On Facebook, Dan Bobek has been posting a sort of slow motion performance art piece: Awkward personal observations, videos of himself playing the song he wrote an hour ago and dispatches from the trenches of the life of an Iowa City musician. Vibrating On Hi is a side effect of Bobek’s relentless self-exposure, except that it’s put together more carefully than what bubbles up on Facebook.
Kent Williams
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Show review: Philip Glass and Oneohtrix Point Never
At the Englert Theatre during Oneohtrix (oh-nay-ah-tricks) Point Never’s performance, I was standing by the back wall, where apparently all the bass goes after passing through the volume of air in the theater. Though the sound system used was not that loud, if you stood where I stood, the bass was a whole body experience without obscuring the detail of the sounds in the higher register. I saw a dimly lit stage with one man illuminated by a laptop screen and dim blue lights. What I heard was dislocated ambience punctuated with synthetic thunderclaps.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Mission Creek show report: April 1-2
Having a Mission Creek pass is like having a two pound box of chocolates. You can get sated early, but you keep eating because it’s just so good! My number one tip for Mission Creeksters is to pace yourself, and don’t try to see everything. Take your time and soak it all in.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
The sound of her voice: Laurie Anderson in Iowa City
Starting Mission Creek 2014 with Laurie Anderson was simultaneously comforting and unsettling, not unlike her body of work. I attended a discussion she had with MFA students Tuesday on-stage at the Englert Theatre, prior to her lecture that evening. My experience with her performances made her a tall person, inhabited by large ideas. But she’s […]
Posted inCommunity/News
The UI’s decision to deny HBO’s film request is a big mistake
I’m continually amazed at how Iowa City, as a community, is both full of pride for its many fine qualities, and at the same time insecure enough to jump on any moment of attention from the outside world as a sort of validating life-line.
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Hip hop and bluegrass fusion: Gangstagrass heads to the Yacht Club
Mixing hip hop and rock is old news. Gangstagrass represents the newest, unlikeliest crossover: bluegrass and rap. This could be something that gets old quick…
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: Works by Matthew Davis, Sergio Leone
When Matthew Davis died in his sleep of an aneurysm in 2003, the loss to Iowa City was larger than the death of one man. His band Ten Grand — so named because, as rumor has it, a more affluent musical group paid them an undisclosed amount to give up their former name Vidablue — was on the verge of becoming a big thing outside our small…
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: Muscle – My House is a Show
Kathleen Hanna, the singer for Bikini Kill and original Riot Grrrl, did something important around the time the women in Muscle were born: She stopped asking permission from men to define who she was. She was angry and confrontational and sexy and funny, and she rocked.
Posted inCommunity/News
Workshop woes: A supposedly bad thing the Iowa Writers’ Workshop did to literature
On Feb. 10, The Chronicle of Higher Education published Eric Bennett’s essay, How Iowa Flattened Literature. Although it is better researched and more erudite…
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: Speakerwire Collins – The Boy Said My Name’s Johnny
Speakerwire Collins is Brian Boelman of the Miracles Of God and Iowa City’s most unpredictable guitarist, bassist and songwriter, Ed Gray. They’re the…
Posted inAlbum Reviews
Album Reviews: Coolzey – Dark Mantras
Coolzey must be very wicked, since it’s clear he gets no rest. Sandwiched in between all the other musical activities he’s dropped Dark Mantras, which contains 13 short hip-hop instrumentals. This is more a beat tape than an album proper; each track is a live performance on his Akai MPC1000 Sampler…
Posted inArts & Entertainment
Nat Baldwin (Dirty Projectors) on his basketball origins, Englert residency and top music picks
Bassist Nat Baldwin is best known as the bassist for Dirty Projectors, but listening to his solo work, one can hear an inversion of sorts, where his bass playing…
