Whether progressive rock was ever truly progressive (or ever truly rock for that matter) is a point of much tedious debate among admirers and detractors of the music.
It might then be to his benefit...
I beg the reader’s forgiveness for beginning this review by talking not about Sufjan Stevens but about Soren Kierkegaard.
French philosopher Henri Lefebvre writes of Kierkegaard, the great Danish...
“Steven Universe” is first of all a fantasy — dreams filtered through the lens of technical studio production and broadcasting.
Its protagonist is Steven, a portly preteen boy who resides with...
“Yuri Kuma Arashi,” which is most appropriately translated as “Lesbian Bear Storm,” is an animated romantic drama. Viewers follow the life of Tsubaki Kureha, whose mother and girlfriend Sumiko...
Before using my acid pen against the current crop of Christian films, I want to discuss why people create and patronize Christian films and at least partly define how these films function in the community.
Note...
The Kepler space telescope has detected the first distant solar system containing more than one planet. One of these five Earth-sized planets orbits inside a habitable zone, meaning that liquid water could...
Noah Lennox, the Lisbon-based musician who releases his solo work under the Panda Bear name, takes pains to avoid sending out bad vibes with his music. Following the radiant work of psychedelic pioneers...
As Bambu tells it, he became politicized while on tour, not as an artist, but deployed as a soldier in Okinawa, Japan. As a Filipino, he was taken aback when he heard about Filipino sex workers servicing...
Three scientists have won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in honor of their contributions to the the development of microscopes. Erik Betzig, Stefan W. Hell and W. E. Moerner all separately created techniques...
Last year, Prince appeared as a guest artist on Janelle Monáe’s album “The Electric Lady,” and at the time I took it as a sign of how far Prince had declined relative to his own legacy. His work...
Moodymann’s new self-titled release centers around the artist’s city of origin. Of its 27 tracks, many are soundbites describing Detroit’s past and current crises. Most of Moodymann’s career has...
As U2’s career lasts into another decade, it starts to resemble more a papacy than a typical tenure in the rock business. I doubt Bono would shrink from such an honor, given that his band has reigned...
Though mostly known as the prime modern jazz label since the 1940s, the venerable company Blue Note Records has assembled a formidable base of young talent. These newcomers, most prominently trumpeter...
Last Tuesday, Facebook announced that it would acquire virtual reality startup company Oculus VR, Inc. for $2 billion. While the company’s founder, Palmer Luckey, and its chief technical officer, famed...
While it is far from the nightmare portrayed in the movie “The Thing,” it is still exciting news. Scientists working in Siberia have discovered and revived a virus that had been entombed in ice for...
Though our culture is beginning to embrace the ‘90s as a source of nostalgia, the long reign of the 1980s over our collective imaginations soldiers on. For one, we still seem to have an appetite for...
To call Beck a folk musician, you would have to make a point of clarifying what you mean. Someone more familiar with his fragmented collage pop-art — albums like “Odelay” come to mind — might rightly...
Since learning about the founding of a new anti-choice group on campus, the Calvin College Students for Life, I have been pondering what the proper response from pro-abortion rights students should be....
New scientific testing suggests that Asian elephants are able to express empathy for other elephants. Though there has been much anecdotal evidence for reassuring and empathetic behavior among elephants,...
Though music has been a constant in human life for thousands of years, the means by which music has been created have constantly evolved. Take the piano, which for many is the first instrument they learn.
Pianos...
Collaborations between improvisational artists are nothing if not unpredictable. That is, of course, the nature of the music that they make, defying boundaries and formulae in favor of a more intuitive...
Nearly two years ago, in May 2012, Google completed its $12.5 billion purchase of Motorola Mobility, one of the largest phone companies in the world. At the time, the new Google-appointed head of the company...
In the wake of a massive breach of Target Corp.’s security, in which hackers compromised around 110 million credit card numbers, several other hacking incidents across the globe have highlighted the...
Wolf Parade was one of the better bands to emerge from the Montreal indie rock scene in the mid to late 2000s. Since it went on permanent hiatus in 2011, frontman Spencer Krug has continued creating work...
In the early 1960s, New York City played host to a hugely influential folk music scene, with urban clubs in neighborhoods like Greenwich Village bustling with acts clamoring for attention and, most importantly,...
About one hour’s drive outside of Johannesburg, South Africa lies a cave where a group of scientists has found over 1,000 fossils from early hominids. The scientists, part of a group called the Rising...
Katsuhiro Otomo’s pivotal anime film “Akira” has reached the 25th anniversary of its release. In commemoration of this event, translation and dubbing giant Funimation has commissioned a new American...
American television produces many works of exquisite craft but few possess any discernible personality. Our entire television output, from hackneyed sitcoms to the empyrean heights of HBO and AMC, is carefully...
Despite recent concerns — published in this very paper — about ongoing budget cuts, Calvin’s art, literature and culture magazine Dialogue has published a significant new issue. In collaboration...
On Nov. 5, the Indian government launched its first mission to the fourth planet from the sun. It hopes to both consolidate its scientific progress over the past few decades and leap ahead of regional...
Last year, accomplished pianist Robert Glasper put out “Black Radio,” an album that acted as a colorful and musically excellent index of black pop music, from jazz to R&B to rap. Numerous guest...
God bless U2. Perhaps the last rock band to achieve universal cultural relevance, they have spawned a veritable army of sincere, quasi-spiritual successors to carry their mantle into the 21st century,...
Sleep is considered a universal need among humans, which has suggested that it serves some kind of vital purpose. That purpose, however, has been a matter of intense debate, speculation and investigation...
Thursday, Oct. 17 was the kickoff day for a special campus event put together as a “love letter” to Middle Eastern culture. This event, the C/O Exist Middle East Culture Series, unites a host of student...
Shad has always had a flare for quiet and ornate production, using plenty of acoustic and electric instrumentation in addition to sampling and synths. Unapologetically emotional and a tad corny, the tracks...
Students of a certain political persuasion will no doubt see truth in this prophecy: “The question of the state is now acquiring particular importance both in theory and in practical politics. The imperialist...
A new report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) warns that human activity is accelerating the decline of ocean life.
Fertilizer runoff is causing algal blooms, carbon emissions...
Contemporary music culture of an accessibly underground sort, embodied in web formed by publications like Pitchfork, the AV Club and Slant, tends to be identified with indie rock music. For nearly a decade,...
Hailing from London, Melt Yourself Down is an ensemble dedicated to controlled chaos and music without borders.
Led by saxophonist Pete Wareham, lately of Acoustic Ladyland and Polar Bear, the band plays...
On Monday, Sept. 23, Valve announced the impending release of SteamOS, an operating system that will deliver the ability to play games from the company’s Steam platform to what the company calls “living...
“Tsuritama” is an animated show about fishing, but from that phrase alone we can infer that the scope of its subject matter will be much larger than that. Fishing, like hunting, has become intertwined...
Every year, it seems, the Princeton Review’s ranking of Calvin College as one of the most LGBT-unfriendly campuses in the United States raises protestations from Sexuality and Gender Awareness (SAGA)...
Artists that become surprise pop music stars tend to provoke concerned and eager questions from their audiences about their longevity.
The way the artists deal with their newfound commercial relevance...
Peter Rollins, an intellectual and in-demand author, and David Bazan, a musician, are two former evangelical Christians who have embraced doubtful and complicated postures toward religion. They will be...
Apple Inc. introduced two new iPhone models at an event designed to showcase the next generation of its mobile phone hardware and software. While the plastic 5C emphasizes affordability and is packaged...
Released in the first half of June, British band These New Puritans’ third record, “Field of Reeds,” has garnered considerable acclaim in all manner of English-language publications.
These accolades...
On Aug. 28, 2013, Nintendo, the famed Japanese game developer responsible for creating Mario, “Pokemon” and numerous other recognizable franchises, announced the 2DS. A version of the 3DS without a...
Birthdays are curious occasions at their best, but when their context is the technology industry, they seem even stranger. For the tech industry, the past is something to be overcome, to be torn down and...
Hackles are bound to prick up the moment a band tries to make “important music.” That phrase usually conjures visions of ham-fisted political lyrics, overblown earnestness and artless pretension. Nonetheless,...
Friend and fellow cultural discerner Tom Speelman published an opinion piece in last week’s Chimes. His article dealt with an Andrew Bird concert that happened last week Friday in the midst of the Festival...
Peter Rollins’ publishers have certainly found a branding image that works for them. The back of “The Idolatry of God” describes his message as “incendiary,” a plug for another book of his describes...
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine stands in an enduring Japanese media franchise centred around Lupin the Third, expert thief. Unlike other associated works, and appropriate to its title, the show focuses...
Amidst a sharp fall in value apparently triggered by selloffs, Bitcoin, an open digital currency, has come under scrutiny. No government or central regulator controls the currency’s value, and its...
Action films, almost to a one, take a cavalier approach to the conventions of physics, warping what we know about the natural world to amplify the thrills and pleasures of movement. Logical complaints,...
“This idea of God as the fulfillment of our desires is so all-pervasive today that most of us take it for granted. Whether people accept the idea of God or reject it, they seem to be talking about the...
No doubt the reader is familiar with Justin Timberlake — his profitable stint with N’Sync, the two solo albums that built up surprising amounts of critical respect for the former boy-band member, his...
Maybe it was the intense Philadelphia heat that drew me into the modest old meetinghouse. Perhaps it was historical curiosity — Philadelphia can be intoxicating for historians — or the quiet calling...
On Sunday, March 3, a child was deemed functionally cured of an HIV infection. With this landmark case open to greater scrutiny and researchers looking to understand its implications, the door could be...
“Here we all are born into a struggle/To come so far but end up returning to dust.”
Those lines serve as the prelude to an extraordinary album, inviting listeners to perk up their ears and listen...
In an interview with CBC Radio show-host Jian Ghomeshi, W. Kamau Bell distanced himself from the role of activist.
“Some people have put that label on me, but I feel like that detracts from activists....
I was born to my parents when they were thirty years old, which means that they were as old as I am now when Fleetwood Mac released “Rumours,” their eleventh and most epochal record. Selling over forty...
Game consoles, unlike most other consumer electronic devices, tend to be maintained for years between updates. The last time Sony revealed a new home game system, the PlayStation 3, it was 2005. While...
Minneapolis has been known as a locus of innovative funk, R&B, and soul music since the late 1970s, when José James was born. Known up till now as a jazz singer, James has broadened his musical...
Few genres in all of music are despised more than smooth jazz. Kenny G, the crown prince of this commercially-oriented subgenre, made his name and sold millions of records with music that emphasized emotional...
Consumer PC manufacturer Dell announced last week that it would be buying itself back from its shareholders and becoming a private company. The firm’s founder and present CEO Michael Dell is planning...
Pastor Mary Hulst, Calvin’s esteemed chaplain, preached a sermon for February 10‘s LOFT (Living Our Faith Together) service that answered questions about Christianity’s exclusivity and the radical...
More than two years have passed since I first read David Mitchell’s intricate nesting-doll novel ”Cloud Atlas.” In it, Mitchell uses dizzying construction in an effective attempt to make sweeping...
This past year was christened the Year of Interfaith Understanding, and it brought with it a whole raft of discussions and projects dedicated to unpacking how people of different religious traditions can...
Because the amount of data people are generating and processing continues to grow at a remarkable pace, storage technologies are obliged to keep up with the world’s ravenous desire for information. While...
Between 2006 and 2010 Sufjan Stevens released only a single album, a recording of a classical piece written for a film dedicated to the infamous Brooklyn Queens Expressway. Since 2010, we have been graced...
A new article in the scientific journal Annals of Neurology has identified a gene that controls a number of what are called circadian rhythms.
Circadian rhythms are biological cycles that have a 24-hour...
Although it claims hundreds of thousands of lives per year in the United States alone, cancer is, in many cases, a treatable disease. There are, however, still significant challenges for patients who are...
Low-fidelity production, so-called “lo-fi,” has been embraced by a diverse set of musicians and movements within the music industry. On the one hand, dreamy pop bands like Best Coast and Wavves use...
The Spirit calls all members
to embrace God’s mission
in their neighborhoods
and in the world:
to feed the hungry,
bring water to the thirsty,
welcome the stranger,
clothe the naked,
care for...
Hurricane Sandy has caused an estimated $50 billion in damages throughout the East Coast, stopped electrical service to millions of people, killed over 100 people and provoked a new engagement with the...
California-based musician Sun Araw produces experimental psychedelic music that owes an obvious debt to Jamaican dub producers. The Congos is a veteran group of reggae musicians whose output includes one...
Microsoft is a software company that minted its considerable fortune producing products that ran on others’ hardware. Its Windows operating system is still ubiquitous on computers the world over, producing...
Montreal’s sprawling community of experimental rock bands can sometimes resemble a commune more than a group of musicians. Famous for composing rock music on a grand scale with orchestral flourishes,...
There are numerous bright lights emerging on the fringes of jazz these days. Attracting the acclaim of crowd and critic alike, these groups tend to be more unorthodox, less academic and more political...
Scientists Serge Haroche and David Wineland have won the Nobel Prize in physics for this year based on “ground-breaking experimental methods that enable measuring and manipulation of individual quantum...
This past decade in music has been a startling rebuttal to any notion that the Midwest cannot produce great artists, with the emergence or continuing popularity of artists like Wilco, Kanye West, Sufjan...
Sony Corp. has had its challenges lately. Last year, the Japanese conglomerate lost around 90 billion yen ($1.2 billion). Though the whole economy in Japan has had a sluggish record for the last two decades...
Most of the music I keep closest to me, that I love most, is sprightly and adventurous. I respond to huge dynamic shifts, magnetic beats, and sonic density. That is, I like my music to be light on its...
Before the turn of the current millennium, political campaigning was largely based on polling. Presidential and legislative candidates’ operations would analyze data and formulate plans based on where...
Musicians today are in the enviable but difficult position of having nearly infinite options in making music. Genre barriers are porous, musicians work across disciplines and computers can create and sequence...
Rhythm, blues and soul music are far from barren ground for artists who push the boundaries of a pop star’s image, particularly when it comes to gender and sexuality. Hello, Prince. Frank Ocean has gained...
“Beasts of the Southern Wild” stormed its way into the world, grabbing headlines and awards praising its originality and the fierceness of its child lead, Quvenzhané Wallis. This review will largely...
Earlier this year, Linnar Viik, the head of the Estonian IT College, was quoted in The Guardian as saying to his fellow citizens, “The Internet is a manifestation of something more than a service —...
After a spectacular landing, the NASA rover Curiosity has begun its two-year mission to discover if life could have existed on Mars.
In recent weeks, however, coverage in mainstream sources has begun...
Jonathan Hielkema
“Kids on the Slope”: Animation producer Shinichiro Watanabe has become known for creating shows saturated in music and music culture (see “Cowboy Bebop” and “Samurai Champloo”)....
