Hey Everyone,

Just in time for the blooming spring, here’s your best and newest music that’s getting played on WVKR this week.

MD PICK OF The WEEK: SERENA MANEESH “S-M2: Abyss in B Minor” [4AD] - Ethereal mania of distorted riffs and obtrusive rhythm, composed by Norweigans as much into pop rock as they are into noise manipulation.

DARIUS’ PICK OF THE WEEK: ZOO “Trilogi Peradaban” [Plover] - Indonesia’s Zoo plays spastic herk & jerk deconstructionist proto punk. If you like Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Fantomas, or Boredoms then let this grace your playlists.

ELODIE’S PICK OF THE WEEK: ELODIE LAUTEN  ”Piano Works” [Unseen Worlds] - If you like avant garde/ modern composition then this will hit the spot for you. For fans of Philip Glass, Stephen Drury. Arthur Russell and Peter Zummo make appearances on this collection!

Other great adds to our playlists:

DUM DUM GIRLS ”I Will Be” [Sub Pop] – Britsy lo-fi garagey pop, almost coining the genre itself.  Everyone’s favorite girl band even attempts to sing in german!

TWO THOUSAND AND TEN INJURIES “Love is All” [Polyvinyl] - Jangly new wavey sounds troddle along at an english pace from these Swedish pop kids.

ROTARY DOWNS “Cracked Maps & Blue Reports” [Rookery] – NOLA barfed and then recovered this art pop rock album, which is catchy for sure.  Their tunes bounce and roll, backed by a mellow wizardry with layers and layers of poly-woven fun.

WVKR will be broadcasting live coverage of Vassar men’s baseball, the first game of a double header against St. Lawrence on Saturday, April 3.  Join us this Saturday for play-by-play commentary by Dean of Students, D.B. Brown and Tyler Maland ‘11.  D.B. Brown has served as the Public Address Announcer for many Vassar games over the past few years, but this will be WVKR’s first live remote broadcast of a game. It will start at 12 noon; tune in to 91.3 FM or listen to our live stream right here on wvkr.org!

If you listened to our broadcast, please comment here and tell us your thoughts!

WVKR is giving away three pairs of free tickets to the Flaming Lips Performance at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center on Saturday, April 17.

WIN A PAIR by listening to these shows in the next few days:

The Singularity : Sunday night : 12-1 am

Hi’s, Fi’s, and Gazes : Monday night : 9-11 pm

Punk Haus : Tuesday night : 10pm-12

Thanks for listening!

I spent the first couple days of my Vassar spring break in Madrid and was lucky enough to see a flamenco performance at the Teatro Español.  The performance was based on an elegiac poem by Federico García Lorca and featured the music of Enric Granados, a classical Spanish composer.  Granados was born in the Catalan region of Spain, home to the city of Barcelona, in 1867 and is most famous for composing a suite of piano pieces inspired by Goya paintings.  But the piece that floored me at the performance of “El Llanto” was the piece “12 Danzas Españolas, No. 5 Andaluza,” inspired by the region of Andalusia in southern Spain where flamenco was originated (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuLHh8JM0a8&feature=related is the best version I found on YouTube─listen without watching).  In the performance, they used the song as a theme for the encounter between the matador and the bull and it worked perfectly as a piece of both passion and melancholy.  I didn’t quite understand what the show was about since I don’t speak any Spanish, but the poem that it was based on is an elegy for the famed Spanish bullfighter Ignacio Sánchez Mejías, so you can see how both passion and melancholy would have played a role.

In this clip of the performance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktu6daNYRr0&feature=channel), the singer (cantora) narrates what is going on before and after the bullfight, but the star of the scene is the dancing.  The bull (el toro) begins his dance to “12 Danzas Españolas” and then the matador (el torero) comes at the end of the slow part of the piece to commences his fight with the bull.  The song perfectly highlights the conflict between the bull and the matador and the way that the dancers interact with the music─slowing down in some places, moving their feet in a frenzy in another─is beautiful and evocative. 

If you’re interested in more Andalusian-inspired music check out Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona’s beautiful “Andalucia” from the Andalucia Suite (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9vo4ojU0Tc&feature=related─terrible sound quality, but he plays it well).