Word: shrilling
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...days all the tunnels and shafts had to be dug with pick, shovel and explosives--backbreaking work. Now there are circular drills mounted on caterpillar treads, which lurch forward chewing at the soft rock, making a hellish racket that changes to a shrill glass-crunching scream when the teeth hit a pocket of "potch" (the gray waste near opal that runs in veins through the matrix). These drills are 4 ft. in diameter, and they create vaults in the tunnel roofs--beautiful, arched Romanesque spaces cut in the creamy pink-veined stone. It is troglodyte architecture: dense, theatrical and intensely...
What scared me more, though, was listening to myself grow hysterical. I was convinced that most video and computer games were a waste. And besides, why wasn't he reading? As I grew more shrill, my son grew more sullen. I was rejecting something he loved. And he recognized my prejudice as uninformed. I was also violating a basic rule of parenting: take an interest in what your kid is doing--especially when his tastes diverge from yours. Every parent in America got a refresher course on that rule April...
...beats, funk threads, classical samples, bossa nova riffs and exotica, running on smooth easy-listening gas. Maki Nomiya and Yasuharu Konishi blend and blush an all-Japanese soundtrack to the imaginary lifestyle of the international playboy/girl set. "Rolls Royce" is experimentally clever but strung on an annoying shrill that detracts from adorable bubbletunes like "La Depression," "Playboy Playgirl" and "A New Song." More schnazzy than riding a carpeted, mirrored elevator to heaven with Audrey's cosmopolitan in your hand...
...with spurts of dissonance that reflect the brutal realities apparent in much of the music. Listening further, though, you'll realize the same formula is repeated in every song--a few bars of the band, and within seconds, a mellow, whiny voice that enters and builds up to a shrill, screaming climax before dipping back into eerie sounds. The repetition made me wonder if I had listened to all eleven songs, or the same song again and again. Despite these flaws, the sounds of Swimmer are, strangely enough, quite soothing. Something to check out on a lazy, chill afternoon...
...barring a debatable ending, Dream of Life actually does stick. Perhaps it's because the characters, Isa (Eloise Bouchez) and Marie (Natacha Regnier), don't ask anything of us, aren't playing to us. They're not even always likable: Isa's rough-and-readiness can quickly acquire a shrill, desperate edge, and Marie is generally painful to watch. The two live in an apartment Marie (somewhat unofficially) looks after; the owners all perished except for a comatose girl, whose diary captivates Isa. Both in their early 20s, both living hand to mouth, perpetually between jobs, they strike...