Ecochella channels music, energy from within

On a particularly bold and balmy day in the cerebrum of a physics student, music and sustainability married, some neurons fired … and Ecochella was born. “Ecochella is one of those mistakes that actually came out of my mouth once and we had to go with it,” said Rachel Woods-Robinson, a fourth-year physics student and […]

UCLA alumnus and The Doors keyboard legend dies at 74

UCLA alumnus Ray Manzarek, keyboardist and founding member of the rock ’n’ roll band The Doors, died Monday afternoon, in Rosenheim, Germany after a long battle with bile duct cancer. He was 74. During the 1960s, Manzarek helped light the fire of a generation with his psychedelic rock as a member of The Doors. He […]

Album Review: ‘Random Access Memories’ by Daft Punk

Much modern debate about electronic music stems from issues with the formulaic rises and falls of beats per minute. With Daft Punk’s long-anticipated studio album “Random Access Memories,” the French duo finds success once more, changing the direction of a genre it helped define. The duo starts off strong with the aptly titled “Give Life […]

Love or Hate: Columnists debate the value of singing competition reality shows

Informal Internet studies show that incidents of loud and passionate shower singing have gone up exponentially since 2002. In unrelated news, the 12th season “American Idol” winner, Candice Glover, has finally broken the five-season trend of “white guys with guitars.” Meanwhile, “The X Factor” grows with every Simon Cowell quip, and “The Voice” is almost […]

B-Sides: Filmmakers and composers work in harmony to create legacies

In recent movie history, fans of both music and film have seen the rise of some truly great filmmaker-composer partnerships. The most obvious, of course, is composer John Williams and filmmaker Steven Spielberg, who worked together on movies such as “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Jurassic Park” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”