As 2013 comes to an end, we are taking a look back at some of our favorite posts of the year by our guest editors.
With Van Dyke Parks’ new Songs Cycled (Bella Union), the renowned composer, arranger and vocalist (in that order), not only releases his first album of originals since 1995’s Orange Crate Art (with Brian Wilson singing), but lends his usually complex creations a renewed sense of simplicity. The thoughts may be determinedly complicated and touched by the soul of social protest, but Parks’ music is deliciously direct, while remaining as elegant as anything he’s done for himself (à la 1968’s chamber-pop initiator Song Cycle) or others (the Beach Boys and Rufus Wainwright amongst them). Parks will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature with him.
Parks: Two Asiatic fusion foods, both imports that recall major bomb-drops. What great gustatory intros to two singular disparate cultures. If you’re of an Asian persuasion, and have an occasion to take your squeeze out on the town just to dine, here are two ways to avoid the rising mercury levels in sushi.
Either heavy-in-hoof, with a whole lot of Seoul, or meat-incidental with satisfying visions of French-colonial Indo-chine starring Catherine Deneuve. Either of these menus offer sweet terms of surrender. Outta the box!
Video after the jump.
