Justin Vernon, formerly of the Raleigh band DeYarmond Edison, scored a surprise indie hit last year with For Emma, Forever Ago, his debut solo album as Bon Iver. Recorded in a Wisconsin cabin as Vernon battled two breakups and mononucleosis, For Emma collected nine haunted folk songs, alternately recalling Devendra Banhart’s spectral early work and […]
Brian Howe
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UNC Opera takes on the wild, modernist The Breasts of Tirésias
The Breasts of Tirésias UNC Opera Hill Hall Auditorium Nov. 21-22 A poet, art critic, playwright, essayist and anonymous author of erotica, Guillaume Apollinaire was a key figure in the emerging modernist art of the early 20th century. His essays were instrumental in defining cubism, and he’s often credited with coining the phrase surrealism. Because […]
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Two decades in, Lud remains lean, mean and laid-back
Kirk Ross lives on the outskirts of Chapel Hill in a brick house with electric blue trim. Fallen leaves and wild foliage cloak the front yard, and two leftover jack-o-lanterns flank the door like decaying sentinels. Overlooking the woodsy backyard is an elevated deck, where a bloodhound named Gracie pads amiably around a moldering wicker […]
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Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra at The Pinhook
Triangle Soundpainting Orchestra The Pinhook, Durham Saturday, Nov. 1 It seemed like a typical Saturday night in downtown Durham: Smokers huddled on the Federal’s patio. Diners gravitated toward Brightleaf Square. … And a bedraggled troupe of zombies moaned and groaned down Main Street. I’m not talking about drunk undergrads. No, these were actual zombies, many […]
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Chapbooks give voice to new work by Triangle poets Jon Leon and Eric Amling
Alexandra By Jon Leon Cosa Nostra Editions, Iowa City, Iowa, 2008 Split Level Igloo By Eric Amling Human Hair & Co. Press, Raleigh, 2008 Poetry just doesn’t sell like fiction: That’s the bad news. The good news is that the relatively dreary climate of poetry-publishing ensures that the chapbook will continue to flourish. While there […]
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Three area musicians explain their new visual art
Now in its third year, Minus Sound Research collects visual art by seven North Carolina-based musicians at Wootini this weekend: Maria Albani (Schooner), Laura Ballance (Superchunk), Anna Bullard (Pox World Empire), Catherine Edgerton (Midtown Dickens), John Harrison (North Elementary), Reid Johnson (Schooner) and Nathan Oliver White (Nathan Oliver). Co-founders Harrison and Albani conceived of Minus […]
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How Blag’ard survived brushes with fame, F-150s and fatherhood
Listen up! If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Blag’ard’s injuries have been numerous and fancifully acquired. The Chapel Hill duo of singer/ guitarist Joe Taylor, 36, and drummer Adam Brinson, 26, seems destined for near-misses and closeness-to-catastrophe. Lucky for us, that spirit of physical abandon translates to the […]
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Waumiss
The European version of The Kingsbury Manx’s 2005 EP, Afternoon Owls, included two remixes by producer (and Wilco keyboardist) Mikael Jorgensen, which made the songs seem adrift in time, harking back to Pink Floyd-era sounds even as the music plunged headlong into the future. WAUMISS is The Manx’s Clarque Blomquist and Shallow Be Thy Name’s […]
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Even indie rockers want the remix
You know a grassroots phenomenon has hit critical mass when massive soft drink companies are hip to it: Any garden-variety consumer can now cool down with a Sprite Remix, which adds cherry, berry or tropical fruit flavors to … whatever Sprite is supposed to taste like in the first place. The concept of the remix […]
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Unraveling the continuing mystique of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls N.C. Museum of Natural Sciences Through Dec. 28 It’s 1947. Northwest of the Dead Sea, not far from the settlement of Qumran, a Bedouin named Mohammed Ahmed el-Hamed throws a stone into a cave. He hears a curious breaking sound and goes inside. Amid shards of pottery, he finds several linen-wrapped […]
