Tagged: censored

It happened so quickly that I bet a lot of people missed it. But M.I.A . gave the finger to the Super Bowl crowd during her half-time performance with Madonna Sunday. It sounds to me like the word "shit" also got through the censors.

Who would have thought the day would have come, the day when the Internet would need its users. You may be thinking this current situation won't affect your life in any way, especially since it is the American's who are trying to pass the new legislation into place. However, this is where you are wrong. SOPA is doing more than censoring and banning sites you may enjoy, the government is having it's first crack at controlling and limiting our rights to 'Freedom of Speech' as well as many other of society's entitlements. In the past, our voice, [...]

Who would have thought the day would have come, the day when the Internet would need its users. You may be thinking this current situation won't affect your life in any way, especially since it is the American's who are trying to pass the new legislation into place. However, this is where you are wrong. SOPA is doing more than censoring and banning sites you may enjoy, the government is having it's first crack at controlling and limiting our rights to 'Freedom of Speech' as well as many other of society's entitlements. In the past, our voice, [...]

Who would have thought the day would have come, the day when the Internet would need its users. You may be thinking this current situation won't affect your life in any way, especially since it is the American's who are trying to pass the new legislation into place. However, this is where you are wrong. SOPA is doing more than censoring and banning sites you may enjoy, the government is having it's first crack at controlling and limiting our rights to 'Freedom of Speech' as well as many other of society's entitlements. In the past, our voice, [...]

Who would have thought the day would have come, the day when the Internet would need its users. You may be thinking this current situation won't affect your life in any way, especially since it is the American's who are trying to pass the new legislation into place. However, this is where you are wrong. SOPA is doing more than censoring and banning sites you may enjoy, the government is having it's first crack at controlling and limiting our rights to 'Freedom of Speech' as well as many other of society's entitlements. In the past, our voice, [...]

Blackout in protest of SOPA. See you on the other side of Wednesday. Filed under: General Discussion

Today on ' The View ' Barbara Walters said the N-word not once, but twice! In a discussion about a situation between presidential candidates, Herman Caine and Rick Perry , the N-word was brought up by co-host Whoopi Goldberg who decided to use the full version of the word. Then, in a moment so awkward I even cringed, Barbara Walters repeated it in context twice! Fellow host Sherri Shepherd became immediately [...]

John Maus, of Ariel Pink fame, makes some bold steps on his new album, but he's yet to shed some habits that tend to make his music feel unwieldy.

A sentir lui gli anni '80 restano solo sullo sfondo, sono il grunge e il punk le influenze che hanno superato la prova tempo. Paradossale. Dopo l'immersione nella musica sperimentale di John Cage durante gli anni del college, galeotto fu l'incontro con Ariel Pink al California Institute of Arts , il loro istantaneo sodalizio e il progressivo avvicinarsi al synth-pop e a un massiccio revival new wave. In mezzo l'interesse per la filosofia, l'insegnamento all'Università delle Hawaii fino all'attuale dottorato in filosofia politica. Ma non aspettatevi testi ribollenti, liriche infarcite di riflessioni teoriche: [...]

Tweetvaso link I could write for days about why I love New Wave; in fact, I might as well considering my lengthier excursions on Drone. Looking back, the idea of fusing pop sensibility with the spirit of punk seems like nothing a total no-brainer. It was inevitable and pure rock 'n' roll. Only where bands...

• John Maus - ...And The Rain

Honestly? I couldn't really get into John Maus' long-winded 'We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves' – an album released in June 2011. The same instrument – possibly an organ or some ancestor or cousin thereof – dominates this collection of music, making it incredibly difficult to hear Maus' possibly Morrissey-sounding voice (which can only be a shame). John's voice is like a faint, annoying noise in the background – like the humming of a computer or white-noise. While every song sounds instrumentally different, his vocals remain stagnant and uninteresting. I'm a huge fan of vocals and [...]

John Maus has a lot of ideas. This much must be evident to anyone who has seen the thirty-one year old Minnesotan being interviewed. You can watch as his brain races; he stammers and tumbles over his words in his effort for clarity, hedge phrases such as 'y'know' 'or something' and 'aaaaaaaah' being delivered with equal pace and frequency as his fascinating, insightful profundities on music, philosophy and culture. It's rare to see an interviewer get much more of a word in; such is the aggressive power of his intellect. It's an incredibly arresting thing to witness, and I [...]

A spoonful of sugar makes the '80s synth-pop go down. I was born in the late '80s. Maybe that's the reason why John Maus' junior album titled "We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves" was so alluring to me- I don't remember the decade in any special way, so the 'nostalgic' goodness of this album lets me form my own mental play land. "Hey Moon" has a lullaby-like melody to it, inviting you to a place you've been before, but even in its familiarity it is differently. The female vocal accompaniment is crucial and the echo of [...]

Un phare déchirant de son intense faisceau lumineux l'obscurité d'une mer tumultueuse, où la violence du vent arrache à la cime des vagues, noires et menaçantes, de luminescents tourbillons d'embruns. Si l'ère digitale a trop souvent tendance à réduire l'artwork des disques qu'elle promeut à sa portion congrue, celle de We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves n'en demeure pas moins évocatrice de la dimension prise par les combats entonnés par un John Maus lucide sur l'avanie que traverse son époque, noyée dans l'indigence intellectuelle d'une injustice généralisée et acceptée passivement comme telle. Philosophe de formation [...]

With 20062s Songs and 20072s Love is Real , John Maus broke out of the collaborative clay of Ariel Pink, but retained his shape-shifting quality. With his solo records, especially his latest LP, We Must Become The Pitiless Censors Of Ourselves , he has incorporated some New Wave signposts, with a little melancholy disco, constantly refining what might be the right kind of landscape for his deeply yearning, compelling vocal. In some ways his closest reference point is probably Arthur Russell who went from the strains of mournful [...]

John Maus assembles his synth army once again for a dark and demonic pop journey. Myspace: Myspace [...]

• John Maus - Believer

Une chose est sûre, plus on avance dans le temps, plus les années 80 semblent être une source inépuisable d'inspiration pour les jeunes musiciens actuels. A ce petit jeu-là, on peut sans trop se tromper, affirmer que John Maus fait partie des plus habiles quand il s'agit de recycler sons et[...]

If Tim Heidecker had never released his album of yacht rock send-ups, Starting from Nowhere , I probably would have never quite understood Ariel Pink's Before Today . See, Heidecker may "like" yacht rock but his reinterpretation of the genre is couched entirely in winking goofiness and sneering irony. Ariel Pink probably actually and truly likes cheesy balladry from the late 70s, and his record is a sincere tribute to the soft rock that soundtracked this nation's most obnoxious decade. The increasingly fine line between knowing irony (Heidecker) and tragic sincerity (Ariel Pink) is collapsing, and the blur [...]

• John Maus - Believer

John Maus is a political philosopher at the University of Hawaii. Does this make his work — disposable synth-pop — any more "meaningful"? Is Maus just a huge OMD fan, or is he attempting to craft some kind of post-ironic commentary on the state of contemporary popular music? Put another way, if some random dude in his bedroom had released We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves , would it garner as much attention as it has? It's impossible to say for sure, and this contextual framework is only as important as the listener wants it [...]