Rake (band)

Rake. was an art rock/noise rock musical ensemble from Northern Virginia (near Washington, DC), founded in 1989. Not aligned with the post-punk/hardcore bands more commonly associated with the local underground music scene, Rake. took a more experimental route and were more closely associated with fellow Virginia-based bands Pelt and Wingtip Sloat. Throughout the 1990s, a relationship cemented via their principal label, VHF Records.

Band members Vinnie Van Go-Go (a.k.a. VVGG, a.k.a. OASTEM! Jim), Bill Kellum, and C-Man (Carl Moller) released their first record in 1989, a 7” 45 rpm single called "Cow Song" and the follow-up EP "Motorcycle Shoes" in 1990. The punkish leanings on these recordings were soon superseded by more experimental offerings such as the cassette "The Day I Remembered Seeing Ice" and the LP Rake Is My Co-Pilot, the latter featuring a sidelong extemporization on the lead song from the "Motorcycle Shoes" EP. The band's early recordings featured (mostly shouted) vocals, but the band's later work was generally instrumental in nature. Although Rake.'s main instruments were electric guitar, bass and drums, they made liberal use of tape loops, synthesizers, static, and anything else they saw fit. The band's sound reached a highbrow, minimalistic/ambient peak on 1998 album Resume The Cosmos, which was released by Australian label Camera Obscura but their aesthetic is best summed up by their double CD release The Art Ensemble of Rake/The Tell-Tale Moog which combined lengthy improvisations with found sounds, field recordings and harsh edits. The second disc was largely indexed at 60-second intervals, regardless of the musical content, although one 5-second section was simply a recording of a male voice saying, "Look out: rattlesnake!".

+/- (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

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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.

Lock picking

Lock picking is the craft of unlocking a lock by analyzing and manipulating the components of the lock device without the original key. In addition, ideal lock picking should not damage the lock itself, allowing it to be rekeyed for later use, which is especially important with antique locks that would be impossible to replace if destructive entry methods were used. Although lock picking can be associated with criminal intent, it is an essential skill for the legal profession of locksmithing, and is often pursued by law abiding citizens as a useful skill to learn or simply a hobby. The move towards combination locks for high security items such as safes was intended to remove the weakest part of the lock: its keyhole.

In normal situations, it is almost always easier to gain access by some means other than lock picking. Most common locks can be quickly and easily opened using a drill, bolt cutters, padlock shim, a bump key, or a hydraulic jack. The hasp, door, or fixture they are attached to can be cut, broken, unscrewed or otherwise removed, windows can be broken, etc. Therefore, a lock that offers high resistance to picking does not necessarily make unauthorized access more difficult, but will make surreptitious unauthorized access more difficult. Locks are often used in combination with alarms to provide layered security.

Rake (geology)

In structural geology, rake (or pitch) is formally defined as "the angle between a line [or a feature] and the strike line of the plane in which it is found", measured on the plane. The three-dimensional orientation of a line can be described with just a plunge and trend. The rake is a useful description of a line because often (in geology) features (lines) follow along a planar surface. In these cases the rake can be used to describe the line's orientation in three dimensions relative to that planar surface. One might also expect to see this used when the particular line is hard to measure directly (possibly due to outcrops impeding measurement). The rake always sweeps down from the horizontal plane.

Fault motion

Rake is used to describe the direction of fault motion with respect to the strike (measured anticlockwise from the horizontal, up is positive; values between −180° and 180°):

Rake (theatre)

English theatre stages in the Middle Ages and early Modern era typically sloped upwards away from the audience. This is known as a rake or raked stage and improves the view for the audience.

Calculating incline

The slope of the rake is measured by the number of horizontal units it takes for one vertical unit measured in the direction of the slope, or by the equivalent percentage. A rake of one horizontal unit to one vertical unit (1 in 1) would give an angle of 45° from the horizontal. Rakes of 1 in 18 (5.56%) to 1 in 48 (2.08%) were more common. Modern stages are constructed with no slope, and the majority of existing raked stages have been renovated into unraked arrangements.

Converting the rake ratio to an angle requires the application of some basic trigonometry. The angle in degrees = arctan(vertical/horizontal), where "vertical" is the vertical rise in distance and "horizontal" is the horizontal distance over which this rise occurs. For example, for a rake of 1:18, the corresponding angle is arctan(1/18) = 3.18°.