High-profile film festivals are also highly exclusive, often resembling the closed society of a debutante’s coming out ball. But the local short film festival Hi Mom!, now almost 10 years old, is more like a high school kegger: rambunctious, loosely organized and open to anyone who shows up thirsty. Forget hors d’oeuvres and distribution deals; […]
Brian Howe
Posted inMusic
In Feltbattery, Benjamin Trueblood makes music by listening to his surroundings
Listen! Listen to Feltbattery’s “Mimesis” and “A House Finch” from the new album It Had Wings. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Benjamin Trueblood, 28, lives in a quaint Hillsborough mill house with his wife, Stephanie. White lilies bloom under the windows. On the morning when I go […]
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Palomar
Listen! Listen to Palomar’s “Bury Me Closer” from the new album All Things, Forest. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Indie-pop is that rare genre that tends to gain or lose nothing in the live setting. Think of Glasgow’s Camera Obscura, who’ve played several well-attended shows in the […]
Posted inArt
A metaphysical evening with British author Rebecca Stott
Lydia Brooke, the protagonist of Rebecca Stott’s debut novel Ghostwalk, has a very specific appearance in my mind. She has a bright, pretty face framed by tight, dark curls. Her wide eyes turn ever so slightly downward at their corners, so she always appears to be on the verge of looking up, which, in concert […]
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Rival literary journals in Greensboro
Backwards City Review Volume 3, Number 1 Spring 2007 The Greensboro Review Number 81 Spring 2007 In sports, the major and minor leagues are distinguished by the skill of the players, but the game is the same at both levels. It’s tempting to extend this construct to poetry, with traditional poets as the pros and […]
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CocoRosie
Listen! Listen to CocoRosie’s “Rainbow Warriors” from the new album The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. If you cannot see the music player below, download the free Flash Player. Sisters Bianca and Sierra Casady, who’ve been making music together as CocoRosie since 2003, are no strangers to the nightlife. Their singular blend of opera, hip […]
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UNC/Duke Battle of the Bands; Artsplosure update
Verses Versus Verses On April 12, I sat down at the judge’s table in UNC’s moderately crowded Great Hall Auditorium for the third annual UNC/Duke Battle of the Bands. It struck me as a fundamentally odd, almost arbitrary, proposition: Three Duke bands would square off against three UNC ones to find out who a couple […]
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The 8088 Collective returns the concept of online community to grassroots basics
It’s one of the first truly spring-like days in 2007, and four young musicians are taking a break from preparing for Austin music industry conference South by Southwest to enjoy coffee on Caffé Driade’s wooded patio. With his short hair, goatee and plain blue jacket, Randy Vaughn looks rather like an auto mechanic. Jason Meeks, […]
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Lost in the Trees
In her essay “On Keeping a Notebook,” Joan Didion describes diarists as “children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Of course, she’s talking about herself. But she could just as well be talking about Ari Picker, Lost in the Trees mastermind and ex-member of the Never, whose music is uncommonly elegiac for […]
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Cory Doctorow’s stories of the techno-present
Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present by Cory Doctorow Thunder’s Mouth Press, 304 pp. How does one write science fiction while living in a perpetual future? Teleportation, artificial intelligence, cloning and time travel are all either physically possible or expressed in cyberspace. They now resemble the quaint stuff of Jetsons cartoons. A city full of […]
