MetaFilter posts tagged with paradise

A brief musical history of Garage

empath — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:06:00 -0800

In the waning days of the Disco era, Larry Levan crafted a new style of dance music, which, like House music in Chicago, came to be named after the nightclub where it was most played, the Paradise Garage. Garage music may have started with disco, but over the decades, it's evolved in some surprising ways: The first Garage records were mostly extended remixes of disco records: Roberta Flack - Loving You Is Such An Easy Thing To Do MFSB - Love Is The Message Lolleata Halloway - Love Sensation Eventually Larry's taste for deep, soulful tracks inspired local music producers to make tracks just for Paradise Garage and the classic Garage sound was born: Wish - Nice and Soft Mahogany - Ride On the Rhythm Over time, the sound got picked by Club Zanzibar in New Jersey where it picked up influences from the new House music coming out of the Warehouse in Chicago and by the early 90s had evolved into the sound that also became known as Deep House: Underground Solution - Luv Dancin Odyssey - Feel My Love Butch Quick - Higher Garage continued to develop and crossed over into the UK, where it began being played at raves in the UK and then back in the US, where the influence of ecstasy caused the DJs to begin pitching the records up and looking for slightly harder and "druggy" records and speed Garage was born: Todd Edwards - Push The Love Sneaker Pimps - Spin Spin Sugar (Armand Van Helden Mix) Industry Standard - So More (I refuse) The speed of the records continued to increase until they went over 135bpm, where something like a phase shift happened -- the 4 to the floor beat became too hard to dance to at that speed, so they started dropping every other beat and in the late 90s(after picking up some R&B and Drum & Bass influences) 2-Step Garage was born: DJ Zinc - 138 Trek Artful Dodger - Rewind MJ Cole - Sincere Azzido de Bass - Dooms Night (Stanton Warriors remix) Dreem Teem - Buddy X 99 2-step garage had massive mainstream success in the early 2000s, but after a backlash it went back underground where a new sound started percolating in London's urban clubs. The sounds got darker, more bass-heavy, dirtier. 2-Step started crossing over with London's hip-hop sub-genre - grime. And finally, some producers decided to drop 2-step's 140 BPM tempo down by half to 70bpm so it would mix with hip-hop, and Dubstep was born: La Roux - In for the Kill (Skream Remix) Plastic Man - White Gloves Rusko - Cockney Thug TC - Where's My Money (Caspa Remix) Mala - Alicia That's a hell of a long way from the Paradise Garage. (apologies in advance if I got some of the details wrong -- this was never really my scene, so I'm not an expert)

Clipperton or bust

mdonley — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 16:29:07 -0800

1200 kilometers southwest of Acapulco lies the only atoll in the eastern Pacific: one of France's most isolated overseas possessions. First named for an English pirate/buccaneer/privateer, written about here by one John Harris in 1744, the island has changed hands numerous times: claimed by France as part of Tahiti, claimed by the US under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. The island remained uninhabited until 1906, when a British and Mexican mission began mining guano (still in demand today, though sources can now be found a little closer to home). The atoll was thought to have been polished off entirely by an earthquake rumored to have sunk the islands outright in August of 1909. Sovereignty over the atoll passed back and forth between France and Mexico again until the Vatican, given the task of arbitrating the dispute, passed the decision to the Emperor of Italy, who on January 28, 1931, decided that Clipperton was French: JSTOR link here. (Full citation if you've got access: Edwin D. Dickinson, "The Clipperton Island Case". The American Journal of International Law, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Jan., 1933), pp. 130-133). Since then, Clipperton has been the object of FDR's attention, who visited en route to the Galapagos in the hopes of creating a seaplane stop en route to Australia, an amateur radio enthusiast destination, a new destination for commercial diving operations (huge album of photos!), and most recently a scientific research base, chronicled for English speakers in a 2003 National Geographic expedition with Lance Milbrand, and televised for French viewers on the program Expedition: Clipperton, which includes a fantastic, if Francophone, photo album of discoveries made on the island, in its surrounding waters, and in its freshwater lagoon. Google Books possesses a copy of a recent history of the island, which goes into the motivation for FDR's visit to the island in 1938. Here's a shot of some leftover American ammunition. Given the island's massive exclusive economic zone - which covers an area nearly the size of metropolitan France itself - the place will certainly be on the radar from now on. And no post about a isolated, uninhabited tropical island in 2008 would be complete without the Wikipedia article that I found which started this little adventure today, and a link to a relevant Flickr photo set...in this case, a set of amateur radio operators.

The Lady Birds Can't Resist

brain_drain — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:52:57 -0800

The male Superb Bird of Paradise has an unusual courtship routine. First he sings. Then he hops. Finally, he busts out a spectacular finishing move, which the female finds attractive and/or totally scary. (If an MC Hammer soundtrack isn't your thing, I recommend this alternative version of the video instead.)

Your own private Idaho.

vronsky — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 15:19:17 -0800

Vatu Vara Thinking of using that spare $75mil. to purchase that apartment on top of the Pierre hotel? Wouldn't you really be happier here...

River Art

tellurian — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 16:15:08 -0800

Ahmad Nadalian's work can be found all over the world. He is an artist that carves symbols on rocks and then leaves them at the site where they were created (sometimes burying them).

The Hedonistic Imperative

homunculus — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:09:18 -0800

The Hedonistic Imperative. David Pearce wants to promote paradise-engineering and abolish the biological substrates of suffering in all sentient life. A brave new world? What would Buddha do?