For liberals, it’s about being Greater Together. For conservatives, it’s about pulling the plug on our nation’s losers. “About 4 million Americans are born every year,” warns David Burge; “about 90k Americans graduate college with art degrees. One out of 44.” With few exceptions, our bitterly divided ideological camps speak as one on education. Up with scientists! Down with artists!

[...]

We shouldn’t be bothered that so many kids these days are artsy and think like actors. We should be bothered by the fact that we’ve guided them into a system where your talents and proclivities are frowned on unless they’re credentialized. We expect our kids to get degrees in whatever they care about most — and then to get whatever jobs those degrees qualify them for. This is a recipe for embarrassing, ridiculous case studies like the underemployed Occupy guy with the bachelor’s in puppetry.

James Poulos, Forbes.com

The arts get a ripping here, but they brought it on themselves: by tolerating and, worse, promoting the brain-dead, fraudulent and self-absorbed for nigh on a century. The encroaching of the academia into the arts hasn’t upped skills amongst artists so much as it has legitimised frankly worthless art and given it a monopoly on state funding.

“the strength to build is now paralyzed; the courage to make far-reaching plans is discouraged; the organizational geniuses become scarce”

facebook.com/absvrdist

More Details here:
http://mgmhiggins.blogspot.com/2011/12/concrete-walls-at-sff-london-3rd-5th.html

Monkey With Car Keys is an electronic music side project of Irish soundscapers Síol Na Gréine, presenting a full-length album for free download @ hiarctow.com.

“Filament in Strata is a bit of an eclectic collection (and probably a one off), mixing DnB, IDM, ambient, techno and even the odd shade of synthpop. Unifying the whole thing is a sense of structure as something that emerges from the increasing layers of electronic ‘orchestration’; similar maybe to what Austrian metal band Summoning do, but put into a different genre.

Somehow I want all this to express a bit more of the dumb delight I get out of just seeing the little things in the world and thinking about them in the bigger complex picture of reality: Like a musical equivalent of looking at something up close and gradually zooming out to see how it connects to everything else.”

Continuing the HI ARC TOW obsession with William Gibson (and probably topping it off) the album’s title is taken from a chapter in Gibson‘s novel Mona-Lisa Overdrive, whilst the final track of the album Chiba City Blues is the title of the first chapter in his classic Neuromancer.

Listen to Monkey With Car Keys’ new album Filament in Strata here

Check out the full list here.

You can view the trailer below:

The long awaited new album from Irish black metallers Beithíoch, is available now – complete and free – from hiarctow.com. “Dúchas” translates roughly to “instinct”, or “that which is native”, and is inspired by the glacier-torn landscape of Ireland’s north.

stylistically this album throws up a few surprises: much of it moves away from the droney, minimalist style of the debut album (and subsequent EP) towards a sound that has more melodic intricacies and more subtleties in the arrangements. At times this album flirts with an old school doom/death sound whilst at other moments hearkens more to early Gorgoroth, Ancient or Immortal. More importantly though, this album is a serious challenge to the staleness and mediocrity of modern metal.

Download:

Dúchas MP3 (RAR Archived)

Visuals:

Front cover – Back cover

Beithíoch’s homepage @ Hi.Arc.Tow

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About Creative Commons

This album is provided as a free Creative Commons licensed download by HI.ARC.TOW. This makes it free to download and to redistribute.