Category Archives: New Utopia

Amazon is ready to take you toUtopia, a new series fromGillian Flynn, adapted from the 2013 British show of the same name. In the series, fans of a comic book discover a conspiracy within the comic is actually real, and now, a group of young fans come together to embark on a high-stakes twisted adventure to use what they uncover to save themselves, each other, and ultimately humanity. A newUtopiared band trailer gives us a blood-drenched look at the series below.

Utopia has had a strange path. The concept originated as a British series in 2013. Then, in 2018, HBO ordered an American remake with David Fincher set to direct. However, budget disputes killed the project over at HBO but it eventually found new life on Amazon. Fincher is no longer involved, butGone Girl writer Gillian Flynn, who was going to work with Fincher on the HBO version, remained on board. And now,Utopia is gearing up to arrive on Amazon Prime Video onSeptember 25, 2020.

My idea was to not only Americanize it and deal with things that I think specifically feel resonant with Americans in a lot of ways, but also to make it gritty, and dirty, and nasty, in a very realistic way, Flynn said. Whereas [Dennis Kelly] took his cue from graphic novels themselves, I took my cue more from the 70s paranoia thrillers I loved that came out after Watergate, in that era where no one trusted anyone and there was a breakdown in what society, the government, and the world was feeling like. I wanted that paranoia to feel very real and to be able to access that through each different character.

Heres the synopsis:

Utopiacenters on a group of comic fans who meet online and bond over their obsession of a seemingly fictional comic called, Utopia. Together, Ian (Dan Byrd), Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop), Samantha (Jessica Rothe), Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges) and Grant (Javon Wanna Walton) unearth hidden meanings cloaked within the pages of Utopia, predicting threats to humanity. They realize these are not just the makings of a conspiracy; they are very real dangers coming alive right now in their world. The high-stakes adventure brings the group face-to-face with the comics famed central character, Jessica Hyde (Sasha Lane), who joins them on their mission to save the world while harboring secrets of her own.

While Im a big fan of Flynn, and I love a lot of people in this cast, Im still not sold onUtopia, even after this trailer full of bonkers violence and all sorts of other mayhem. Maybe itll surprise me.

The rest is here:

Utopia Red Band Trailer - /FILM

Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop) and Jessica Hyde (Sasha Lane) in Utopia, hitting Amazon Prime Video on Sept. 25.

Before diving into Utopia, Amazon's new conspiracy thriller series from Gone Girl's Gillian Flynn, let's get the big question out of the way: Is it better than the cult classic 2013 British series it's based on?

Short answer: No.

But at least it's not a mass appeal US remake. Flynn pens all eight episodes of the adaptation about a pandemic conspiracy, with John Cusack and Rainn Wilson providing the marquee names. Originally ordered in 2018 with David Fincher tapped to direct, the series hit pause before Amazon, with a trio of directors, made it happen -- and with the benefit of some fortuitous release timing.

Entertain your brain with the coolest news from streaming to superheroes, memes to video games.

That's as long as you're into pandemic TV. The ridiculous conspiracy, involving a bat-based virus that might have been created on purpose, will tug the occasional wry smile. There are new and reimagined characters, and the further the conspiracy unravels, the more it veers away from the original. Plus, Cusack is weirdly charismatic as the creator of a synthetic meat.

There's a lot here. But you're still better off seeking out the UK version.

Center: John Cusack as Dr. Christie.

The plot starts off the same way. Several parties are hunting down a graphic novel called Utopia that predicts future viruses. There are the torture-artist secret agents known as The Harvest, and the "fanboys" who believe the prequel to Utopia, Dystopia, predicted real-life epidemics like Eobola and MERS.

"Why do we keep feeling like it's the end of the world?"

"Because someone is ending the world!"

Caught in the middle is the mysterious Jessica Hyde (Sasha Lane), who has a role in the graphic novel and is on the run from The Harvest. "Where is Jessica Hyde?" is repeated a lot.

Ian (Dan Byrd), Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges), Sam (Jessica Rothe) and Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop).

The giddy excitement of the "fanboys", or nerdy internet friends who study the mysteries of the manuscript, is fun to share as the epiphanies come thick and fast across the episodes. There's insurance man Ian (Dan Byrd), his crush harboring a secret illness Becky (Ashleigh LaThrop), underground bunker owner Wilson Wilson (Desmin Borges), troubled 11-year-old Grant (Javon Walton) and brand-new character, idealistic Sam (Jessica Rothe).

Their bumbling naivety is chuckle-worthy, especially in high tension scenes with agents like Arby (Christopher Denham), a tracksuit-wearing, raisin-popping, softly-spoken psychopath. While there's no infamous school shooting from the original, his eyeball torture scene remains horrendous.

While the US adaptation's violence is less extreme, the extreme characters grate. They mainly populate the second big storyline following Cusack's scientist Dr. Kevin Christie, who's accused of starting a new virus, and Rainn Wilson's meek Dr. Michael Stearns, who studies it.

It doesn't help that some characters, like Jessica Hyde, are super serious, making those like Christie's ambitious son, who oversees a media spin team with the smile of a game show host, seem even more over-the-top.

The relatable band of misfits are gradually nudged to the side, when you want them to drive the narrative. Their interactions with Jessica lack chemistry, her cutthroat decisions often receiving baffled looks.

The absurd-to-serious tone rides an electronic current from Jeff Russo's score, which at times sounds like The Social Network's. It's dark and ominous, but might have benefitted from a hit of wackiness. Hear the rooster calls and chopstick clicks texturing Cristobal Tapia de Veer's lauded score for the original.

This grittier feel finds its way into the brownish Chicago setting. The original's stunning Technicolor palette is applied to the green fields and the yellow decontamination tents, but looks strangely muted, rarely popping.

Still, the likeable gang, propulsive mystery and the flecks of dark and deadpan humor create an absorbing world. It might be visually duller than the British series and can't take any credit for the imaginative brilliance, but Amazon's Utopia isn't a write-off. Benefitting from a timely release, it grows into something different, with a few twists fans of the original won't see from a mile off.

Utopia hits Amazon Prime Video on Sept. 25.

Link:

Pandemic thriller Utopia on Amazon might be the perfect viewing - CNET

From American Utopia (2020), dir. Spike Lee (all images courtesy Cinetic Media)

Its tempting to say this about any piece of media that brings even a semblance of joy during this terrible year, but David Byrnes American Utopia genuinely feels like a balm. The stage show, which ran from late 2019 to early 2020 at New Yorks Hudson Theatre, exists somewhere between a concert and a musical. Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festivals 2020 online edition, the film adaptation, directed by Spike Lee, is a fascinating deconstruction of live performance, emphasizing negative visual space and human connection over pyrotechnics.

As Byrne takes the stage, the recollection of Jonathan Demmes equally joyous 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense is plain, what with the simple stage assemblage and costuming. Its perhaps a reminder of how things have and havent changed in the time since. But while the original stage show and this film adaptation are absolutely in conversation with Stop Making Sense, Lee still makes it feel distinct. He applies his own visual stamp and a more intimate setup, especially as the show draws closer to its conclusion. He privileges Byrnes audience with unique angles afforded by the camera, getting close-ups, providing new views of the choreography via aerial shots, and generally making this a cinematic experience rather than simply a filmed show. He adds flair to Byrnes minimalist sensibilities.

For his part, Byrne is the same as he ever was humanist, good-humored and often a little self-deprecating, and most of all egalitarian. Hes the focal point of an ensemble, rather than an all-consuming presence. Hes still trying to make sense of the world through Dadaist art, world music, close friends and collaborators, and his audience. The big questions he asks about the American state of being in between the songs provide new context for everything from classics like Burning Down the House and of course Once in a Lifetime to modern collaborations like I Should Watch TV (written with Annie Clark, aka St Vincent) or a retooling of X-Press Zs house track Lazy. Some numbers are updated dissections of modern living, while others are more focused on finding joy in showmanship. Looking at people? Thats the best, Byrne says as This Must Be the Place thunders to life.

For all of American Utopias joy in revisiting these classics, it also has surprising urgency, full of calls to action, specifically around contemporary Black protest. Colin Kaepernick appears on screen as Byrne and his band take a knee and raise their fists, and one of the closing numbers is a cover of Janelle Monaes Hell You Talmbout. That protest song first came out in 2015, and lists some of the Black people killed, mostly by police, up until the point she performed it. Here its updated to include a few names from this year alone: George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery. The most telling sign of Lees presence is the confrontational construction of this performance, cutting it with scenes of protests featuring people holding gaze with the viewer, carrying placards and pictures of these stolen lives, with many more names in bold red text that engulf the screen.

The term American Utopia is knowingly oxymoronic. A lot of the show is dedicated to wondering how things can be fixed, if they ever will be. But at the same time, its hard to watch Byrnes warm and humanistic performance without grinning from ear to ear. The American Utopia doesnt exist, but for a couple of hours, the possibility feels a little more hopeful. Even such temporary escapism and affirmation is more than welcome.

American Utopia is currently playing as part of the Toronto International Film Festival. It premieres on HBO October 17.

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David Byrne and Spike Lee Consider the Oxymoron of "American Utopia" - Hyperallergic

Read: David Byrnes joyful and uncomfortable reinvention of the rock concert

This tension is at the heart of American Utopia, as is Byrnes distress over our disconnected modern world. Throughout the show, he champions the joys of collaboration and communality. At one point, he notes that most of the performers (including himself) are immigrants. At another, he decries Americas low voting numbers and informs the audience members that they can register to vote on-site once the concert is over. The film builds to a cover of Janelle Mones protest song Hell You Talmbout, during which performers chant the names of Black people who were killed by police or died in their custody, including Freddie Gray and Sandra Bland; Lees camera cuts away from the theater and shows the victims loved ones holding up photographs of those they lost.

Through each beautifully choreographed song, Byrne demonstrates the thrill of watching people perform in sync. But he tempers that glee with stark reminders of how much remains broken outside of his theatrical space, and how much work remains to be doneby others and by himself. The films premiere came shortly after Byrne apologized on Twitter for a newly resurfaced clip of him appearing in blackface in a 1984 video: Like I say at the end of our Broadway show American Utopia, I need to change too... and I believe I have changed since then. In an interview with Variety, he addressed the responsibility he has as an artist talking about racial justice to own up to his mistakes.If Im going to talk about this stuff, I cant talk about giving advice to other people if I cant do it myself, Byrne said.

Along with American Utopia, the most highly anticipated premiere at TIFF was Chlo Zhaos Nomadland, which won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival and will be released on December 4. Zhaos previous movie, the heart-wrenching modern Western The Rider, was one of the best films of 2018 and made enough of a splash to get her a gig making a giant blockbuster for Marvel (The Eternals, due out next year). In between those projects, she quietly made Nomadland, working with its star, Frances McDormand, to adapt a nonfiction book by Jessica Bruder about older transient workers displaced by the 2008 recession and living in cars. The film is a worthy exploration of the lost American dream, focusing on communities laid to waste by an economic crisis the country has already begun to forget.

Read: The Rider was one of the best films of 2018

Nomadland was filmed with a tiny crew that moved across seven states for four months and mostly features nonactors appearing as themselves. McDormand plays Fern, a woman still mourning the Nevada company town she left behind after its Sheetrock factory closed and her husband died. Zhaos film is a requiem for Ferns former way of life and a celebration of the new existence shes found, living in her van and moving from job to job as the seasons change. The open road has long been a mythic environment for cinema, and Nomadland captures many staggering, romantic vistas on Ferns journey. But Zhao also visits mundane localesparking lots, Laundromats, an Amazon packaging factory where Fern picks up shifts at Christmas. In the classic American Western, endless possibility always lies ahead; Nomadland is a modest yet powerful portrayal of Ferns determined effort to cling to the only thing she has left: her independence.

While Nomadland renders the inherent contradictions of America visually, Regina Kings directorial debut, One Night in Miami, does so in words. Kings film, which will be released by Amazon later this year, imagines a fictional meeting between historical heavyweights: Sam Cooke (played by Leslie Odom Jr.), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge), and Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), before he was known as Muhammad Ali. Based on Kemp Powerss play of the same name, the film is set after Clays first victory over Sonny Liston, in 1964, when a celebratory hangout turns into a debate over the best way to build a better America.

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4 Films You Need to Watch This Fall - The Atlantic

HARVARD Nestled in the woods of Harvard is a message waiting to be discovered: Hope is the watchword now.

These words of Bronson Alcott flutter on a printed banner near the entrance to Fruitlands Museum. Flapping in the wind on large banners throughout the grounds are the words of other transcendentalists, too, utopians and some contemporary philosophers.

Jane Marsching, the 2020 artist-in-residence at Fruitlands Museum, is creating outdoors her interpretation of the newest exhibit indoors.

Recruiting for Utopia: Print and the Imagination, which opened Sept. 5, is an exhibit in two distinct parts. There is a historical collection and a contemporary collection of visual artifacts.

Shana Dumont Garr, curator at Fruitlands, explained the overall premise of the exhibit: To look at New England in two specific time periods: the 1840s and 2019-2020. And to explore how print and design helped express peoples worries and their desires to make the world a better place.

When we think of utopia in this way it was peoples imaginings of what was good, said Dumont Garr. Utopia has meant different things to different people.

In the1840s there were various ideologies competing for the attention of New Englanders. Since there was no internet to share memes, visual representations of complex ideas and concepts were created to spread particular beliefs.

For a little background, 1843 is the year that Bronson Alcott, educator, reformer and father of "Little Women" author Louisa May Alcott, tried unsuccessfully to establish Fruitlands, the experimental utopian community.

About that same time William Miller, a farmer turned preacher, who was born in Pittsfield, prophesied the return of Christ, the end of the world and the 1843 ascension of the true believers to heaven utopia. Miller was a charismatic speaker who gained followers across many social sectors. The Millerites were aligned with the temperance and abolitionist movements and they were encouraged to help others prepare to be worthy to ascend into heaven.

At large outdoor gatherings called tent revivals, Miller would preach to hundreds of people. To help spread the word, large-scale banners printed on linen were hung from the tent depicting timelines of real historical events, blended with scripture from the Old Testament. There were also frightening images of mythical beasts and lots of mathematical calculations. Instilling fear of an apocalypse was an important aspect of Millers proselytizing.

Miller successfully recruited many followers with his persuasive speaking and his didactic visuals. Flyers and pamphlets were printed and distributed and newspapers were sold to further promote his teachings.

The Millerites were only one of many Protestant organizations during this time of resurgent religious fervor. The Shakers in nearby Harvard believed that living a life of simplicity and perfection in all their endeavors would produce a utopia on Earth. They are known for their fine craftsmanship and innovation, but on display in this exhibit are writings devoted to their spirituality.

Shaker Sister Sarah Bates secretly documented in ink on paper her spiritual communications using detailed biblical symbols and text. It was kept secret, rolled up in a drawer, because creating two dimensional art was forbidden in the Shaker faith.

Also on display are handmade and printed ephemera from the Freemasons, the Phrenologists (practitioners of a pseudoscience who claimed they could discern a persons character from the shape of the skull), and various flyers concerned with the urgent issues of the times.

I am hoping that it will be reassuring for people to see that in 1840s New England, it wasnt just farmers who all got along and lived a simple life. There were conflicting ideas and life was just as complicated then, said Dumont Garr.

Today, even with the internet to digitally spread content, there is still a place for the printed word. Think about the signs we have all seen for the Black Lives Matter and Hate Has No Home Here movements, or Greta Thurnbergs Skolstrejk fr klimatet (School Strike for Climate). These powerful messages have spread organically with simply printed yard signs.

The contemporary part of the exhibit is an eclectic collection of printed materials, pamphlets, street signs, posters, zines and a comic book, all created within the past few years by diverse artists. These physical documents highlight issues as varied as the slave market at Faneuil Hall, saving the U.S. Postal Service, the repatriation of sensitive objects belonging to indigenous peoples, and the interface of beekeeping and environmental injustice.

This is not the singular, precious, one-of-a-kind type of artwork destined to hang on the wall of a museum, viewed only by people who have the privilege of visiting that place. These works were intended to be distributed, to convey a message and to recruit others who support the message, building a community in the process.

Paige Johnston, an art historian and co-curator for the contemporary portion of Recruiting for Utopia, explained the value of making art to be distributed. It is a very democratic art form. You can make it out of inexpensive materials, whether that is by photocopying or by hand stitching on paper you have made yourself out of old clothes. There is a level of economic and monetary accessibility.

And Marsching, the artist-in-residence, is creating banners that flutter in the breeze at Fruitlands just as the Millerite banners would have done in the mid-1800s. Marsching is a visual multidisciplinary artist, a professor at Massachusetts College of Art and Design and a climate change activist. For her project, Utopian Press, she uses bark and acorns foraged on the grounds of Fruitlands to make the ink for the 3-by-30-foot banners hung from trees.

Her ink is steeped in a passive solar oven that she made herself. Marsching designed and built a portable backpack letterpress that can be carried out onto the trails at Fruitlands for groups to collaboratively create the banners onsite and hang them from the trees. Marschings banners visually recreate the words and ideas of the utopians.

"Recruiting for Utopia" runs through March 21, 2021. While visiting Fruitlands, do not miss the exquisite work of Boston painter Polly Thayer Starr. Also on view are some of Starrs personal items and journals.

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Recruiting for Utopia exhibit at Fruitlands looks to the past and the present - Worcester Telegram

If theres one thing that film and TV history teaches us, its that strangers visiting remote communities is not a good idea. The Wicker Man, Netflixs Apostle, Midsommar there are no happy endings here. Sky-HBO co-production The Third Day, starring Jude Law and Naomie Harris, is the next big-budget project to adopt the premise and the results are mixed.

Split into three separate parts Summer (three episodes), Autumn (an immersive theatre event broadcast live from London) and Winter (three episodes) The Third Day is at the very least inventive. In the first part, Summer, Law plays bereaved husband Sam an episodic psychosis sufferer who happens upon the mysterious Osea Island during festival season. Reachable only at low tide via a causeway, this chunk of British land off the coast of Essex is populated by the likes of Paddy Considines Mr Martin and Emily Watsons foul-mouthed Mrs Martin (How c**ting lovely! she remarks during one scene), whose inn plays host to off-kilter shenanigans involving the locals. While staying there, Sam meets Jess (Fantastic Beasts Katherine Waterston) and the linebetween fantasy and reality begins to blur.

The Third Day stars Jude Law as Sam, in the midst of a nervous breakdown. Credit: Sky

In the middle of a breakdown, Sams fever-dream state is captured via intense close-ups by director Marc Munden. Aided by a cryptic script from Dennis Kelly and Cristobal Tapia de Veers disturbing score, the former-Utopia triumvirate have succeeded in crafting a haunting and colourful mystery drama that deals with weighty themes like faith and grief.

Skipping Autumn (the immersive theatre event hasnt been filmed yet),The Third Day arrives at Winter, which belongs to Naomie Harris character Helen. Driving to Osea with her two young daughters she explains that the island is a great archaeological treasure to her studious eldest the familys idyllic weekend away quickly spirals into a nightmare. Go home, believe me its for the best! a local hotelier says before shutting the door in Helens face. Does the Booking.com star rating mean nothing to these people?

Naomie Harris plays Helen, a mother who takes her children to a mysterious island off the coast of Essex. Credit: Sky

As Helen and her squabbling kids roam the freezing terrain, encountering weirdo after weirdo and the odd mutilated animal, Harris imbues Helen with an affable determination. This time we know what shes up against, so its a relief to find were in the company of someone a bit more attentive than Laws Sam. When the customs of the islanders manage to rattle our new protagonist, the atmosphere in The Third Day morphs into a low-key kind of horror la Ben Wheatleys Kill List. This is the shows best form and itll be fascinating to see which way Autumn goes when it airs in October.

Four months after it was originally scheduled to premiere COVID-19 pushed back post-production The Third Day arrives with two standout episodes (five were available for review, not including the live-streamed, mid-season Autumn and October 19s last episode). It might not blow anybodys socks off but for those who choose to stick by it, next months finale promises a mouthwatering if, likely ill-fated climax.

The Third Day premieres September 15 on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV

Continued here:

The Third Day review: Jude Laws inventive mystery drama from the team behind Utopia - NME.com

AGENT SONYAMoscows Most Daring Wartime SpyBy Ben Macintyre

We have at last, in Ben Macintyres Agent Sonya, the tale of a fully fleshed-out female spy. Not a femme fatale with a tiny pistol in her purse, Sonya was a spy who loved her kids and was racked by guilt for neglecting them, who had serious babysitter problems, a woman whose heart was broken by Mr. Wrong a woman very much like the rest of us. Except not quite. Macintyre, the author of numerous books on spies and espionage, has found a real-life heroine worthy of his gifts as John le Carrs nonfiction counterpart.

Le Carr, however, could not have invented Ursula Kuczynski, a.k.a. Agent Sonya. For this panoramic account of espionage from Weimar Germany through the Cold War is, above all, a womans story. Macintyre draws on Sonyas own journals, which capture the stressful balancing act of spymaster, mother and lover of several men during the most dangerous decades of the 20th century. Like many supremely successful women, Sonya benefited from men underestimating her.

Her journey began in the lawless streets of Berlin in the 1920s, as Communists and Nazis brawled and the Weimar Republic unraveled. A blow from a policemans rubber truncheon during her first street demonstration set the 16-year-old on the road to revolution. Although born to a prosperous, secular Jewish family from Berlins bourgeois Zehlendorf district, she signed up with the Communists, who seemed to be the only ones prepared to shed blood to fight the Nazis. And once she was seduced by their promise of a workers utopia, Sonya never swerved from the cause.

[ Read an excerpt from Agent Sonya. ]

From Shanghai, where Sonya was caught up in the struggle between Chiang Kai-sheks Nationalists and Mao Zedongs Communists, to Japanese-occupied Manchuria, to the placid Cotswold hamlet where she spent part of the war, Sonya managed to elude German, British and American secret services. It boggles the mind how a woman with so many domestic responsibilities a husband and two children could find time for spy drops and transmitting coded messages. But Sonya was the consummate multitasker, now cooking dinner, now cooking up explosives to blow up railways. Domesticity was the perfect cover.

Read more from the original source:

The Housewife Who Was a Spy - The New York Times

Heidi Schreck in performance. Photo: Joan Marcus

Heidi Schrecks play What the Constitution Means to Me has a knack for always seeming of the moment, so of course its coming from Broadway to streaming in the October before a general election. The production announced today that a taped version of Schrecks performance will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on October 16. Marielle Heller, director of Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, filmed the show in its last week on Broadway at the Helen Hayes Theater in 2019. Amazon also announced that it has signed a new overall deal with Schreck to create content exclusively for the platform.

In What the Constitution Means to Me, Schreck recreates the speeches and debates about the Constitution she performed at American Legion halls as a teenager in order to raise money for college, while commenting on her experience from her current perspective, and weaving in the ways the document affected her family history. The play won acclaim on and off Broadway, earning Best Play and Best Actress Tony nominations, becoming a Pulitzer finalist, and most importantly, getting a lot of enthusiastic coverage from us at this publication. Oliver Butler directed the stage production. In addition to Schreck, the productions cast includes Mike Iveson, Rosdely Ciprian, and Thursday Williams. Im delighted with how beautifully Mari Heller has translated Constitution to the screen and Im thankful to Big Beach and Amazon Studios for making it possible to share the show with more people especially right now when we cant gather together in theaters, Schreck said in a statement. In light of the moment we are living through, I am donating part of my proceeds from this film to the Broadway Cares COVID Relief Fund and to the NAACP Legal Defense Funds Voting Rights 2020 initiative.

The news that What the Constitution Means to Me is coming to Amazon continues the trend of streaming services becoming a second home for theatrical productions, even while theater itself is shuttered due to COVID. Hamilton recently premiered on Disney+. American Utopia is going to HBO. Netflix has adapted The Boys in the Band and The Prom into feature films, while it also plans to film the musical Diana before audiences return to Broadway.

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What the Constitution Means to Me Film Coming to Amazon in October - Vulture

We have also sound-houses, where we practice and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have harmonies, which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to you unknown, some sweeter than any you have, together with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which set to the ear do further the hearing greatly. We also have divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and as it were tossing it, and some that give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice differing in the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have also means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in strange lines and distances. New Atlantis by Francis Bacon

Daphne Oram resigned from the BBC in November 1958, mere months after her petitions for an electronic music studio were finally granted with the opening of the Radiophonic Workshop, in April of that year. It seems her disillusionment with the new studio started to set in almost as soon as it opened. By August of 58, Oram was writing to her parents to complain, I never thought the new Workshop could have so many teething troubles. She speaks of tussles with the equipment and regular interruptions from various high ups getting in the way of her experiments. There is no time to concentrate on the real work!

A few months later, in October, she was sent by the BBC to the Exposition Universelle in Brussels. While she was there, she attended the Journes internationales de musique exprimentale where she saw concerts by Pierre Henry and Luciano Berio, attended lectures given by Stockhausen and Schaeffer. Was this the real work she lamented being kept from at the Workshop?

Its hard to say. A report on the Expo that she wrote for BBC management is somewhat equivocal, beginning with expectations stirred only to be baffled by Berios Mutations and left finding Schaeffers musique concrte studies all rather blatant. Here in England, she concluded we use electronic and concrete sounds only where their use is shaped by an architecture outside the music itself for instance, as incidental music to a play, or wedded to a poem to make a radiophonic composition. We find it most useful in creating a mood which will be built upon by the spoken drama itself. Of course, such a statement might be interpreted in the light of who it was addressed to: the BBCs management. Perhaps she was simply writing what she thought was expected of her, more than her true feelings on the matter. What is sure is that just three weeks after returning to England, she handed in her resignation to the director-general, Ian Jacob.

Upon her departure from the BBC, Oram set up her own electronic music studio in a converted oast house near Wrotham in Kent. She made her own headed notepaper and took to corresponding with other composers around the world: Henk Badings in the Netherlands, Pietro Grossi in Italy, and Lejaren Hiller in the United States, among others. Despite a number of significant commissions from the Royal Academy to James Bond Oram struggled to make ends meet as a freelance composer. She supplemented her income through public speaking, maintaining a steady volley of talks on the history of electronic music during the 60s and 70s. Bacons text on sound-houses from the New Atlantis was a recurring presence throughout these lectures.

In the Daphne Oram archive maintained at Goldsmiths College in South London, there are more than half a dozen typed copies of Bacons sound-houses passage amongst her personal effects and many, many more references to it in her handwritten notes and correspondence. When did electronic music begin? she asked a Westminster audience in 1974. Before the war? After the war? 350 years ago. At this point, having answered her own rhetorical question, she would brandish her copy of the New Atlantis and read out her favourite passage.

By this stage, she was following an established routine. Practically every lecture she gave for which some form of notes survive has Francis Bacon as the first bullet point on a list that then proceeded through Schaeffer and Stockhausen to her own music.

By the end of the 60s, its clear that she had a recording on tape of someone (perhaps herself) reading the sound-houses passage that she would open her talks with, before drawing out the links between each line in Bacons text and more recent developments. One typed copy of the text is marked up in pencil, with, for instance, Bacons reference to all sounds and their generation circled and lassoed to a note in the margin indicating Henk Badings (1958) electronic work, Genese. Then harmonies which you have not is linked to Stockhausens early Studie II from 1954, and so on. From other scattered notes and loose pages in the archive, it seems clear that she frequently used the same device as a way of structuring her lectures. In Orams telling, the whole history of electronic music had been played to a score written by Bacon more than three centuries before the fact.

In his own time, Bacon himself was fascinated by music. As a child he dabbled with the lute. At Cambridge in his teens, he took courses in music. His already enquiring mind must have been alive to the vast gulf which separated these two practices.

Music studies at Cambridge in those days placed the subject within the medieval quadrivium, together with arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. The arts of measure. Its object was the monochord and the divisions of its single string. And the calculations of those proportions were devised with a mind less to please the ear than to please God. Music, as a scholastic discipline, had almost zero communication with music as played by musicians or as engineered by instrument-builders. It was less an art form, as we would understand such today; more a branch of mathematics.

Another significant early experience: whilst staying in France as a young man at the residence of the English ambassador, ostensibly to further his legal studies but actually to act as information-gatherer to his uncle, the secretary of state Lord Burghley, Bacon travelled one day to Charenton, to the south-east of Paris. He went there with a specific purpose: to hear, in the nave of a small church, a famous echo said to return the voice sixteen times (Bacon himself, when calling out, could only make out thirteen distinct echoes). The trip would spark or perhaps merely confirm an early interest in acoustic phenomena. He mentioned it several times in his later published writing. It made sound feel real to him, thing-like, as the tossing of a ball, to and fro.

Sound was a topic Bacon returned to often as a writer, from his first mention of an acoustique art (a term which seems to be his own coinage) in The Advancement of Learning in 1605 to the very last writing projects of his final months where it was given pride of place. It clearly occupied his thoughts for a long time. And throughout, we can sense a continuing attempt to hew together these two formerly quite distinct aspects practical music-making and the speculations of its academic discipline in such a way that it could make sense of the kind of strange acoustic effects Bacon had heard in Charenton. In Bacons lifetime, the understanding of such effects was primarily the domain of magic.

Magic, in Jacobean England, was a thing at once more commonplace and more feared than it is now. If today the word conjures up images of cloaks and broomsticks and illicit rituals performed at midnight, it is necessary to readjust ones frame of reference to picture something like a kind of paleo-science encompassing such relatively mundane pursuits as jam-making, perfumery, and the production of lenses for reading glasses. Distinct from such potentially dangerous practices as ceremonial magic and demonology, what sixteenth- and seventeenth-century savants knew as natural magic was simply an experimental practice concerned with the exploitation of material properties towards effective ends. It was proscribed by the church but employed nonetheless by many statesmen, pharmacists, and even priests. For the most part, it dealt with what today would be called science only it did so mostly in secret, behind closed doors and cloaked in sigils and passwords, led by some rather strange ideas about cause and effect.

Certainly it was not the part of any academic natural philosopher to conduct experiments any more than a university music student would be expected to whip out a guitar and strum through Greensleeves. It would be beneath their dignity. Upon Francis Bacons shoulders fell the task of bringing together what had seemed like opposed and irreconcilable disciplines to produce a new kind of experimental science combining rational speculation over causes with a desire for useful, tangible results. As he wrote in the New Organum of 1620, The true and lawful goal of the sciences is none other than this: that human life be endowed with new discoveries and powers. What use theory if it didnt lead to practice? In this sense, his approach to acoustics was typical of his work as a whole. And the text in which he laid out his lab notes for the new science in the most detail was published at the same time, even in the same volume, as the New Atlantis.

This work was titled Sylva Sylvarum. The name itself sounds mysterious to modern ears. In Latin, sylva can mean forest, but also timber or even material. When the French belletrist Antoine Mizault published his Arcanorum Naturae Sylvula seventy years earlier, he employed the diminutive sylvula to mean something like a small heap, a little collection of useful things, like its his iPhone notes, basically. For Bacon on the other hand, there was nothing little about his collection. It was more like a forest of forests, a collection of all the collections.

The book is divided not into chapters but centuries, of which there are ten each one a hundred numbered paragraphs offering hypotheses, observations, and experiments, grouped thematically. There are centuries devoted to physics, to botany, to taste and smell, and so on. Century two and most of three deal with music and sound. They do so in a manner which is characteristically eclectic.

Unusually for Bacon, the basic theory is Aristotelian. Like Aristotle, Bacon regards sound as a sensuous phenomenon, received by the ear of the listener where it mingles with the spirit, forming affinities and correspondences which play directly upon the passions. But Bacon combines this with practical experiments in things like throwing the voice and eavesdropping cribbed from the book Magia Naturalis by the Neapolitan intellectual Giambattista della Porta, along with notes on various kinds of automatic musical instruments and other like marvels built by regular visitors to the British court like the Dutch engineer Cornelis Drebbel and the French architect and polymath Salomon de Caus. What it represents is a stab at gathering together all the knowledge and ideas related to sound available at that time from whatever source. In that sense, the tone is lofty but also reserved, even tentative. This was a knowledge base that was expected to grow. It spoke of everything from the basic essence of sound to suggestions of new microtonal scales, drawn from de Causs recently published Institution Harmonique; techniques, pilfered from Porta, for amplifying and transmitting the voice with tubes and cones; descriptions of new instruments and automatons by Drebbel everything, in fact, from the the voices and notes of beasts and birds to the strange and artificial echoes that Bacons wayward seafarers are told of in the sound-houses of the New Atlantis. There is almost nothing in the utopian prophecy of Bensalem that does not find its counterpart in this catalogue of contemporary observations and experiments.

Upon publication, the two texts New Atlantis and Sylva Sylvarum came bundled together, registered as one volume with the printer mere months after Bacons death and published within the year. The book was put together by Bacons former chaplain turned executor, William Rawley, who claimed his Lordship had always insisted the two works were designed for this place, i.e., together, inseparable. The one was designed to illustrate the promise of the other, to show what wonders it made possible, the kind of world it implied. But the two texts would have markedly different fates.

The Sylva Sylvarum was reprinted more times than any of Bacons other scientific works in the seventeenth century. Its suggested experiments were the bread and butter of the new Royal Society formed in 1660, partly in Bacons image. Later on, as the specifics of its science grew outdated, interest in the Sylva withered. In its place, enthusiasm for New Atlantis, relatively neglected in its own time, has only grown. It is now one of Bacons most popular texts, everywhere feted for its visionary glimpse of modern technology. But far from foreseeing the future of science, the Sylva Sylvarum and New Atlantis together merely drew together and placed side by side the available knowledge of their own time. In the process, they brought something new into existence. The sound-houses of the New Atlantis did not so much predict electronic music as lay the ground for its development. The acoustic science they inaugurated was the condition of electronic music even happening.

New Atlantis by Francis Bacon with a new introduction by Robert Barry is published by Repeater Books

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Features | Tome On The Range | We Have Also Sound Houses: How A 17th C. Utopia Foresaw Electronic Music - The Quietus

Keanue Reeves and Alex Winter are back for a new Bill and Ted journey (Picture: Rex)

No way?! Yes way! After long 30 years, those bodacious dudes Mr William S Preston, Esq. (Alex Winter) and his best friend Ted Theodore Logan (Keanu Reeves) are finally back in cinemas. As Bill And Ted Face The Music is released,, heres Larushka Ivan-Zadehs refresher course on all you need to know about the cult sci-fi comedy franchise.

1983Bill and Ted are conceived in an improv workshop by UCLA students Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson. One day, we decided to do a couple of guys who knew nothing about history, talking about history Solomon told Cinemafantastique, while Teds father kept coming up to ask them to turn their music down.There was a third guy, called Bob, but Bob dropped out.

1984Solomon and Matheson write the first script, by hand, in just four days in a coffee shop. Originally called Bill & Teds Time Van, it saw two nice but dim teenagers borrow a van (later judged a bit too close to Back To The Futures DeLorean) and somehow end up in Nazi Germany where they get up to high jinks with Adolf Hitler (later switched to Napoleon as being less problematic).

1987Though Bill and Ted were originally conceived as weedy 14-year-olds, the rather older and cooler Alex Winter (fresh off The Lost Boys) and Keanu Reeves (in his breakthrough role) and are cast and the film comes in to time and budget ($8.5m). A most egregious disaster occurs when the distributor files for bankruptcy. However Bill and Ted are saved from the direct-to-DVD dustbin by a small video company called Nelson Entertainment, who snap the movie up for a song and make millions.

1989Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure is released! [Cue air guitar riff!] It sees two loveable metal heads in danger of flunking most heinously (Ted) out of their Californian high school unless they can score A+ final history report. Given they only know Julius Caesar as the salad dressing dude, failure seems assured. That means Ted will be sent to a military academy and their atrocious rock group, Wyld Stallyns, will be disbanded.

Enter Rufus (the late George Carlin) and his time-travelling phone booth from the year 2688, who tells Bill and Ted that that their philosophy and music will eventually inspire new utopia, but only if Wyld Stallyns stays together.The goofy pair Ping-Pong through time, collecting historical personages like Socrates (pronounced so crates) and Joan of Arc to ace their project and ensure world peace.

1990Excellent Adventure is such a hit, it spawns a TV cartoon series, an entire youth slang lexicon and a breakfast cereal which Alex Winter cheerfully admits was disgusting.

1991Bill& Teds Bogus Journey is released! [Cue air guitar riff!] This bonkers movie sequel adventure cast a reluctant Joss Ackland (who later said he regretted doing it) as a baddie from the future, who dispatches evil robot replicants of Bill and Ted back to the past to kill our heroes. Events take a surreal turn as our heroes challenge Death (William Sadler) to a game of Twister, find the meaning of life in a Poison lyric, finally learn to actually play their guitars and both produce beards and babies. They sign off to us with Be excellent to each other and party on.

1991Bill and Ted is spun-off into a videogame, a live action TV series and a comic book. In a case of life imitating art, Keanu Reeves forms an ill-received garage band called Dogstar. Reeves also makes Point Break which, followed up by Speed and The Matrix trilogy, transforms him into one of the biggest stars on the planet. Making Bill and Ted 3 is no longer top of his To Do list.

2010A sad Keanu meme, of Reeves looking sad, circulates online. As if to cheer him up, a first draft of Bill and Ted 3 is created. Hollywood, however, doesnt want it. Alex Winter directs the kids TV cartoon series Ben 10, then turns his hand to feature documentaries.

2018The script is still locked in bogus development hell. The studios want to reboot the franchise with a younger cast, but writer Ed Solomon tells Digital Spy that We love these characters, theyve been with us for our whole lives and we wanted to visit them again as middle-aged men. We thought it would be really fun, and funny, and sweet.

2020Bill & Ted Face The Music is released! [cue air guitar riff!] It sees a now middle-aged and married (not to each other) Bill and Ted settled in the suburbs, but yet to fulfil their rock and roll destiny. With time ticking, they must write the best song ever to save life as we know it. This time theyre helped by their own teenage daughters (Samara Weaving and Brigette Lundy-Paine). Released in the UK this Friday, it has enjoyed most excellent reviews in the US, with a 81% fresh score on Rotten Tomatoes. A Bill & Ted 4 is already being rumoured. Catch you later, Bill and Ted!

Kid Cudi as himselfThe US rapper shows another side of himself (as himself) as the movies go-to expert regarding epistemological reality and quantum looping.

Holland Taylor as The Great LeaderThe Emmy-winning TV veteran (Two And A Half Men, Hollywood) camps it up in a glittery cape as the most powerful person in the universe.

Kristen Schaal as KellyIn a tribute to the late George Carlin, who played Bill and Teds kindly guide, Rufus, Schaals character is named after his daughter, Kelly Carlin.

Brigette Lundy-Paine as Wilhelmina Billie LoganA most excellent turn as Little Bill (ie the daughter of Keanu Reeves character) should prove a breakout role for this non-binary rising star.

Samara Weaving as Theodora Thea PrestonShe may portray Bills daughter but the real life niece of Hugo Elrond Weaving looks more like Margot Robbies cousin, dont you think?

Bill & Ted Face The Music is out now.

MORE: Keanu Reeves claims Alex Winter almost died while filming for Bill and Ted 3 in a muscular bodysuit

MORE: Bill & Ted Face The Music reviews are out is it an excellent adventure or just bogus?

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Bill and Ted 3: Here's what you need to know - Metro.co.uk