Roch Gersbach looks out the glass of the projectionist’s room down at the crowd of about 50 at the Cinematheque theater, located in Vilas Hall. The crowd, as usual, is made up of primarily older individuals, people who have spent years crafting sophisticated film tastes. The theater is small but… Read more »

On Monday, Postdoctoral Fellow Mary Murrell spoke to a crowd of about 30 in Helen C. White Hall, detailing the history of mass book digitization and its developers’ quest towards modernity. Murrell, a University of California, Berkeley graduate with a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology,  addressed the crowd of professors and… Read more »

Ah, springtime! That most glorious time of the year! Yes, it is finally here, bringing with it that most beautiful unpredictability of weather patterns. One day, it is sunny and the birds chirp loudly. The next, raindrops fall angrily from the sky and soak the shoes of those who wade… Read more »

From the frozen landscape of the Midwest comes a magical voice that, at its angriest, sounds like a pack of hyenas gnawing at the carcass of injustice and, at its gentlest, sounds like an arthritic butterfly perched atop a flower just as heavy raindrops begin to fall from the sky.… Read more »

In David Fincher’s 2010 film “The Social Network,” Mark Zuckerberg and his cronies attend a Caribbean night party at a Harvard fraternity. A few people dance awkwardly. Small groups of people cluster together. A loop of Niagara Falls plays on a giant screen. A DJ and a man playing steel… Read more »

Over the years, Radiohead has always proven its ability to take whatever music its members are listening to and turn those influences into something entirely new. On OK Computer, the band blended the sounds of the krautrock genre, composer Krzysztof Penderecki and other musical elements. What resulted is an entirely… Read more »

On Saturday, every rock music aficionado with Internet access let out a yelp followed by a few uncontrollable drops of urine. My Bloody Valentine had just released an album. Titled m b v, the album is a nine-song collection 22 years in the making. It is the follow-up to the… Read more »

It’s easy to criticize ASAP Rocky. His oftentimes superficial lyrics, pretty boy image and rapid rise to fame — from unknown Harlem rapper to YouTube sensation to rap royalty with a $3 million deal with RCA Records — leads one to question his current stature: Is Rocky truly a great… Read more »

“I’ve been runnin’/ And I’ve been racin’/ So many different towns/ So many different places.” These words begin “Home,” a heartwarming track from G. Love’s newest album, Fixin’ to Die, a collection of stripped-down, folk-blues tunes produced by the Avett Brothers. After 20 years of touring both solo and with his backing band, Special… Read more »

When Eduardo Urbaez was 14 years old, his mother remarried. The Venezuelan-born teenager had been living in Miami for most of his life, but his mother’s new marriage forced him to move to Spain. In this foreign country, he wished desperately to fit in and assimilate into the local culture.… Read more »

Lights! Purple! Lasers! Pink! Paint explosion! Bass drop! Alcohol! Uninhibited libido! Dancing robot! More alcohol! Trampolines! Neon acrobats! Bigger paint explosion! D-d-d-d-d-drop the bass! The subjects of those short, fragmented sentences are what keep EDM devotees going. Mention to a dubstep-head the words “lasers” and “bass drop” in the same… Read more »

Crowds at hip-hop concerts are notoriously unenergetic. Oftentimes regardless of an artist’s onstage energy, the crowd will simply bob their heads, carefully avoiding any hip motions or movements that could be perceived as “dancing.” This lack of energy could inherently stem from the genre itself: Rappers often focus on exuding… Read more »

On Saturday night, an army wearing flannel shirts, unkempt beards, designer glasses and skinny jeans invaded the Majestic Theater to welcome an event some hipsters may declare as more important than their weddings: The Dirty Projectors were playing. The general public probably couldn’t care less, but they most likely haven’t… Read more »

This story is the first in a weekly series of features introducing you to Madison’s music venues.Nestled comfortably on King Street in the shadow of the Wisconsin State Capitol lies the Majestic Theater. From the exterior, the Majestic could be any concert venue. A simple, unobtrusive marquee greets passersby, and… Read more »

The cover of The xx’s sophomore album, Coexist, flaunts a brilliant “X.” This letter frames a beautiful, multicolored oil sheen, the result of two similar but fundamentally different liquids — oil and water — mixing into a whole but flawed assemblage doomed to never fully coalesce. Coexist isn’t quite a breakup… Read more »