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David Byrne Stars in ‘The Art of Sound,' L-Acoustics' New Documentary on ‘Audio's Hidden Language'

David Byrne Stars in ‘The Art of Sound,' L-Acoustics' New Documentary on ‘Audio's Hidden Language'

Yahoo5 hours ago

Professional audio technology specialists L-Acoustics, in collaboration with Black Meteor, have launched 'The Art of Sound,' a three-part documentary series that merges scientific discovery with artistic insight to explore sound's fundamental role in human evolution and its continuing influence.
David Byrne stars in the season premiere, 'Sound Is Fundamental,' which was directed by Andrew Lancaster ('Accidents Happen,' 'The Lost Aviator') and debuts today on 'The Art of Sound by L-Acoustics' channel on YouTube. Also featuring researchers Robyn Landau (Kinda Studios) and Dr. Erica Warp as they investigate our primal connection to sound and its fundamental role in human experience. Through EEG research conducted at L-Acoustics London, the episode reveals how our brains and emotions respond to various soundscapes and their impact on humans' wellbeing.
More from Variety
David Byrne Announces New Album, 'Who Is the Sky?,' and World Tour
Saoirse Ronan Goes Feral in Talking Heads' 'Psycho Killer' Video: Director Mike Mills Says 'I Don't Know How She Didn't Just Shrivel Up at the End'
David Byrne Regrets Talking Heads' Bitter Split: 'I Was a Little Tyrant'
'It's remarkable how much we can orient ourselves based on sound,' said Byrne. 'We can't close off our ears because that way, we can tell if something or someone is approaching. With your eyes closed, you can tell what kind of space you're in, what kind of room you're in, and what kind of landscape you're in. I think sound probably affects us emotionally and physically. You can sense something you can't see.'
Amber Mundinger, Global Director of Creative Engagement at L-Acoustics, added, 'With the release of 'The Art of Sound,' we aim to take viewers on a journey that not only celebrates the artistic and scientific elements of sound but emphasizes its profound impact on our collective experience. Sound is everywhere – it shapes our emotions, influences our well-being, and connects us as a community. As we explore how our relationship with sound influences everything from architecture to entertainment, we invite audiences to reflect on the often-overlooked power of this invisible force and its ability to bring us together.'
To view 'Sound is Fundamental,' visit https://www.youtube.com/@l.acoustics.artofsound.
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David Byrne Stars in ‘The Art of Sound,' L-Acoustics' New Documentary on ‘Audio's Hidden Language'
David Byrne Stars in ‘The Art of Sound,' L-Acoustics' New Documentary on ‘Audio's Hidden Language'

Yahoo

time5 hours ago

  • Yahoo

David Byrne Stars in ‘The Art of Sound,' L-Acoustics' New Documentary on ‘Audio's Hidden Language'

Professional audio technology specialists L-Acoustics, in collaboration with Black Meteor, have launched 'The Art of Sound,' a three-part documentary series that merges scientific discovery with artistic insight to explore sound's fundamental role in human evolution and its continuing influence. David Byrne stars in the season premiere, 'Sound Is Fundamental,' which was directed by Andrew Lancaster ('Accidents Happen,' 'The Lost Aviator') and debuts today on 'The Art of Sound by L-Acoustics' channel on YouTube. Also featuring researchers Robyn Landau (Kinda Studios) and Dr. Erica Warp as they investigate our primal connection to sound and its fundamental role in human experience. Through EEG research conducted at L-Acoustics London, the episode reveals how our brains and emotions respond to various soundscapes and their impact on humans' wellbeing. More from Variety David Byrne Announces New Album, 'Who Is the Sky?,' and World Tour Saoirse Ronan Goes Feral in Talking Heads' 'Psycho Killer' Video: Director Mike Mills Says 'I Don't Know How She Didn't Just Shrivel Up at the End' David Byrne Regrets Talking Heads' Bitter Split: 'I Was a Little Tyrant' 'It's remarkable how much we can orient ourselves based on sound,' said Byrne. 'We can't close off our ears because that way, we can tell if something or someone is approaching. With your eyes closed, you can tell what kind of space you're in, what kind of room you're in, and what kind of landscape you're in. I think sound probably affects us emotionally and physically. You can sense something you can't see.' Amber Mundinger, Global Director of Creative Engagement at L-Acoustics, added, 'With the release of 'The Art of Sound,' we aim to take viewers on a journey that not only celebrates the artistic and scientific elements of sound but emphasizes its profound impact on our collective experience. Sound is everywhere – it shapes our emotions, influences our well-being, and connects us as a community. As we explore how our relationship with sound influences everything from architecture to entertainment, we invite audiences to reflect on the often-overlooked power of this invisible force and its ability to bring us together.' To view 'Sound is Fundamental,' visit Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week 'Harry Potter' TV Show Cast Guide: Who's Who in Hogwarts? 25 Hollywood Legends Who Deserve an Honorary Oscar

Talking Heads — and ‘70s N.Y. music scene — deserve better than ‘Burning Down the House'
Talking Heads — and ‘70s N.Y. music scene — deserve better than ‘Burning Down the House'

Los Angeles Times

time8 hours ago

  • Los Angeles Times

Talking Heads — and ‘70s N.Y. music scene — deserve better than ‘Burning Down the House'

When an author decides to tackle the story of a popular and important band like Talking Heads, the contours of which are familiar to many of its fans, the remit should be to illuminate the unexplored corners, the hidden details and anecdotes that provide a more full-bodied narrative and ultimately bring the band into sharper relief than ever before. Unfortunately, Jonathan Gould has almost completely ignored this directive in 'Burning Down the House,' his new Talking Heads biography. This lumpy book, full of redundant stories and unnecessary detours that provide little illumination but plenty of needless bulk, lacks participation by the group's members and is not the biography that this great and important band deserves. As fans of the Heads already know, three of the four members met as students at the Rhode Island School of Design in the mid-'70s, children of privilege with artsy aspirations and not much direction. David Byrne came from Baltimore by way of Scotland, a socially awkward dabbler in conceptualist experiments with photography and a veteran of various mediocre cover bands. It was drummer Chris Frantz who enlisted Byrne to join one such band; bassist Tina Weymouth, Frantz's girlfriend and the daughter of a decorated Navy vice admiral, played bass. They were an anti-jam band and pro-avant; the first decent song they came up with was a shambolic version of what became 'Psycho Killer,' with Weymouth contributing the French recitatif in the song's bridge. For the emergent Heads, timing was everything. When Frantz signed the lease on a spacious loft on Chrystie Street in East Village in October 1974, he had unwittingly found the practice space where the three musicians would hone their craft. The loft was also a short walk to CBGB, soon to become the proving ground of New York's punk revolution and the Heads' primary live performance venue at the start of their career. In March 1975, Byrne, Weymouth and Frantz attended a gig by Boston's Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers at the Kitchen, an arts collective space in Soho, and it showed them a new way to approach their music. Richman, 'who dressed like a kid that everyone laughed at in high school,' influenced the band's preppy visual template and Byrne's clenched singing voice. Within a year of moving to the city, Talking Heads had found its look, sound and favored club. When Frantz bumped into Modern Lovers bassist Ernie Brooks in a West Village Cafe, Frantz inquired about keyboardist Jerry Harrison; Brooks gave him Harrison's number, Harrison joined the band and the classic Talking Heads lineup was complete. What followed was a contract with Seymour Stein's label Sire and the band's collaboration with producer Brian Eno, beginning with its second album, 'More Songs About Buildings and Food.' By the time the band released 1980's groundbreaking 'Remain in Light,' Eno's role had expanded beyond his production duties. He was now writing songs with Byrne, which created friction within the band. When Byrne allegedly reneged on songwriting credits (the album listed 'David Byrne, Brian Eno and Talking Heads,' rather than the individual band members), it created a rift that never healed, even as the band was selling millions of copies of its follow-up 'Speaking in Tongues' and the soundtrack to the Jonathan Demme concert film 'Stop Making Sense.' The final act was recriminatory, as Byrne commanded an ever greater share of the spotlight while the other members quietly seethed. The band's final album, 'Naked,' was its weakest, and Talking Heads dissolved in 1991, after Byrne removed himself from the lineup to explore outside projects. Gould does a serviceable job of telling the Heads' story in a book that arrives 50 years after the band's first gig at CBGB. Curiously, for someone who has tasked himself with explaining Manhattan's late '70s downtown renaissance, Gould regards many of the key players in that scene with derision bordering on contempt. Gould refers to Richard Hell, a prime architect of New York punk, as a mediocrity whose 'singing, songwriting and bass playing remained as pedestrian as his poetry.' Patti Smith's music 'verged on a parody of beat poetry,' while the vastly influential Velvet Underground, a band that made New York punk possible, is hobbled by its 'pretensions to hipness, irony and amorality.' Even Chris Frantz's drumming is 'exceptionally unimaginative.' Gould is also careless with his descriptors. Jonathan Richman's band displays a 'willful lack' of commercial instinct, the Heads assert a 'willful conventionality' to their stage appearance, Johnny Ramone is a 'willfully obnoxious' guitarist and so on. It's hard to fathom how a biographer intent on cracking the code of one of rock's seminal bands can do so with so much contempt for the culture that spawned it. An inquiring fan might want to go to Will Hermes' 2011 book 'Love Goes to Buildings on Fire' for a more nuanced and knowledgeable portrait of the creative ferment that made the Heads possible. As for a biography of Talking Heads, we are still left with a lacuna that Gould has unfortunately not filled. Weingarten is the author of 'Thirsty: William Mulholland, California Water, and the Real Chinatown.'

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