+/- (band)

+/-, or Plus/Minus, is an American indietronic band formed in 2001. The band makes use of both electronic and traditional instruments, and has sought to use electronics to recreate traditional indie rock song forms and instrumental structures. The group has released two albums on each of the American indie labels Teenbeat Records and Absolutely Kosher, and their track "All I do" was prominently featured in the soundtrack for the major film Wicker Park. The group has developed a devoted following in Japan and Taiwan, and has toured there frequently. Although many artists append bonus tracks onto the end of Japanese album releases to discourage purchasers from buying cheaper US import versions, the overseas versions of +/- albums are usually quite different from the US versions - tracklists can be rearranged, artwork with noticeable changes is used, and tracks from the US version can be replaced as well as augmented by bonus tracks.

History

Bandō

Bandō may refer to:

People

Other

See also

Bando (disambiguation)

!!!

!!! is a dance-punk band that formed in Sacramento, California, in 1996 by lead singer Nic Offer. Its name is most commonly pronounced "Chk Chk Chk" ([/tʃk.tʃk.tʃk/]). Members of !!! came from other local bands such as The Yah Mos, Black Liquorice and Popesmashers. They are currently based in New York City, Sacramento, and Portland, Oregon. The band's sixth full-length album, As If, was released in October 2015.

Background and history

!!! is an American band formed in the summer of 1995 by the merger of part of the group Black Liquorice and Popesmashers. After a successful joint tour, these two teams decided to mix the disco-funk with more aggressive sounds and integrate the hardcore singer Nic Offer from the The Yah Mos. The band's name was inspired by the subtitles of the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, in which the clicking sounds of the Bushmens' Khoisan language were represented as "!". However, as the bandmembers themselves say, !!! is pronounced by repeating thrice any monosyllabic sound. "Chk Chk Chk" is the most common pronunciation, which the URL of their official website and the title of their Myspace page suggest is the preferred pronunciation.

Lavender (album)

Lavender is an album by Machiko Yamane and Paul Christopher Musgrave. It contains 12 original compositions for piano and string orchestra, and was recorded with members of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and the CBC Radio Orchestra.

Reviews

According to CD Review, Lavender is "poetically performed", and "eclectic, with a classical flavor". "The themes and arrangements are elegant, light, and lovely" according to the NAPRA Trade Journal, who also noted a "Satie" influence. Margaret McCoy of Virginia Pathways wrote that Lavender is "as fresh as the breeze on a hyacinth-covered open field, yet as elegant as a candlelight dinner for two high above Park Avenue." She praised its depth and sophistication.

According to Dan Gassoway, "Paul Christopher's original piano pieces stroll lazily along with a quiet and poignant charm that slowly seduces the listener". In the Lifedance Music Guide he wrote that Lavender's "deceptively simple melodies spin into delicately interwoven patterns that often touch the heart's subtle emotional chords."

Lavender (chicken plumage)

Lavender or self-blue refers to a plumage color pattern in the chicken (Gallus gallus domesticus) characterized by a uniform, pale bluish grey color across all feathers. The distinctive color is caused by the action of an autosomal recessive gene, commonly designated as "lav", which reduces the expression of eumelanin and phaeomelanin so that black areas of the plumage appear pale grey instead, and red areas appear a pale buff.

Description

The "lavender" gene (lav) in the chicken causes the dilution of both black (eumelanin) and red/brown (phaeomelanin) pigments, so according to color background, dilution due to "lavender" gives a sort of plumage color patterns: On an extended black background, this condition causes the entire surface of the body an even shade of light slaty blue, which is the typical phenotype known as '"self-blue"'.

On a red/brown color plumage background, lavender gene degrades color to beige, like in some Pekin Bantams as in the picture set aside. On the color background of the Belgian Bearded d'Uccle Bantams, frequently referred to as the "Mille Fleur" in the United States, lavender causes the pattern known as "porcelain". The resulting "porcelain" pattern is beige with each feather tipped with a V-shaped of slaty blue near the end of the feather and the feather tipped with a V-shaped white spangle.

Matilda (novel)

Matilda is a children's novel by British writer Roald Dahl. It was published in 1988 by Jonathan Cape in London, with 232 pages and illustrations by Quentin Blake. It was adapted as an audio reading by Joely Richardson, a 1996 feature film, a two-part BBC Radio 4 program starring Nicola McAuliffe as Matilda and narrated by Lenny Henry, and a 2010 musical.

In 2012 Matilda was ranked number 30 among all-time children's novels in a survey published by School Library Journal, a monthly with primarily U.S. audience. It was the first of four books by Dahl among the Top 100, more than any other writer.

Plot summary

In a small Buckinghamshire village, Matilda is a young girl of unusual precocity, but often ill-treated by her father or neglected by her mother. In retaliation, she pulls pranks such as gluing her father's hat to his head, hiding a friend's parrot in the chimney to simulate a burglar or ghost, and secretly bleaching her father's hair.

At school, Matilda befriends her teacher, Jennifer Honey, who is astonished by Matilda's intellectual abilities. She tries to move her into a higher class, but is refused by the headmistress, the tyranical Agatha Trunchbull. Miss Honey also tries to talk to Mr. and Mrs. Wormwood about Matilda's supreme intelligence, but they ignore her.