Maria (album)

Maria is a 1995 critically acclaimed album by Canadian singer and songwriter Jane Siberry. It was her first album not to include any musical contributions from longtime collaborators such as Ken Myhr, John Switzer and Rebecca Jenkins.

Information

The album ends with "Oh My My," a 20 minute-plus ode that gathers the themes from the entire album. Rolling Stone wrote: "[I]n this heap of Siberjazz you realize that everything that has arisen on Maria has indeed converged and that you've actually been led on an unforgettable walk in a garden facing fall with a tour guide who's sure-footed in her wobbly pace. Awesome."

Maria was her last major label album. In 1996, Siberry started her own independent record label, Sheeba Records, and has released all of her subsequent recordings on that imprint.

Reception

Rolling Stone wrote about Maria: "[H]ot damn, the girl's back in the driver's seat with Maria...This is vintage Siberry: scissor-kicking around the soul's messiest spots in search of anything hinting toward redemption... That's exactly what this album's about: the pull of life. Not specifically the good or the bad or the ugly but just the pull and the subsequent release"

! (album)

! is an album by The Dismemberment Plan. It was released on October 2, 1995, on DeSoto Records. The band's original drummer, Steve Cummings, played on this album but left shortly after its release.

Track listing

Personnel

The following people were involved in the making of !:

References

Album

Albums of recorded music were developed in the early 20th century, first as books of individual 78rpm records, then from 1948 as vinyl LP records played at 33 ¹⁄₃ rpm. Vinyl LPs are still issued, though in the 21st century albums sales have mostly focused on compact disc (CD) and MP3 formats. The audio cassette was a format used in the late 1970s through to the 1990s alongside vinyl.

An album may be recorded in a recording studio (fixed or mobile), in a concert venue, at home, in the field, or a mix of places. Recording may take a few hours to several years to complete, usually in several takes with different parts recorded separately, and then brought or "mixed" together. Recordings that are done in one take without overdubbing are termed "live", even when done in a studio. Studios are built to absorb sound, eliminating reverberation, so as to assist in mixing different takes; other locations, such as concert venues and some "live rooms", allow for reverberation, which creates a "live" sound. The majority of studio recordings contain an abundance of editing, sound effects, voice adjustments, etc. With modern recording technology, musicians can be recorded in separate rooms or at separate times while listening to the other parts using headphones; with each part recorded as a separate track.

+ (disambiguation)

+ (the plus sign) is a binary operator that indicates addition, with 43 in ASCII.

+ may also refer to:

See also

Final Fantasy II

Final Fantasy II (ファイナルファンタジーII, Fainaru Fantajī Tsū) is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) in 1988 for the Family Computer as the second installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game has received numerous enhanced remakes for the WonderSwan Color, the Sony PlayStation, the Game Boy Advance, the PlayStation Portable, and multiple mobile and smartphone types. As neither this game nor Final Fantasy III were initially released outside Japan, Final Fantasy IV was originally released in North America as Final Fantasy II, so as not to confuse players. The most recent releases of the game are enhanced versions for the iOS and Android, which were released worldwide in 2010 and 2012, respectively.

The game's story centers on four youths whose parents were killed during an army invasion by the empire of Palamecia, who are using hellspawn to conquer the world. Three of the four main characters join a rebellion against the empire, embarking on missions to gain new magic and weapons, destroy enemy superweapons, and rescue leading members of the resistance. The Game Boy Advance remake adds a bonus story after the game is completed.

M (song)

"M" is a song written by Japanese singer Ayumi Hamasaki from her album I Am... (2002). The lead single from the album and Hamasaki's nineteenth overall, "M" marked Hamasaki's increased creative control over her music, as it was the first song she composed, under the pseudonym "CREA".

The single is to date one of Hamasaki's most commercially successful; it peaked at the top spot on the Oricon weekly charts, selling over 500,000 units on its first week. Moreover, the single eventually sold over 1,000,000 copies over its seventeen-week run and became an RIAJ-certified million-seller; "M" also won the Japan Gold Disc Award for "Song of the Year".

Background and themes

Shortly after the release of her studio album Duty, Hamasaki began writing "M". Before then, Hamasaki's staff had composed the melodies; Hamasaki only wrote the lyrics. However, with "M", Hamasaki felt that none of the melodies composed by her staff fit her vision of the song. Consequently, she decided to compose the melody herself. She began work on an electronic keyboard; however, as she had little proficiency in the instrument, Hamasaki eventually resorted to singing the melody into a voice recorder.

Maria (play)

The play Maria, a portrait of the sordid underbelly of Soviet society during the Russian Civil War, was written by Isaac Babel during the mid-1930s.

Plot

Maria is set in Saint Petersburg during the Russian Civil War. In the aftermath of the October Revolution, the once iron clad Russian class system has disintegrated. The plot focuses on the aristocratic Mukovnin family and their attempts to adapt to the hardships of war communism and chaos. The elderly General Mukovnin is writing books about Russia's military history, where he criticizes the harsh treatment of common soldiers under the Imperial Russian Army. He sympathizes with Lenin's Bolsheviks and regards them as "gatherers of the Russian lands" akin to Ivan Kalita. His daughter, the ditzy and superficial Ludmila, is hoping for an advantageous marriage with Isaac Dimshits, the Jewish mob boss who dominates the city's black market food supply. Her cousin, Katya Felsen, is unhappy and pessimistic about the new regime, despite having an affair with a senior Soviet Army officer. The General's eldest daughter, Maria, is an idealistic Communist and a political officer assigned to the Soviet Army. During the entire play, she is away on the front and is quoted, but never seen.