Another Band, Another Kickstarter

We discovered Marah in the Mainsail at Audiofeed 2014. Any time a band uses a 20-foot metal chain as a percussive instrument, we are in. Their music struck us, and we supported the Kickstarter effort for their debut album "Thaumatrope." It immediately became one of our favorites.

The band is currently funding their second album,
another concept album. This one is called "Bone Crown," and is an attempt "to capture the darkness and beauty inherent in the animal kingdom, all the while telling a very human story of trust, deception, and rebellion." They intend for the album to include a narrated story that exists alongside the music. It's a bold idea, all the way around.

The band only has a week or so left in the campaign, and is still a few thousand dollars short. A link to the Kickstarter page can be found here.

To get a feel for the band, here is the official video for "Wendigo," one of our favorite tracks from the first album.

Happy Easter / TV Review

Holy Week Humor!

Audiofeed 2016 - Saturday Highlight

This Saturday highlight was also the overall highlight of the fest. As I’ve mentioned before, the fest is growing enough to bring in non-musical events. On Saturday morning, the Asylum (Goth) tent hosted a screening of the movie “The Phoenix:Hope is Rising.” This is a documentary by Phil Gioja and Isaac Musgrave about the issue of homelessness in Urbana, Illinois,

Every year, the city hosts the One Winter Night event, a fundraiser for a homeless drop-in shelter. Participants in One Winter Night spend a night on the street, living in a cardboard box, experiencing for 12 hours what it is like to live on the street. Gioja and Musgrave decided to document the event, as well as tell the story of the shelter, The Phoenix. In the course of the filming, changes to the city’s zoning regulations put the future of the shelter at risk. 

For a low-budget movie, the quality is surprisingly high. Interviews are well-lit and have clear audio, and are integrated well into archival and news footage, as well as coverage of city council meeting. It is a compelling film that tells a compelling story. It is hopeful, annoying, and heartbreaking. 

The trailer for the movie can be found here. 

Another Podcast Recommendation

Author Nate Fleming, of the YA novel Thimblerig's Ark has become Nate Fleming, host of the podcast Thimblerig's Ark. This new podcast has joined Tyler Smith's More Than One Lesson family of shows.

On this show, Nate looks at Christian film, asking hard questions about why they often aren't as good as they could be. He examines each film in a number of areas, such as whether they challenge the audince. He also asks is a film take risks, and recognizes the different between the pulpit and art. It is an entertaining podcast, and represents an important voice in the Christian community,

Over the first few episodes, he has looked at a recent offering (God's Not Dead), and a "classic" in the field ("A Thief in the Night"). He promises to cover movies of various genres, various budgets, and various eras.

A Kickstarter for Tyler Smith

Our buddy Tyler Smith from the More Than One Lesson website and podcast network has a new crowd-funding effort. The specific details about the campaign, including the giving levels and rewards, can be found here. 

Tyler has attended a number of Christian pop culture and movie festivals over the last few years, and has found himself with nothing of his own to give away or sell at these events. The purpose of this Kickstarter project is to raise money to print a collection of Tyler's reviews and essays.

Tyler is an important voice in the world of Christian film criticism, and a work like this could help bring critical thinking and understanding of the role of film criticism to Christians interested in the arts.

Audiofeed 2016 - Saturday Events

No surprise, but Saturday was the busiest day of the festival. Busiest both in terms of the musical acts and activities, but also in terms of attendance. If any person or church group is going to come for one day, most often it's Saturday.

We were busy all day long. The three of us stayed together for some events, and split up for others. Between us, we attended another seminar, morning prayers, an excellent movie (more on that in a later post), a worship time, and concerts by some of our favorites. We spent a little bit of time chatting with Insomniac Folklore after their set, and frontman Tyler Hentschel provided us with an opening clip for our podcast.

We saw other concerts during the day, ending with a terrific back-to-back. Twenty-five years after the only other time I saw them play live, hard rockers One Bad Pig put on a terrific, energetic show.  They sang some pieces from their new album, as well as the classic songs "Isaiah 6," "Red River," and "Ice Cream Sundae." They even had a Johnny Cash impersonator join them for "Man in Black."


We ended Saturday with a harp concert. It's the kind of musical juxtaposition that made Cornerstone what it was, and that has been translated over the Audiofeed. Timbre Cierpke played a terrific show, as intense in its own way as the One Bad Pig show was in its way. She played many tracks from her latest release, Sun and Moon, which was based on works by George MacDonald. As was mentioned in a previous post, there was a surprisingly strong presence of MacDonald-related content at Audiofeed 2016.