Insomnia (soundtrack)
Insomnia is the soundtrack album for the 1997 Norwegian film Insomnia, which was composed by ambient artist Biosphere. The tone of the album is much darker in places than Geir Jenssen's earlier work, such as in the tracks "Field" and "Quay".
Track listing
References
Insomnia (Faithless song)
"Insomnia" is a song recorded by British dance group Faithless. Released as the band's second single, it became one of their most successful. It was released in 1995 and became a hit in Dance Charts while peaking at number 27 in the UK in 1995 and number 3 in 1996. The song also reached number 17 in the UK chart as a re-entry in 2005 and was certified Platinum by the BPI in 2015. It was voted by Mixmag readers as the fifth greatest dance record of all time.
Content
The song features Maxi Jazz singing as an insomniac while he struggles to sleep ("I toss and I turn without cease, like a curse, open my eyes and rise like yeast/At least a couple of weeks since I last slept, kept takin' sleepers, but now I keep myself pepped"). The subject is resonant with fans of dance music, since stimulant use is common in club/rave culture, and insomnia is a common side effect. The insomniac is also rather destitute ("Make my way to the refrigerator/One dry potato inside, no lie, not even bread, jam, when the light above my head went bam...").
Insomnia (composition)
Insomnia is a single-movement orchestral composition by the Finnish composer Esa-Pekka Salonen. The work was composed between March and November 2002 and was first performed on December 1, 2002 by the NHK Symphony Orchestra under Salonen.
Composition
Insomnia has a duration of roughly 20 minutes and is composed in a single movement.
Style and inspiration
Salonen described the piece as "a set of variations based on a harmonic model separated by a Ritornello-like section, which is essentially a pedal point on the note e." He further described the composition in the score program notes, writing:
The two basic archetypes of my music, the chorale and the machine, are still an important part of the vocabulary, but now they are quite often in a state of flux, one thing becoming another gradually. Even the Ritornello phrase keeps changing shape and structure; only the characteristic harmony remains the same throughout the piece.
Salonen continued:
The musical processes in Insomnia have a lot in common with the psychology of a sleepless night: some thoughts become prison cells we cannot escape; others keep coming back persistently. Towards the end of Insomnia the music finally calms down to an Adagio, dominated by the mellow sounds of the horns and the Wagner tubas. The very moment we think that we have finally arrived at the gates of sleep, the sun rises in its full glory. A new day begins, exultantly.
Silver (The Wrens album)
Silver is the debut studio album by the alternative rock band The Wrens, released in 1994.
Track listing
References
Silver coin
Silver coins are possibly the oldest mass-produced form of coinage. Silver has been used as a coinage metal since the times of the Greeks; their silver drachmas were popular trade coins. The ancient Persians used silver coins between 612-330 BC. Before 1797, British pennies were made of silver.
As with all collectible coins, many factors determine the value of a silver coin, such as its rarity, demand, condition and the number originally minted. Ancient silver coins coveted by collectors include the Denarius and Miliarense, while more recent collectible silver coins include the Morgan Dollar and the Spanish Milled Dollar.
Other than collector's silver coins, silver bullion coins are popular among people who desire a "hedge" against currency inflation or store of value. Silver has an international currency symbol of XAG under ISO 4217.
Origins and early development of silver coins
The earliest coins of the western world were minted in the kingdom of Lydia in Asia Minor around 600 BC. The coins of Lydia were made of electrum, which is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, that was available within the territory of Lydia. The concept of coinage, i.e. stamped lumps of metal of a specified weight, quickly spread to adjacent regions, such as Aegina. In these neighbouring regions, inhabited by Greeks, coins were mostly made of silver. As Greek merchants traded with Greek communities (colonies) throughout the Mediterranean Sea, the Greek coinage concept soon spread through trade to the entire Mediterranean region. These early Greek silver coins were denominated in staters or drachmas and its fractions (obols).
Silver (color)
Silver or Metallic gray is a color tone resembling gray that is a representation of the color of polished silver.
The visual sensation usually associated with the metal silver is its metallic shine. This cannot be reproduced by a simple solid color, because the shiny effect is due to the material's brightness varying with the surface angle to the light source. In addition, there is no mechanism for showing metallic or fluorescent colors on a computer without resorting to rendering software which simulates the action of light on a shiny surface. Consequently, in art and in heraldry one would normally use a metallic paint that glitters like real silver. A matte grey color like the swatch on this page could also be considered silver in color.
History
The first recorded use of silver as a color name in English was in 1481. In heraldry, the word argent is used, derived from Latin argentum over Medieval French argent.
Like turquoise, orange and purple, silver has no common rhyme.
