Military Madness: How the Army Courted the Music World

Anyone browsing the U.K. arm of MTV’s website may find themselves raising an eyebrow when they see this page. Yes, MTV is using its considerable weight to bolster Army recruitment figures, presumably realizing the age range that the network attracts makes for ideal cannon fodder. Naturally, the advertising campaign features very little about the prominent hazards of the job-—U.K. troops are still being deployed to Afghanistan, but it would be unthinkable to mention something related to that on the MTV page-—instead choosing to focus on other aspects of military life. Predominant among these are ways in which the Army can indefinitely enhance civilian life.

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Nite Jewel - Good Evening: Review

Forget chillwave and glo-fi and nostalgia for a version of the Eighties that didn’t exist. Nite Jewel’s Good Evening is a great Los Angeles album. It’s impossible to imagine this music being made anywhere else. It’s as L.A. as John Lautner’s Chemosphere, the Venice Beach boardwalk and Dennis Wilson’s Pacific Ocean Blue. If you drive through Malibu Canyon at 3am, a rolling haze known as the 'marine layer' prevents you from seeing anything more than a couple of feet ahead. This meeting of cool air from the ocean and warm air from inland smudges the world just out of focus, inducing a paralyzing mixture of terror, bewilderment and awe-struck wonder amid the pluming nebula.

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DiS Staffers '09 Mixtapes

Best Of '09 by Nickneyland on Mixcloud

Memories of 2009: Watching high school kids on E puking on each other while Animal Collective played in a giant park; seeing Yojiro from the Boredoms getting carried aloft over a crowd while playing his drum kit at ATP; being blown away by Ponytail and wondering why they're not huge yet; TV on the Radio making the rain stop in Central Park (nYc); being at a Grizzly Bear show with Jay-Z and Beyonce; watching Deerhunter, Dan Deacon and No Age collaborate together in a bowling alley while Avey Tare ate a plate of chips; Pissed Jeans almost getting into a fight onstage; watching the Beets get busted by the NYPD; Rhys Chatham leading 200 guitarists at Lincoln Center and it being surprisingly quiet and tranquil; Nick Cave playing the piano with the Dirty Three; and new bands like Jeff the Brotherhood, Javelin, Sleigh Bells and Sisters making 2010 feel like it’s filled with potential.

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Trans Am - What Day Is It Tonight?: Review

The members of Trans Am appear to motivate themselves in much the same way as the owner of a donkey might keep a carrot perma-dangling just out of reach. Except, in their case, they have a gigantic jar of Ritalin swinging on a string in front of them. It’s the only way to explain their agile take on rock, which has the ability to match eternally cool reference points (Can, Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra) with the worst Seventies excesses (Yes, Styx, Boston). As a result, their output has veered all over the place, and What Day is it Tonight? attempts to pull some of those strands together in a live album culled from many different tours spanning 1993-2008.

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