How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz

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Music video essay mae­stro Poly­phon­ic is back. What I dig about his videos is that he takes on some of the true warhors­es of mod­ern pop­u­lar music and man­ages to find some­thing new to say. Or at least he presents famil­iar sto­ries in a new and mod­ern way to an audi­ence who may be hear­ing…

Every Hidden Detail of New York’s Classic Skyscrapers: The Chrysler, Empire State & Woolworth Buildings

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Cur­rent­ly, the tallest build­ings in New York City are One World Trade Cen­ter, Cen­tral Park Tow­er, and 111 West 57th Street. All of them were com­plet­ed in the twen­ty-twen­ties, and all of them have attract­ed com­ment, some­times admir­ing, some­times bewil­dered. But none of them, fair to say, yet exude the romance of the Wool­worth…

The Most Iconic Electronic Music Sample of Every Year (1990–2024)

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Hear a sec­ond or two of Ver­non Burch’s “Get Up,” and you’re back in 1990; of “Bal­ance and Rehearsal” from the JBL sound-test album Ses­sion, and you’re back in 1999; of Eddie Johns’ “More Spell on You,” and you’re back in 2001. What, you don’t know any of those songs? Per­haps you’re…

Why There Isn’t a Bridge from Italy to Sicily – And Why the 2,000-Year-Old Dream of Building the Bridge May Soon Be Realized

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We’ve all heard of the great Amer­i­can road trip. If you’ve ever dreamt of tak­ing a great Ital­ian road trip, you’ve sure­ly come across this inevitable hitch in the plan: you can’t dri­ve to Sici­ly. You can, of course, put your car on a fer­ry; you can even take a train that gets put…

Watch Dziga Vertov’s A Man with a Movie Camera: The 8th Best Film Ever Made

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Of all the cin­e­mat­ic trail­blaz­ers to emerge dur­ing the ear­ly years of the Sovi­et Union – Sergei Eisen­stein, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Lev Kuleshov – Dzi­ga Ver­tov (né Denis Arkadievitch Kauf­man, 1896–1954) was the most rad­i­cal.

Where­as Eisen­stein – as seen in that film school stan­dard Bat­tle­ship Potemkin –…