February 6, 2014

recess

r VOLUME 15, ISSUE 19

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Carrack Modern Art hosts Lilac Shadows Exhibition, concert and album release , Feb. 8

Sweetheart 2014 Starbucks releases another comp

America Seen Social realist prints at the Ackland sPeCial to the ChroniCle

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editor’s note ss recess r

R recess editors yung trustee, yung...

This week I had one of the most incredible musical experiences of my life, a distinction so far reserved for a spinetingling LP concert in the rain and an especially impressive Delaware Symphony Orchestra performance. On Monday, I rode a terrifying, cage-like elevator up to the Duke Chapel bells to hear the carillon played, and I have never been more excited for 5 p.m.

Bear with me for a moment while I gush about the carillon. A magnificent instrument sits in the center of the room, like a giant piano with wooden handles to depress instead of keys. Each of those “handles” is connected to a gargantuan bell suspended overhead by cords much thinner than I expected. As the carillon played, the sound surrounded us.

It pressed against our feet through the floor and clamored for attention. The chimes ended arrhythmically as they bounced around in all directions, folding me into an aggressive embrace.

I had climbed the chapel before, but I had been so paralyzed with fear from my ascent up the ever-narrowing stairs that I entirely forgot to document my accomplishment, instead hanging back far from the edge in a state of near-panic.

This time I was ready. When I first got to

Lauren Feilich [editor]........................................................................................... m&l Eliza Strong [managing]...................................................................... and the hopeless MC Bousquette.[music]................................................................................... hammer Megan Rise [film]................................................................................. and the restless Kathy Zhou [art]....................................................................................... and beautiful Eliza Bray.[photo]............................................................................................. egg foo Prashanth Kamalakanthan [online].....................................................global technocrat

The Chronicle

the top, I bounded out of the elevator through one of the doors to the outside to take pictures. Immediately, I resented myself for forgetting my camera and opting to bring only my Windows phone, but that would pass. There was that feeling—that unbelievable, euphoric, wowthe-ground-is-far-away feeling—that you only get when you finally reach the top of something you have only seen from ground level before.

But then that feeling subsides. You try to capture something better than the disappointing reality you see through the screen of your camera, but you can’t. Desperation rises, as does your desire to capture the perfect Facebook photo. No matter how far you tilt your camera down you can’t capture the excitement and height that you’re slightly embarrassed to have felt. My hands were talon-like as I hovered my phone over the ledge in vain. Maybe if I had a better camera? Maybe if the sunset wasn’t blocked by clouds? Maybe if I leaned further from the ledge? You find yourself asking these questions, but the answer is simple. Duke is prettier from the ground, at least for now.

Duke’s construction has made it impossible to get a great picture from above. Let me help orient you a bit.

Angling my phone towards the bus stop from the front of the chapel, my shot is flanked on either side by Perkins scaffolding and the mess that is the West Union. From the opposite side, you look down and see the cross-shaped back of the chapel. And what do you know? It’s also undergoing construction. A rickety wooden platform blocks any hope for a picture to prove how much more beautiful Duke is than anyone else’s school.

Foiled again.

Moreover, everything is tainted

with the eyesore that is the faux-stone wall that was put up over the summer.

There’s been surprisingly little discussion about the fake wall (insert FakeBlock joke here). Yes, we all mock it for its obvious glossiness and its tendency to peel away, revealing gashes of white behind its wallpaper-y surface. But I think we’ve stopped questioning it. What is its purpose? To serve as a slightly more attractive and undoubtedly more costly version of a plain wall? Why don’t we just have a fence? If it’s meant to hide the construction going on, I think the aforementioned scaffolding is giving Duke away—provided that the gaping hole to the center of the earth that the Bryan Center Plaza has become hasn’t already done that. To find a beautiful image from such an elevation, you have to look beyond Duke’s campus, towards the forest or out into Durham—anywhere without renovations or “improvements” going on.

Then again, there are still a few remaining places to find an untouched image of Duke. The greenhouse behind BioSci looks pretty cool, and there are some residential quads where independent housing signs have yet to take up all available wall space. If you have a good angle, you can even get a decent Chapel pic these days. From the ground, close up, there’s still beauty at Duke. It’s only when you get a view from the top that you realize it’s a big ol’ mess. I’m looking forward to a time when I can reach the top of the chapel to hear the carillon, look out, and see something as beautiful as what I hear.

-Megan Rise

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Dance company culminates residency with premiere

by Kathy Zhou ThE ChrONICLE

This Friday and Saturday, Brooklyn-based dance company Urban Bush Women will perform at the reynolds Industries Theater.

Founded in 1984 by Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, Urban Bush Women has firmly established itself as an American modern dance company. The group is innovative and collaborative, embedding storytelling, diversity and community into their works.

“Urban Bush Women are an incredibly important and vibrant postmodern dance company,” Thomas DeFrantz, professor of African and African American studies, dance and theater studies, said. “They have proven that dance artists can effectively change the way that people experience their lives, not only by performing on stage, but by teaching workshops, by performing in beauty parlors or senior center homes, by making films, by touring internationally.”

While primarily a modern dance company, Urban Bush Women is dedicated to lifting up untold and under-told stories of women and the history and traditions of the African Diaspora. The dance company, then, infuses the aesthetics and cultural values from all over the world into their work. Their movements might incorporate dance from the United States, West Africa, the Caribbean and so on, mixing together elements for a new dance expression.

“Because of where they live stylistically and the kind of political and social agenda that is interwoven into their work, the company resonates really strongly in Durham,” Aaron Greenwald, executive director of Duke Performances, said. “[Duke Performances] seeks to engage a visiting artist not only for the presentation or finished work, but also for as robust and engaged a residency as we can muster.”

The company’s two-week residency at Duke has notably included a series of education and community-related engagements or workshops, facilitated by BOLD (Builders, Organizers, & Leaders through Dance), an extensive program developed by Urban Bush Women.

“They’re part of the conversation; their political, social, aesthetic concerns are borne of, fundamentally, who they are as an ensemble,” Greenwald said.

At reynolds, Urban Bush Women will not only premiere their pieces, but also will celebrate their 30th anniversary. This will be the first performance after a two-season touring hiatus, during which the company focused largely on education, community engagement and strategic planning as the company looks toward its next 30 years.

See URBAN, page 4

Photo Courtesy of miChael zirkle

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4 | thursDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2014

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The Chronicle

Local band Lilac Shadows exhibit

by Hanna Anderson-Baranger The Chronicle

Local band Lilac Shadows wanted to do something special for the release of their latest record. So, they decided to put up an art exhibition. Opening this week is the “No Dark/ No Light” exhibit at the Carrack Modern Art gallery in downtown Durham, complementing their album of the same name.

“No Dark/No Light” is Lilac Shadows’ first full-length record, following an EP, remixes and singles. Sam Logan, the band’s vocalist, writes the songs almost entirely himself, and the band self-recorded and mixed their 2012 EP. This time around, Logan again wrote and recorded on his own, hardly letting anyone hear the music while working on it. They brought it to Mitch Easter at The Fidelitorium, near Winston-Salem, where the record “kinda got a rebirth,” drummer Reed Benjamin said, with a process that was half analog and half digital.

The tracks on “No Dark/No Light” seamlessly blend into the next, creating an absorbing sonic journey. The album moves beyond power pop, which the band has been labeled as in the past, and inhabits a space between ambient, pop and garage. There are plenty of happy surprises, like the guitar opening of ‘Inactivism,’ which is evocative of a psychedelic battle in outer space. The album finishes by featuring a mournful violin and the rich layered pop that is blooming in the Triangle. Lilac Shadows mixed the tracks consecutively, to preserve the delicate flow between them.

“I felt it was really important to work on

Photo Courtesy of Reed Benjamin

Photo Courtesy of Reed Benjamin

photo courtesy of michael zirkle

Photo Courtesy of Reed Benjamin

urban

from page 3

“At the very crux of it, we want to add beauty and inspiration and wonder to the world in addition to being grounded in social justice principles,” Maria Bauman, associate artistic director and dancer for Urban Bush Women, said.

The first of the four pieces, “Being Bushified,” is choreographed by Zollar and Bauman. The piece will start with a sort of keynote address before the audience is hit by a surprise. “Hep Hep Sweet Sweet” takes place in a fictional jazz club in Kansas City, where Zollar grew up, and follows how the city became a hotbed of jazz and art during the Great Migration (in which 6 million African Americans moved from the rural South to urban areas up north and out west). “dark swan,” choreographed by Nora Chipaumire, is a take on the dying swan in “Swan Lake,”

examining the African body, the female body and acts of resistance. Lastly is “Walking with ‘Trane,” choreographed

by Zollar and Samantha Speis. The company will dance alongside composer and pianist George Caldwell as he performs his own non-linear composition, inspired by John Coltrane’s seminal “A Love Supreme.”

“Anytime we go out onstage we hope the audience feels moved. We hope they connect with us and with their own sense of humanity and culture and power,” Bauman said. “We hope that we offer something beautiful to the world.”

Urban Bush Women will perform Fri. February 7, and Sat., February 8, at 8 p.m. in the Reynolds Industries Theater. Tickets are available online and at the box office. For more information, visit the Duke Performances website. The “Dancing the African Diaspora” conference will be held this weekend, alongside these performances.

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ts artwork inspired by new record [the album] in the order it was going to be heard, to keep the moods consistent,” Logan said.

Lilac Shadows are not afraid of seeing what people think of their work—in fact, they embrace it. A couple of years ago, guitarist Nathan Price (also of cassette-based raleigh label DiggUp Tapes) had the idea

of collaborating with visual artists on cassette tape art. The time was finally right, so the group sent the album to their artist friends and friends of friends, asking for visual responses to the music. There were no rules, other than a digitized copy of the final artwork to be turned into cassette tape art.

“Instinctually we had a feeling that [since]

we liked the idea so much, that it would be received by pretty different people in the same way,” Benjamin said of the band’s expectations of the collaborations. “A lot of artists do want to be involved in stuff like this.

They just need the opportunity.”

The pieces, rather than encapsulating the album, are a physical response.

“That something I made inspired that in someone else…that’s enough for me,” Logan said.

The band mounted the art exhibition themselves earlier this week, with help from the Carrack’s Laura ritchie. The art pieces have been trickling in, surprising the band with the variety in mediums, messages and experiences of the music. Everything from painting to photography to typography to installation is represented.

“You can’t capture [those experiences] in the same way in a conversation,” Benjamin said. “Everyone’s interpretations are radically different.” highlights include a photograph of a rope installation wrapped around a forest, abstract collages, and a quilt. Price designed a sound installation with samples from the record running on infinite loop cassettes for visitors to make their own soundscapes. All of the pieces are in conversation with one another, but are tangential enough that understanding them collectively can only come from experiencing the album oneself.

The record release show provides that opportunity this Saturday. At the Carrack, the music and the artwork will create a singular multisensory experience of “No Dark/

No Light.” The show will also feature Matt Northrup and Midnight Minus One. When deciding whom to invite to open for Lilac Shadows, the band wanted musicians who would work well in a gallery space.

“It’s not just finding good bands, but finding bands that make sense,” Logan said.

“Again like with the artwork, we curated the show as much as we curated the gallery.”

Several band members of Midnight Plus One are also artists—member Casey Cook has a piece in the show—and Matt Northrup is Benjamin’s former roommate. Logan “was floored” when he first saw Northrup perform and describes his sound as “art music.”

The immersive evening of collaboration is rounded out by the merchandise attendees can take home: limited edition cassettes of “No Dark/No Light” will be on sale, each with a different contributed artwork as its cover.

Looking forward, Lilac Shadows hopes to do many more collaborations and are already planning to release stems from the albums for remixing. Benjamin hopes they will explore everyone in the band’s interests, as they each have “a wide array of things we’re fascinated by creatively, besides music.”

On mounting their first art show, Logan said, “It’s like we’re learning how to drive stick shift for the first time. It really sucks right now, but at the end of the day...” The awesome is implied.

Lilac Shadows’ record release show is Sat., February 8 at the Carrack Modern Art at 9 p.m. The artists’ work will be on show until Saturday February 15th.

Photo Courtesy of reed Benjamin

MUSIC

Broken Bells

sPeCial to the ChroniCle

After the Disco Columbia Records

by Drew Haskins ThE ChrONICLE

“After the Disco,” Broken Bells’ second album, is a grab-bag of music history references combined with the band’s usual synth-driven indie pop. The record valiantly attempts to integrate these various styles, yet on the whole, it is a very hit-or-miss affair.

The most distinct element on “After the Disco,” compared to Broken Bells’ self-titled first album, is the broad scope of its production. Danger Mouse, best known for collaborating with Cee-Lo Green in Gnarls Barkley, has thrown together a hodgepodge of different musical genres—often in the same track.

Many times, this pays off. ‘Control’ is an incredibly strange yet excellent fusion of Latin guitars and new wave synthesizers that sounds like a collaboration between roxy Music and Santana. ‘No Matter What You’re Told’ combines potentially incongruous ska and ‘60s soul to great effect on the album’s catchiest track.

Broken Bells, however, seems to have focused largely on production on “After

the Disco” while neglecting other aspects of song composition. James Mercer, the lead singer for both Broken Bells and The Shins, is the group’s greatest asset. he is a very good singer, and one of the best storytellers in alternative music at the moment. On many of the tracks, he is restrained in favor of showcasing the shiny mélange of beats around him, which often makes the singing feel anonymous. The album opener ‘Perfect World’ is a particularly egregious example. Mercer listlessly describes gardenvariety middle age disillusionment over Danger Mouse’s well-crafted homage to early 2000s dance-rock bands like Franz Ferdinand. Mercer also resorts to a Barry Gibb-like falsetto on some songs in a feeble attempt to inject some artificial personality, but it almost never works.

“After the Disco” is best when its two creative forces sync together. The title track is a blissful disco reverie where Mercer vamps it up over a strutting beat.

Danger Mouse cleverly replaces ‘70s disco strings with strafing synthesizers; the song could play at both Studio 54 and a nightclub in Ibiza. The album’s highlight, ‘The Angel and the Fool,’ is a lovely acoustic ballad with an r&B backbeat. here, Mercer is truly allowed to play to his natural skills as a troubadour, and he infuses the allegorical song with a powerful sensation of loss.

Overall, “After the Disco” does not lack for ambition. Blending all of these musical styles together into one cohesive album is a very tall order. Ultimately, the record is a little ungainly and it often feels like Mercer and Danger Mouse are in different worlds. But, when “After the Disco” is firing on all cylinders, the results are very good.

sPeCial to the ChroniCle

MUSIC

Various Artists

sPeCial to the ChroniCle

Sweetheart 2014 Hear Music/Concord Music Group

by Sid Gopinath ThE ChrONICLE

There is a fine line between covering a song and replicating it. The former involves a band reinventing a song to appeal to old and new audiences alike. The latter is something better left for cover bands and intoxicated karaoke singers.

“Sweetheart 2014” rides this line with the teetering overconfidence of a freshman at Shooters. This is an album that desperately doles out wannabe hits, while at the same time, struggling to hide the lack of innovation that lies just beneath the surface.

This Starbucks compilation album, which includes covers of love songs by Willie Nelson, Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Wonder, to name a few, starts off with confidence. Jim James of My Morning Jacket hits all the right notes in his cover of Bob Marley’s ‘Turn the Lights Down Low.’ By taking the classic reggae groove and updating it to a more distant, but silky, indie rock feel, James brings his signature tone and style to a classic song.

But by the second song, an uncertain

and awkward Vampire Weekend cover of the classic ‘Con Te Partiro’ made famous by the great tenor Andrea Bocelli, “Sweetheart 2014” starts to stumble. After covering ‘Blurred Lines’ with what could have won the award for the Most Cringeworthy rapping of 2013, Vampire Weekend proves again that their distinct style is better left to their original music.

Fortunately though, most of the album stays at an above-average level. The head and the heart play a faithful cover of harry Nilsson’s ‘Don’t Forget Me.’ But, like too many other songs on this album, they decided against bringing in any new elements, even eschewing the thick, folksy harmony that made the Seattle band so popular. The failure of “covering” a song instead of simply duplicating it plagues the entire album. For example, Brandi Carlile is vocally stunning for Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain,’ but considering how little she added to the instrumentation, she may as well have been singing over the band’s original backing track.

On the other hand, Bahamas does a splendidly somber and hauntingly beautiful cover of Willie Nelson’s ‘Always On My Mind,’ reinventing the original for a new generation of distraught lovers.

Sharon Jones, hot off of her new album, closes the album with a soulful, passionate punch, singing Stevie Wonder’s ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered’ as if it were her own.

I am conflicted about “Sweetheart 2014.” On first listen, it seems like a great way to introduce these songs to a new audience. But soon enough, it is clear that only a few great songs dominate this record to keep it above mediocrity.

Next week in Recess, keep an eye out for our coverage of Thea Alvin’s “In Good Time,” an upcoming sculpture installation at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke, February 10 - March 1.

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The Chronicle

thick cross around her neck, but it doesn’t stop her clinging velvet gown from partially exposing her breasts. She’s talking to another woman who’s too focused on taking in the gossip to notice the child tugging on her thick fur coat. Her socially superior analog to the right wears a look of judgment as she cradles her blonde-haired daughter. Another man is wary in his fedora and circular glasses, but much less so than the elderly woman who exhibits her discomfort with a sharp glare at the two chatterboxes. The only passengers who aren’t visibly disgruntled by the duo are a fast-asleep construction worker and a bearded grump engrossed in that America Seen day’s paper.

Ackland Art Museum This wood etching made me wonder when talkVarious Artists ing on the subway became so taboo. It was the first piece I saw in “America Seen: The Hunter and

by Andrew Karim Cathy Allen Collection of Social Realist Prints,” The Chronicle which recently debuted at the University of North A group of strangers crowd into a New York City Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Ackland Art Museum. subway car. It’s the ‘40s, and you can tell by the way “America Seen” offers glimpses of everyday life everyone’s dressed. A woman on the far left wears a in the United States. The series enriches the AckSPECIAL TO THE CHRONICLE

ART

NOTICE The University Store The Gothic Bookshop Duke Technology Center The Textbook Store We will be

CLOSED on Sunday, February 9 for inventory.

We will reopen at 8:30am on Monday, February 10.

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land’s already well-established archive that houses North Carolina’s most extensive collection of European and American prints. Stretching from the 1920s to the 1940s and addressing various aspects of geography, race, class and time, the collection covers a broad chunk of history that would become formative to our current generation of American culture.

“America Seen” covers a broad chunk of history that would become formative to our current generation of American culture.

“Give Us This Day” by John Stockton de Martelly is one of the darker pieces in the collection. It shows three women gloomily draped across a kitchen table. The dreary looks on their faces tell us how they feel about sharing the measly bowl of watered-down soup they see before them, but it’s their only means of sustenance in a troubled economic climate. The room abounds with dozens of empty plates, and an open window in the background reveals a barren farmland implying a scarce harvest.

Howard Baer’s “Gladys” is a lithograph piece portraying Gladys Bently, a popular blues singer during the Harlem Renaissance. The outspoken lesbian was known to wear tuxedos and top hats while performing throughout New York City’s speakeasies and jazz clubs, and the piece captures her unapologetic presence by positioning her at the center of a jazz club packed with jiving patrons.

This is one of the few pieces in the series that captures a more complicated live action shot, and it looks as though everyone in the frame slants to the left while swaying to Gladys’s bluesy ballads.

In addition to showing several vantage points of American life, “America Seen” exhibits a diverse set of mediums that include lithography, wood etchings and engravings. It’s easy to think of these pieces as remnants of a distant past, but they also highlight many parallels to our present, especially in depicting economic disparity.

“New York” is an exaggerated depiction of Manhattan by Ralph Della-Volpe. The modernist lithograph piece shows a cluster of curved skyscrapers, each one towering above the next. A flock of blackbirds weaves through the dizzying maze of buildings, but not nearly high enough to soar past the ominous center tower. This piece stands out by featuring an almost absurdist take on scale and depth, and qualities that highlight this perspective include topsy-turvy towers that might tumble sideways at any moment, a lone steamboat seeping its way through a canal-like opening into Manhattan’s underground, and a cartoonish winding road that disappears into a sea of high-rises.

“America Seen” presents various scenes that fluctuate in mood, from despairing pieces depicting economic depression to lighter images of bustling jazz clubs or city traffic. While subject matter varies throughout the collection, a palpable sense of humanity shows itself in each piece, providing a timeless and reliable link to the present.

“America Seen: The Hunter and Cathy Allen Collection of Social Realist Prints” is on show at the Ackland Art Museum until April 13. For more information, visit the museum website at http://ackland.org/exhibition/ america-seen/.

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