Elastica

Elastica were an English alternative rock band that played punk rock, post-punk and new wave-influenced music. They were best known for their 1995 album Elastica, which produced singles that charted in the United Kingdom and the United States.

History

In mid-1992 ex-Suede band members Justine Frischmann and Justin Welch decided to form a group. By the autumn of that year, bassist Annie Holland and guitarist Donna Matthews were added. After initially gigging under names such as "Onk", the band settled on the name "Elastica" in October 1992. Elastica released their first single, "Stutter," in October 1993, which benefited from the promotional efforts of BBC Radio 1 DJ and Deceptive Records label boss Steve Lamacq, who had discovered the band earlier in the year. In 1994, Elastica released two UK Top 20 singles ("Line Up" and "Connection") and performed on numerous radio shows. In addition, Frischmann's relationship with Blur frontman Damon Albarn made tabloid headlines.

Elastica's first LP, Elastica, was released in March 1995, and entered the UK Albums Chart at No. 1; it became the fastest-selling debut album since Oasis' Definitely Maybe and kept the position for another 10 years. The album was preceded by their fourth single "Waking Up" which went to No. 13 on the UK Singles Chart, their highest placing therein.

Elastica theory

The elastica theory is a theory of mechanics of solid materials developed by Leonhard Euler that allows for very large scale elastic deflections of structures. Euler (1744) and Jakob Bernoulli developed the theory for elastic lines (yielding the solution known as the elastica curve) and studied buckling. Certain situations can be solved exactly by elliptic functions. Later elastica theory was generalized by F. and E. Cosserat into a geometric theory with intrinsic directions at each point (1907).

Elastica theory is an example of bifurcation theory. For most boundary conditions several solutions exist simultaneously.

When small deflections of a structure are to be analyzed, elastica theory is not required and an approximate solution may be found using the simpler linear elasticity theory or (for 1-dimensional components) beam theory.

A modern treatise of the planar elastica with full account of bifurcation and instability has been recently presented by Bigoni.

See also

Elastica (album)

Elastica is the debut studio album by English alternative rock band Elastica. It was released on 14 March 1995 through Deceptive Records.

Reception

Elastica hit No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, becoming, at the time, the fastest-selling debut since Oasis' Definitely Maybe the previous year. The record also did well in the US, peaking at No. 66 on the Billboard Hot 200 and being certified Gold. It was well-received critically and nominated for the Mercury Music Prize.

The album was well-received critically. In their retrospective review, Allmusic praised the album, writing "what makes Elastica such an intoxicating record is not only the way the 16 songs speed by in 40 minutes, but that they're nearly all classics" and that "hardly any new wave band [sic] made records this consistently rocking and melodic."BBC Music wrote "As albums that fall off a genre's radar go, Elastica's eponymous debut ranks high", calling it "a neglected gem" and the "blueprint for what Britpop should sound like".NME it the 191th greatest album of all time in 2013.

Stuttering

Stuttering (/ˈstʌtərɪŋ/) or stammering (/ˈstæmərɪŋ/) (more generally the first in US and the second in British usage) (alalia syllabaris, alalia literalis or anarthria literalis) is a speech disorder in which the flow of speech is disrupted by involuntary repetitions and prolongations of sounds, syllables, words or phrases as well as involuntary silent pauses or blocks in which the person who stutters is unable to produce sounds. The term stuttering is most commonly associated with involuntary sound repetition, but it also encompasses the abnormal hesitation or pausing before speech, referred to by people who stutter as blocks, and the prolongation of certain sounds, usually vowels or semivowels. According to Watkins et al. stuttering is a disorder of "selection, initiation, and execution of motor sequences necessary for fluent speech production." For many people who stutter, repetition is the primary problem. The term "stuttering" covers a wide range of severity, encompassing barely perceptible impediments that are largely cosmetic to severe symptoms that effectively prevent oral communication. In the world, approximately four times as many men as women stutter, encompassing 70 million people worldwide, or about 1% of the world's population. The impact of stuttering on a person's functioning and emotional state can be severe. This may include fears of having to enunciate specific vowels or consonants, fears of being caught stuttering in social situations, self-imposed isolation, anxiety, stress, shame, being a possible target of bullying (especially in children), having to use word substitution and rearrange words in a sentence to hide stuttering, or a feeling of "loss of control" during speech. Stuttering is sometimes popularly seen as a symptom of anxiety, but there is actually no direct correlation in that direction (though as mentioned the inverse can be true, as social anxiety may actually develop in individuals as a result of their stuttering).

Stutter (Joe song)

"Stutter" is a 2000 song by American R&B singer Joe. The original version of the song was produced by Roy "Royalty" Hamilton and Teddy Riley and written by Roy "Royalty" Hamilton and Ernest E. Dixon. A remix by Allen "Allstar" Gordon Jr. (marketed as "The Double Take Remix", due to its appearance in the similarly titled 2001 film, Double Take) features rapper Mystikal, and was a number-one hit on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States for four weeks in 2001. It was one of just three singles to have sold over 500,000 copies in 2001.

Composition

The song samples Summer in the City by Quincy Jones. The remix samples "Passin' Me By" by The Pharcyde.

Music video

The song and video refers to Joe's girlfriend, who comes home early in the morning while he wakes up and they're discuss where she had been. She's "stuttering" because it seems she is lying to him about having an affair. Joe's close friend, portrayed by rapper Mystikal, follows and spies her while she sleeps with another man in a motel, called the "Easy Rest-In", taping it on video. After she leaves, she and Mystikal are driving next to each other on the road, while they discuss the bad situation. Arriving home, Joe's girlfriend notes the video in their television, turning out it was her evil twin sister having that affair. Both the girlfriend and the twin sister were played by actress Natashia Williams.

Hands All Over (album)

Hands All Over is the third studio album by the American rock band Maroon 5. Produced by veteran producer Robert John "Mutt" Lange, the album was released by A&M/Octone Records on August 18, 2010. On July 12, 2011, the band re-released the album to include their summer hit "Moves like Jagger". The lead single, "Misery", was released in June 2010. "Give a Little More" followed as the second single in August 2010, "Never Gonna Leave This Bed" as the third single in January 2011, and "Moves like Jagger" as the fourth and final single in June 2011.

The album received generally mixed reviews from music critics, though many of them praised it for its production. Some critics have noted that the album features a more soulful style than Maroon 5's previous works. Maroon 5 went on tour to promote the album in the summer of 2011.

Background

The band began writing the songs from the third album, after winding down from a world tour in support of their second album It Won't Be Soon Before Long. Several months later, the band received a phone call from Robert John "Mutt" Lange, who had heard the band were beginning to write a new album, and expressed an interest in producing it. In a press release on their official website, the album is described as "a killer hybrid of rock, pop, funk and R&B."