Jake Moore

Stumbling upon the barren, minimalist, relatively clean FiDi park (once again a venue for investment bankers sitting and eating Subway sandwiches alone) it’s easy to forget Zuccotti’s status as a living organism just weeks ago.

NYU Local photographer Julia Berke shares her retrospective of the movement. Taken from an insider’s perspective and shot on film, these images seem somewhat divorced from more sensationalist Zuccotti photojournalism.

Photo gallery after the jump.

Looks best in fullscreen.

Photos by Julia Berke

The band Widowspeak, founded by two NYU seniors, played a small show at the Broome Residential College last Sunday. The show was hosted by faculty fellow in residence Bryan Waterman (who teaches Writing New York in CAS).

The band also answered questions in a Q&A run by WNYU DJ (and former NYU Local writer) Jenn Pelly. They talked a little bit about what it’s like trying to make it as a band in Brooklyn, their plans after graduation, and the music scene in Tacoma, WA, where two of the band’s members grew up listening to and playing in the local grunge scene.

Widowspeak is comprised of Rob Thomas (guitar), Michael Stasiak (drums), and Molly Hamilton (rhythm guitar, vocals). Rob and Michael are both NYU seniors. “We both lived in Hayden. The great thing is, you guys actually know what that means,” Michael said during the Q&A.

“I think we actually met when you were doing your laundry. You had a great moustache at the time,” said Rob.

In a story that is typical of many NYU musicians, Michael and Rob frequently talked about starting a band, but never actually played together until the summer after their junior year, when Michael and Molly (who were both involved in a label called Dear Records in high school) started a band and realized they needed a guitarist. They then began to play shows around New York, mostly in Brooklyn.

“The Brooklyn scene is surprisingly accessible. I think people give it less credit than it’s due,” said Michael. “It’s not like it’s the League of Extraordinary Indie Shitheads, or something.”

Widowspeak has just finished recording their debut album, which will come out some time this summer on the Captured Tracks label. It features dreamy vocals from Hamilton and a melodies and mellow rock rhythms inspired by the 1950s and 90s.

For many, as students and Americans and New Yorkers, there was only one appropriate response to the news of Bin Laden’s death– a return to where it began. For those who didn’t or couldn’t leave their rooms last night, the constant stream of images and video piped from the celebrations at Ground Zero to our Facebook and Twitter feeds provided a surreal, removed feeling of collective experience.

Click through for photos from last night, submitted by both NYU Local writers and photographers and dozens of readers who found themselves at WTC.

Photos by Amalyah Oren, Priya Vij, and contributing photographer George Brooks.

More photos from NYU Local:

Reader-submitted images from the celebration:

There is a stock joke/thought that is overused when we talk about Morgan Freeman talking–”That man should narrate my life. Like hearing the voice of God.” But while Freeman’s god-narration can tell us that Penguins are Marching and It Is Beautiful, narration by filmmaker Werner Herzog would tell us that Penguins are Questioning Their Mortality to the Extent That They’re Already Dead, and that Looking Into the Eyes of a Penguin is like Gazing into the Vast Abyss of Time.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the first real 3D documentary film of note, finds Herzog mining for both metaphors and the origins of human creativity in a cavern in southern France.

The man has made more than 40 films, but the Chauvet cave is one of the more perfect vessels he’s used to inject with his musings–It houses the earliest existing examples of cave art–32,000 years old. And in this case, “vessel” is literal–with the 3D, this cave has a spatial feel that he couldn’t have done any other way. But Herzog doesn’t poke us in the face with gimmicky 3D objects flying out of the screen, he burrows into it, revealing hundreds of images. He talks to just the right intelligent people about just the right things–their insights and his build flesh-and-blood prehistoric artists with only dusty paint-daubed cave walls as materials for construction.

But for something exploring laughably-huge questions like “What is human-ness?”, Cave never feels preachy or stale. While Herzog’s crazed quest for allegories and metaphors for human progress is sometimes hilariously overreaching (something about albino crocodiles and a nuclear power plant), he never falls into the trap of lapsing into Freeman-style, unnecessary broad strokes. When he’s not hypothesizing and provoking, he falls silent and lets us vibe (with operatic voices as a soundtrack) to the work of artists so old they may not have been entirely Sapiens yet.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams opens tomorrow night at the IFC Center and Lincoln Plaza Cinemas.

Although it may seem democratic in its distribution and quality of study areas, Bobst Library contains a clear “best place” to hear oneself think. Use the following directions to find the tiny locus that amplifies, via freak acoustics, even the tiniest whisper to what many would consider an unmanageable and frightening volume.

Direct your gaze (the trajectory of your voice following) to the center point between items 110 and 112 [Editor's Note: At press time Cheetos and Doritos, respectively] within the vending machine sixth from the right of the entrance to the food rotunda on Lower Level One. Eyes fixed on this point, back slowly away from the machine. If it is necessary to “cover” the peculiarity of your actions in light of bystanders (microwaving, buying from the very machine that is the object of your attentions, staring), adopt a look of revulsion, subvocalize words such as “ammonia,” “high fructose corn syrup,” or “monosodium glutamate” as you tread backward to simulate a renouncement of processed foods or a deep-set personal bias.

Would-be companions pacified, direct your gaze downward to the tiles of the floor without breaking focus or spatial orientation. You will need to triangulate your location and direction, making use of the tiles:

1. Use left-most wall of the recessed vending machine alcove as a reference. Note tile directly beneath its edge (usually home to a small waste bin).
2. Count backward four tiles–because tiles are offset, count first the tile beneath the recessed nook, then the tile behind it and to its left, then move to the tile behind and to the right of this tile, and so on. This avoids veering off-course diagonally.
3. The fourth tile has dark streaks on the middle of its right side. These streaks terminate on the rightmost edge of the tile in a dark splotch. Place the toe of your left shoe behind this splotch.
4. Place your right shoe in line with your left–you should now be straddling the crack between the original tile and the tile to the direct right of it.

Now, standing close to the center of the rotunda, renew your gaze between item 110 and item 112 and vocalize. Begin with very small consonant-heavy sounds, gradually increasing in volume and guttural quality–enthusiasm sharply rising and blood aggressively pulsing in your temples–as you develop a sense of the power of the acoustic condensing, which amplifies the sounds you make extremely precisely, as if the words you are speaking are not leaving your head and reentering your ears but are channeled directly into your brain to form a personal and quasi-internal monologue with exquisite fidelity. After attaining the proper volume control, this magnification will only be apparent to your person; little attention will be paid from microwavers/passers-by, providing relative restraint is maintained.

At the Subway restaurant near Lafayette and Canal last night, there was a wispy/spindly young white kid with glasses and Jansport backpack–he spotted another kid with a similar description and made an assumption: “Are you here [here meaning near Santos Party House] for Odd Future?” I was wearing Brooks Brothers and Oliver Peoples, I’m white and 21 years old. It seemed incredible that spindlykid could type me as a fan of a pint-sized (median age roughly 17) black rap collective grounded in skate culture, swag, and winking satanism. Until we went inside, anyway, and saw the whiteout.

OFWGKTA stands for Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All. A brief unofficial and semi-ethnographic cataloging of the crowd, and somewhat of a review:

1. One drummer for the popular indie band Vampire Weekend and female companion
2. A blogger and Esquire magazine employee with a large twitter following
3. Most of Das Racist
4. A white majority
5. A fan tweeting from the front row about the tameness of the crowd in comparison to previous Odd Future audiences in Washington, DC
6. At least three men wearing vests
7. A man with a Cape Cod sweatshirt, pridefully worn, a Ron Howard haircut
8. An eight-year-old child, unsupervised
9. A cat-eyed couple in their mid-twenties with matted dread-locked hair, apparently under some influence, kissing during lines about murder

As the show started, lyrics were shouted in unison to one of Odd Future’s leader Tyler the Creator’s more popular songs. Climbing on top of towers of speakers with wiry arms, he clung to the ceiling with an easygoing ghoulishness. The unison-shouting: “Come on kids, fuck that class and hit that bong / Let’s buy guns and kill those kids with dads and mom / With nice homes, 401Ks, and nice ass lawns.” I’d never condemned my lawn before, but it seemed just. The amount of self-loathing depends on the choice to be shouted at or to shout with.

A lyric: “I’m stabbin’ any bloggin’ faggot hipster with a Pitchfork.”

But it’s a joke we’re all supposed to be in on, maybe. The fun calls for anarchy and lyrics that can serve as a suitable vehicle for the logical extreme of white guilt gave way to silliness. Tyler’s asthmatic lungs were bothered by all the smoke from drugs, the asthmatics in the audience cheered as he asked for an inhaler—a donation skittered onto the stage. Not everyone was feeling generous—Tyler’s shoe was stolen from this braggart after Tyler threw himself into the crowd.

Another song, having grown popular in the past week or so partially because of its music video featuring Tyler eating a cockroach, came near the end. This was a favorite.

Tyler the Creator – Yonkers – NYC – 2/15/11 from Brook Bobbins on Vimeo.

The last selection was new. Tyler mentioned that it’s a song he wants concerned mothers to contact Bill O’Reilly about. We all got frenzied quickly, mostly shouting with. Having fallen to the floor in mid-mosh, mid-screams of “Kill people / Burn shit / Fuck school,” I righted myself feeling the taste of blood. On closer inspection it was a tiny inner-lip cut—with all these cameras and self-loathing, I sort of wished it was bigger.

Odd Future will perform on Jimmy Fallon tonight, will meet more of white America including some moms.

The NYU Program Board’s aptly-titled F**cking Valentine’s Day hardcore show–featuring Baltimore’s Double Dagger and the titular Canadian band Fucked Up–transmogrified Kimmel’s bathrooms (read: men’s room) into a quagmire of spilled loko, piss, and vomit. In E&L, bones were broken. Program director Lauren Monaco was kicked in the face only to mosh still harder. Stage dives were constant, eventually yawn-inducing in their regularity. Some music happened as well, and cupcakes were complimentary and delicious. (Video after the jump).

We’ve decided to provide a public service on this Valentine’s Day by giving you images and video of an angry borderline-obese man (Fucked Up lead singer/shouter Damian Abraham) through which to vicariously vent anti-consumerist and anti-love anger. We recorded one of their new songs, “Two Snakes,” which Damian claims is his favorite, ever.

Fucked Up — “Two Snakes” from NYU Local on Vimeo.

It’s too bad that Jamie xx’s moniker is so rooted in the band (hipster-cliche punching bag The xx) for which he’s better known–his minimal dubstep compositions are good to the point of making his Mercury Prize-winning trio seem like a side project. As a primer, listen to Jamie’s precise remixes of Florence and the Machine, Jack Penate, and his day job band. He plays damn good Macbook, so it’s strange and brilliant that he’s decided to collaborate with an intensely natural instrument–the scratchy 61-year-old throat of Gil Scott-Heron.

In February, Scott-Heron came from (what felt like) nowhere to release “I’m New Here”, his first album in thirteen years. His near-spoken word tracks confirmed his status as rap-forebear-royalty. This week’s Tuesday Track “NY is Killing Me” is one of the products of Jamie’s reworking of 13 tracks from the Gil Scott-Heron “I’m New Here” sessions. The remix album (“We’re New Here”) is out February 21st, but the original “New York is Killing Me,” featuring Nas, is also worth a listen.

Jamie’s version is ambient and minimal and takes a while to sneak up on you, but makes great bleary-eyed twelfth-hour-of-your-all-nighter music–the title is all too appropriate for this point in the semester. Check out the video above, or buy the track here.