Month: February 2021

Minecraft (Volume Alpha)

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Cover art for C418’s Minecraft (Volume Alpha)

Minecraft (Volume Alpha) is the first Minecraft soundtrack album and eighth album overall released by Daniel Rosenfeld, commonly known as C418. Volume Alpha is a piano-heavy ambient record with electronics and impressionism fused into it. It is a hallmark in the video game soundtrack discography.

Soundtracks are an interesting area in music because the quality of music usually declines when it is removed from the context it was initially in. For some soundtracks, a lot of their songs lose their meaning when they are removed from the game or movie because they are specifically designed to accompany that game or movie. This is not the case with Minecraft (Volume Alpha). Minecraft is currently the best-selling game of all time, sitting at roughly 200 million total sales, and some people believe the widespread success and acclaim might have been lost without the soundtrack.

When composing Volume Alpha, Rosenfeld believed that the music he was making needed to be applicable to almost every aspect of the game, while at the same time not taking up too much attention from the player. Tracks like “Sweeden” and “Subwoofer Lullaby” have these beautiful, divine, and peaceful melodies accompanied by this bass that just tiptoes around the melody which creates an extremely melancholic and meditative atmosphere. When players of the game are asked what feelings Minecraft gives them, they might respond with words like lonely, peaceful, or calm, and that is mostly due to the Volume Alpha soundtrack.

There have been many controversies surrounding the simplicity of this album, saying that the record is devoid of any complexities and lacks emotion. A lot of people making these arguments usually don’t have the context of the game to go along with the soundtrack. Minecraft is a very simple and self-explanatory game. You don’t need someone to teach it to you. You don’t need a tutorial. It feels natural. When you boot into a new world and the beginning notes of Haggstrom fade in, you begin to feel reborn.

The Minecraft soundtrack was a revolutionary piece of work that has inspired and paved a way for ambient music to come. It was one of the primary reasons why Minecraft become as popular as it did. To some people Minecraft (Volume Alpha) is simply peaceful piano ambient music that doesn’t impress, but to others it’s a masterfully crafted soundtrack that gives the game it’s meaning.

The Most Important Concept Album in Music

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Cover for The Dark Side of the Moon

Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon is one of the most important concept albums in music history. Dark Side is the eight studio album from the British rock band released on March 1, 1973. The album focuses on the themes of greed, time, and death.

The theme of greed is seen on the track “Money”. The song talks about the lengths that people will go for money and how they believe that all of their desires can be found through money. We see how people can be hypocrites when they say that they think money should be donated to charity or that money should be given to help others and not live a materialistic lifestyle through the words “Money, it’s a crime. Share it fairly, but don’t take a slice of my pie.” The group members have seen the music industry inside out and have seen how money is basically the driving force of the music industry.

The theme of time comes from the song “Time,” but is present throughout the entirety of the album. “Time” is about how time can quickly slip by without any realization until it’s too late.

“And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking. Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older. Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death.”

This lyric describes the constant struggle it is to keep up with time, and although it might seem like you’ve finally caught up with it, it takes over you again only to keep you chasing it. The band found themselves in a sort of rhythm releasing album after album and having to constantly jump through the hoops to make it work, that they forgot that time was passing them by.

The theme of death comes from the second to last song off the album, “Brain Damage.” It is on this song that we hear the title of the album sung in the lines “And if the band you’re in starts playing different tunes. I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon.” The dark side of the moon is a metaphor for death or the destruction of all positive emotions. If the band you’re in “starts playing different tunes,” you might begin to think that the good times are gone and that something you once knew so well is changing, dying. The members of Pink Floyd saw a previous bandmate of theirs slowly slip away as he turned to the dark side of the moon.

The Dark Side of the Moon is the fourth best-selling album of all time and will be cemented in history forever.

 

The Possibilities of Removing CO2 From the Atmosphere

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A portrayal of a possible structure used to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

 

It is well known how wide-scale an issue climate change is becoming, and our society is slowly realizing how catastrophic climate change might be for future generations. Despite how well known this issue has become, we are still failing to find solutions that best address the issue. Possible solutions such as a carbon tax and subsidization of renewable energy sources have been explored and even put into place all over the world. One solution that has not been fully considered/explored yet is the idea of actually removing the CO2 that is entering the atmosphere. The idea behind this is pretty self-explanatory. The CO2 is taken from the atmosphere and moved somewhere else. The solution seems easy in theory, but when applied to such a large scale such as the entire planet, lots of problems arise.

One of the more simple and easy to implement solutions is to create more forests. The process of photosynthesis already removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and trees are especially good at this process. When compared to some other solutions, using forests to remove carbon emissions can be “generally less than $50 per metric ton.” Not only is it far more cost-effective, but it also yields cleaner water and air in the process. One of the main issues with this though is that it takes up far too much valuable space such as farmland (WRI). Although, this farmland can still be put to use with soil that naturally stores carbon. Still, we do not have enough evidence to show the long-term effects of using soil carbon, and since it would extremely expensive and time-consuming to inhibit the 900 million acres of farmland in the U.S. with soil carbon, it would be risky to do so.

An interesting solution that would stop the problem at its source has been designed by some MIT engineers. This new design can “work on the gas at virtually any concentration level, even down to the roughly 400 parts per million currently found in the atmosphere.” This is rather important because older designs could only work at very high concentration levels and used almost anywhere. This new method is also “significantly less energy-intensive and expensive.” We have yet to see this new system in action, but these researchers have created a new company named Verdox and hope to have a pilot-scale plant within the next few years (MIT News).

The more difficult aspect of removing CO2 from the atmosphere seems to be where to store it. One of the most hopeful and well-established solutions is to store the excess carbon dioxide in the ground. Norway has already been practicing this by storing it in their oil fields. But this has proven to be controversial because storing CO2 in the ground can lead to earthquakes and even leakages back into the atmosphere. Iceland on the other hand has been exploring an option that involves CO2 being sequestered into porous basalt rock to be mineralized into stone (Eco Watch). These methods however are extremely costly, costing upwards of $650 per ton, which is more than 1000% more than what forests are already capable of.

As you can see, the act of removing and storing excess carbon dioxide is not simple and straightforward. Some methods that aren’t as costly as others such as forestation require a bountiful amount of land and do not seem feasible in the short term. Other methods that can be implemented rather quickly are extremely costly and might not be worth the cost. Still, it seems that politicians and authoritarian figures like to think in the short term, so it is hard for them to justify such a time-consuming and costly project. It is up to the younger generations to hold these politicians and authoritarian figures accountable for their actions. We have to understand that we cannot sit by and wait for them to do something, because they will usually do the wrong things. Luckily, with the recent inauguration of Joe Biden, we have seen him sign back into the Paris Climate Agreement, which agrees that the U.S. will reduce carbon emissions by 25% by 2025. Hopefully, we will start to see a change in the attitudes of our leaders.

Turn On the Bright Lights

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Turn On the Bright Lights is the debut album from the New York group Interpol released on August 20, 2002. One of the first albums to come out of the post-punk revival, Turn On the Bright Lights is a melancholic dive into the mind of members Paul Banks and Daniel Kessler. It is a revolutionary record that helped to shape indie rock for the coming decades and inspired many artists such as The National.

Turn On the Bright Lights is an album about loss and regret. The rolling bass and artificial strings on “Untitled,” the album’s opening track, kicks off the rest of the anxious and bittersweet 46 minutes. Paul Banks is promising to his loved one that he will make a change for the better eventually when he says “Oh, I will surprise you sometime, I’ll come around. When you’re down.” The following track, Obstacle 1, is probably Interpol’s defining song and is where they get their many comparisons to Joy Division. Although the song is open to interpretation, Obstacle 1 was said to be written after the group saw a report of a model who committed suicide by stabbing herself in the neck. The song warns of the harm of obsessions over physical appearance and what can happen mentally when you age and start to look less like you did when you were young. The horrific lyrics combined with aggressive and gripping vocals, rolling base, and explosive guitars leave the listeners uneasy yet craving more.

The two dark previous tracks set the mood for the third song on the record, NYC, which sets out to depict New York City post 9/11. It is in this song where we hear the lyrics “It is up to me now, turn on the bright lights.” Paul Banks has a deep admiration for the city and hopes it will eventually rebuild itself, but also believes that his fate is ultimately decided by himself and it’s up to him to “Turn On the Bright Lights.”

Although the group managed to release a somewhat enjoyable record following Turn On the Bright Lights, most fans were disappointed with how quickly Interpol fell off the tracks and like to think that if Interpol had remained in the underground, they would have continued to release records on the same level as this one.

Björk

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Cover art for Vespertine by Björk
Vespertine by Björk

Björk, pronounced bee-yerk, is an artist who has constantly defied expectation. Björk is a female artist who was born and raised in the capital of Iceland. Having been obsessed with music since a very young age, she released her first album when she only just 11. Over the span of her 40-year career, she released 9 studio albums, been nominated for 15 Grammy’s, and been a primary influence for the art pop genre. Very few solo female artists have been able to accomplish what Björk has.

Her most accomplished album, Vespertine, is a beautiful combination of art pop and electronics used to create a sensual, ethereal, and bittersweet album that depicts the universe that is within every person. Björk herself is extremely introverted, so to her, Vespertine is a very internal, intimate, and personal album. The most notable song off the album, “Pagan Poetry”, is about Björk’s journey in discovering her emotional and physical desires as a human. As the song progresses, Björk hesitates when she is proposed to by her significant other because, like all other humans, her desires are complicated and cannot easily be understood even by herself. The song reaches a climax when her significant other is unable to help her understand her own desires and emotions because it is an understanding that must come from within herself. The song ends with Björk attempting to convince herself that she loves her significant other, but clearly not knowing if that’s actually what she wants.

An album released by her four years earlier, Homogenic, is in direct contradiction to “Pagan Poetry”. Homogenic is an album about rushing “headlong into a life lived to the fullest—an unbridled yearning for the sublime.” Whereas Vespertine felt a little warmer and more personal, Homogenic feels rather cold and anxious. The opening track off of Homogenic, “Hunter,” describes Björk’s newfound fame and popularity as the biggest name to come out of Iceland and how it has pushed her into wanting to take what’s hers, becoming a hunter. Homogenic feels more like an album about someone who knows what they want and who they are, but Vespertine feels like an album about someone who is uncertain of who they are, or who they want to become.

Although Björk has not released any new music that meets the level of Vespertine or Homogenic, she continues to release music today and hopes to continue into the future.

 

The Effectiveness of the Paris Climate Agreement

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Why the Paris Agreement is a model for 21st century global governance | World Economic Forum
International Leaders Standing Together at COP21 in 2015 (World Economic Forum)

There has been controversy surrounding the legislative that Joe Biden is passing since he’s been inaugurated. After less than 24 hours in office, Biden signed 15 executive orders, most of which were used to reverse Trump’s previous policies (BBC). One of which was an order to begin the process of rejoining the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. The Paris Climate Agreement is an international treaty designed to limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius. The United States’ role in the Paris Climate Agreement consists of having their emissions reduced by 25% by 2025. President Biden’s climate envoy tweeted out after the order was signed that by rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement, we were “restoring America’s credibility and commitment — setting a floor, not a ceiling, for our climate leadership” (Twitter). For most Democrats, or left-leaning citizens, this is seen as a huge win, but for a lot of Republicans, or left-leaning citizens, this is seen as a loss since Trump recently withdrew from the Paris Climate Agreement less than a year ago. –

In most arguments or discussions, the reasons why Democrats and Republicans disagree on joining the Paris Climate Agreement lies in the economy. Republicans tend to believe that economy is more important to keep stable, whereas Democrats believe that climate change will lead to a world that is very undesirable and hard for their children to live in. Although it might seem like in the long run, it would be more important to tackle climate change now and get ahead of it, Republicans are also voicing some important aspects. One idea to slow down the effects of climate change is to oppose a carbon tax. This would incentivize large producers of carbon to slow production and hopefully decrease carbon emissions. On the other hand, this could affect families who might be struggling financially because it would “it would increase energy prices across the board, hitting hardest at the families who are already struggling to pay their bills” (Scientific American). A carbon tax is not the only possible solution to slowing down climate change though.

One issue in which most Republicans and Democrats can believe in is the use of renewable energy sources. Democrats are somewhat pleased with this solution because it helps to cut down on the use of sources of energy that are not so environmentally friendly at a relatively cheap and easy cost. Republicans are somewhat pleased with this solution because the introduction of renewable energy sources will grow and introduce more jobs into the economy. Although it is not a perfect solution. Democrats do not believe this solution will solve the problem fast enough since this will not completely ban the use of nonrenewable energy sources. Republicans do not like that this may take away the jobs of families who work with nonrenewable energy sources.

As for the Paris Climate Agreement itself, both sides have different viewpoints on what should be done, but the disagreement comes down to how much money it will cost the U.S. Trump had stated in 2017 that the Paris Climate Agreement would cost the U.S. “$3 trillion by 2040 and $2.7 million jobs by 2025” (NRDC). This has since been proven false by fact-checkers and one study done in 2018 showed that failing to meet the requirements of the Paris Climate Agreement might cost the U.S. $6 trillion in the coming decades. Although Republicans have another concern and that lies with allowing China to become the more powerful nation. Unwinding the effects of climate change would mean less production and could allow China to gain an upper hand over the U.S. in the short term. Democrats argue that this will pay off much more for the U.S. in the long run as China will suffer for not reducing its carbon emissions.

Overall, there are many sides to the argument over the consequences of the Paris Climate Agreement. Although, most Democrats and Republicans believe that climate change is a real and daunting threat that the world will have to deal with eventually. To both sides, it’s mostly a matter of time.