Confessions of a Community Manager: Marina and the Diamonds

Posted on by
Reply

Anyone who knows me knows that I have some horrible taste in music. That doesn’t mean that I think the music I listen to is trash…other people think that for me. So I’m here to offer you more of my favorite music to think of in whatever way you wish (even though I will listen to it on repeat for longer than I should admit).

“How to be a Heartbreaker” (the music video is featured above) was officially released two months ago in the United States, though the music video itself was posted in late September of 2012. Anyone who has listened to Marina’s “Primadonna” should instantly recognize her unique vocals. Her recents releases have been tailored for club and dance venues with easy to follow beats; the lyrics are catchy and over-dramatize the theme of the song.

Like her song, the video is light-hearted and extremely fun. Talking to The Sun, Marina described how simple the idea was for the music video:

I had 100 per cent creative control over this video. I was like OK, lets get six Calvin Klein models and put them in the shower and I’ll standing the middle in PVC.

And, after all, what could be better than a bunch of scantily clad models dancing under running water? (I can pretend Marina isn’t there.) That line of thinking might be the reason that the video got little attention in the US. Noah Michelson asked Marina about it for a Huffington Post article and the artist responded with this:

It’s so fucking ridiculous. At the moment in the U.S. they’re having trouble getting it on music channels because they say it’s homoerotic. And I’m like how rude and how ridiculous is that when girls, we put up with scantily-clad women grinding [in videos] and no one says, “This is totally lesbian and we can’t have it on TV!” So I just don’t see the problem. I think it’s a complete double standard and it’s ridiculous.

I for one have to agree. That type of double standard exists everywhere, unfortunately. I’d say it’s heartbreaking, but it’s really just discriminatory.

2012-13 Radio Show Applications

Posted on by
Reply

So you want to host a radio show with WSLC? That’s great! We’d love to have you on the team! This post should help you with info about what is involved with hosting a show and how to apply.

You & Your Show

Every radio show is different. Some are primarily music, but if you go that route, you should be ready to compete with iPods, Pandora, and Spotify. On the other hand, talk shows offer insightful (and sometimes not-so-insightful) views on current events (both Obama and Britney count). Whichever type of show you choose, though, if you’re ready to produce the audio, we’re ready to broadcast it.

Broadcasting takes place from 5pm to 2am everyday beginning October 1st, and your show will be scheduled based on your availibility. All our broadcasting is done digitally, so that means that anyone with an Internet connection should be able to listen in. The studio is located in the basement of the communications building, and will be open from 9am till 5pm for scheduled recording and production sessions if you would like to prepare for your show.

The biggest requirement to host a radio show is that you be able to make the 1 hour commitment every week for your radio show. There will also be check-ins every two weeks to talk about how your show is going and what tools you need to help you provide better content. You may also be asked from time to time to write for the online blog, and we always encourage content that can be posted to our Facebook and Twitter timelines.

Ultimately, your show is about expressing your personal tastes whether that be musical or on a foreign-policy-and-its-impact-on-the-worlds-financial-climate talk show. So without further ado, I will explain how to apply to be a radio show host.

How to Apply

Unlike in previous years, we won’t be accepting paper applications for a radio show. Instead, we’ve split the application up into two digital pieces: the show and DJ information piece and the scheduling piece. Both pieces make up a whole application, so please be sure to follow the directions and submit both.

The first part of the application you’ll find on MySLC here, so you’ll need to be logged in to MySLC to view it! You will also need to be logged in to your personal Gryphon Mail account (which ends in @gm.slc.edu) in order to view and submit the application. We won’t be authorizing access for non @gm.slc.edu addresses, so please don’t use the request access button.

You can host a radio show on your own, or with up to 3 of your friends for a total of 4 hosts. Each show only needs one application, though. The application requires you submit info for the first show host, but you also must answer every question on the form for each additional host. If not, we’ll e-mail you back asking for the info.

Your show also needs a name, and we love creativity. Try to keep it short (as in, I should be able to fit it in a tweet), and definitely make it relevant to your broadcast.

Instead of a sample playlist, this year we are requiring a full programming layout for either 60 minutes of music programming or 10 minutes of talk. Feel free to indicate where certain things will be ad-lib, but please understand that we are also stressing show preparation this year.

Once you have filled out all the necessary fields, you will receive a confirmation e-mail with a link to our scheduling doodle. Instead of putting down your name in the Doodle, put down the name of your show and then indicate when you (and your other hosts, if any) are free. We will use this information to schedule your show.

If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to e-mail me.

The Sarah Lawrence Radio Festival

Posted on by
Reply

If you’re really interested in broadcasting, radio, and new media, there is a great campus event for you to attend. The SLC Radio Festival will be happening on Saturday, September 22nd and Sunday, September 23rd and is going to feature some absolutely amazing panels and workshops that you won’t want to miss! The schedule of awesome events is below, and don’t forget to check out the Facebook event!

Saturday, September 22

The program on Saturday runs from 11 am till 5:30 pm and will feature a full day of panels, one-on-one “Radio Doctor” workshops, and listening sessions.

Radio Doctor Workshops

All of the speakers listed below will be participating in the “Radio Doctor” workshops. You can get feedback on your work, career advice, or pick the brain of a media making genius. Due to the limited amount of students that each speaker can meet with, students are asked to send an e-mail to radioclassslc@gmail.com by Friday, September 21st at noon. You should include a subject line of “Your Name – Mentoring Session” (obviously replacing “Your Name” with your own). Students who submit an e-mail on time will be entered into a lottery for the limited number of sessions. If you’re awarded a session, you will be notified by e-mail on Saturday morning at 9am.

The Sound and the Blurry

Amy O’Leary, The NY Times – Multimedia
11:00 am – 12:20 pm in Heimbold 210

How do you marry a strong audio narrative to an equally strong visual narrative for the best possible storytelling? In today’s world almost all content creators are being asked to produce on a variety of platforms. This is a skill vital for everyone from photographers to writers -almost anyone interested in creating media on a digital platform today. By examining stunning audio-visual collaborations and some cringe-inducing disasters, this session will deliver a set of ready tips, tricks, and best practices for making multimedia projects both sing and shine.

Print and radio journalist Amy O’Leary has produced for a wide range of pub radio programs including This American Life and Radiolab. She’s now a reporter at the New York Times.

The Broad Experience: Women Take Control of the Mic

Ashley Milne-Tyte
11:00 am – 12:30 pm in Heimbold 211

Ashley Milne-Tyte will talk about stories focused on women (and reactions to those stories), women hosts in radio and podcasting and what led her to start her own podcast. She’ll play a few of her stories about women and girls and parts of her podcast.

Journalist Ashley Milne-Tyte is host and producer of The Broad Experience– a new podcast that brings thoughtful, intelligent conversation – and a little attitude – to the subject of WOMEN AND THE WORKPLACE Milne-Tyte’s work has appeared in print in The New York Daily News, the Independent, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal and her radio pieces have been aired on Marketplace, WNYC, NPR, The World and the BBC.

Radiolab, The Secret Sauce

Ellen Horne, Radiolab
12:30 pm – 1:50 pm in Heimbold’s Donnelley Auditorium, Room 202

Radiolab executive Producer Ellen Horne will talk about process – the mysterious recipe and ingredients for one of the most magical shows in public radio.

What the hell is a story, anyway?

Rob Rosenthal
2:30 pm – 3:50 pm in Heimbold 210

Radio producers are in the storytelling business, right? But that begs the question, what the hell is a story? Rob will unpack some of the mystery surrounding story including tips on how to focus and organize a piece. And he’ll offer some thoughts on how to tell a story when you don’t have one!

Rob Rosenthal is an independent producer and a teacher. He’s the producer of How Sound, a bi-weekly podcast on radio storytelling for the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org. Rosenthal ran the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies’ radio track for 11 years and is now the lead instructor at the Transom Story Workshop.

Fiction on the Radio

Jonathan Mitchell
2:30 pm – 3:50 pm in Heimbold 211

Writing for radio requires a whole different way of thinking than print. Wanna know how to do it? One hint – Mitchell works with improvisational actors and looks for unusual ways of using the recording studio to create dramatic fiction.

Jonathan Mitchell is executive producer of The Truth, a podcast that creates and presents movies for your ears — short dramatic fiction that feels like a film, but without the pictures. He’s contributed a wide range of pieces—documentaries, fictional stories, non-narrated sound collages, and original music—to programs such as Radiolab, Studio 360, This American Life, Hearing Voices, Fair Game, The Next Big Thing, and All Things Considered. His work has won many awards, including the Peabody, the Golden Reel, and the Gold Mark Time Award for Best Science Fiction Audio. He lives in New York City.

News Can Sound Beautiful

Johanna Zorn and Gwen Mascai, Third Coast
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm in Heimbold’s Donnelley Auditorium, Room 202

It’s rare that the concepts of “news,” “beauty,” and “innovation” go hand in hand, but when they do… it’s something to behold (with your ears!) Third Coast’s Gwen Macsai and Johanna Zorn will share audio stories that offer inspiration to producers who want to report on the world while deploying radio to its fullest, sound-rich

Based in Chicago, the Third Coast International Audio Festival curates sound-rich audio stories from around the world and shares them with as many ears as possible – on the radio, on the Internet (thirdcoastfestival.org), and at public listening events. Third Coast also hosts an annual competition and biennial conference, offering producers and listeners a multitude of ways to celebrate audio storytelling.

Sunday, September 23

The program on Sunday is dedicated to “DIY in the Digital Age” and features a 24-hour DIY Multimedia Zine Workshop with Mindy Abovitz, the creator of Tom Tom Magazine, a magazine made by and about female drummers. RSVP for this session by e-mailing sarahlawrenceradio@gmail.com.

Inspritational Lecture

Minday Abovitz, Tom Tom Magazine
11:00 am – 12:30 pm in Heimbold’s Donnelley Auditorium, Room 202

The day will begin with a lecture to inspire your creations during the workshop phase.

Hands-On Workshop

Mindy Abovitz, Tom Tom Magazine
12:30 pm – 5:00 pm in Heimbold Digital Lab 209A

Flex your DIY creative muscles and learn out how create a multi-media magazine in just 24 HOURS! Mindy Abovitz, founder and editor-in-chief of Tom Tom magazine, a publication for and made by female drummers, will lead an all-day workshop to have students create an online magazine in 24 hours. Mindy plans to show, tell and teach you how to subvert all kinds of norms in media creation.

Review: The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Sea

Posted on by
Reply

The Magnetic Fields – Love at the Bottom of the Sea

Aaron Lindenberg

 

 

The Magnetic Field kind of love is not conventional pop-song fodder. Within the first two minutes of Love at the Bottom of the Sea, an androgynous voice chants over beating synths about badly timed abstinence vows: “I guess its true I should have told you before / and not have waited ‘till we’re nude on the floor”.  The tongue-in-cheek nature of this opener, “God Wants Us to Wait” pervades the remaining 30 minutes of the album, which unfolds in serial two-minute vignettes of bizarre, hilarious, and somehow affecting misanthropy. These sub-plots range from party escape plans (“The Horrible Party”) to confessions of rear-end admiration (“Infatuation (With Your Gyration) and deadpanned threats to cheating boyfriends (“My Husband’s Pied-a-terre”). These tracks are often as calculated as they are ludicrous, with dense and beautiful instrumentals supporting the lyrical wingdings. However, all doubts are cast to the wind once Stephen Merritt’s chocolaty baritone drowns them in melancholy. When Merritt falls in love with his friend’s one-time drag queen, his heartache comes wrapped in a layer of biting irony, making it a startlingly candid confession. Vocal contributions from pianist and percussionist Claudia Gonson can’t near the pathos of Merritt’s voice (a near-impossible feat), but do give life to some of the more wonky, deranged cuts, such as the alarmingly violent schoolyard sing-a-long, “Your Girlfriend’s Face”. Merritt and Gonson paint Love with a variety of narrators: embittered exes, indentured lovers, mama’s-boys, and cheated spouses.

 

Musically, Love is a return to the synthesizers that marked The Magnetic Fields’ earlier releases. Each tiny track bumps with its own blend of keyboard sounds and sampled drums. Some tracks drag and swoon over waltz rhythms (“Born for Love”, “The Only Boy in Town”) while others fizz and clang atop assembled beats, equal parts Nintendo and dance floor (“God Wants us to Wait”, “Infatuation”). Though this album is a shift toward the new (Merritt has remarked how he instituted modern synthesizers), each tune maintains the Fields’ watermark of intoxicating sobriety. The songs are assemblages of lyrics that pinch while they sooth and synths that are as avant-garde as they are kitschy. Somehow these tufts of strangeness are spun into finely woven pop music for an increasingly splintered music climate. The Fields have always represented the weirdo-underdogs, and it’s comforting to see that time hasn’t changed that. Love reminds us why we need the geeks in the lunchroom.

-

Recommended tracks: “Andrew in Drag”, “Infatuation (With Your Gyration)”, “Quick!”

Love at the Bottom of the Sea is available on Merge Records.

Tuneage – 2/26/12

Posted on by
Reply

Hey guys, we have a BUNCH of new tunes this week. But to start it off, a feature from a new face, NYC-based folkie Robin Bacior: Rest Our Wings, Bacior’s hot-of-the-press full length debut, is for fans of percussive, string-based folk rock, led by a unique, passionate young voice. Bacior, a northern-California native, drenches her poetry with equal parts west-coat sunlight and Appalachian bonfire. Check out the video for her single, Ohio, which features some tantalizing choreography/cinematography. Listen to Wings here and/or catch her on tour in NY:

February 26, 2012- Pianos- 7 PM- Manhattan, NY
March 2, 2012- WGXC In-Studio- 4 PM- Hudson, NY
March 2, 2012- Spotty Dog- TBA- Hudson, NY
March 26, 2012- Cameo Gallery- TBA- Brooklyn, NY
April 5, 2012- The Rock Shop- Grand Lake Islands LP Release- TBA- Brooklyn, NY
April 7, 2012- Roots Cafe- 7 PM- Brooklyn, NY

Robin Bacior – Rest Our Wings (Consonants & Vowels Recordings)

-

OTHERS JAMS – CHECK ‘EM OUT!:

Morning Parade – The Hated & The Loved (EMI/Astralwerks)

  • Electrified pop-rock from one of the UK’s rising stars.

Vigri – Pink Boats (STEF)

  • Two Icelandic brothers’ create colorful, sweeping symphonia reminiscent of their fellow Icelanders, Sigur Ros.

Pink Boats Cover Art

Mark Bragg – Your Kiss (MusicNL)

  • Weirdo, eclectic alt-rock ranging from gypsy fanfare to cabaret – perfect for fans of Gogol Bordello

Riot in Stereo – Silhouettes (Self-released)

  • Synthed-out, fuzzed-out dance desert from Seattle trio that will make you move.

New Music Update 2/21/12

Posted on by
Reply

Chiddy Bang – Breakfast (Virgin Records/EMI)

This break-through electro-rap duo, which made their mark on 2010/11 with their MGMT-sampling single “Opposite of Adults” are back with a full-length debut. Breakfast continues to boom, shake, and slam with colorful cut-and-paste beats and tightly packed rhymes. They’re far from their frat-house show origins, but you’ll still end up singing along.

Robert Glasper Experiment – Black Radio (Blue Note Records)

Acclaimed Hip-hop/jazz visionary Robert Glasper returns with his 5th full-length, Black Radio. Glasper continues a long tradition of textural depth, tonal experimentation, and a passion for bending genres until they snap back in your face. Black Radio finds Glasper recruiting a tableau of musician friends (i.e. Erykah Badu, Chrisette Michelle, Bilal, Lupe Fiasco) to span hip-hop, world, and 90′s R&B, all underscored by Glasper’s delicious jazz piano. Whether through accomplices or instrumentation, Glasper conjures heard elements and then packages them into something that is undeniably new. Experiment indeed.

NMU 2/14/12

Posted on by
Reply

Catherine Traicos & The Starry Night – Gloriosa (An Ocean Awaits)

‘Gloriosa is an album which should cement Catherine Traicos and The Starry Night as a serious force in Australian music with a bit of luck and a bit of airplay.
Gloriosa deserves your attention, and Traicos and her band are in for a bright future.’
- liveguide.com.au

James Houlahan – Misfit Hymns (ASCAP)

How else could his sophomore record, Misfit Hymns, feel so natural despite covering just about every possible angle of the folk-rock shtick? From the unabashed twang of opener New Year’s Day to the obligatory Bon Iver-esque Song for Janis, no two tracks on this album are much alike. It’s a true relief to see an artist who, when faced with the post-debut dilemma of “what next?”, decides to keep striking out for new ground.

- unregularradio.com

Chris Alvy Band – Art Noise (Forward Motion Records)

Don’t hold the title against the Chris Alvy Band – Art Noise is prime melodic rock of the timeless variety. Swimming at the more rocking end of the powerpop pool, the Chris Alvy Band has crafted an all-killer-no-filler winner in Art Noise.

- Musoscribe

Dreaming in Stereo – Dreaming in Stereo 2 (Forward Motions Records)

“Seduces your ears lieka  smooth lover, whipsering sweet nothings, mellotrons and soft guitar melodies until you blus and relent to its charms.”

-Tom Bowker- Miami Herald

New Music Update 2/7/12

Posted on by
Reply

String Theory – Sam Weiser - disappear records [BMI] (http://samweisermusic.com/)

One listen to 17-year-old violin prodigy Sam Weiser will yield one common reaction – “is he really 17?”. Connecticut-born Weiser blends exhibits eye-popping precision, articulation, and dexterity with a love for genre-hopping on String Theory, his second full-length. In just one album, he effortlessly spans bluegrass, classical, jazz, and gypsy music – and he’s done it before. An already illustrious rapport with professional performers and institutions like Manhattan School of Music frame Weiser’s beautiful, sophisticated violin music. This young talent may blow up the scene soon, but he’s already hit artistic realization.

Of The Valley – Danielle Duval - Peopleplay Records (http://www.ofthevalley.com/)

Montreal singer-songwriter Danielle Duval showcases a girl-rock revivalist spirit with her latest release, Of The Valley. Duval’s spirited, layered vocals and eccentric production flourishes make for a unique listening experience – her guitar buzzes and jingles beneath a gruff, honest voice. What’s most impressive about Valley is the tactful range of expressions, as she does not limit herself to acoustic bedroom strumming or balls-to-the-wall punk vivacity. Ultimately, Duval is making 21st century pop for an eclectic audience – whether you’re a riot grrrl or a top 40 patron.

Mess of My Memory – Van Meter - Self-released (Vanmetermusic.com)

Country-born and bred, Jessica Van Meter represents a new mix of Americana – equal parts Johnny Cash and Mary Playground. Her training at East Tennessee State University’s Bluegrass provided the foundation for her now grunge-tinged Country sound. Her voice recalls old folk legends yet brings a haunting new tone. Effect-laden guitar work and thundering, expressive drums course through Memory, making it a veritable addition to the tradition of American country music.