Word: laddered
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Asian nations have tended to follow the Japanese export model of development, starting with labor-intensive manufacturing of low-cost items like shoes and garments, then moving up the high-tech ladder to refrigerators, TVs, vcrs and, eventually, computer components and software. North Korea doesn't have that luxury: it has no cash for capital investments and no private sector. South Korea has a unique opportunity to pump up North Korea's economy. Despite years of animosity, it is probably in the South's interest to facilitate the North's economic growth. "If North Korea collapses and forces premature unification...
...That, too, sums up the way his bloody life is going. After years of dwelling in pop's dark obscurity, David Gray has at last discovered that the sun doesn't have to go down-and he's still basking in the glow. His album White Ladder, recorded in his living room and self-released in Ireland and Britain in 1999, broke the U.S. Top 100 chart last October and is now pushing the top 30; by the beginning of January, 850,000 copies of the album had been shipped in America. That's on top of the 1.5 million...
...Almost no one in the music industry did, which is why, when Gray began recording White Ladder in 1998, he had left one record label and been dropped by another in less than five years. His first album, A Century Ends, consisted mainly of Gray strumming and wailing acoustic folk anthems and Celtic ballads; it earned him a small following in Ireland and little else. His two subsequent efforts leaned toward more conventional electric-guitar rock but failed to gain attention. (Lost Songs 95-98, a collection of tracks recorded during his more fallow days, was released this week.) Distraught...
...Gray started experimenting with synthesizers and drum machines, working out catchy grooves and beats and then layering melodies over them. He and his bandmates made White Ladder over the course of four months in Gray's London apartment; it "cost nothing and was recorded on a couple of mikes and some dodgy equipment." The result bore some resemblance to Gray's brooding, languid early songs, but it also featured pulsating tracks, like Please Forgive Me, which melded folk, pop and dance styles. What catapulted Gray into the mainstream was the album's exuberant first single, Babylon, with its celebration...
...Holdsworth does give the old China hands their due, but Foreign Devils is at its best when it allows the missionaries who have made Hong Kong their calling or the Eurasians who have climbed the social ladder to tell their own stories. One glaring omission: despite Holdsworth mentioning that Filipinos are by far Hong Kong's largest expat group, she doesn't include a word from them...