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The Magnetic Fields
The Magnetic Fields are an American Band (rock and pop), band founded and led by Stephin Merritt. Merritt is the group's primary songwriter, producer, and vocalist, as well as frequent multi-instrumentalist. The band is named after the André Breton/Philippe Soupault novel ''Les Champs Magnétiques''. The band released their debut single "100,000 Fireflies" in 1991. The single was typical of the band's earlier career, characterized by synthesizer, synthesized instrumentation by Merritt, with lead vocals provided by Susan Anway (and then by Stephin Merritt himself, from the ''The House of Tomorrow (album), House of Tomorrow'' EP onwards). A more traditional band later materialized; it is now composed of Merritt, Claudia Gonson, Sam Davol, and John Woo, with occasional guest vocals by Shirley Simms. The band's best-known work is the 1999 three-volume concept album ''69 Love Songs''. It was followed in the succeeding years by a "no-synth" trilogy: ''i (The Magnetic Fields album), i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeastern United States. It has an area of and a population of 675,647 as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, making it the third-largest city in the Northeastern United States after New York City and Philadelphia. The larger Greater Boston metropolitan statistical area has a population of 4.9 million as of 2023, making it the largest metropolitan area in New England and the Metropolitan statistical area, eleventh-largest in the United States. Boston was founded on Shawmut Peninsula in 1630 by English Puritans, Puritan settlers, who named the city after the market town of Boston, Lincolnshire in England. During the American Revolution and American Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War, Boston was home to several seminal events, incl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
100,000 Fireflies
"100,000 Fireflies" is the first single by the American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields, taken from their first studio album ''Distant Plastic Trees'', released in 1991. It is known for its bleak, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and black humor and for Susan Anway's sparse, soprano vocal performance. The song saw play on alternative and college radio stations on its release and slowly grew into a cult classic, becoming "the ultimate staple" of indie mixtape culture during the 1990s. Ryan H. Walsh described the song as mysterious and contradictory, with the sparse arrangement giving it an intimate feeling. Because of its re-release in 1995 as part of the 2 for 1 ''Distant Plastic Trees ''Distant Plastic Trees'' is the debut studio album by American indie pop band the Magnetic Fields, released in 1991. The lead vocals on the album are performed by Susan Anway. Style The album has a stripped down sound and largely synthesized .../ The Wayward Bus'' album, ''Glide'' magazine named it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxophone
The Marxophone is a fretless zither played via a system of metal hammers. It features two octaves of double melody strings in the key of C major (middle C to C''), and four sets of chord strings (C major, G major, F major, and D7). Sounding somewhat like a mandolin, the Marxophone's timbre is also reminiscent of various types of hammered dulcimers. The player typically strums the chords with the left hand. The right hand plays the melody strings by depressing spring steel strips that hold small lead hammers over the strings. A brief stab on a metal strip bounces the hammer off a string pair to produce a single note. Holding the strip down makes the hammer bounce on the double strings, which produces a mandolin-like tremolo. The bounce rate is somewhat fixed, as it is based on the spring steel strip length, hammer weight, and string tension—but a player can increase the rate slightly by pressing higher on the strip, effectively moving its pivot point closer to the lead hamm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xylophone
The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African and Asian instruments, diatonic in many western children's instruments, or chromatic for orchestral use. The term ''xylophone'' may be used generally, to include all such instruments such as the marimba, balafon and even the semantron. However, in the orchestra, the term ''xylophone'' refers specifically to a chromatic instrument of somewhat higher pitch range and drier timbre than the marimba, and these two instruments should not be confused. A person who plays the xylophone is known as a ''xylophonist'' or simply a ''xylophone player''. The term is also popularly used to refer to similar instruments of the lithophone and metallophone types. For example, the Pixiphone and many similar toys described by the makers as xylophones have b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galaxie 500
Galaxie 500 was an American indie rock band that formed in 1987 and split up in 1991 after releasing three studio albums: '' Today'' (1988), '' On Fire'' (1989), and '' This Is Our Music'' (1990). The band membership comprised guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham, drummer Damon Krukowski, and bassist and vocalist Naomi Yang. History Formation and early releases Guitarist Dean Wareham, drummer Damon Krukowski and bassist Naomi Yang had met at the Dalton School in New York City in 1981, but began playing together during their time as students at Harvard University.Thompson, Dave (2000) ''Alternative Rock'', Miller Freeman Books, , p.380-381 Wareham and Krukowski had formed a series of punk-influenced student bands, before Wareham returned to New York. When he returned in 1987 he and Krukowski formed a new band, with Yang joining the group on bass guitar, the new group deciding on the name Galaxie 500, after a friend's car, a Ford Galaxie 500. The band began playing gigs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Damon & Naomi
Damon & Naomi are an American dream pop/indie folk duo, formed in 1991 by Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang (musician), Naomi Yang, formerly of Galaxie 500. History After Galaxie 500 completed a tour of the US supporting Cocteau Twins, guitarist and vocalist Dean Wareham quit the band, forcing the cancellation of an imminent Japanese tour. Damon & Naomi had recorded a few tracks before the split, and these were released under the name Pierre Etoile by Rough Trade Records, Rough Trade (UK) in July 1991. The duo then spent time working on their book publishing company Exact Change, with no plans to return to recording, until producer Mark Kramer urged them back into the studio. The resulting album, ''More Sad Hits'' was released on Kramer's Shimmy Disc label in 1992. Following the release of ''More Sad Hits'', Damon & Naomi were contacted by Kate Biggar and Wayne Rogers, whose band, Crystalized Movements, had recently lost its rhythm section. The two couples teamed up to form the psy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is a suburb in the Greater Boston metropolitan area, located directly across the Charles River from Boston. The city's population as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 U.S. census was 118,403, making it the most populous city in the county, the List of municipalities in Massachusetts, fourth-largest in Massachusetts behind Boston, Worcester, Massachusetts, Worcester, and Springfield, Massachusetts, Springfield, and List of cities in New England by population, ninth-most populous in New England. The city was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in Cambridge, England, which was an important center of the Puritans, Puritan theology that was embraced by the town's founders. Harvard University, an Ivy League university founded in Cambridge in 1636, is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Lesley University, and Hult Inte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Quickies (album)
''Quickies'' is the twelfth studio album by The Magnetic Fields. The album consists of 28 songs, each of which is between 0:17 and 2:35 in length. For the album's concept, Magnetic Fields singer and songwriter Stephin Merritt was influenced by the short fiction of Lydia Davis and the writing of his own book of Scrabble poetry. Release ''Quickies'' is available as a box set of five 7" records or as a CD. The US release of the CD was delayed to June 19. A single LP release was done for Record Store Day of the same year, pressed on pink vinyl and featuring a bonus track on Side A - "The Witches' Fly". Reception ''Quickies'' was met with generally positive reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating out of 100 to reviews from professional publications, the album received an average score of 74, based on 11 reviews. Marc Hogan from Pitchfork said that the album "thrives" on the shortness of its songs, and Slant Magazine stated that Merritt " lourishesunder ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Realism (The Magnetic Fields Album)
''Realism'' is the ninth studio album by American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields. It was officially released on January 26, 2010, by Nonesuch Records. Content Described by songwriter Stephin Merritt as his "folk album", the instrumentation of ''Realism'' is largely acoustic, stark in contrast to the band's previous album, ''Distortion'', released in 2008. Merritt said he "thought of the two records as a pair" and considered titling the albums ''True'' and ''False'', but ultimately could not decide which title would correspond with which album. The song "The Dada Polka" is the only track to feature an electric guitar. Merritt also avoided using a traditional drum kit, further separating the sound of ''Realism'' from the noise pop of ''Distortion''. Along with ''Distortion'' and the 2004 album '' i'', ''Realism'' was also recorded without the use of synthesizers, completing the band's "no-synth trilogy". Joshua Rifkin, who arranged the Judy Collins albums ''In My Life'' an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exclaim!
''Exclaim!'' is a Canadian music and entertainment publisher based in Toronto, which features coverage of new music across all genres with a special focus on Canadian and emerging artists. The monthly ''Exclaim!'' print magazine publishes seven issues per year, distributing over 103,000 copies to over 2,600 locations across Canada. In addition to music, the magazine also covers film and comedy. History ''Exclaim!'' began as a discussion among campus and community radio programmers at Ryerson's CKLN-FM in 1991. It was started by then-CKLN programmer Ian Danzig, together with other programmers and Toronto musicians. The goal of the publication was to support great Canadian music that was otherwise going unheralded. The group worked through 1991 to produce their first issue in April 1992, with monthly issues being produced since. Ian Danzig has been the publisher of the magazine since its start. The magazine had no official name for its first year of operations, with only th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Distortion (The Magnetic Fields Album)
''Distortion'' is the eighth studio album by American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields. It was released on January 15, 2008 on Nonesuch Records. Recording As the album's title implies, several of the musical performances featured are distorted by various means. In particular, the album's sound was influenced by the 1985 album ''Psychocandy'' by The Jesus and Mary Chain. ''Distortion'' was recorded at Mother West in New York City. It was produced by Stephin Merritt and co-produced by Charles Newman. No synthesizers were used to record the album; it is the second in a "no-synth trilogy", succeeding the 2004 album '' i'' and preceding 2010's '' Realism''. Release ''Distortion'' debuted at number 77 on the U.S. ''Billboard'' 200 chart, selling about 8,000 copies in its first week.Katie Hasty"Keys Still Atop Album Chart In Slow Sales Week" Billboard.com, January 23, 2008. Reception ''Distortion'' has been well received by critics. It currently holds a 79/100 rating ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I (The Magnetic Fields Album)
''i'' is the seventh studio album by American indie pop band The Magnetic Fields. It was released on May 4, 2004, by record label Nonesuch. The songs of the album all start with the letter "i" and are all sung by Stephin Merritt. The songs are also in alphabetical order. Musical style The album ditches many of Stephin Merritt's past synthpop and electropop influences, largely being led by guitars and strings. It was followed in 2008, by ''Distortion'', and in 2010, by ''Realism'', which were both also free of synthesizer instrumentation, forming the so-called "no-synth trilogy". Album cover The cover art, designed by Evan Gaffney, is based on ''Gravity in Four Directions'' by Fred Tomaselli. Reception ''i'' has been well-received by critics. It currently holds a score of 79/100 on review aggregator website Metacritic. A track-by-track tribute to the album, entitled ''¡AYE!'', was released by Jackson & the Wargonauts in 2014. Track listing Personnel ; The M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
