Kseniya Simonova – sand art

An evening pause: From Ukraine’s Got Talent, an amazing performance by Kseniya Simonova, telling the story of World War II from the Ukrainian perspective, all with sand. From the youtube webpage:

What she depicts is love and the chaos of war, it is set amidst the turmoil of the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa (Nazi invasion of USSR during World War II) and the impact it had on a Ukrainian couple, the husband is drafted into the Soviet military and never came back home, years later his wife grows old and visits a war memorial to mourn him. The last picture is her younger self and her baby saying farewell to him… with the quote, “You are always with us.”

Alvino Rey – St. Louis Blues

An evening pause: From the youtube webpage:

Alvino Rey is as important to the development of the electric guitar as Les Paul was, but has been criminally uncredited for it–until now. More and more photos, recordings and film clips like these are coming out of the woodwork to show what a genius Alvino was.

This film clip is from 1944 and shows Alvino demonstrating not only his amazing work on the steel guitar, but also his “singing guitar” effect, similar to the Sonovox, manifested in the persona of “Stringy” the talking guitar puppet! Enjoy this and whatever you do, DO NOT TAKE ACID BEFORE VIEWING….we warned you….

A scientific analysis of a database of over a million songs produced since 1955 has found that modern popular music is louder and has less variety or range than the popular music of the past.

A scientific analysis of a database of over a million songs produced since 1955 has found that modern popular music is louder and has less variety or range than the popular music of the past. Key quote:

Lastly, the researchers detected a trend of homogenization of the timbral palette. Timbre is what makes a particular musical sound different from another, even when they have the same pitch and loudness. It is essentially the difference between different instruments playing the same note at the same loudness. They found that, after peaking in the mid 60s, timbral variety has continued to narrow.

This confirms a suspicion of many fans of modern popular music, that it is less interesting and shows far less creativity than the popular music of the 1960s. This result might also explain why 1960s music remains so popular.

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