5,929 research outputs found
Project The Future - The Projections
No full text'Project The Future' is a concept album designed, composed and written by Adam de Paor-Evans under the name The Projections. It is a reflective album containing eleven songs which critically position eleven narratives within contemporary themes of: racism and race denial, financial and personal struggle, intellectual trajectories within hip hop, personal loss, and paranoia.
The album is a reification of The Projections' collaborative work, and de Paor-Evans worked with five producers from the UK and Germany to craft this album which was released on vinyl through B-Line Recordings, UK in 2016. Limited runs with artwork by de Paor-Evans were made to promote the release.
https://www.discogs.com/The-Projections-Project-The-Future/release/888282
HAZARDOUS - DEF DEFIANCE
No full textDef Defiance. (2019). Hazardous. Britcore Rawmance, 014, Double Vinyl Album second reissue. LP gatefold artwork, front and rear, and inside photomontage.
Hazardous was written and recorded at the dawn of the 1990s, released as the artist Def Defiance. This album was self-released on cassette only, and was the first of their kind to be released in the South-West of England. Hazardous remains the only 1980s album-length DIY hip hop artefact in Britain that was officially released on vinyl in Europe.
The ideas connected to remoteness and identity vis-à-vis recording contracts are explicitly apparent in the work, which also inform part of the discussion in de Paor-Evans' book Provincial Headz. The methodology for writing the lyrics of these outputs was a compound of observational analysis and reflexive/lived autoethnography. In every song, de Paor-Evans positioned himself in a multitude of scenarios based on the song's concept. Through lyric writing, these scenarios translated into audible narratives which sought to critically describe a context or situation under interrogation
The Futurism of Hip Hop: Space, Electro and Science Fiction in Rap
No full textIn the early 1980s, an important facet of hip hop culture developed a style of music known as electro-rap, much of which carries narratives linked to science fiction, fantasy and references to arcade games and comic books. The aim of this chapter is to build a critical inquiry into the cultural and socio-political presence of these ideas as drivers for the productions of electro-rap, and subsequently through artists from Newcleus to Strange U seeks to interrogate the value of science fiction from the 1980s to the 2000s, evaluating the validity of science fiction’s place in the future of hip hop. Theoretically underpinned by the emerging theories associated with Afrofuturism and Paul Virilio’s dromosphere and picnolepsy concepts, the chapter reconsiders time and spatial context as a palimpsest whereby the saturation of digitalization become both accelerator and obstacle and proposes a thirdspace-dromology. In conclusion, the article repositions contemporary hip hop and unearths the realities of science fiction and closes by offering specific directions for the future within and the future of hip hop culture and its potential impact on future society
Scratching The Surface: Hip Hop, Remoteness, and Everyday Life
No full textScratching The Surface: Hip Hop, Remoteness, and Everyday Life presents the evolution of hip hop through 28 particular and detailed memories drawn from the encounters of a young, rural teenager growing up in Devon, in the south-west corner of the UK. The book is divided into four parts, and situated between 1983 and 1986, explores the emotional growth, contextual questioning, and at times, naïve journey of the protagonist as he reflects on such miniscule details as the price tags on record sleeves, the LED display on cassette players, and the zips on tracksuit tops. The author of Provincial Headz: British Hip Hop and Critical Regionalism returns with a quirky, contextual non-fiction novel with extensive endnotes, which explores some of the less canonical hip hop artefacts of the 1980s and expresses the innocence and obsessions he experiences as an only child growing up in the sticks
Adam Bede: Author, Narrator and Narrative
No full textReaders of novels seem to have a natural, almost instinctive, tendency to perceive the voices of the author and the omniscient narrator as being one and the same. This tendency is even stronger when the narrator is blatantly intrusive, frequently inserting his own opinions into the objective narrative material of the novel. And although there are certainly some novelists who truly intend their narrative voices to be perceived as their own, this is not the case with George Eliot in Adam Bede.
In analyzing the narrative voice in this particular novel, I was struck by the almost total agreement, on the part of the critics, that there is a distinction in Eliot\u27s work between the author and the narrator. In fact, Barbara Hardy goes one step further and makes a case for a third category, discriminating between characters who tell their stories, the narrator who does everything but tell his or her story, and the reticent author whose name never appeared on the cover or title-page.! For the purposes of this study, I will be using categories which are basically parallel to Hardy\u27s, though my third category differs somewhat: (1) the author - Mary Ann Evans, (2) the narrator - George Eliot, and (3) the narrative itself.
Any serious student of English literature knows that \u27George Eliot\u27 is the pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans, but the fact was hardly common knowledge to the readers of Adam Bede in 1859. The newly-published novel was an immediate success, selling thirteen thousand copies in the first year, and two thousand copies in the first month alone. A comment by Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist and biographer of Charlotte Bronte, humorously reflects both the mystery of the author and the popularity of the novel: \u27I have had the greatest compliment paid me I ever had in my life. I have been suspected of having written Adam Bede\u27.2 While I do not wish to elaborate on the historical facts surrounding the mystery of the author hiding behind this pen name, it is important to try to understand why Mary Ann Evans chose to let George Eliot narrate Adam Bede, rather than speaking through her own authorial voice.
The use of pseudonyms has been fairly common practice throughout the history of English literature, particularly among female writers who felt the need to disguise themselves behind a man\u27s name. Just a decade earlier, the Bronte sisters had published novels and a book of poetry in the names of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. Pseudonyms create a situation in which the relationship between the author and the work is reserved, and the fiction creates a reality, rather than reality creating fiction. Or as Michael Ginsburg explains it, \u27The author who chooses to use a pseudonym wants to upset the normal relationship according to which he is the father of his works; he wants to be himself an offspring of his own imagination
Adam Bede: Author, Narrator and Narrative
No full textReaders of novels seem to have a natural, almost instinctive, tendency to perceive the voices of the author and the omniscient narrator as being one and the same. This tendency is even stronger when the narrator is blatantly intrusive, frequently inserting his own opinions into the objective narrative material of the novel. And although there are certainly some novelists who truly intend their narrative voices to be perceived as their own, this is not the case with George Eliot in Adam Bede.
In analyzing the narrative voice in this particular novel, I was struck by the almost total agreement, on the part of the critics, that there is a distinction in Eliot\u27s work between the author and the narrator. In fact, Barbara Hardy goes one step further and makes a case for a third category, discriminating between characters who tell their stories, the narrator who does everything but tell his or her story, and the reticent author whose name never appeared on the cover or title-page.! For the purposes of this study, I will be using categories which are basically parallel to Hardy\u27s, though my third category differs somewhat: (1) the author - Mary Ann Evans, (2) the narrator - George Eliot, and (3) the narrative itself.
Any serious student of English literature knows that \u27George Eliot\u27 is the pseudonym for Mary Ann Evans, but the fact was hardly common knowledge to the readers of Adam Bede in 1859. The newly-published novel was an immediate success, selling thirteen thousand copies in the first year, and two thousand copies in the first month alone. A comment by Elizabeth Gaskell, the Victorian novelist and biographer of Charlotte Bronte, humorously reflects both the mystery of the author and the popularity of the novel: \u27I have had the greatest compliment paid me I ever had in my life. I have been suspected of having written Adam Bede\u27.2 While I do not wish to elaborate on the historical facts surrounding the mystery of the author hiding behind this pen name, it is important to try to understand why Mary Ann Evans chose to let George Eliot narrate Adam Bede, rather than speaking through her own authorial voice.
The use of pseudonyms has been fairly common practice throughout the history of English literature, particularly among female writers who felt the need to disguise themselves behind a man\u27s name. Just a decade earlier, the Bronte sisters had published novels and a book of poetry in the names of Acton, Currer and Ellis Bell. Pseudonyms create a situation in which the relationship between the author and the work is reserved, and the fiction creates a reality, rather than reality creating fiction. Or as Michael Ginsburg explains it, \u27The author who chooses to use a pseudonym wants to upset the normal relationship according to which he is the father of his works; he wants to be himself an offspring of his own imagination
No Hatchet
No full textCONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece is a song commissioned in 2019 and featured on Specifik’s album The Ill Circus, released on Berlin-based Britcore Rawmance, 2019.
The research questions the song interrogates are spatio-geographic. Questioning the validity of the positions of hip-hop artists from rural areas vis-à-vis the broader national-global political context, the song decentralizes the core of British hip-hop and makes visible the regional-rural and provincial presence of rap, additionally attesting to an alternate glocal viewpoint from this perspective.
The song achieves this firstly through its sonics and structure. The song is split into two distinct parts. Part one opens with a typical Blaxploitation-esque sample driven 8-bar drum-pattern, after which a standard 4-stanza/16-bar verse is delivered, repeated in part two. The two breakdowns offer narratives of cultural distance and closeness, entering into a full 4-bar drop of ‘Take Me To The Mardi Gras’ – its full break with bells – ensuing with the ‘Mardi Gras’ break repeated, but fully filtered suggesting detachment from hip-hop’s roots. The author murmurs menacingly “Another classic” over each pattern. These vocals are repeated in the breakdown of part two. The juxtaposition of “classic” with the remoteness of delivery represents a new decentralized hip-hop habitus, as explored in the author’s article ‘Urban Myths and Rural Legends’: “…this new hip-hop habitus evolves through responding to local regional-rural traditions and the continuing development of glocal hip-hop culture. Furthermore, there is an invisible class system at play between regional-rural dwellers and inhabitants of cities, constructed through what Farrugia describes as ‘…structural inequalities that differentiate rural and urban places’ (2016: 2-16)” (2020). Secondly, these themes are reinforced by lyrics such as: “From borderlands, Lebanon, Syria to southern Cyprus / A liminal sketch I draw I might just”, “I mimic a brick”, and “Spin on the Centre Point I’m counter-point / My counter-raps, I flex it”.
[300 words
Not A Love Song
No full textCONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece is a song commissioned in 2016 for B-Line Recordings’ collection, ‘The B-Line EP Vol. 4’, released in 2017.
The research question the song explores is twofold, and connected to the position of hip-hop as a driver for thirdspace-dromology (taking Soja’s thirdspace [1996] and Virilio’s dromology [1977] as points of departure) – a hybrid concept developed by the author and proposed in his article ‘The Futurism of Hip-Hop’ (2018: 132, 134).
Firstly, and sonically, it challenges the space-time conventions of popular and hip-hop songs, immediately through the title (nodding to PiL’s similarly named song), but mainly through its structure and production. Structurally, it presents the lyrics as a single 48 bar verse containing 4-bar and 8-bar stanzas, grouped as 2 verses. These groups of lyrics are sonically melded throughout via exponential use of echo and reverb, resulting in a 3-minute listener experience concluding with 31 seconds of echoed reverb of the single-lyric: “organize” fused with white noise and glimmering Afrofuturist aesthetics. By altering the song’s structure and sonics makes visible spatial atmospherics for the listener, which slow down and speed up the perceived pace of sonic travel and experience throughout the song. Its 31-second outro suspends this notion of movement and invites listeners to question their own spatio-sonic engagement with the song.
Secondly, and vocally, the lyrics identify several points of connection between thirdspace-dromology, represented through the narrative of the arcade game, and which also aided the development of the thirdspace-dromology concept. Through the lines: “Are you in range? What is your location? / Nearest station application sent to stick while I'm slick over analogue / I toggle, my monologue will spy your eyes boggler / Losing lives on the street like you're playing Frogger”, the song captures a reflective analogue in tension with futurist and spatial context.
[298 words
Mathematic Facts
No full textCONTEXTUAL STATEMENT
This piece is a song featured on Specifik’s album Eighty3, commissioned in 2015 and since its release in the summer of 2016 has received airplay on The Pioneers Radio Show, Kane FM and widely across internet radio, and performed live in a range of different music contexts including Berlin’s Cassiopeia and hardcore punk venue, K19.
The research question that ‘Mathematic Facts’ investigates is twofold: First, it challenges the formulaic 92bpm / 4-bar stanza verses trope found in contemporary global hip-hop sound. Percussion samples are split, and by utilizing the latter half of each sample, a disorientation of apparent delayed bass and snare drums create an atmospheric swing that beguiles the listener and invites a questioning of tempo. The sonics are metallic, murky and distinct, which make way for a series of interlinked themes which support the vocals.
Second, its lyrics expose hip-hop’s contextual myths of urbanism, attesting to the presence of the regional-rural – a subject rarely addressed. Through lyrics such as: "My grind is on the resist the crumble / Through toil I'm digging dirt to reach the soil, salt of the earth / I've already smurfed so I stare through screens at others who do / I mix voodoo with wicca now my rhymes are thicker", the author presents the socio-cultural status of the regional-rural artist. By connecting observations of religion, medieval and astral life with textures of the earth, contemporary socio-cultural issues are addressed. The lyrics continue to explore the chasm between medieval and contemporary life as metaphor for the void between urban and rural, and the invisibility of rural artists. Exposing the fallacy of hip-hop’s urbanism, ‘Mathematic Facts’ confirms regional-rural hip-hop’s coexistence with contemporaneous global hip-hop production, reinforcing the author’s argument in ‘Urban Myths and Rural Legends: An Alternate Take on the Regionalism of Hip-Hop’ (2020).
[299 words
Studies into the detection of buried objects (particularly optical fibres) in saturated sediment. Part 3: experimental investigation of acoustic penetration of saturated sediment
No full textThis report is the third in a series of five, designed to investigate the detection oftargets buried in saturated sediment, primarily through acoustical or acoustics-relatedmethods. Although steel targets are included for comparison, the major interest is intargets (polyethylene cylinders and optical fibres) which have a poor acousticimpedance mismatch with the host sediment. This particular report provides a briefhistorical overview of sediment propagation models has been presented. Two theorieshave been covered: the Biot-Stoll theory; and wave scattering from random roughsurfaces. The debate surrounding the observations of, so-called, anomalous acousticpenetration has also been discussed.This series of reports is written in support of the article “The detection by sonar ofdifficult targets (including centimetre-scale plastic objects and optical fibres) buriedin saturated sediment” by T G Leighton and R C P Evans, written for a Special Issueof Applied Acoustics which contains articles on the topic of the detection of objectsburied in marine sediment. Further support material can be found athttp://www.isvr.soton.ac.uk/FDAG/uaua/target_in_sand.HTM
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