July 2012
10 posts
Madonna at a ceremony to mark the start of construction of the Raising Malawi Girls’ Academy in Chinkhota in 2010. it never got built. Photograph: Nick Obank/Barcroft Media
When Madonna came here to cut a ribbon and plant a tree at a groundbreaking ceremony in 2009, hopes were high for her $15m (£9.4m) elite academy for girls. Three years later, the site looks like a quarried mine, with little activity beyond footballers kicking a ball around.
Madonna’s plan was scrapped last year without a brick being laid. Now Malawi has come up with an alternative plan for the eyesore. It will build a monument to national heroes on the spot where the singer once promised to change hundreds of young lives.
celebrity activism eh?… *coughs*
Is Your Love Big Enough?
(Warner Bros.)
It’s a voice that invites you in, and only the hardest heart will resist the offer. La Havas’ guitar work, meanwhile, is often superb. Her fingers pluck clean lines that shift from playfully atonal on the title track, through the très chic Parisian vibes of Au Cinema, to the palm-muted tension of angry break-up anthem Forget.(BBC Reviews)
KR-51
(Frog Stand)
For “KR-51” Clare and the Reasons decamped from Brooklyn to Berlin — the album is named after the model of moped they used to get around the city — and soaked up a European ambience, often melancholy and displaced. It’s an album made by self-conscious visitors, with glimmers of Kurt Weill and of David Bowie’s Berlin trilogy. (New York Times)
Eleni Mandell
I Can See the Future
[Yep Roc Records]
Though this might be a different, more contented Mandell than fans are used to (no one is going to compare I Can See the Future to Tom Waits), it doesn’t change the fact that she is a songwriter of the highest ilk. (Paste)
Video description reads:
Directed by Alex Southam, “Tesselate” is a twist on Italian Renaissance painter Raphael’s ‘The School of Athens’, set in a modern day gangster’s paradise. The incredible ‘Tessellate’ will be released on 16 July 2012 through Infectious Music. The track is lifted from their stunning debut album ‘An Awesome Wave.’
How is this a “modern day gangster’s paradise”?
There’s nothing new in appropriating and fetishizing. It’s just gross. Please hipsters! Cease and Desist! It’s boring.
I really liked this band, but this video really put me off from listening to them for a while, and certainly put me off from buying their album :(
