of the targets, as her friends Sarah (Suki Waterhouse), Bex (Hari Nef), and Em (Abra) all find themselves caught in the crosshairs. The whole town does, just as Lily explicitly states in her opening voiceover, want them dead. You don’t set a plot like this in Salem, of all places, if you’re going for nuance and an understated exploration of moral grey areas and complexities that you’re trusting your audience to grasp on their own. What results from this highly combustible social media-fueled combination of outrage and flat-out hatred isn’t exactly an indictment. There’s definitely no editorializing or preaching about internet mobs and their fallout here. There’s also no particularly pointed humor or challenge against social mores, which means that Assassination Nation can’t be definitely hailed as a satire, either. And yet it clearly does aspire to be something other than pure schlock. It might not be the Heathers of its time in terms of purpose, execution, and reception. I do wonder if today’s teenagers will walk away from it feeling the same way I do about something Jawbreaker, which was middlingly received at the time, and somewhat disregarded as overindulgent and exploitative, but was embraced by a younger audience who were hungry for something sloppy, weird, and improper that we could grapple with on our own messy and increasingly complex terms. I did come away from the film thinking that my younger self would have found a sneering underground thrill that I would have felt no need to justify to anyone, where my presently aging self was inching toward ambivalence. Over a week after seeing Assassination Nation, multiple conversations about it with fellow film critics at TIFF (where it enjoyed its international premiere last week) and almost 700 words into this review, I’m still not exactly sure what I do think about it. I know that I can vouch for the talent involved, particularly the four leads, who are consistently excellent whether they’re discussing the politics of empathy or wielding makeshift weapons in red PVC trenchcoats. (If there is any fairness in this world, we’ll look back on this as Hari Nef’s big breakthrough role.) I know that I can’t, in good conscience, argue against the fears that people who face any of the film’s initial trigger warning in real life on a daily basis will have. , Or that they’ll be assuaged by the actual content of the film. There’s a part of me that still feels uneasy about all of that myself. But I also know that I’m not necessarily angry or offended by what I saw — or exhausted by it, which is my default emotion for films that posture like they’re somehow brilliantly subversive when they’re just perpetuating real-life violence and inequality instead of challenging it in any meaningful way these days. At the end, I almost felt a bit of rush, in fact. I might not be able to tell you what exactly Assassination Nation is, but the one thing I can confidently say is that it’s not easy to forget or dismiss. Trailer: Source

HEAL, the excellent 2014 album from indie rocker Tim Showalter, aka Strand of Oaks, contained a track called “JM”, which served as a tribute to Jason Molina. Now, to further honor the Songs: Ohia and Magnolia Electric Co. frontman, Showalter is forming a tribute band with the surviving original members of Magnolia Electric Co., as Stereogum points out. Dubbed Goshen Electric Co., they’ve recorded a 7-inch comprised of two covers from Molina’s extensive catalog. The first is A-side “The Gray Tower”, which was first released as a one-off Songs: Ohia single in 2002. As for the B-side, Showalter and company have done their own version of “Ring the Bell”, taken from Songs: Ohia’s Didn’t It Rain from 2002 and Magnolia Electric Co.’s Trials & Errors from 2005. “Very honored to introduce you all to Goshen Electric Co,” Showalter tweeted of the project. “Myself and the original members of Magnolia Electric Co. went into the studio this summer and recorded a 7 inch for Secretly Canadian its a heavy responsibility to try and sing Jason’s songs and I hope I did him proud.” “So many people made this happen and I’d like to thank especially Chris and Ben Swanson for making this a reality,” he added. “And also to William Schaff for continuing the tradition of such amazing artwork.” Ahead of the 7-inch’s November 2nd release date, the A-side has been shared, along with a black-and-white video helmed by Colin Kerrigan and Rocco Avallone. Check it out below. Goshen Electric Co. 7-Inch Artwork: So many people made this happen and I'd like to thank especially Chris and Ben Swanson for making this a reality. And also to William Schaff for continuing the tradition of such amazing artwork. See you on the road – Goshen Electric Co. Pre-Order/Stream: https://t.co/ZWFmRVnesr — Timothy Showalter (@Strandofoaks) September 18, 2018 Later this month, Showalter will head out on the road with Memorial Electric Co., an alternate version of the tribute band. Memorial Electric Co. 2018 Tour Dates: 09/24 – Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club 09/25 – Dublin, IE @ Tivoli Theatre 09/27 – London, UK @ Bush Hall 09/28 – Antwerp, BE @ De Roma 09/29 – Haarlem, NL @ Patronaat 09/30 – Utrecht, NL @ EKKO 10/02 – Oslo, NO @ John Dee 10/03 – Stockholm, SE @ Sodra Teatern 10/05 – Copenhagen, DK @ Bremen Teater 10/06 – Aarhus, DK @ Voxhall Source

Chilean-American musician and staple of the California rock scene Alain Johannes has played with just about everyone, most notably Them Crooked Vultures, Queens of the Stone Age, and Eleven. His latest project, however, sees him teaming up with brothers Felo and Cote Foncea as The Alain Johannes Trio. The group’s debut full-length is due out next year on Mike Patton’s Ipecac Recordings, so it’ makes sense that the Faith No More singer appears on the album’s new single, “Luna A Sol”. The track is a rumbling and rolling boulder of alternative rock, layered with squealing guitars that almost sound like horns. Though not everyone may be able to understand what Patton is singing in Spanish, his unmistakable croon remains completely distinct and utterly powerful. “’Luna A Sol’ is a really special song for me. Not only because it’s my first lyric in Spanish but also because of Mike Patton’s amazing vocals on it,” Johannes said in a press statement. “And it’s the debut recording of my all Chilean trio with Cote and Felo Foncea. I feel it like a rebirth, a recharging of my musical path continuing where Natasha and I left off in Eleven. Returning to my roots in Chile eight years ago has fueled and informed this moment and I’m very excited and honored that Ipecac will bring it to resonant listeners around the world.” Take a listen: Source

Given that Life Itself is only the second film he’s ever directed, it’s far too early to call writer/director Dan Fogelman an auteur. Yet he does have an auteurist’s interest in exploring the same themes over and over again: Death, most prominently, but also family histories, epic love stories, and narratives that twist and turn in unexpected ways, usually rendered through an unabashedly sentimental lens. It’s an artistic voice he puts to great use on his hit NBC drama This Is Us, which tenderly explores complex intergenerational family relationships. In his truly bizarre new movie Life Itself, however, Fogelman pushes up against the limits of what twist-filled, family-focused sentimentality can do. Life Itself is broken up into four chapters and an epilogue, but it’s more of a film with two distinct halves. The first follows Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Annette Bening, Olivia Cooke, Mandy Patinkin, and Jean Smart as a group of interconnected New Yorkers whose lives are marked by tragedy. The second hops across the globe to spin a straightforward Spain-set family drama involving Antonio Banderas, Laia Costa, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Adrian Marrero, and later Alex Monner. Though the stories eventually intersect, they function more like two tonally distinct films. Unfortunately, rather than being a case of two halves forming a whole, the bifurcated structure just drives home the weaknesses of each section — one of which wholeheartedly embraces This Is Us tropes and the other of which self-consciously runs from them. There’s a deeply unnerving energy to the first half of the film, as if Fogelman is trying to prove he can do more than just write network TV dramas. Though you wouldn’t know it from its gauzy marketing, Life Itself is an R-rated film with several incredibly jarring moments of bloody violence. When his New York characters aren’t waxing poetic about Bob Dylan (which they do a lot), they’re raving about Quentin Tarantino, whose influence hangs over the first half of the film in obnoxiously showy ways. There’s still some patented This Is Us schmaltz and speechifying in the initial love story of Will (Isaac) and his wife Abby (Wilde), but their relationship is far more defined by the faux edginess Fogelman awkwardly tries to graft onto it. They have a dog named Fuckface, for instance, and they make jokes about farting and dead parents and suicide. There’s an even darker mystery at the heart of their story. When we first meet Will, he’s a disheveled mess struggling to get by after being institutionalized for six months. His therapist (Bening) is patiently trying to help him get to the bottom of why Abby so abruptly left their seemingly happy marriage, which means they spend a lot of time delving into Abby’s past. And because Fogelman is apparently intent on tackling any topic that might be considered taboo, it turns out Abby’s childhood involved death, abuse, molestation, gun violence, and a literal decapitation. (Don’t worry, there’s more horror to come in the present!) Yet all of this is recounted with detached irony by Will, who regularly pops up within flashback scenes in order to comment on them. That’s just one of the many meta filmmaking gimmicks that the film’s first half utilizes, others of which include a fake-out opening sequence, an unexpected celebrity cameo, and those aforementioned shocking acts of violence. It’s all designed to challenge your assumptions about narrative structures, storytelling devices, and protagonist arcs, but in practice it just keeps you emotionally removed from the film’s characters (neither Isaac nor Wilde can convincingly bring their thinly written characters to life, although Cooke and Patinkin fare better in smaller roles). It’s also hard to imagine the target audience for a movie this schmaltzy and yet also this aggressively confrontational. Though the first half of the movie is bad, it’s at least bad in an interesting way. The second half has the opposite problem, in that it’s good in a boring way. It tells the story of wealthy olive orchard owner Mr. Saccione (Banderas), his noble employee Javier (Peris-Mencheta), Javier’s wife Isabel (Costa), and their son Rodrigo (Marrero first, Monner later). The Spain-set stuff — almost all of which unfolds in subtitled Spanish — drops the filmmaking gimmicks of first half to explore an emotionally complex and narratively straightforward love triangle that touches on issues of money, power, gender, family, and duty. The dynamics are intriguing and thoughtfully rendered, and Banderas and Costa turn in the film’s best performances as two proud, empathetic people caught in a difficult situation. Yet because the first half primes you for an entirely different kind of film, and because their story is ultimately allowed just half a movie, it’s almost impossible to settle into the Spanish story and enjoy it for what is it. You keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and you feel increasingly bored and bewildered the longer it doesn’t. The film’s two halves are ostensibly linked by the concept of the unreliable narrator, a topic Life Itself keeps returning to over and over again to increasingly frustrating results. (Abby’s college thesis argues that all narrators are inherently unreliable, even — yes — life itself. Mercifully, the film at least acknowledges that as a terrible example of literary criticism.) Ultimately, however, the idea of unreliable narrators is mostly just a red herring to distract from the film’s actual central theme, which doesn’t really snap into focus until the film’s final few minutes. As he did in the pilot of This Is Us, Fogelman offers some last-minute reveals that are meant to re-contextualize everything we’ve seen before. But where the This Is Us twist was the prelude to an ongoing story with plenty of time to explore its larger implications, Life Itself ends just as it’s getting started, with little time to process what it turns out we’ve actually been watching. Fogelman wants to argue that tragedy can ultimately lead to happiness, but that just doesn’t ring true when the tragedy is so viscerally and lengthily depicted, while the happiness is so rushed. Life Itself is the sort of film that’s meant to be even more powerful in retrospect than it was while you were watching it, but it actually just gets more baffling the longer you sit with it. In fact, all that focus on unreliable narrators may just be a convenient way for Fogelman to wave away the film’s most confusing choices — like the fact that it takes place across multiple decades, yet also seems to be continually set in the present. For those who like a lengthy post-movie discussion, you’ll certainly be left with plenty of plot contrivances, questionable character decisions, and weird age issues to discuss for far longer than the film itself runs (just under two hours, although it feels much, much longer). Though Life Itself is neither good nor “so bad it’s good,” it’s also such a bizarre, inexplicable film that it’s almost worth seeking out just to experience it for yourself. For those who want to watch a worthwhile family melodrama, however, just stick with This Is Us. Trailer: Source

In an odd twist, two of the day’s most trending topics involve characters of your yesteryears. For obvious reasons, we’ll let you figure out why Toad from Mario Kart is in the news for yourself. The other story of the day involves Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street fame, and whether or not they’re gay. In a new interview with Queerty, longtime Sesame Street writer Mark Saltzman was adamant that the puppets were more than just friends. “I always felt that without a huge agenda, when I was writing Bert & Ernie, they were [gay],” Saltzman explained. “I didn’t have any other way to contextualize them.” Though Jim Henson and Frank Oz created Bert and Ernie, Saltzman was charged with writing the characters’ storylines over the course of his 15-year stint on Sesame Street. In doing so, he said his depiction of the characters was reflective of his own relationship with editor Arnold Glassman. “Yeah, I was Ernie. I look more Bert-ish. And Arnie as a film editor—if you thought of Bert with a job in the world, wouldn’t that be perfect? Bert with his paper clips and organization? And I was the jokester. So it was the Bert & Ernie relationship, and I was already with Arnie when I came to Sesame Street. So I don’t think I’d know how else to write them, but as a loving couple.” For its part, Sesame Workshop maintains Bert and Ernie are merely “best friends,” and nothing more. According to a statement released in response to Saltzman’s interview, Bert and Ernie “were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.” Being puppets didn’t stop Miss Piggy and Kermit from having a romantic relationship for the last 40 years, but I digress. Please see our statement below regarding Bert and Ernie. pic.twitter.com/6r2j0XrKYu — Sesame Workshop (@SesameWorkshop) September 18, 2018 Source

This past weekend was rough for the festival community. Nocturnal Wonderland and Lost Lands, two of the year’s most anticipated events, both reported fatalities. Just over a month ago, HARD Summer reported one death. A couple months before that, Lightning in a Bottle also reported one death. Throughout my years as a journalist covering the electronic music scene I have always avoided writing about drugs in any context. I don’t like the idea that drugs are a necessary part of being in this scene, and I don’t like perpetuating the stigma that typecasts people who enjoy raves as drug-users. However, all these tragedies undeniably lead to one conclusion: we as a community are reinforcing the stigma, and we need to change that. Politicians around the country have been trying to ban festivals for years, and in light of all these unfortunate circumstances their claims are becoming more and more legitimate. Much of these efforts are very heavily biased as none of the people writing these laws and county ordinances have attended a festival. But imagine a type of event that you yourself don’t enjoy. My example is renaissance fairs. I have zero desire to attend a renaissance fair, yet if people were dying at renaissance fairs at this rate then I might think it’s reasonable to get rid of them. After all, what amount of fun is worth someone’s life? Last year Lost Lands was commended for their transparency and efficiency when it came to concerns from attendees. Unfortunately that praise will not be returned this year. Nocturnal Wonderland is an Insomniac event, and the city of Los Angeles has had it out for them since EDC 2010. And for those who cast these incidents are inherent to Insomniac or HARD events because they’re “commercial” or “mainstream”, this is the second year in a row Lightning in a Bottle has faced tragedy, and Lightning in a Bottle is a pillar of the transformational festival circuit. This problem can’t be confined to one branch of the scene. It’s widespread. As such, WE are the ones who need to show politicians, and everyone else, that these events can be as safe as they can be fun. The amount of people who need medical attention at festivals is infinitesimal compared to those who don’t. Despite what people may think, this community is filled with smart, caring individuals who want everyone around them to be safe. Well now is the time to double our efforts. We need to approach this from every angle. First of all are the events themselves. With social media it’s easier than ever to reach out and share your thoughts, so reach out. Tell them you want things to be different. Every event can always do more to combat medical issues. For example American festivals need to start offering free drug tests so people know what they’re taking. It’s a simple, inexpensive solution to help make sure attendees are safe. Instead of merely attacking drugs and drug users, events need to accommodate them because honestly, it’s impossible to completely stop drugs from entering an event. If someone wants to get them in, they’ll do it. This is why you need to keep an eye on your friends. Even if you’ve been to thousands raves with the exact same people who have never had a problem. If your friends are taking drugs, watch them. Make sure you take breaks. Keep insisting they drink enough water. Be the annoying person in the group who checks on everyone too much. People might seem irritated, but they appreciate it. Finally, it is mandatory that if you’re going to an event and you’re taking drugs to take care of YOURSELF. If there is one thing you take away from reading this piece, please let it be this simple truth. The buck stops with you when it comes to being safe at a festival. You can’t control other people. You certainly can’t control an event. What you can control are your own actions. These events are fun, and a lot of people think drugs make them more fun. If you are one of those people then that’s your choice. Just know that no party is worth your life. None. If you feel nervous about taking that extra dose, don’t do it. If you feel tired or hungry or thirsty, stop and make sure you handle it. Most of all, if the people you’re with at an event are pressuring you, ditch them. I promise nobody who is worth your limited rave hours will pressure you to do drugs. There is no room for complacency anymore. A vital part of rave culture is looking out for one another. If you want people to look out for you, you have to do it for them, too. No exceptions. At the end of the day it shouldn’t even be a chore. Everyone should be happy to do it; to make sure you’re safe. It’s the best way to spread positive energy, and that’s what this scene needs right now. Time and time again the rave community has proven we can overcome adversity. A few years ago the legendary London nightclub, Fabric, was nearly closed after a drug-related death. What saved the club was the rousing call from people who revered the club, both DJs and dancers alike. It’s time for us to come together in that same light. Except this isn’t just about one club or one festival. It’s about all of us. The post Let’s Get Real About Deaths At Festivals appeared first on EDM Maniac. Source