If you’re a designer and you haven’t been following the work of Jesse Bennett-Chamberlain, then you’re doing yourself a disservice.  The man’s got a great eye for both detail and simplicity, which means his designs remain interesting time and again without overwhelming a person with needless complexity (as evidenced by his recent redesign of the ExpressionEngine website).

So it follows that the recent redesign of his personal website, 31Three, would be no less fantastic.

I’m especially enamored with the new look of his blog, which as I mentioned before, packs a lot of information—blog entries, blogroll, job listings, etc.—into a single space without seeming the least bit overbearing.  Much of that is due to his color scheme, which is incredibly pleasant on the eyes (especially the atmospheric imagery in the header), and a very judicious use of shadows.

Mind you, I’ve never met a drop shadow I didn’t like.  But Bennett-Chamberlain’s are especially nice and do what drop shadows should do—serve as highlighters and separators, but the key here is subtlety.

Take a look through the new design, and be sure to check out his portfolio, which is chock full of simple, yet gorgeous work (such as Dalit Freedom Network and The City Church).  Sigh… as with all great redesigns, part of me wants to hang up my copy of BBEdit in shame and part of me wants to roll up my sleeves and do my best to learn—and (hopefully) top it.

Andy Whitman on Jerry Falwell’s legacy:

I couldn’t stand the man, although I admit my grudging admiration for some of the things he accomplished. He stood for some things that were right, and he stood for some things that were wrong, but at least in his public life he mostly stood up and yelled shrilly. For what it’s worth, I have the same tendencies. Speaking the truth in love is the damndest thing, and I frequently fall on one side or the other, and often enough fail at both. I suspect he was a great man, in both the great good and the great evil he accomplished. God grant him peace and eternal life. I hope and I pray that I am nothing like him, and I see every day how much I follow in his footsteps.

On a related note, Larry Flynt eulogizes Falwell:

I’ll never admire him for his views or his opinions. To this day, I’m not sure if his television embrace was meant to mend fences, to show himself to the public as a generous and forgiving preacher or merely to make me uneasy, but the ultimate result was one I never expected and was just as shocking a turn to me as was winning that famous Supreme Court case: We became friends.

Bill Maher, Christopher Hitchens, and others may dance on the man’s grave all they want.  As for me, I’ll try to meditate on the above articles—one by a favorite critic of mine and the other by an (in)famous pornographer—as well as scripture as I wrestle with my own reactions.  Not just with regards to Falwell and his death, but towards death in general—seeing as how it’s decided to come inside, make itself comfortable, and take away one of mine this week.

Death lays us all low—it’s part of being in the brotherhood of man—and if nothing else, that should strike humility into our hearts even as we reach for the shovels, exhume the body, dissect the legacy, and lay out all that someone has done for the world to see, examine, judge, condemn, gloat over, celebrate, and decry.

Someday, the same will be done for the rest of us.  And however justified it might be, however necessary it might be, it’s still a sobering thought.

I suppose it could be argued that the fact that I once played in a band with two members of Spring Gun might somewhat color or bias my opinion of their music.  But even if we’d had a big falling out, the knock down, drag out kind you only really see on shows like “Behind The Music,” I’d still be forced to admit that their music is really damn good.

The six tracks on their new self-released EP, Lover Slain, contain all manner of influences.  There’s a little classic U2 in the chiming guitar tones, a love for volcanic climaxes a la Mogwai, a whee bit of Grizzly Bear-style psychedelia—and is that a little My Morning Jacket-esque whimsy I hear now and again?  But the foursome do a fine, fine job of synthesizing all of those sounds into a style all their own that is affecting, lively, exciting, and perhaps most importantly, joyous (just listen to “Crystal”‘s lovely ukelele strains and swaying climax).

I now feel a little ashamed that I’ve yet to see the boys in concert, despite only living 45 minutes away from Omaha, where they play many of their shows.  But hopefully, I’ll get to experience the crescendoes of “Good Kings” or “Three Rings” in person soon (and if I know Nate at all, they’ll be freakin’ louder than loud).

So kudos to old friends, and for what it’s worth, I’m really proud of and excited for you guys.

I’ve really been slacking off on migrating all of Opus’ old music reviews to ExpressionEngine since I made the switch back in December of 2006.  I’ve now got my ass back in gear and have be making slow, but steady progress with the archives (700+ done, 300 left to go).

Working my way through the old reviews, some of them originally written back in my college days when Opus was a struggling webzine, has been quite the nostalgic experience.  I’ve come across many reviews of musicians and bands who have since, for the most part, faded into obscurity.  Indeed, the reviews here on Opus are some of the few online documents that might exist for these artists and their music (which makes me all the more anxious to get the reviews back on the site).

One of these artists is The Waterfall Effect, the ambient/shoegazer project of John Kupchik. The Waterfall Effect released a self-made album entitled Souvenir From A Dream back in 2001, as well as a couple of earlier EPs such as Japanese Heterophony.

But that was all six years ago, and there’s been nary a musical peep from Kupchik since (but he has a pretty good excuse for the silence—getting his PhD and teaching classes at the University of Hawai’i).  However, it looks like the silence might end this summer.  According to his MySpace page, some new recordings have been worked on.  What’s more, a release is planned for the summer of 2007.

There aren’t any new songs posted on his MySpace page, but you can listen to one track from Souvenir From A Dream, and one from a 1998 EP entitled Parallel Thoughts (which I knew nothing about until now).

I can point out the exact moment when Spider-Man 3 went right down the crapper for me.  It was when Peter Parker, who had recently undergone an emo-ification, somehow forgot that outtakes belong on the DVD and started strutting his stuff through New York City a la Saturday Night Fever.  And then decided to follow that up with the unforgiveable busting of some moves in Mary Jane Watson’s jazz club.

Perhaps if Parker’s strutting and dancing had been anything like this, then maybe Spider-Man 3‘s rampant worldwide success would’ve been justified:

Come of think of it, this is actually better than the whole of Superman Returns as well.  Sigh, if only I’d known beforehand.  I could’ve saved myself twenty bucks.

What’s the best part about the new and exclusive trailer for the upcoming Transformers movie?  The part that actually got me a little teary-eyed from all of the geeky giddiness welling up inside?  It’s the fact that, during Optimus Prime’s transformation sequence, they actually included the “transformation sound” from the old cartoons (it’s roughly at the 1:38 mark).

You may now commence with the wedgies. Just make sure you watch the trailer in HD with the volume turned way up, okay?

A lot of folks have been giving Michael Bay and Co. grief for all of the changes that have been made (i.e. giving Optimus Prime flames).  And yet, it seems like the filmmakers are really trying to strike a nice, solid balance between appealing to fanboy nostalgia (using Peter Cullen to provide Optimus Prime’s voice), and making the film’s action realistic and plausible (hence the changes to the robots’ iconic appearances).  At least, as realistic and plausible as a movie about giant, transforming robots duking it out here on Earth can be.

As far as I’m concerned, Bay can make all of the changes he wants so long as the end result kicks mucho hindquarters.  Which, if this trailer is any indication, it most certainly does—from Blackout and Scorponok’s initial desert attack, to Bonecrusher’s highway smashups, to Starscream’s various bits of bad-assery.  As such, any nods, references, and homages paid to the original cartoons that I knew and loved as a fourth grader… well, those will just be little extra dabs of icing on the cake.

Earlier, I wrote about the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, listing a bunch of films that I’d love to see were I there.  One film that I accidentally overlooked was Anton Corbijn’s Control, a biopic of Joy Division’s Ian Curtis.  Which has been garnering a lot of acclaim since its screening.  Twitch’s Todd Brown—who is currently living it up on the Riviera—has seen the film, and he’s also singing its praises:

You will be forgiven if you were expecting Anton Corbijn’s Control to be a vapid exercise in style over substance. After all if you take one of the world’s most in-demand music video directors and set him the task of shooting a biography of one of the most iconic rock figures of the 1980’s, one whose style is being openly nicked by a number of current acts, it is not unreasonable to think the urge towards posturing and gimmickry would be overwhelming. Thankfully Corbijn and his film are far, far better than that.

I did some scrounging around on YouTube and found a couple of clips related to the film.  The first is a feature from Dutch television that focuses more on Corbijn, but does contain some behind-the-scenes footage.  This second clip contains more footage from the film, but the quality isn’t all that great (the clip was captured with a camcorder).

Control is due for a wide release later this year.  I hope The Ross is paying attention.

One of the earliest reviews I ever wrote here on Opus was of Piano Magic’s entry into Darla’s “Bliss Out” series, and since then, I’ve been rather enamored with the music of Glen Johnson and his associates.

Over the course of ten years, seven albums, and countless EPs, singles, and compilations, the group has consistently straddled the line between shoegazer, goth, electronica, post-rock, and folk.  Sure, there have been a few missteps along the way—though I still contend that Writers Without Homes is a fine album—but few groups have a catalog as beguiling, mysterious, or beautiful as Piano Magic’s.  As such, my checking account instantly groans as soon as I catch word of a new Piano Magic album.

Which, this time around, is Part Monster, which is coming out May 22, 2007 on Important Records (Anoice, Merzbow, Acid Mothers Temple, Pauline Oliveros).

You can listen to two clips from the album—“The Last Engineer”, “Soldier’s Song”—both which are lovely.  Especially “The Last Engineer,” whose echoing piano notes and swooning guitars perfectly match Johnson’s tale of alienation (“I feel alone in the city/I feel alone in the crowd/I try to listen to reason/But the city’s too loud”).

Additionally, you can listen to the title track on Piano Magic’s MySpace page. Finally, Delusions Of Adequacy has posted a review, calling it a fearless and powerful piece of work.

In other Piano Magic-related news, Angele David-Guillou, whose dreamy vocals have graced many a recent Piano Magic song, recently released her solo debut under the moniker Klima.  And Glen Johnson has fellow Piano Magic member Cedric Pin have released an an album of electropop entitled We Don’t Just Disappear under the moniker Future Conditional.