Rapture (Blondie song)

"Rapture" is a song by the American pop rock band Blondie from their fifth studio album, Autoamerican (1980).

In January 1981, "Rapture" was released as the second and final single from the album. The song reached No. 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, where it stayed for two weeks. It was the first No. 1 song in the U.S. to feature rap. The song peaked at No. 4 in Australia and No. 5 in the United Kingdom.

History

"Rapture" is a combination of disco, funk, and hip hop with the rap section forming an extended coda. The song title "Rapture" served to indicate this element. While it was not the first single featuring rapping to be commercially successful, it was the first to top the charts. Its lyrics were especially notable for namechecking hip-hop pioneers Fab Five Freddy and Grandmaster Flash.

Music video

The music video made its U.S. television debut on Solid Gold on January 31, 1981, and became the first rap video ever broadcast on MTV. Set in the East Village section of Manhattan, the "Man from Mars" or "voodoo god" (dancer William Barnes in the white suit and top hat) is the introductory and central figure. Barnes also choreographed the piece. The final shot is a one-take scene of Debbie Harry dancing along the street, passing by graffiti artists, Uncle Sam, a Native American and a goat. Fab Five Freddy and graffiti artists Lee Quinones and Jean-Michel Basquiat make cameo appearances. Basquiat was hired when Grandmaster Flash did not show for the filming. The UK 7" version of the song is used in the video.

Rapture (composition)

Rapture is an orchestral composition in one movement by the American composer Christopher Rouse. The work was commissioned by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and was completed January 9, 2000. It is dedicated to then Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra music director Mariss Jansons and premiered in May 2000.

Composition

Rapture is markedly more tonal than Rouse's earlier compositions. In the program notes to the score, Rouse commented, "With the exception of my Christmas work, Karolju, this is the most unabashedly tonal music I have composed. I wished to depict a progression to an ever more blinding ecstasy, but the entire work inhabits a world devoid of darkness -- hence the almost complete lack of sustained dissonance." The piece is also built around "gradually increasing tempi" gains speed over the course of its roughly 11 minutes.

Despite the religious title of the work, Rouse did not intend Rapture to be sacred music. He further commented, "...the piece is not connected to any specific religious source. Rather, I used the word 'rapture' to convey a sense of spiritual bliss, religious or otherwise."

Rapture (iiO song)

"Rapture" (sometimes referenced as "Rapture (Taste So Sweet)") is a song by American recording duo iiO. It was chosen as the lead single from their debut studio album, Poetica (2005). The song was written by both the members; Nadia Ali and Markus Moser, while production was handled just by Moser. The song was released on October 29, 2001 by Universal Records. Musically, the song is a dance-oriented song, which was very popular around the early 2000s. The song also incorporates musical genres of dance-pop, electronica, disco, house, and trance music.

With the song winning positive reviews from music critics, citing it as catchy and one of the best songs of the year, the song was a commercial success. The song charted inside the top ten in countries including Romania, United Kingdom, United States, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Ireland. It managed to chart inside the top fifty on the US Billboard Hot 100. A music video was also shot, showing the group in a futuristic city with visual lighting.

ARC (file format)

ARC is a lossless data compression and archival format by System Enhancement Associates (SEA). It was very popular during the early days of networked dial-up BBS. The file format and the program were both called ARC. The ARC program made obsolete the previous use of a combination of the SQ program to compress files and the LU program to create .LBR archives, by combining both compression and archiving functions into a single program. Unlike ZIP, ARC is incapable of compressing entire directory trees. The format was subject to controversy in the 1980s—an important event in debates over what would later be known as open formats.

The .arc file extension is often used for several file archive-like file types. For example, the Internet Archive uses its own ARC format to store multiple web resources into a single file. The FreeArc archiver also uses .arc extension, but uses a completely different file format.

Nintendo uses an unrelated 'ARC' format for resources, such as MIDI, voice samples, or text, in GameCube and Wii games. Several unofficial extractors exist for this type of ARC file.

Inverse trigonometric functions

In mathematics, the inverse trigonometric functions (occasionally called cyclometric functions) are the inverse functions of the trigonometric functions (with suitably restricted domains). Specifically, they are the inverses of the sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, secant, and cosecant functions. They are used to obtain an angle from any of the angle's trigonometric ratios. Inverse trigonometric functions are widely used in engineering, navigation, physics, and geometry.

Notation

There are several notations used for the inverse trigonometric functions.

The most common convention is to name inverse trigonometric functions using an arc- prefix, e.g., arcsin(x), arccos(x), arctan(x), etc. This convention is used throughout the article. When measuring in radians, an angle of θ radians will correspond to an arc whose length is rθ, where r is the radius of the circle. Thus, in the unit circle, "the arc whose cosine is x" is the same as "the angle whose cosine is x", because the length of the arc of the circle in radii is the same as the measurement of the angle in radians. Similar, in computer programming languages (also Excel) the inverse trigonometric functions are usually called asin, acos, atan.

Arc (Everything Everything album)

Arc is the second studio album by British indie pop band Everything Everything. It was released in the United Kingdom on 14 January 2013, having been preceded by the singles "Cough Cough" and "Kemosabe".

Track listing

Critical reception

Freddie Holmes of The Underclassed gave the album a positive review stating:

7digital featured Arc as album of the week, praising the record as "schizophrenic, electro-pop perfection."

Personnel

References