Puppet

A puppet is an inanimate object animated or manipulated by a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, which is a very ancient form of theatre.

There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made of a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They can be extremely complex or very simple in their construction.

Origins

Puppetry was practiced in Ancient Greece and the oldest written records of puppetry can be found in the works of Herodotus and Xenophon, dating from the 5th century BC. The Greek word translated as "puppet" is "νευρόσπαστος" (nevrospastos), which literally means "drawn by strings, string-pulling", from "νεῦρον" (nevron), meaning either "sinew, tendon, muscle, string", or "wire", and "σπάω" (spaō), meaning "draw, pull".

Aristotle (384–322 BC) discusses puppets in his work On the Motion of Animals.

In India puppetry was practiced from ancient times and is known by different names in different parts of the country. Excavation of clay dolls from Indus valley sites serve as an indication. The art of puppetry called Bommalattam is mentioned in Tamil literature Silappadikaram, which is written around 2nd century B.C.

Speak & Spell (album)

Speak & Spell is the debut album by the British synthpop group Depeche Mode, recorded and released in 1981. The album peaked at number 10 in the UK Albums Chart.

Overview

This was the only Depeche Mode album with Vince Clarke as a member of the band. Clarke wrote most of the songs for the band, before departing to form Yazoo and later Erasure.

The album is significantly lighter in tone and melody than their later work, a direction which can largely be attributed to Clarke's writing. After he left, Martin Gore took over songwriting duties, writing almost all of the band's material. Later albums written by him would explore darker subjects and melodies.

The album title alludes to the then-popular "Speak & Spell" electronic toy.

When interviewed by Simon Amstell for Channel 4's Popworld programme in 2005, Gore and Fletcher both stated that the track "What's Your Name?" was their least favourite Depeche Mode song of all time.

Critical reception

Melody Maker praised the album, saying the singles "New Life" and "Just Can’t Get Enough" "sound as fresh and unflagging as every new number" of their time. Although reviewer Paul Colbert noted that there are a few songs like "Nodisco" that tend to "repeat earlier thoughts and feels", he praised "the gleefully untroubled surface" of "What’s Your Name", [...] "the moody whisper" of "Puppets" and the tautly sketched around octave-leaping bass lines and dark vocals of "Photographic".

Puppet (disambiguation)

A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated by a puppeteer.

Puppet may also refer to:

Film

Music

Us3

Us3 is a jazz-rap group founded in London in 1992. Their name was inspired by a Horace Parlan recording produced by Alfred Lion, the founder of Blue Note Records. On their debut album, Hand on the Torch, Us3 exclusively used samples from the Blue Note Records catalogue, all originally produced by Lion.

History

Us3 is the brainchild of London-based producer Geoff Wilkinson. Formed in 1992 alongside production partner Mel Simpson, Us3 had two previous incarnations. The first, a limited edition white label 12" release in 1990 called "Where Will We Be In The 21st Century". The release garnered the attention of independent label Ninja Tune, resulting in NW1's 1991 12" "The Band Played The Boogie" featuring UK Rapper Born 2 B. It sampled a dancefloor tune of the burgeoning jazz dance scene, Grant Green's "Sookie Sookie", originally released on Blue Note Records.

London's Kiss FM added "The Band Played The Boogie" to its playlist and Wilkinson received a call summoning him to EMI Records's offices in London. Wilkinson avoided a lawsuit and was granted rights to the archives of Blue Note Records . One of the resulting demos, recorded in March 1992, was "Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia),"featuring UK Trumpeter Gerard Presencer. It sampled Herbie Hancock's Cantaloupe Island. Two years later, it entered the US top ten and was included on Hand on the Torch, the first Blue Note album to achieve Platinum status (1,000,000 sales) in the USA.