Word: sonic
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...someone who composes his music from recombinations of pre-existing sound fragments, a remix album is certainly appropriate. Subliminal Minded, DJ Spooky's follow-up to last year's Riddim Warfare, combines remixes, sound collages and general mayhem in a sonic soup that is equal parts John Cage, Sun Ra, Grandmaster Flash, and Aphrodite. DJ Spooky, a. k. a. That Subliminal Kid, a. k. a. Paul D. Miller, is a founder of the New York illbient sound, which blends the urban, rhythmic edge of hip-hop, dub and jungle with the abstract, ambient noise techniques of French musique concrte...
HATS OFF! It's only a first step, but scientists may be a hair closer to a cure for baldness. Using injections of a gene--nicknamed the Sonic hedgehog--they have been able to awaken hair follicles from a resting state and force them into an active one. Alas, that's just in mice. Whether the therapy works on human pates remains to be seen. One potential problem: the Sonic hedgehog gene is linked to basal-cell carcinoma, a common, treatable skin cancer...
...Fragile has very little fat on it, and in the age of the Backstreet Boys, it courageously dares to not pander to radio. The album has an organic feel, with little of the machine-like velocity and crushing density of Spiral. Reznor leaves breaks in the sonic wall this time, allowing the songs to breathe. He drives home a subtle message of uplift by filling the open spaces with soft, surprising textures rarely found in rock: cellos, violins, a ukulele here and there, and a tinkling piano--many of those played by Reznor himself, who also does most...
Good thing I did. Dreamcast can be, well, a dream: in graphics, sound and especially speed, it's a quantum leap ahead of the 64-bit consoles. If anything, it may be a little too brisk. Take Sonic Adventure, a revamped version of that Sega classic Sonic the Hedgehog, which the company is marketing as the quintessential Dreamcast game. The visuals are 3-Delicious--Sonic's footprints appear in the sand as he zooms by, while the sun glints in the lens just as it should. But dismal attempts at midair loop-the-loops left me cursing at controls that...
Then again, I'm hardly the target audience for Sonic Adventure. Much more my sort of thing is a fishing game called Get Bass. Your aim is to reel in a catch within a time limit, using a rodlike controller that vibrates every time you get a bite. The best bits: underwater shots of your bait, and a kind of fishy artificial intelligence that determines whether the bass will fall for it. I found myself returning to Get Bass again and again--and I'm no angler...