Album Review: Forrest Day Debut Album
Forrest Day produced this sprawling, genre-churning hip-hop record on his own and got it mastered with the help of the label Ninth Street Opus.
What has resulted is an LP full of character and originality.
Forrest Day utilizes a unique blend of instrumentation. Right on the first track
of the album. "Sleepwalker" has gypsy violins playing the melodic motif with Day's rapping of the lyrics. There are few bands out there that
venture into hip-hop with an original musical outlook steering clear of auto-tuned singing and generic club beats. Forrest Day breaks these
mundane molds.
Says Day, "A lot of the music has this kind of laughing-at-life type of feel, a tragicomic attitude."
The songs definitely have
attitude. Day who produced the album himself, put together songs with such intricacy and detail that there are surprises and evolutions all the
way to the final seconds, not to mention his autobiographical lyrics are so relatable and sometimes even hilarious. This, coupled with the
pioneering sound on this LP makes for a great listen...Read more
Record Rewind: 'Solar Gambling' By Omar Rodriguez-Lopez
If you've heard of Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, the infamously experimental guitarist and songwriter for The Mars Volta, you probably already had a taste
of the idiosyncratic musical tendencies that flow in abundance in any Rodriguez-Lopez solo album. Solar Gambling, his thirteenth solo release, is
a record worth taking notice out of the litany of other works Rodriguez-Lopez has put out.
Compared to Cryptomnesia, Solar Gambling features a very
different line up of musicians beginning with vocals from Ximena Sarinana. It's understandable that Rodriguez-Lopez shifted naturally into using a
female vocalist to supply the singing to his solo records after being away from the falsetto crooning of Volta frontman Cedric Bixler-Zavala for an
extended period of time...Read More
Album Review: 'All The Rage' By Blood On The Dance Floor
All The Rage is Blood On The Dance Floor's fourth album. Lead singers Dahvie Vanity and Jayy von Monroe have cultivated a devoted following after a
successful slot on the Warped Tour. With multicolored hair and crazy clothes, Blood On The Dance Floor seem to rely a lot on their image, but after
listening to All The Rage there is an obvious reasoning to their almost stubborn will to individuality. The album moves from electronic pop to metal,
rap and even dubstep...Read More
Cyber hacking and White House security might sound like the makings of a TV drama, but for College alumnus Brian Wanner it's all in a day's work. Wanner,
a 2005 computer science graduate, is branch chief of security operations for the president's Information Assurance Directorate.
Wanner gave a presentation
on the nature of cyber security, cyber weapons and viruses and his experiences working in the White House on Nov. 9 in Science Complex room P101 at 1:30
p.m.
"Our job is to protect the network, to make sure people don't break in," Wanner said...Read More
Report says campus crime decresed in 2010
Crimes on campus have steadily decreased since 2008, according to the recently released 2010 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report, which was made available
to the public on Oct. 1.
Two forcible sexual offenses were filed in 2010, though they both referred to the same incident when Samuel Sarpeh and Christen
Solomon, both sophomores at the time, allegedly assaulted a female student in a residence hall on Sept. 1, 2010, during the first week of the fall semester.
"The two men involved in that incident were associates of each other," said Campus Police Chief John M. Collins. "They were both charged separately, and so
it is filed that there were two (forcible) sexual assaults in 2010."...Read More
Professor explores history behind ‘The Help’
Deborah Gray White gave a detailed presentation on the history of female African-American domestic workers, their impact on the Civil Rights Movement and the
validity of their portrayal in the recent movie depiction of Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel, “The Help,” last Wednesday in the Mildred and Earnest E.
Mayo Concert Hall.
White, a Board of Governors professor of history at Rutgers University and author of several books on African-American women’s history,
detailed the many strengths of Stockett’s book and the subsequent movie adaptation, while also noting its shortcomings...Read More