Magma (band)

Magma is a French progressive rock band founded in Paris in 1969 by classically trained drummer Christian Vander, who claimed as his inspiration a "vision of humanity's spiritual and ecological future" that profoundly disturbed him. In the course of their first album, the band tells the story of a group of people fleeing a doomed Earth to settle on the planet Kobaïa. Later, conflict arises when the Kobaïans—descendants of the original colonists—encounter other Earth refugees.

Vander invented a constructed language, Kobaïan, in which most lyrics are sung. In a 1977 interview with Vander and long-time Magma vocalist Klaus Blasquiz, Blasquiz said that Kobaïan is a "phonetic language made by elements of the Slavonic and Germanic languages to be able to express some things musically. The language has of course a content, but not word by word." Vander himself has said that, "When I wrote, the sounds [of Kobaïan] came naturally with it—I didn’t intellectualise the process by saying 'Ok, now I’m going to write some words in a particular language', it was really sounds that were coming at the same time as the music." Later albums tell different stories set in more ancient times; however, the Kobaïan language remains an integral part of the music.

+/- (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.

Magma (Jonathan Darque)

Magma (Jonathan Darque) is a fictional character, a supervillain from Marvel Comics. He first appeared in Marvel Team-Up vol. 1 #110, as an enemy of Spider-Man and Iron Man.

Fictional character biography

Jonathan Darque was the chief executive officer of a mining company investigating new and cheap sources of energy. His investigations were opposed by environmental activists, who held demonstrations at his trial bore sites. His wife died in a car crash when attempting to evade the activists' blockade. Darque used his engineering skills to design a battle suit allowing him to become Magma. He then developed an underground crime organization.

Darque/Magma created a device he called the Long Range Sonic Stata Scanner (LRSSS), which enabled him to discover the epicentres of earthquakes before they erupted. He also used the machine to generate waves causing earthquakes; this enabled him to blackmail the Mayor of New York City. (At the publication time of this story, the historical Mayor was Ed Koch). Magma held a press conference to reveal his plans. Spider-Man and Iron Man joined forces to drill down vertically to reach the source of the earthquake, where they discovered his hidden base. After Magma was defeated by Spider-Man and Iron Man in a battle on the surface, he escaped in a pod into the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Spider-Man aimed the LRSSS at this location and Magma was engulfed by the resultant waves and he disappeared into the depths of the ocean.

Gorath

Gorath, released in Japan as Calamity Star Gorath (妖星ゴラス, Yōsei Gorasu), is a Japanese science fiction tokusatsu film produced by Toho in 1962. The story for Gorath was by Jojiro Okami.

Plot

The year is 1980, and the film opens with the launch of the JX-1 Hayabusa spaceship into outer space. The ship, originally sent to collect data on Saturn, has its course diverted to investigate the mysterious star Gorath, reported as being 6000 times the size of the Earth. It is feared that the star's path could come dangerously close to Earth. The JX-1 reaches locates Gorath and it's much smaller than earth but with 6000 times the gravity. The JX-1 radio's back any data about the star but gets sucked into the star's gravitational field which drags the ship into Gorath, incinerating it.

Japan and the rest of the world are stunned by the discovery and, after some reluctance, send up the JX-2 Ootori spaceship for a voyage to investigate Gorath. The United Nations band together to discover a solution to the problem, and decide that their only solutions are to either destroy Gorath or move the planet out of the way.

Magma (computer algebra system)

Magma is a computer algebra system designed to solve problems in algebra, number theory, geometry and combinatorics. It is named after the algebraic structure magma. It runs on Unix-like operating systems, as well as Windows.

Introduction

Magma is produced and distributed by the Computational Algebra Group within the School of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Sydney.

In late 2006, the book Discovering Mathematics with Magma was published by Springer as volume 19 of the Algorithms and Computations in Mathematics series.

The Magma system is used extensively within pure mathematics. The Computational Algebra Group maintain a list of publications that cite Magma, and as of 2010 there are about 2600 citations, mostly in pure mathematics, but also including papers from areas as diverse as economics and geophysics.

History

The predecessor of the Magma system was named Cayley (1982–1993), after Arthur Cayley.

Magma was officially released in August 1993 (version 1.0). Version 2.0 of Magma was released in June 1996 and subsequent versions of 2.X have been released approximately once per year.