Due to inclement weather, shuttle service will be suspended after 1:30p Sunday December 8.

Safe travels!

 The lights drop and a single spotlight shines on a synthesizer set, covered by a large mosquito net.

As a small man wearing sunglasses and a grey hoodie walks out on stage, the audience cheers and claps their hands in anticipation for the beginning of a great show.

Brian De Graw or “bEEdEEgEE,” the drummer for the experimental group Gang Gang Dance, sits down beneath the mosquito net and plays this.

A quarter of the crowd loved it and began “jammin’ out.”

Another quarter was intrigued and slowly moved their head to the beat. But to the ordinary concert-goer who was excited for the main performer, Animal Collective, bEEdEEgEE was a strange collection of rattling rhythms, syncopated electronic beeps and an occasional dolphin noise. 

The indie music news blog Stereogum recently chose bEEdEEgEE’s new album SUM/ONE as their album of the week.

The article notes that DeGraw ”put together SUM/ONE alone, in his home studio in upstate New York, doing the whole thing as an experiment in planned-out music.” According to the music bloggers,

…when he’s recording on his own, there’s a sparse cleanliness to the way DeGraw uses these sounds; it’s almost like they’ve been graphed out. SUM/ONE is also very much a dance music album that thinks of itself as a dance music album.

Another writer applauds DeGraw  for inviting Lizzi Bougatsos of Gang Gang Dance to be featured on a song, but he is disappointed when Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip makes another track sound like his own than of bEEdEEgEE’s.

Between the half-dozen articles written about SUM/ONE, the following words are used to describe the album:

• windblown, propulsive house-music thump
• disco muscle
• oceanic swirl
• barefoot shamanic dancing
• deep R&B piano lines meeting trap beats meeting straight-ahead electro-pop meeting hazy ambience
• feel-good balearic house
• slippery rhythmic constructions of grime and bashment
• an orchestral sex jam periodically swarmed by a cloud of angry cyborg cicadas

Music has vastly changed in the past ten years with the indie revolution, and once lesser-known bands such as Vampire Weekend and Two Door Cinema Club have hit the radio waves (it was an irregularity for tenth graders in Frederick County, MD to listen to them in 2010).

But there is a whole new layer of underground electronic music to be peeled away and explored, like sound designer Yosi Horikawa or recording engineer Rashad Becker.

But now we ask you, readers: what do you think of bEEdEEgEE? Is this experimental music or organized sound?

We have long prided ourselves on being the greatest nation in the world.

We possess the strongest military, a culturally diverse population, and a government that guarantees freedom for all. 

But how are we doing in education?

Not so hot, apparently. 

Its been evident for years that the U.S. needs to improve their education system; however, the problem has worsened. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) just released a report indicating that the U.S. has slipped in global rankings. Globally, we rank 17th in reading, 21st in science, and 26th in math, all of these being lower than its previous rankings.

This is troubling considering the U.S. spends more per student than any other developed nation. 

The OECD survey affirms that money is not a predictor of performance. Neither is immigration or childhood poverty considering that the East Asian countries at the top of the list have levels comparable to those of the U.S. 

As our global market becomes increasingly dependent on technology, it becomes essential that our students acquire a solid math and science background. 

Will the U.S. prevail and rise out of this educational rut, and if so, how? 

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot

Is Cool Design Really Uncool? http://depot.ly/rweM3

Saturday fun: How to create a digital doodled snowflake in Adobe Illustrator http://depot.ly/rwcI0

Top 5 Web Design Tips That Optimize your Site’s Conversion Funnel http://depot.ly/rwbkl

Real-Life Fox And The Hound Best Friends Will Melt Your Heart http://depot.ly/rwb2z

Interview with designer Benjamin Dauer: “Be Humble, Be Honest, Don’t Be Afraid To Fail” http://depot.ly/rwdqJ  via @smashingmag

Handy quick read: Personal finance in 10 sentences http://depot.ly/rwbGi  via @lifehacker

Front pages pay tribute to the extraordinary Nelson Mandela http://depot.ly/rwmDd

Hiring Before You’re Ready http://depot.ly/rtxxq

Explosive Roy Lichtenstein inspired spot you have got to watch http://depot.ly/rtx0C

How to manage clients as a freelancer http://depot.ly/rtxjx  *Advice via @CreativeBloq

Inspiring design from Studio FNT http://depot.ly/rtx5Y

Useful tip from @smashingmag: Modifying Admin Post Lists In #WordPress – http://depot.ly/rtxeP

Quick tutorial on customizing dashed and dotted borders in #CSS3 – http://depot.ly/rraIf

Plagiarism website shames logo thieves http://depot.ly/rpFwc  *Great article by @CreativeBloq

goodui.org/  Good resource

Making the Perfect WordPress Theme: Maintenance, Compatibility, and Customer Care http://depot.ly/rpF3K

Good design starts with empathy http://depot.ly/roN89  #UX

Interesting read via @lifehacker: Apply “Schumpeterianism” to Push Through Criticism and Get Things Done http://depot.ly/rn1do

Delivery drones are coming http://depot.ly/rn0UT  Awkward or rad?

Want more? No problem! Keep track of all our tweets by following us @DesignerDepot

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