• Experimental music is in its gravy days. With bands from Animal Collective to Grizzly Bear taking on-its-face odd music to the Billboard charts, we figured we were due to look back at some of the roots of weird tuneage. Most of this stuff isn’t as listenable as, say, Lady Gaga, but there’s something to be said about the challenge they offer.

• 1. This is kinda accessible. Steve Reich is perhaps the most famous name of minimalist music. From magnetic-tape-looped early works such as “It’s Gonna Rain” to later instrumental and sampled works, he’s a huge influence on what indie rock has become. You can hear, for example, some of Sufjan Stevens’ musical left fields in “Pulses.”
• 2. Talk about acquired taste. The Residents may perhaps be the most acquired taste in the history of rock music, but not one without a great history. A bunch of experimental raiders, the band has managed to keep its public profile secret for about 40 years now – or about four times longer than KISS did. And in 1979, they even got nominated for a Grammy for “Eskimo,” an album of made-up Inuit folk tales. The comparisons to Animal Collective are myriad.
• 3. Also acquired taste. The Red Crayola/Krayola is a band that famously knew little about playing their instruments at first (but lots about freaking out), and now is a musical front for psych-rock survivor Mayo Thompson, who later worked with members of Tortoise. Fun fact: The guy playing keys on “Hurricane Fighter Plane” is Roky Erickson, a garage-rock icon who has a pretty interesting history of his own.
• 4. By this point, also acquired. Scott Walker’s early career – which leaned heavily on orchestral pop – was hugely influential on dudes such as Beck (“Scott 4” is one of the most underrated albums ever). But by the early ’80s, he started going off the grid, to the point that by 1995’s “Tilt,” his music was completely unrecognizable. “Farmer in the City” is a beautiful, cinematic tune, but it’s also a complete mind-screw.
• 5. This is acquired, too. Captain Beefheart‘s weird, off-key masterpiece, “Trout Mask Replica,” still isn’t very easy to find legally online, but debut album “Safe as Milk” still has a lot of the cluster-screwing elements that his later works did. If you had Howlin’ Wolf drop a lot of acid, you might get kinda close.

• 214+ people killed in Chile as a result of the earthquake
• 50+ aftershocks have hit in and around the country in the last 24 hours
• 1.5M homes have been damaged by the huge quake source

• We need to move past the bickering and the game-playing that holds us back and blocks progress for the American people. Some of these disagreements we may be able to resolve. Some we may not. And no final bill will include everything that everyone wants. That’s what compromise is.
• President Barack Obama • In his weekly radio address. With the health care summit still fairly fresh in people’s minds, this may seem to be an olive branch. But Republican Sen. Tom Coburn doesn’t seem to take it that way. “Instead, they want to use procedural tricks and backroom deals to ram through a new bill,” he notes. The truth, of course, is somewhere in the middle. source

• 33 aftershocks in the wake of the earthquake, the latest in Argentina
• 700+ number of times the quake is stronger than the Haiti quake source

• The finally unblocked Twitter, Facebook and so on. About time. For three years, if you used a military computer, you couldn’t access sites like Twitter and Facebook, despite the obvious advantages they offer. No longer. “The purpose of the policy is to recognize that we need to take advantage of these Internet-based capabilities,” said deputy assistant secretary of defense David Wennergren, “These Web 2.0 tools need to be part of what we use.” Even with the possibility of info leaks, we’re glad the military finally changed this policy. It came later than it should’ve. source

• National Geographic’s explainer on what tsunamis are (two-word description: giant waves) seems like a fitting thing to pull out of the bag right now.

• Get off the shore line. We are closing all the beaches and telling people to drive out of the area.
• Oahu Civil Defense spokesman John Cummings • Describing the danger of being on the coast in Hawaii right now as a result of the pending tsunami. While the tsunami isn’t expected to be serious, Hawaii is taking all the precautions it can, including voluntary running a bus near the shore to pick up those with no other way to get away. Tourists who stay at modern resorts should be safe as long as they stay above the third floor. “We are taking it very seriously, but this is not a big one.” said Brian R. Shiro, a geophysicist at NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii. source

• 122+ killed by the earthquake, which had aftershocks in Chile up to 500 miles away
• 15 number of stories in a building that collapsed in Concepcion, the closest big city
• russia the furthest country to get tsunami warnings as a result of the Chilean earthquake source

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• The last 24 hours have been crazy seismically. There was a 7.0 earthquake in Japan yesterday, and now this 8.8 earthquake in Chile (just upgraded by the USGS, which tracks quakes) sounds especially scary. It’s already prompted tsunami warnings in neighboring countries. We’ll keep you posted. It’s already quite awful. source