Category Archives: Trance

The Tragedy of Macbeth cast : Denzel Washington as Macbeth, Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth. Director Joel Coen

Macbeth is perhaps an unparalleled drama by William Shakespeare as the focus is more on the riving guilt that results in a splitting conscience, post crime, than the events leading to the act of butchery itself. It is more about punishment (mostly self-inflicted) than crime. Though one could argue that the reasons for Fyodor Dostoevskys Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment and Shakespeares Macbeth were different, the consequences of their heinous acts are much similar in nature.

Considering that The Tragedy of Macbeth is a Joel Coen project, bereft of any contribution by his brother Ethan Coen who has otherwise remained a collaborator in most films produced by the duo, one feels akin to sipping vintage wine when watching it. The film is aptly handled by allowing it to breathe, and viewers are made to imbibe it at a sober pace lest too much smother the palate in a single sip.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is a tour de force that assiduously encapsulates a tale of conspiracy and betrayal in a monochromatic format. And yet, the film never falters in exuding the many shades of a human character, the credit for which partially goes to the extraordinary ensemble of actors.

While Michael Fassbender appeared as a haughty warrior in the Justin Kurzel version of Macbeth; in this film, actor Denzel Washington appears vulnerable, more mature and astute than brusque and impulsive. The fact that Macbeth had his share of fragile moments was initially proved by his vacillation over assassinating the King, leading him to even confess to his wife that he is willing to junk his murderous ambition.

The cold-hearted personality portrayed by Washington and his consistency in dialogue delivery straight from the original text to retain the essence of this Shakespearean drama is noteworthy. He takes the right pauses and allows viewers time to absorb a moment.

Case in point is the scene where King Duncan, enacted by Brendon Gleeson, bestows upon Macbeth the title of Thane of Cawdor but soon declares it is Malcolm, his son, who is next in line to be King of Cumberland. The disappointment and fiery ambition, which begins nesting in Macbeth, becomes apparent in Washingtons poker face; best captured in the words of the character, False face must hide what the false heart doth know. The characters repressed rage finds vent in the next scene where he admits, The Prince of Cumberland! that is a step/ On which I must fall down, or else oerleap,/For in my way it lies.

It is noteworthy that Joel Coen has reinvented Macbeth in a very American way which seems to assert itself through Washingtons diction. But, since the play is based in 11th century Scotland, his American accent sticks out like a sore thumb. An English accent may have been fair but then, as they say, fair is foul, and foul is fair.

Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, perfects hers except minute slips. She impresses with her measured acting; not overdoing parts where the chances of going overboard were ample. McDormands Lady Macbeth, compared to Marion Cotillards in Kurzels version, equals in embodying the conniving nature of the character that influences Macbeth to murder the King. In this, she appears more fastidious and subtle than hysteric and desperate. The mark of a mature and scheming woman is prominent. It is the literal translation of Lady Macbeths wish, and fill me from the crown to the toe top-full/Of direst cruelty.

McDormands soliloquy, during a fit of somnambulism, is a scene worth admiring. She aptly appears as a woman in trance but moves one when she sort of breaks the fourth wall and makes a gesture at the camera, sparking a doubt as to whether the state of trance is but a conscious act. Lady Macbeths death would perhaps always remain shrouded in mystery and thus a matter of debate. In the play, though she dies off-stage, suggesting suicide, the movie leaves one wondering if she really killed herself.

Certain slips, pertaining to attention-to-detail, fail to evade viewers. Theres not a scratch on either Macbeth or Banquo as they return from a bloody war against the Irish invaders, even as the apparently wounded Captain reports to King Duncan that both the Scottish generals fought with great valour and violence.

The setting of the film, shot on a sound stage, creates a closeted ambience where each character holds a secret, which, if it were to trundle out of the cupboard, could scuttle their cynical ambitions. Macbeths secret constricts and suffocates him like a serpent coiled around his neck, making him eventually slip into delirium.

The chiaroscuro effect casts a glimpse into the psyche of the characters and their motives which are both virtuous and sinister. This finds evidence where Lady Macbeth, while walking down a long corridor, approaches from a brighter section of the passageway but gradually steps into the shadowy part while she reads a letter from her husband. She is enticed at the prospect of him becoming King, just as the witches prophesied.

Wry humour and suspense are the sine qua non of Coen Brothers films. Their neo-Western crime thriller No Country for Old Men made one quake in their boots as a rotating doorknob in a dark and hushed motel room indicated the arrival of hitman Anton Chigurh in search of his target.

Here, in a tense situation, the comic relief is brought forth by Jacob McCarthys Wheyface a servant who informs Macbeth about the approaching troops but is instead assailed with a barrage of expletives such as creamfaced loon, goose-look and lily-livered boy. The forlorn and muddled Wheyface, and his quick retreat in the face of a hurricane of insults, is what tickles the funny bone.

The success of The Tragedy of Macbeth would remain incomplete without acknowledging the intense music by Carter Burwell that relays the mood of the film at times, euphoric, and at others, despondent. The director of photography Bruno Delbonnel creates hypnotic visuals on screen, which look like charcoal sketches on a white paper. In the main, this film can be termed as the finest Macbeth ever adapted for the screen as it retains the charm of the play being enacted on stage.

The Tragedy of Macbeth is available for viewing on Apple TV+

(The writer is a reporter, The Statesman, Kolkata)

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Darkness within, darkness without - The Statesman

Fifteen years ago this week, Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered a vitriolicspeech at the Munich Security Conference in which he denounced the United States as a hyperbolic superpower, challenged Europe to reexamine security institutions across the continent, and questioned the rationale for expanding NATO. Sound familiar? On the fifteenth anniversary of his manifesto, as the world sits on the precipice of yet another conflict in Ukraine, Putin has dusted off the same talking points and the same demands, announcing last week that once again fundamental Russian interests were ignored. And just as the Bush administration did a decade and a half ago, the Biden administration is engaging in a series of talks which, while likely leading nowhere, are validating Putins bad behavior and giving him a bigger presence on the world stage than he deserves.

Founded more than fifty years ago, the Munich Security Conference has grown into a major annual event attended by world leaders, American and European defense ministers, parliamentarians from both sides of the Atlantic, journalists, policy experts, and more. The conference was, for decades, the place where U.S. defense secretaries reinforced Americas security commitment to Europe and occasionally chided their counterparts about contributing more to transatlantic security.

But on February 10, 2007, Putins litany of grievances disrupted this pattern, transforming the conference into a launch party for a resurgent Russia. The blockbuster tirade led to a series of diplomatic discussions and high-level strategic framework meetings that were, while interesting, ultimately fruitlessthe same kind of meetings which are being repeated now to address the Ukraine crisis.

U.S. and European policies leading up to the February 2007 conference provided Putin useful material for his rant. In the months preceding the conference, the Bush administration in concert with Americas European allies was pursuing multiple, concurrent policies intended to strengthen transatlantic security. Bulgaria and Romania had agreed to host U.S. forces. NATO was close to extending membership invitations to Albania, Croatia, and Macedonia, having invited seven nations of Central and Eastern Europe to join in 2002. NATO had also made the decision to take over responsibility for the entirety of Afghanistan via the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) mission. As the Alliance began preparations for its April 2008 summit in Bucharest, its members were discussing whether and how to draw Georgia and Ukraine closer. And, the month before the conference, newly minted Secretary of Defense Robert Gates had made the decision to place the third site of the nations missile defense system on the territory of some of NATOs newest members in Central and Eastern Europe.

To Putin, these policies provided a way to portray Moscow as the victim of U.S.-led dominion in Europe with scant regard for Russias interests. Another Russian leader might have smiled on developments that brought democracy, rule of law, and free markets closer to a Russia struggling with long-term economic stresses, crumbling infrastructure, and declining demographics. Putin saw them are threats to his rule. Instead of seeing NATOs ISAF mission as an opportunity for cooperation against the common threat of Islamic extremism, Putin portrayed it as NATO destabilizing his near abroad.

No one in the U.S. delegation or the international audience was prepared for what Putin would unload over nearly 45 minutes. The strident Russian president spent the majority of his speech and the following Q&A period railing against the Bush administration, staring down Gates and the U.S. congressional delegation led by Sen. John McCain throughout. He criticized the United States for being arrogant, for its uncontained hyper use of force, for having overstepped its national borders in every way, and for not adhering to the rule of law. He called America out for its policies on missile defense. He criticized NATO actions in Kosovo.

For the first two-thirds of the speech, which focused on castigating the United States, many of the Europeans in the audience were disturbingly open to Putins message. I remember sitting with the rest of the American delegation, seeing agreeable expressions and nods of approval from our European friends and allies.

But the Europeans trance broke when Putin redirected his ire toward the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). He claimed the organization was being transformed into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries, paying insufficient attention to relations between the spheres, and making states dependent and, as a consequence, politically and economically unstable. This naked paranoia startled the Europeans. It made them concerned that Putin had bigger ambitions about transforming Europe, and that his rant was not only about President Bush and his policies, but about Europe and the institutions that keep it free and peaceful. The unease was palpablethe Europeans were happy to criticize American leadership, but deeply suspicious of any plan to replace the institutions it supported.

Putins remarks and Gatess responseone Cold War was quite enoughled to a yearlong effort known as the 2+2 talks, with Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and their Russian counterparts trying to define areas of cooperation, such as counterterrorism and nonproliferation, and trying to soothe areas of contention, such as missile defense and military deployments in Europe. Yet despite honest attempts at good relations, the issue of NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia loomed over the discussions as neither side was willing to accept the others position.

Putins Munich speech was a watershed moment in Russias relations with the free world. It made many in Europe aware of the danger Putin represented, but it also created division among them (and among Americans) about how to respond to Moscow. It put the United States in the lead position for engagement with Putin about his concerns and grievances. And it served as the manifesto for the revanchism Putin has pursued ever since. Perhaps the biggest and most lasting effect of Putins speech was the reaction it generated from the West, which sought to engage him and reason away his concerns. This helped to legitimate his grievances and his desire to be treated as the leader of a great power.

Since 2007, Putin has remained intent on shaping political and security developments in Russias periphery. He wants to be seen as a necessary player on the world stage. He wants Russia to be seen as global power whose approval must be sought. As he said at Munich and many times thereafter, he seeks to reestablish Russian influence in the world.

Successive U.S. administrations and European governments have failed to convince Putin that he could have more influence by playing a constructive, cooperative role than a destructive, antagonistic one. His countrys forces wreaked havoc in Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine since 2014, splintering the territory of both nations and launching disinformation campaigns which have degraded their democratic processes (and those of other democracies as well). Putin and his cronies have paid relatively little compared to what damage they have been able to inflict militarily, psychologically, and diplomatically on millions of people.

With potential violence and devastation an order of magnitude greater than anything Europe has seen since World War II awaiting only Putins order, the Biden administration is again engaging in strategic framework talks with Russia, entertaining Moscows grievances and revisionist fantasies. Thankfully, United States and Europe have rejected Putins proposals, which essentially amount to a do-over of the Cold War. No doubt, talking is better than fighting, but the cost of talking is legitimizing Putins quest for dominion over Russias neighbors, as if that were the kind of thing about which the United States could or should negotiate.

For the most part, the collective position the transatlantic community has taken has been the right one: There needs to be an unambiguous message to Putin that any hostile actions by Russia against Ukraine will be met with consequences. For this threat to be seen as real and enforceable, NATO, the European Union, and individual European nations must be unified in their willingness to impose penalties on Russia for yet another attempt at disrupting peace and redrawing borders in Europe.

The United States and Europe have an opportunity to learn from past ineffective engagements with Putin and have this round turn out differently. Ideally, American and Europes leaders would adopt a stronger position of deterrence regarding Russias new offensive in Ukraine so as to make the penalties so severe that they force those around Putin to calculate the cost and benefits.

Putin told the world at Munich fifteen years ago that he has a narrative of how the West wronged his country, and he has used that story to appeal to the Russian people and to satisfy his need for validation, legitimacy, and special treatment. Taking his insecurities and Cold War nostalgia seriously gives him what he wants. By making clear that the consequences of aggressive action in Ukraine will be severe international political, economic, and military isolation would hit Putin where it matters.

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Putin Announced His Manifesto Against the West Fifteen Years Ago. His Story Hasnt Changed. - The Bulwark

Stepping into the Gothic Theater felt like entering another realm, a dream within our own reality. Washed Outs sold-out crowd of eager and open supporters came to be taken by the signature chillwave monsoon of drum pads, wavey bass and processed vocals. The audience stepped up to the stage and was welcomed into a trance of heavenly visuals and hypnotic rhythm. Right on time, opener Brijean floated onto the stage. The ultra-chill duo comprised of Brijean Murphy and Doug Stuart set the tone from the very first tap of Murphys bongos. Quickly, the crowd assumed a collective sway as the two blanketed everyone with soft harmonies and scintillating chimes. The haze of purple light hitting the stage, coupled with the sweet whispers from their latest release with Poolside, Better When Were Close, delivered a uniquely exquisite opener experience.

After years of anticipation, Ernest Weatherly Greene Jr., known by stage name Washed Out, entered the stage. From the jump, Greene delivered a sonic experience which begged you to ask Are we in heaven? He kicked off by the set with Too Late, off his latest album, Purple Noon, released in 2020.

This is the first tour weve done as a band in two or three years so thanks so much for showing up.

It was as if no time had passed since his debut album, High Times, released in 2009. Washed Out displayed the rare ability to impart the inimitable sensation of falling uncontrollably in love or floating carelessly in open water. Switching from keys to drum pad to acoustic guitar, Greene laid it all out on the stage. The trance continued with the track All I Know, and a collective gaze was met by a spectacle of lasers hovering above bobbing heads.

This is the Purpose Noon tour. Were playing a lot of new stuff but were playing some old ones too. This is one I think youmight know.

In response, the crowd was sent into a frenzy with the hit Feel it All Around, known by many as the insanely catchy theme to Portlandia. The energy was palpable with not a single body standing still. For those not dancing their face-off, a more dreamy position was assumed with eyes closed in delight. Despite the already animated current, Greene shouted, Were going to pick up the tempo a little bit, and blasted the crowd with the dance track from Within and Without, Amor Fati. Audience members wore giddy grins as they bounced around, captured by the bright beams backlighting the stage.

As quickly as the show was kicked off, the three-piece band scampered off stage. Shouts from the crowd begged for more and they re-entered for an extended version of Get Lost from Mister Mellow with the words take a hit and get lost emblazoned behind them. Knowing the end was near, the room held a sense of hopeful nostalgia. In the end, the show was rounded out with a classic from their 2011 album Eyes Be Closed. Greene tapped his drums sticks together, gazing out into the crowd with a huge smile, leaving everyone in sweet revelry.

All photography by Shelby Moeller

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Review Washed Out Sent Gothic Theater Into A Trance - 303 Magazine

Hemant Joshi who has popular tracks like Ekla Jivishu', 'Dayalu Dwarka Vala', 'Kem Bani Gya Che Bija Na', 'Sorath in Amirat', and 'Shiv Aradhna' amongst many others to his credits, is all set to release a new song 'Girnari Trance' towards the end of February.The makers recently wrapped the shooting and will soon release it on social media platforms. 'Girnari Trance' is a Tandav track sung by Hemant Joshi. The lyrics are written by Mensi Vadher and the music is directed by Hemant Joshi. The DOP team includes Vishal Makwana and Vivek Makwana.To know more about the song and the making, ETimes contacted Hemant, and here is what he shares, "We have finally finished shooting and shall release it without further delay. I hope that the song brings together generations as it has Tandav and trance on the same loop. I have been working on my western classical and this is one such attempt where I have tried to create the fusion between the Indian and western worlds. The beats are something that would keep it going for the audience connecting at different levels. A lot of hard work and research has got us here and we are all set to see this song flourish."Read Also:

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Hemant Joshi on his new release 'Girnari Trance': I have tried to create the fusion between the Indian an - Times of India

Colombia and the world are still pending the evolution of the health of the cyclist Egan Bernal, who is admitted to the Clinic of La Sabana, after the accident he suffered last Monday.

After several days the uncertainty continues, his followers hope that the Tour champion of France in 2019 and current winner of the Giro d'Italia is in good health and overcomes this difficult situation.

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We have no doubt that hard times are coming, that Bernal's battle to get ahead is much more demanding than a full season. The corridor is playing it all, there is no tomorrow. It is known that he lives a complicated present and that the first objective is for the human Egan Bernal to get ahead physically and medically, because the cycling Egan Bernal can wait.

On roasted Monday, around 10:01 in the morning, at km 33 of the Bogot-Tunja road, Bernal was riding his time trial bike and crashed into the back of a bus, which stopped to drop off a passenger. .

He was transferred by ambulance to the Clnica de la Sabana and presented the following injuries: mild head trauma, non-displaced cervical spine fracture, perforation of the lung with the presence of air and bleeding in the thoracic cavity, fracture of the t5 and t6 thoracic vertebrae. and fracture of the femur and the right patella.

As the hours and days passed, Bernal showed improvement, he was gradually awakened and it was confirmed that he had mobility in all four extremities, something that reassured.

It may interest you: (Egan Bernal: Alejandro Valverde wins in Mallorca and dedicates the victory to him)

However, the race has not ended for him, until now he is in the prologue, of a complicated test, the most difficult of his 25 years of life.

There have been several cyclists who have had similar or stronger accidents than those of the Cundinamarca cyclist. Some have recovered and have returned to the road, others have not, they have hung up their bicycles.

EL TIEMPO spoke with two of them, the Spaniards Joseba Beloki and Pedro Horrillo, who went to the ground, hit rock bottom, but they recovered and came 'back to life'.

Beloki and Horrillo are a light, a guide in this situation of uncertainty and they tell how they got out of the tunnel, how they overcame that competition that Bernal, the best Colombian cyclist of the moment, has reached.

From the road to the hospital

On July 14, 2003, the ninth stage of the Tour de France was held between Bourg d'Oisans and Gap of 184 km, and the world was able see live the fall of Beloki, who left a curve, was dispatched down the ravine and remained on the asphalt.

He was urgently evacuated. The Eleven team runner was taken to the hospital and there the doctors confirmed a fracture of the head of the femur, the elbow and the wrist of the right arm. He was second in the general, only 40 seconds separated him from the leader, the American, Lance Armstrong, but that remained in history, because the multiple fractures took him out of the option of winning the test, in which he finished second once and two more from third.

These are very difficult moments that one lives. Today I think that in these cases the best thing is to put one in the real situation, Beloki told EL TIEMPO.

And he added: You wake up and what you want is to know when he's going to ride a bike again and that's not it, the first thing is to know if you look good. It is ideal not to create false expectations to put that recovery plan to work, which must go hand in hand with the physical.

Beloki was late coming back. Eight months of hard work and sacrifice passed. They were days of great pain and of becoming aware that he could get ahead.

The key is to have a clear objective. The first is that he has to fight through several mountain stages, flat, others with fans. Want to be a cyclist again? He can do it, he is a young boy, who has a lot ahead of him, but who has to look good, first for his daily life, said the former runner.

For him, the situations are different. He says that he could not be the same as before for several reasons, and that the main one was that the accident was in a race, fighting for the maximum goal of winning the Tour, the best competition in the world, and he could not overcome that.

Egan has a lot going for him, he was close to having injuries that are not even worth talking about, he got away, he's alive and that for him should be the most important thing.

I was risking my race, I lost the chance to fight for the Tour. It was months of hard work to get back and I never recovered well. Egan has a lot going for him, he was close to having injuries that are not even worth talking about, he got away, he is alive and that for him should be the most important thing, said Beloki.

For the podium of the Vuelta a Espaa in 2022 (he was third) there is another fundamental part at the moment: the people around Bernal.

Your environment has to understand it. In this case you have to support it with sincerity, not invent other things. That is important, that his people know how to direct him, it is that one must feel supported by all those who are close, it is the only way that one gets up from those accidents, he concluded.

Daz in a coma

Horrillo had some tough days. He was in a coma for 12 days, following the crash on the eighth stage of the 2009 Giro d'Italia, when he went off the road and into an 80-meter abyss.

They took him out on a stretcher, which was tied to a rope that pulled the helicopter, who took him urgently to a hospital in Bergamo.

The doctors intubated him, because the injuries warranted it: head trauma, multiple fractures of the ribs and vertebrae, of the knee and femur, and a pneumothorax that required drainage after his splintered bones punctured his lungs.

Today, He says that he wants to erase those hard moments, but he can't. He says that he has followed step by step what has happened with Egan Bernal, whom he knows by the way, because he has seen him train in the Basque Country in Spain.

It may interest you: (The Colombian cyclist Winner Anacona, positive for covid-19)

Horrillo knows what the Colombian cyclist is going through, but based on his experience and what he knows about Bernal, he is optimistic that he will succeed.

Egan's path is hard, difficult, complicated, with a lot of sacrifice, but it is nothing different from what he found in his job, that is cycling, he said.

And he added: You have to change the chip and understand that all the sacrifices he has made are training for the great test that lies ahead. His most difficult moment is now and I am convinced that he will give one hundred percent.

Horrillo did not compete again. He recovered, they almost amputated his leg and the doctors informed him that he was going to be in a wheelchair.

It is that these experiences help one to mature. They tell me that he could not walk again and two months later he was getting me out of the wheelchair. Each organism and injuries, even if they are the same, are different. Egan has several of the ones I had, but if I was able to stand up, he can too, but I want to make it clear that the road is very long, he said.

Horrillo is in favor of Bernal taking things calmly, not despairing. Because, he says, right now he wants to run out and get on his bike and win the Tour again.

You have to lower your threshold of anxiety, because what you want is to be yourself again and you have to control that.

I think it will look good, because the body of a high-performance athlete like his is the instrument of work, it reaches unforeseen limits, because a normal person cannot do it. They were going to amputate my leg, I was in a coma for 12 days, my body was not capable of withstanding an amputation. I had a double pneumothorax, the response of the lungs was dilated, that was serious. In that case it was complicated, but I came out, Egan can do it, said Horrillo.

Currently, he is 47 years old, has ridden two Tour de France, three Giros d'Italia and eight Vueltas a Espaa, and believes that haste is Bernal's worst enemy today.

There is no need to speed up any process, efforts in this type of process are not good advisers. You have to go step by step, you have to balance each step you take. I am optimistic. You cannot be pressured, neither by the media nor personally. You have to calm down and be aware of what you have and how to get out of it. You have to lower your anxiety threshold, because what you want is to be yourself again and you have to control that, the rush is not very good, said Horrillo, who works for one of the sponsors of the race at the Tour.

he agrees with Beloki on the subject of the environment, he warns that it is extremely important that those close to him help him all the time.

You have to have a proper perspective, because the recovery line must be ascending, not descending. You have to live day by day, because sometimes you work intensely and everything can fall apart. He is in the best team in the world, he cannot be better aired, that will help him, as will his family, he specified.

Both pray for the recovery of the Colombian and from Spain they sent him positive messages, those that they received when they were in similar circumstances, in a bed and in the midst of pain and sadness for what happened.

Lisandro RengifoJournalist for EL TIEMPO@lisandroabel

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The former cyclists tell how they overcame the hard trance, after their heavy accidents. - The Times Hub

In 2021, Anjunadeep favourite Ben Bhmer embarked on an emotional and stunning journey in the form of his latest album Begin Again. Written from a dark and hard time in his life, it allowed him to reflect and ultimately take fans on an incredible journey through the most emotional side of uplifting and relaxing trance soundscapes. Now, Ben Bhmer takes four of the top favourites out of the 11-track body of work and reimagines them in a beautiful way alongside composer and producer,Rob Moose, onThe Apparitions EP.

Selecting the tracks Home with JONAH, Slow Wave with Gordi, Beyond Beliefs, and Erase with lau.ra to take on this new journey, this is where classical and trance mix perfectly. With trance already not being too far from some of the same elements that is found within classical music, this is the two genres combined at their best.

I first discovered Rob through his work with Phoebe Bridgers on her Copycat Killer EP and instantly knew I wanted to work with him one day. That day came sooner than I thought. When we started the project neither of us were sure on how it would all come together or what form it would take, but I couldnt be happier with the end result! It is so special to hear such a unique take on my music and I hope you enjoy listening to it. says Ben Bhmer via Instagram

Wanting you to stop and take in every detail sounding through your speakers,The Apparitions EP is more than successful in taking fans on a spiritual journey where they can take a moment out of their busy schedules to stop, breathe, and reflect. With all tracks certainly being tear-jerkers, there wont be a dry eye in the house once this is put on. Not losing the magic of the originals but rather adding to them and building upon them, these are another set of tracks that are sure to become beloved within his fanbase.

Talking about the overall structure of the EP, Rob Moose stated:

I loved getting to work with Ben and the featured singers on this project. In the beginning, we werent sure what shape our collaboration would take, and almost as a lark, I tried muting all the album stems and building the entire structure with just strings. To my delight, Ben liked this approach, and I went deep with all the stems, studying FX artifacts and minute timings to try to translate electronic sounds onto a body of strings without losing the magical idiosyncrasies of the original work. I hope that the EP feels familiar to fans of the album, but pulls their ears and their hearts in unexpected directions.

The Apparitions EP is out now via Anjunadeep.

Image Credit:tobias_schult_photography

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Ben Bhmer & Rob Moose release stunning EP 'The Apparitions' - We Rave You

Name: Hypnotic cinema.

Age: New for 2022.

Appearance: Just like a film.

But, in this case a piece of film-making so mesmerising and incantatory that it leaves viewers in a kind of trance? No, just a regular film. They hypnotise you before it starts.

Where? In Sweden.

At every film? For now, the policy is only in place before some films at this years Gteborg film festival.

What happens? Audiences are treated to a preliminary session with a hypnotist, the aptly named Fredrik Praesto, who stands in front of a projection of a large spinning spiral.

Are you sure this isnt a film? I think Ive seen it. Im sure. After about 20 minutes of relaxation exercises, everyone closes their eyes for a countdown. Once theyre under, they open their eyes, and the film starts. Afterwards theres another quick countdown to lift the spell.

Why do they do this? To experiment with the film experience, to challenge our ideas about how to watch a film, said Jonas Holmberg, the director of the festival.

Oh. I thought maybe it was to stop people using their phones. Audience members did report higher levels of concentration, so maybe they were less prone to that sort of distraction.

I mean, anything to stop the constant talking and all the laughing in the wrong places. Thats not a bad idea perhaps hypnosis could be deployed more widely as a way of controlling unruly audiences.

I guess people have forgotten how to behave in public since Covid forced a two-year break from going out. Well, there have been a few recent incidents. A studio audience member was criticised for shrieking maniacally during a recent broadcast of Dancing on Ice.

Annoying, but its not exactly Turandot, is it? And, just before Christmas, the singer Beverley Knight was complaining about rowdy drunks repeatedly spoiling performances of her West End show The Drifters Girl. My advice is to stay your ass at home, she said.

But, can hypnosis really calm drunkards intent on wrecking an evening of musical theatre? Its got to be worth a try, dont you think?

Im worried they might include a hypnotic suggestion to stop me bringing my own Maltesers from home. As long as you dont eat them too loudly, no one will know.

Do say: I really enjoyed The Matrix Resurrections. Somebody snap me out of it, for pitys sake.

Dont say: Your eyelids are getting heavy. Your limbs are like lead weights. So stay your ass home.

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Cinema hypnosis: is this the answer to noisy post-lockdown audiences? - The Guardian

The Power of the Dog from Jane Campion is due to become a serious Oscar contender in 2022, with the spectacular revisionist western treating cinemas oldest genre with a contemporary attitude. Starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the lead role, Campion has recently revealed that she let the actor improvise in the trance of method acting until the films climax, meaning she never truly knew how he was going to act on screen until the project was complete.

Starring as the dominant, though charismatic, rancher Phil Burbank, Campions story follows the life of a family of cattle farmers that also includes George (Jesse Plemons), his new wife Rose Gordon (Kirsten Dunst) and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Leading the line with an intimidating watchful eye, in one of the films final scenes Cumberbatchs character goes into a rage of fury after Rose sells his cowhides.

In conversation with IndieWire, Campion reveals this scene was almost entirely improvised, noting: I didnt have a clue what he was going to do. In rehearsal, we never went there. We never went to that place to look at what he might do there. Shocked and pleasantly surprised by his improvised performance, Campion added: When I first saw him let it rip, I was absolutely stunned, thrilled, because I felt like this is what we need, this is what the film needs, to see the threat of Phil explode.

Though Cumberbatchs method acting style may put him among the top of the pile for Oscar glory, it certainly annoyed his co-stars, with Jesse Plemons reporting that the actor pissed me off on the set of the film after calling him big boy in character.

Out now on Netflix, The Power of the Dog is due to win big at the Academy Awards, with Cumberbatch, Campion, Plemons and Dunst all in the line for golden glory.

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The general counsel of the Anti-Saloon League of America came to Spokane to raise an alarm.

He said that the wets of America had a fighting chance to bring beer back to America unless the dry advocates awaken to the danger.

He warned that New York and Chicago politicians were pledged to support the wets because it is good politics. They were trying to raise Prohibitions legal threshold from a half-percent of alcohol to four or five percent which would make most beer legal.

Cant you see what that means? asked the counsel. It means that if the wets win their fight in Congress, we will have all of the evils common to the open saloon and all the drunkenness which we thought we had ridded ourselves of.

From the spiritualist beat: Spokane in 1922 was well-supplied with spiritualists, if the classified ads were any indication. The listings showed seven spiritualists, including Madam Lane, noted psychic and trance medium. Another, Madame Davis, gave private readings daily or by mail.

For those who would rather know what the stars might say, Professor F.F. Neitzel offered horoscope reading daily from his office on Third Avenue.

(From the Associated Press)

1913: The 16th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, providing for a federal income tax, was ratified.

1959: Rock-and-roll stars Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and J.P. The Big Bopper Richardson died in a small plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.

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100 years ago in Spokane: A visiting Prohibitionist warned that 'the evils common to the open saloon' could be returning - The Spokesman-Review

BEST ELECTRONIC The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp: January 2022 By Joe Muggs February 02, 2022 Photo of :3lon by Lemary

A new year, a new start? Well, maybe. Weve certainly got some very fresh releases here, including Baltimore cyborg soul, experimental club sounds from the South, meditative takes on drill, and psychedelic junglism from Czechianot to mention one of PC Musics most head-melting epics yet. So if youre keen to rocket into the future, weve got you covered. But history is represented here, too: there are tributes to the history of grime and drum & bass, some great, rediscovered 90s techno, and quite a lot of straight-up old-school rave energy. And even better, there are tunes that sound both ancient and futurist at the same time. So get ready to travel forwards, back, sideways and diagonally in time all in one go.

Shes been a queen of the Berlin scene for some 30 years now, but Ellen Allien is still in love with the instant joy of rugged techno. Lately, shes been looking back to her early days, a time when techno and trance were not separate entities. That continues here: simple one-note acid gurgles and breathless tempos whoosh you along at high velocitya one-way journey to ecstatic release.

There are plenty of artists who mine retro synth TV soundtracks and library music for nostalgic purposes, but none do it like British multi-instrumentalist and producer Cephas Teom. He draws on the past to imagine the future, creating the kind of ultra-high-definition music that 70s and 80s synth artists only dreamed of. And also, thanks to his rich background in jazz and folk, each composition is packed with unorthodox twists, and lands an emotional punch. All of which adds up to a powerful experiencea wistful dream of beautiful alternate timelines.

D. Richardson, aka twofold, is only in their early 20s but theyve already made three of our records of the year, and they only continue to evolve. Bringing queer Black art [that] defies categorization, twofolds specialty involves finding new ways of distorting classic club patterns in ways that recall Aphex Twin and Jeff Mills at their creative peaks. Twenty (BLACK) is pure propulsion: voices, chords and clatter all forming one dense mass. Twenty-two (SCRAP HEAP) is way more jagged and abstract, with crashes and splats, warbles and zaps flying this way and that.

Bristol-based Richard Tudor Acid Wigglesworth began his career firmly rooted in the 90s Artificial Intelligence electronica sound popularized by Plaid, early Autechre, and others. But his evolution has been fascinating. Each of his recent albums and live streams has been a rigorous investigation of a new production technique and style, and hes grown massively as an artist in the process. This album is informed by the glittering hi-hat patterns and huge sub-bass of UK drill, and its one of the few successful attempts by outsiders to take that sounds rhythms and dark emotions somewhere new. Its core is a low-res digital fuzz that creates completely unique textures and gives the record a very direct and physical impact.

This ones from December, but it would be a crime not to flag it up. Better known these days as Dungeon Acid, Trinidadian-Swedish musician Jean-Louis Huhta is decades deep in underground culture. Rave, hardcore punk, noise, hip-hop: you name it, hes been immersed in it. With absolutely stunning artwork from Swedish graffiti legend NUG, this is a collection of rare and unreleased techno tunes from the 90s, but you wouldnt necessarily know it. His grasp of space, groove, and texture are so incredibly advanced that these tracks could be the work of a young producer on any new, hip label in 2022. This is techno as good as youll hear thisor anyyear.

The Das Booty label has long specialized in the purest of electro, techno, and rave, and even 13 releases in, their momentum still isnt flagging. Here, over six tracks, you get cheeky acid, sleazy voiceovers, gabber-tempo pounding, shameless trance riffs, andcruciallyabsolute bucketloads of funk.

Portlands London Van Rooy, aka Kult Krimes, is an electronic singer-songwriter with a healthy sense of the preposterous. Vitally, where a lot of Bowie-ish, new wave-ish types tend to be stuck in the 80s, his sounds are as peculiar and expressive as his voice. And better still, voice, lyrics, and synthetic noise wrap and writhe around one another to fantastically dramatic effect. Its potentially silly, but LVR has the audacity and star quality to carry it off. He challenges you to step into his warped world, and rewards you richly when you do.

UK label Nice Up! has traditionally been a home for ebullient reggae and dancehall from around the world. On this new comp, theyve gone significantly more electronic than normal. Theres still a strong dancehall undercurrent, but most of the tracks here broadly explore the interzone between dubstep and drum & bass, and do it with a crisp, modernist panache. This is still definitely dance music, but its a pleasing sign of a label refusing to rest on its laurels.

The YUKU store and label in Prague is a beacon of joyous high tech psychedelic mischief, creating and defining new genres on the flybranching off from the ultra-high-tech neurofunk strands of drum & bass, but without the self indulgence that style can fall into. These five tracks by Anna Derlemenko are case in point: you can hear bits of footwork, gabber, old-school jungle, and even electroclash (in the deadpan spoken verses of Julia Marks on The Party Is Inside), but all are warped, twisted, folded in on themselves with a trippy sense of mischief and bravura digital processing.

Fresh from an appearance on Scratcha DVAs brilliant, amapiano-flavored Flex, Baltimore maverick :3Lon stretches their creative wings on this single. An elegant soul song unfolds through a sea of cascading rave breakbeats, chiptune pings, and sampled yelps. Its both instantly appealing in its originality and profoundly thought-provoking. Theres clearly a major talent at work here.

It is, incredibly, 20 years since the original release of Musical Mobs Pulse Xone of the first, if not the first, grime instrumentals released on vinyl. Its brutally simple bassline has had many, many refixes and re-rubs over the years, and has been played forwards, backwards, and sideways by DJs of all genres. But this sped-up anniversary reworkingadding Kurtis Blows Do the Do break, most famously used in Adam Fs Circlessomehow manages to blow away all the dust of history and make it sound as vital for the dancefloor as it ever has.

Londoner Maribor has never rushed things. Starting in the post-dubstep climate of 2012, his label Badimup has very gradually amassed a series of stunning releases that occupy the interzone between techno and UK bass. That continues with their first release in almost four years. The title track here is ultra-digital broken beat: rhythmically off-kilter ritual music for artificial rainforests. Watching the Thinker is more jacking, perhaps a little footwork influenced, and keeps building and building to intense levels of hypnosis.

London radio presenter and all-around grime scene champion Queen Bekz is barely two years into her production career as Becky On The Beat, but shes already built a serious catalog and super distinctive sound. This tune, as ever, is sophisticated and rugged at the same time, a complex rolling beat dancing around classic grimes blurting sounds. There are brass stabs, gong-like chimes, breathy synthsThe amount of detail that emerges as you listen closely is downright trippy. But its a subtly melodic 808 cowbell that holds the whole thing together.

PC Music have always forced the harsh and the pretty together in various ways, but this ups the ante significantly. A joint effort between PC Music founder AG Cook and , aka Nicolas Petitfrre, it veers from ambience filled with android angels to terrifying laser warfare and back. Its an opaque and tangled piece, but it crams so much narrative and dynamic into a short space, it compels you to replay it while asking, What the hell just happened?

The heart of Amsterdam DJ-producer Marjolein mayo Hoppens sound is 80s EBM and other sleazy, industrial-adjacent Euro club music. But somehow, she escapes retroism effortlessly. Thats in part to do with her self-built modular synth setup which, on all three tracks here, contributes a very particular fizziness around the edges of all the sounds. But more than that, the tunes stand out because they only look to the past for moods, not rules.

Two tracks from Russians Dmitry Molodtsov and Vitaly Podosenov veer from the familiar to the WTF. Magen is cavernous techno with a hint of Burial, starting with a broken rhythm and slowly gaining momentum. Its not radical, but its very enjoyable in its spooky and gothic way. Innunaki, though, doesnt bear much relationship to anything. It runs at a drum & bass tempo, but with a taut, rigid pattern, and raw, primitive drum sounds feeling like a dark industrial ritual. Even though its just percussion and drones for over seven minutes, its utterly compelling the whole way through.

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The Best Electronic Music on Bandcamp: January 2022 - bandcamp.com