Daniel R. Wilson is a sound designer, writer, instrument builder, and is currently Resonance 104.4fm/Sound and Music Embedded Composer in Residence for 2014. Wilson was also winner of the Arts Foundation Award for electro-acoustic composition. He works under many aliases including Meadow House and Ashfordaisyak, and his debut album was released in 2006, showcasing his self-built instruments. He is also a founding member of the electroacoustic improv group Oscillatorial Binnage.

Brandon LaBelle - Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian

“Writing comes up from under my skin,” writes Brandon LaBelle. “It creeps into my sleep, to tense my fingers; I am plunged into it, as a space for capturing a new voice, for figuring a new body, between here and there.”

Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian is marked by an urgency to unsettle divides between west and east, Anglo and Arab, and to put into question structures and modes of being-political. Written between February and June of 2011, the Diary functioned as a daily consideration of the intensity of events erupting around the world at that time. LaBelle sought to engage these events by way of a diary of affiliation and reciprocation in which personal memories and cultural reflections search for remote connection, in particular, with the Arab Spring. The Diary acts as a platform from which questions around US imperialism, art and revolution, the task of writing, and the possibility of new political subjectivity are raised. LaBelle asks for an "agency of the intimate", outlining a tender map of the transnational.

Diary of an Imaginary Egyptian is the second issue of the new book series Doormats published by Errant Bodies Press, edited by Riccardo Benassi and Brandon LaBelle. The series aims at contributing to the now, addressing issues that are present and that demand presence.

Global Groovers - Preserving Grooves from Around the World

Learn How to Make Gluten-Free Beer at Home

The Pros and Cons of Brewing Gluten-Free Beer at Home

Is it really possible to brew good, even great gluten-free ales and lagers at home? Yes! But before you run out to buy everything you need to become a gluten-free home brewer there are some things you need to know. And in case you decide that home brewing gluten-free beer isn't for you -- see the list of breweries that produce some wonderful gluten-free beers at the end of this article.

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Some of my favourite tunes this month

Rare & Classic Soul Funk by Adam Kvasnica on Mixcloud

Massoud l'Afghan (1998)

Last winter, when Christophe de Ponfilly's documentary ''Massoud, the Afghan'' was shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, it was hard to imagine a more urgently topical film. Its subject, Ahmed Shah Massoud, the Tajik commander who had, over more than 20 years, fought the Red Army and then the Taliban, was assassinated by Al Qaeda suicide bombers on Sept. 9, 2001, in a grisly prelude to the attacks on the United States two days later. In the war that followed, the United States and its allies routed Massoud's enemies, the Taliban, and put together a government led by his allies in the Northern Alliance -- a posthumous and as yet perilously incomplete victory for the soldier known as the Lion of Panjshir.

Mr. Ponfilly's film, which opens today at Film Forum, is of course no less relevant than it was a year ago. Indeed, its release should serve as a timely reminder that, even as our government trains its sights on Iraq, the hardships of Afghanistan, a country nearly obliterated by decades of war, persist. Few Westerners can claim as intimate a knowledge of that war or as deep a connection with the people of Afghanistan, as Mr. Ponfilly. He first went to the country in 1981, to record the Mujahadeen's war against the Soviet invaders, and he returned many times over the next 16 years.

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Read more about Ahmad Shah Massoud and his assanination two days before the attacks on 9/11 here...

Close-up - Abbas Kiarostami

Internationally revered Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami has created some of the most inventive and transcendent cinema of the past thirty years, and Close-up is his most radical, brilliant work. This fiction-documentary hybrid uses a sensational real-life event—the arrest of a young man on charges that he fraudulently impersonated the well-known filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf—as the basis for a stunning, multilayered investigation into movies, identity, artistic creation, and existence, in which the real people from the case play themselves. With its universal themes and fascinating narrative knots, Close-up has resonated with viewers around the world.

5 Great Iranian Films

When A Separation became the first Iranian film to win an Academy Award, more people gained awareness of the country’s rich film legacy. Hamid Naficy, a leading authority on Middle Eastern cinema, lists a selection of his favourite Iranian films.

The House is Black (1961), directed by Forugh Farrokhzad

The Cow (1969), directed by Dariush Mehrjui

Close-up (1989), directed by Abbas Kiarostami

The May Lady (1997), directed by Rakhshan Banietemad

Kandahar (2001), directed by Mohsen Makhmalbaf


Read more details about the films...