 you, Teresa, and good luck in wherever you go and whatever you do.Italy, will send more troops but also will have to review both the political reality, but beyond that will remain unspecific for the present time.
It broke with the "unspecific" tax-protest vibe writer Ed Brubaker was striving for and left Marvel vulnerable to charges it was "picking" on the tea-baggers.
He said there had been a number of bomb threats since the attacks but described them as unspecific, adding it was "normal" some people would seek to create more fear after such a tragedy.
So far the government has anonymously floated various possible charges to a willing and largely supportive media: fraud against the team's sponsor, the Postal Service or even an unspecific more general fraud, all somehow related to the vague idea that Armstrong and other riders allegedly took substances that were criminal.
Jonathan Littman: Lance Armstrong's Trial: Franz Kafka, Anyone?Gov. Roy Cooper officially signed North Carolina’s $27.9 billion budget recently, the second year in a row the state has passed a budget after he vetoed budget bills in 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Some of the general highlights include an average 3.5 percent raise for most state workers, an average 4.2 percent raise for K-12 teachers and more than $800 million in water and sewer infrastructure projects. There’s also a record $4.75 billion for the state’s rainy day reserve fund.
$50,000 for the county for water and sewer.Half the fun of writing about music and musicians for a living is the time spent picking through an artist’s work to find the threads connecting their work to that of their forebears. And trying to understand and elucidate the new patterns being created using those same materials as a guide.
Which is why reading critical responses to Arooj Aftab’s music has been so fascinating. The 36-year-old Pakistani artist has struck a deep chord within the listeners of the world via her outstanding album Vulture Prince–but setting her emotive sounds within a tidy genre box or under the umbrella of a label has proved to be a difficult task for the folks profiling her or reviewing her work.
Yet what appears slippery and elusive to outside ears seems perfectly natural to the person who created these sounds.
And what Vulture Prince sounds like, most often, is a cavernous lament. Aftab pulls from, adapts, and in some cases rewrites a selection of South Asian poetry and song. Some of the work is centuries old, while “Saans Lo” was written by Annie Ali Khan, a model and author and friend of Aftab’s who passed away in 2018. What emerged are songs that speak to the fragility and joy of life, the anger she feels at the state of modern life, and her own sadness at the recent deaths of people in her life.
Arooj Aftab. Photo by Soichiro Suizu.
That all comes out even when the words, many of them sung in Urdu, remain foreign to the listener. The tranquil volume of Aftab’s voice reveals so many shades of emotion as it rides the music’s fluttering melodies. She gives her vocals a lot of space to pull from this well of feeling within each song. Using primarily harp, guitar, and strings, Aftab’s arrangements slip quietly between the minimalist jazz of vintage ECM recordings and threadbare contemporary classical work. She sends listeners and critics further off her trail with “Last Night,” which sets the words of a Rumi poem to the bounce of a reggae beat.
Arooj Aftab. Photo by Daniel Hilsinger.
Aftab poured herself into other projects, like her 2018 album Siren Island, a vivid collection of one-take instrumentals using analog synths and guitar, and performing around New York. When she returned to Vulture, the mood of the music shifted into the more serene, twilight feel of the finished album.
As I talked to Aftab, I had to know how the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the most recent album felt, knowing that it was borne from something so devastating. Was it strange to have this be her breakthrough or did it help make the loss a little easier to bear?
Arooj Aftab performs at Holocene (1001 SE Morrison, Portland OR) on September 26 w/ Sheers. 9 pm. Tickets: $35.
It’s hard to know what María Isabel, the up-and-coming Latinx pop artist from New York was expecting as she stepped on to the stage at Holocene for the first date of her first ever tour. But from the look of her wide grin and even wider-eyed reactions to the gaggle of folks huddled at her feet that knew all the words and Snapchatted every moment of her hour-long set, it clearly wasn’t this.
Hedging her bets on how she would be received in a city she’d never been to was a safe play. Though numbers bear out that this is an artist on the rise (her 2020 single “Stuck In The Sky” has racked up over 3 million plays on Spotify) and she had sold out shows in California to look forward to, Portland was unproven ground. And the fact that there were only around 60 bodies present for her debut performance might have left Isabel focusing on the empty space in the room.
María Isabel @ Holocene, September 14, 2021. Photo by Robert Ham.
Whatever impression the experience ultimately left her with, while she was in the moment at Holocene, Isabel looked beatific and constantly surprised when the first notes of a song would draw out shouts of recognition from the audience. But just as quickly, she would downshift into pop professional mode, taking her body and voice back to the song and evoking the drama or joy or heartbreak that inspired it.
The set was mostly downtempo and downcast. Backed by a live drummer and a guitarist who also worked a laptop, the song selection stuck to Isabel’s ballads and gently smoldering pop that spoke of sensuality or romantic dismay. It was a gear that she and her band stuck to until the closing moments of the night when the broken beat groove of “No Soy Para Ti” sent her body and her syrupy voice into a warm, fizzy bounce.
Shahzad Ismaily is not one for wasting time. Visiting Portland for a stretch to work in the studio on a new Laura Veirs record, the New York-based multi-instrumentalist decided to fill his evening hours with gigs. With the assistance of Mike Gamble–guitarist and artistic director of Creative Music Guild–Ismaily wound up playing a series of shows around town at small venues and in different ensembles.
This mini-residency landed last week at No Fun, a narrow space that has become a vital hub for experimental music in Portland. The perfect low-key, low-stakes location for a short set from a visiting artist. For this particular performance, Ismaily was joined by an ensemble that included Gamble on guitar, Matt Mayhall on drums, violinist Manami Mizumoto, and guitarist Indigo Street.
Shahzad Ismaily @ No Fun, September 14, 2021. Photo by Robert Ham.
The improvised set shifted depending on what instrument Ismaily was using. When he slipped his bass guitar on, the music stayed in a rumbling, post-rock mode that let the guitarists tangle together in the vein of Sonic Youth. The sound became a haze of drones and occasional rhythmic spatters as soon as Ismaily slipped his modular synth into his lap.
It was the ideal experience of watching a group of musicians build and develop a sound out of nothing. They listened to each other closely, tugging the music in a new direction when they sensed an opening.
After the main set scrambled to a close, Ismaily shouted that he needed five more minutes and settled his bony body behind the drum kit. Some new players entered the game with one gent strapping on Ismaily’s bass and musician Maxx Katz—on hand as part of one of the support acts—grabbing a microphone. The three pounded out a quick number that was all punishing doom metal downstrokes and ugly vocal tones. It was a fun, if unnecessary addition to the night–but Ismaily had a few moments to spare and wasn’t about to let them slip away.
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Mount Shasta, Lake Shasta and Lassen Volcanic National Park are the big attractions of the Cascades - and it is unsurprising that the natural glory of this mountain range should be its biggest draw. But local theater arts, such as the McCloud Dance Company, historic sites such as the Fort Klamath Museum, and Collier Memorial, and art galleries and small city parks are much of what give the range a quiet charm, to offset the majestic beauty.
This 250-acre college is nestled in the foothills of Mount Shasta.the virtual home for Cliff Jenkins
Soundball Tennis at Shoreham is special.
The normal arrangements are that it is an indoor sport, whereas we can enjoy it as an outdoor sport with fresh air, none of the noise associated with sports halls (squeaking shoes, screams from Badminton players, rock music from the climbers on the indoor walls, etc.)
We have found and initially we prefer the slightly firmer BUZZBALLS which re made in England as their flight is tr