10A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, March 30, 2006 ARTS MUSIC FROM BEYOND Looks like someone's not all that anymore. 'Snakes' can't escape, pre-release buzz By Anthony Baber Daily Arts Writer Music Column Audiophile MIKE HULSEBUS/Daily TOP: An Interior diagram of the Buddha Machine. ABOVE: The device's Innocent exterior. Regard: an unassuming colored plastic box about the size of two cassette tapes stacked on top of each other. There's a little switch on one side, jacks for plugging in adapters or head- phones and what looks like a volume dial on top. In the middle of the box is a circular pattern of holes not unlike a speaker. So what the hell does this little plastic box do? Does it release little puffs of freesia- scented powder into the air? Does it keep roaches from scurrying across your kitchen counter? Is it the gray- market answer to the iPod? Sort of, actually - but it's about a million times cooler and more imagi- native than a supercharged MP3 player could ever be. The device is called the A Buddha Machine, and if you give it a chance, it can totally change the way you listen to music. ALEXA Yes, it plays music, but nothing so outmoded as tunes or songs or even JON is where I picked up my machine, but you can also find them online. The device will set you back about $23. It might sound like a novelty, and in one sense of the word, that's what the Buddha Machine is - a ,.new gadget for the aurally inclined, something that's so alien to our world of multimillion-dollar beats and career-spanning boxed sets as to be at once momen- tarily intriguing and easily dismissed. But here's where the device sheds its status as a nov- elty and enters the realm of cultural text. Inside its hard-plastic shell, resting beatifi- cally amid wires and connectors, is a tiny statue of the portly, smiling deity. As an avowed atheist and devotee of camp, how could I not love a cheap piece of plastic imbued with such spiritual significance? For those of us who follow release dates like some follow draft picks, for whom the occupation of listener initiates one into a NDRA world in which a maze of sub-subgenres, side projects, b-sides, live DVDs and the ES like must be navigated and assessed, the experience of relinquishing control to the Buddha Machine's randomly selected, muted ululations can be liberating from the connotations of popular music. At its best, the machine allows the listener to become a participant, drawing meaning out of the endless stream of random, dark pulses and birdlike flutters it amplifies. Of course, the Buddha Machine's loops aren't com- pletely random. They range from loosely rhythmic pulses to sonic impacts that bear a resemblance to the slow, methodical tempo of crashing waves. One of the more spirited themes sounds like it might've been made by a piano, but there's too much fuzz and fog sur- rounding the core tone to figure it out. As a classically trained music student (tuba - eight years and counting), the device's mechanized randomness represents to me a sort of forbidden hedonism, a respite from the formal discipline and strictly imposed guidelines that are built into inter- preting the compositions of others. The Buddha Machine even goes a step further, removing the opportunity for manipulation by an artist entirely. There's no author to these sounds - the only ownership can be claimed by Fm3 (wwwfm3.com cn), the Chinese company that makes the machine and the meaning of whose website's text I'm blissfully ignorant. While I'll champion the significance of the three- minute pop song just as heartily as any other music lover, there's something to be said for hookless, riffless, wordless, unbranded sound. Free from the connotations of major and minor, key signature and time signature, you're free to meditate, zone out; the sounds are fuel for the listener's imagination. You can actually hear yourself think. Even to those of you who already have an ear for the avant-garde or just like really weird shit, the idea of turning your ears over to the Buddha Machine might seem pointless. But if you want to know what it's like to hear music that doesn't end until the batteries run out, that doesn't tell you what it's "about," that is the germ, not the product, of inspiration, ditch that other plastic musicmaking box and open your ears. - Find the Buddha Machine as useful enlightening as charming as Jones? Share the love and spiritual enlightenment with her at almajo@umich.edu. If the filmmaking debacle that was "Freddy Vs. Jason" taught us any- thing, it's that the novelty of a bad title - one that unapologetically sums up an entire movie - can sometimes tap into our cultural fascination with the truly and irredeemably horrible. "Snakes on a Plane" can only be interpreted as a movie about snakes on a plane, and that's exactly what's caught the nation's attention. The film tells the story of a flight over the Pacific gone terribly wrong. David R. Ellis ("Final Destination 2") is at the helm of the film, which has buzz louder than a Chicago bar- bershop. Thanks to overactive blogs, comically manufactured T-shirts and the premature honor of Wired magazine's "Worst Movie of 2006," fanatics are already camping out in front of theaters. The. kicker: The film doesn't even open until around August. Although the movie was basical- ly finished, filmmakers brought it back in for a reshoot in an attempt to bump it up from its PG-13 rating to an R. Viewers can expect graphic scenes of reptilian attacks and sex in the bathroom abruptly interrupted by a python (and I don't mean in his pants, ladies). The film also carries the appeal of boasting a sense of humor mixed with a thirst for action. With Samuel L. Jackson ("The Man") in a leading role, we can expect multiple scenes of loud profanity and maybe, if we're lucky, a snake getting shot in the face. And with the casting of lesser-known comic Kenan Thompson (TV's "Satur- day Night Live"), we can also expect a sensational reaction to a snake crawl- ing up his arm that inevitably ends up overdrawn and over-the-top. Insiders have made numerous attempts to circulate more media cov- erage around the film, and nurture the idea that it's not as asinine a waste of time as critics predict. Josh Fried- man, a film industry screenwriter and journalist who was offered a chance to work on the script, started all the talk with an entry about the film on his popular blog www.hucksblog. blogspot.com. To date, the biggest media fren- zy over the film began with the announcement of Jackson being cast in his perennial role as a tough FBI agent. Jackson was enraged when rumors spread of a name change to "Pacific Air 121." In an interview with Collider, Jack- son said, "We're totally changing that back. That's the only reason I took the job: I read the title ... You either want to see it, or you don't." And apparently many Internet fans do. Chris Rohan of Bethesda, Md., created a hit R-rated audio trailer that playfully promotes the movie and title. "It's a genius title," Rohan told the Hollywood Reporter. "It's so stupid (that) it's great. It invites satire, but it's something you just love. It's some- thing I can't explain. You either get it or you don't." Jackson gets it. In the same inter- view with Collider, the actor enthused, " 'Snakes on a Plane,' man!" 0 01 vE tracks; while its sounds are mysteriously basic and its mass-produced, plastic parts almost toylike, the music that issues from the device is nothing like anything you've heard before. The machine plays nine tape loops of drones, pulses, wobbly glissandi and sonic fog. The sounds are difficult, if not impossible, to attribute to the instruments that made them; this is due in no small part to the almost-too-cheap-to-work speaker. I was intro- duced to the singular gadget by Ian Fulcher, an LSA lecturer and a core member of the experimental music group Drafted by Minotaurs, upon whom I now bestow infinite cool points. Schoolkids Records on State Street U II ...at Rush North Shore Medical Center, a progressive 265-bed acute care facility and one of the nation's leading research & teaching hospitals. Proudly serving Chicagoland with the greatest of care, we seek an equally dynamic leader to join our team as: Clinical Informatics & Outcomes Performance Manager Take a key role in determining/summarizing clinical outcomes by applying your knowledge of clinical informa- tion technologies, statistical analysis methodology and data management to this unique opportunity. Ideal candidate will possess an MS in Statistics, Biostatistics, Outcomes Performance or related field with seven great reasons to come to columbia college chicago this summer. 1. 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