Helsinki-based indie-pop quintet koriakittenriot have crafted a very fine album that exudes charm and evokes feelings of idyllic reverie. Their melodic songwriting and thoughtful lyrics are sure to rouse any listener.
They are influenced by The Flaming Lips, Elliott Smith and Wilco and it shows in their sound. Their latest release titled ‘Songs of Hope and Science’, was written in response to a tumultuous 2016.
An Anthem From The 80’s
Probably the most lauded is Finland’s koriakittenriot who’s newest offering is an impressive eight song, seven track album that oozes with class. The Lows & The Highs is one of the most aptly named albums I’ve ever listened to and is a definite must have for any music fan. The best part is that you can listen to it all for free using the Wynk Music app. The app is available on Android and iOS devices and will sync up to any music streaming service you might already have. You can even stream it to your headphones via Bluetooth if you like.
The Earth Will Spin Around
Finnish indie rock band koriakittenriot return to the scene with their new album Songs of Hope and Science, out on 27th January via VILD Recordings. Spearheading the record is lead single
The song is inspired by a recent article in Nature Geoscience, which explains that the core of the Earth may be spinning backwards and could even stop moving altogether. According to the researchers, this is a natural process and it is likely that the core has stopped rotating relative to the mantle and crust of the planet.
It is a theory that has been proposed before, but this is the first time that it has been proven to be true by scientists. Scientists had been unable to determine the speed of the Earth’s rotation, but after analysing seismic waves, they found that it was stopping and restarting in reverse.
A change in the Earth’s rotation has been happening over the past million years, but it is so slow that we are unaware of it. This is due to a long-term motion called precession, which causes the axis of the planet to rotate in a circle that has a 23.4 degree radius relative to a fixed point in space over about 26,000 years.
This is a very interesting scientific discovery and it will be exciting to see how this affects the way we view our place in the world. However, it will be a little while before we can understand how this effect is actually happening.
The Lovers That You’ve Never Had
The mid-’00s were a good time for cheerful, instrument-stuffed indie-pop. Bands like Annuals, Decemberists, Grandaddy and the Shins embraced this genre with some serious gusto. The Finnish indie-pop group koriakittenriot carries on that torch with their richly melodic and maximalist album Rich Men Poor Men Good Men.
Singer-songwriter Antti Reikko cites The Flaming Lips, Elliott Smith and Wilco as influences on his band’s debut album. The band recorded the album in Berlin with Doug Van Sloan (Bright Eyes, She & Him) handling mastering duties.
This is an incredibly well written song about the difficulties of one-sided love. You can hear the frustration that the protagonist has from the very beginning, and the chorus is an excellent way to convey how much he wants the girl to fall for him.
It’s not clear whether or not the song is autobiographical, but it does a great job of getting you emotionally involved with the character and expressing the frustration that he has at the situation. You can listen to it over and over again and it will still make you feel everything that the lyrics are trying to say.
Another expertly crafted song about one-sided love is the Toronto melodic rock band Harem Scarem’s “Leading Me On”. You can see the raw emotion that the character feels in this track, and you can also feel how angry the protagonist is when he realizes that the woman he likes is not going to come around.
There are a lot of songs that talk about unrequited love, and this is definitely one of the most powerful ones. It’s an incredibly sad song, but it’s a very effective way of conveying the emotions that the protagonist has at the time.
In addition to the emotions that this song is able to express, it also contains some great harmonies and a beautiful guitar solo. It’s definitely worth a listen if you are looking for some great acoustic pop music.
The song was released as a single in 2010 and reached the top ten in several countries including Australia, Belgium and France. It was certified gold in those countries and received critical acclaim.
Milgram Experiment
The Milgram Experiment, a series of experiments conducted by Stanley Milgram at Yale University, was a controversial study into the power of obedience. Many of the conclusions he reached have been called into question, but his work remains hugely influential in the field of psychology and beyond (Miller, 2016).
The main experiment involved a group of volunteers who were told that they would be paired up to perform a learning task. The volunteers drew straws to decide who would be the teacher and who would be the learner.
Once the roles were fixed, the volunteer participants were paired with a confederate of the teacher and the learner – these individuals were fakes and Milgram used them to create a false sense of authority and trust. The participants were then given instructions to administer painful electric shocks, with the highest level being 450 V, to the confederate if the learner did not comply.
Despite the fact that the confederate was in fact an actor, the results of the experiment suggested that people are naturally very willing to obey authority figures. However, the experiments had some serious ethical and moral problems.
A number of variations to the original test had been carried out which allowed Milgram to explore how different factors affect the rate of obedience. For example if the experimenter was not wearing a lab coat (a symbol of authority) then obedience levels dropped to 20%.
In another experiment, participants were given the choice to withdraw if they felt uncomfortable. This reduced the overall obedience level to 47.5% and was interpreted by Milgram as proof that people are naturally more willing to obey orders when they feel safe from pain.
Finally, there was a remote condition in which the experiment was conducted at run down offices rather than the impressive Yale University. This resulted in a lower overall obedience rate of around 30% and the ability for participants to instruct a confederate (who wore ordinary clothes) to press switches to administer the electric shocks.
The present article uses audio recordings from this condition to provide a new analytical perspective on the rhetorical construction of collectivity in the Milgram studies. This is in line with recent work on the rhetorical construction of social categories in Milgram’s experiments, and builds upon previous attempts to analyse the audio recordings of the obedience experiments themselves (Reicher & Hopkins, 2001).