#chris mclaughlin

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 3.5 out of 5. “The Laundromat” makes a pointed political statement, while spinning out a garbled mess of a movie. In the process, director Steven Soderbergh mostly squanders a cast top-lined by Meryl Streep, in a Netflix film that plays like a darkly satiric connection of vignettes that lost something — mostly, a coherent narrative — in the rinse cycle. Billed as being “Based on…

GREEN DRUID Perform Psychedelic ‘Ritual Sacrifice’ Visualizer Rite; Live Dates

(By Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker, Senior Writer/Journalist, RiffRelevant.com) Denver’s down-tuned pagans of doomened psychedelia, GREEN DRUID, have just premiered their new, mind-altering official video, “Ritual Sacrifice“. (more…)

GREEN DRUID Reveal ‘Ashen Blood’ Album Details; Track Streaming

(By Pat ‘Riot’ Whitaker, Lead Journalist/Writer, RiffRelevant.com) Colorado’s newly coronated overlords of stoner doom heaviness, Green Druid, have unveiled details of their upcoming debut album release. “Ashen Blood” will be released on March 16, 2018 and features seven monumental tracks totaling over an hour of mind-altering doom. Today, the first auditory offering, “Pale Blood Sky“, can be…

One of the key 2017 initiatives for the Libertarian Party of Pinellas County is to try to get as many members into appointed local positions as possible. It isn’t the first time this has been a goal in the LPPC, but there has been some serious headway made in just the past six months.

This month, LPPC executive committee member Mark Rodriguez was appointed to a seat with the seven-person City of Clearwater Parks and Recreation Board. It is a four-year appointment and will meet quarterly to review budgeting, zoning, allocation of funds and proposed renovation of city properties.

RELATED: Come join the Libertarian Party of Pinellas County for its upcoming July and August events

“I’ve gotten tired of people pointing fingers and complaining about government, and I decided to put my money and time where my mouth is,” said Rodriguez, who serves as the North Pinellas Representative of the LPPC EC. “I like the saying that, ‘Every nation gets a government it deserves’. It is what happens when you aren’t a part of changing it.”

Earlier this year, fellow EC member Chris McLaughlin was appointed to the Dunedin Hammock Advisory Committee (HAC) for a three-year term. He was also asked this past month to join the Dunedin Local Planning Agency, but the meetings conflict with other meetings within his field of work – surveying.

Speaking of surveying, McLaughlin was also confirmed by the Florida Senate and commissioned by Gov. Rick Scott for the Florida Board of Professional Surveyors and Mappers, which meets quarterly in Tallahassee. The Dunedin HAC meets monthly. He’s also taken on a spot as a Director of his neighborhood HOA and has been asked to take on the President’s role of the HOA down the line.

“I just want to get active in the community,” said McLaughlin, the LPPC At-Large Rep in the EC. “I just wanted to get acclimated, to learn how the city of Dunedin is structured.”

LPPC member and LPF Region 8 representative J.D. Pierce has applied for a position with the Clearwater Housing Authority and will find out if he will be appointed later this year. There is a very good chance three LPPC members will be in appointed positions by 2018, and more Libertarians in Pinellas are planning to go for appointed roles in the next year to two years.

“This is a great step for future leaders to gain experience and for people to develop their communication skills and policy-making skills,” newly elected LPPC chairman Daryle Hamel said. “It’s a chance to network with people and be involved, so it’s great from that standpoint. At the end of the day we’re all in this together, and beyond just the Libertarian Party, we’re also Pinellas County residents.”

NEW LPPC LEADERS: As mentioned above, Daryle Hamel (Ballotpedia page) – a former primary candidate for Florida State House – was unanimously elected by the LPPC as the newest chairman at a June 22 special election. Hamel is very involved in the Pinellas County civic and business community and has been involved with Libertarian campaigns in the past.

Also elected was new vice-chairman Matthew Skopek (Ballotpedia page), the former state chairman of Illinois and former candidate for Illinois Treasurer who nearly hit the 150,000-vote mark and still holds the third highest LP vote total for statewide office in Illinois history.

Hamel and Skopek are the new leaders of the second largest Libertarian county affiliate in the state, in terms of registered Libertarians. Neighboring Hillsborough is the largest county affiliate, by that criteria.

2/21/16

By Angel Lam

The Supperclub: Music for Percussion Ensemble took place at Verboten in Williamsburg, a spacious and well-equipped venue for a music event that immersed the audience in a dazzling percussive world, ornamented with visual projections, light design, and even a 3-course dinner served by chef Chris McLaughlin.  

You would not believe the number of percussive instruments on the dance floor stage—the variety of drums, pitched and non-pitched percussions, and even tuned metal pipes become the central instrumentation in one of the pieces.  Audience members surround the stage to see the performance actions from new vantage points, compared to a formal music concert.  When their instruments light up, the stage transforms into an interesting theatrical set where the four percussion musicians move around between musical movements.



This is an evening that is intellectually challenging for the music geek and musically and aesthetically exciting for the average attendee. The amount of concentration needed to perform the minimalistic phrasing in Steve Reich's Drumming – Part I (1970) always astounds me (see first video below). Four players stand tightly side-by-side and opposite from each other with 4 pairs of tuned bongo drums in front of them. Phasing is achieved when two players are playing a single repeated pattern in unison, and one player changes tempo slightly while the other remains constant, eventually the two players are one or several beats out of sync with each other.  After some time, they catch up with each other and come back as a unison rhythm again.

Jason Treuting's Extremes utilizes four players with a total of 12 sticks in their hands. This is another visually invigorating piece watching the four percussionists surround a single bass drum with many more instruments that they strike on placed on top of the drum.

Victor Caccese's A Part, Apart develops from a simple rhythmic motive in canon and inversion, and later blossoms in wonderful ways on the vibraphones and cymbals in the second section. The piece uses a multitude of instruments but the percussionists are always in total unity. 

The layering additive process in David Lang's So Called Laws of Nature - Part 2 (see second video below) is unfolded before us as four percussionists line-up playing the same gesture one after another, and we start to hear a rhythmic pattern that is constantly changing and varied. 

Jonny Allen's Sonata is in the form of a sonata.  He did not go into the detail of explaining the sonata form, but took a poetic explanation that "if the house is the formal space (of this piece) the home is whatever you imagine it—and you will be right!" This piece contains melodious themes beginning on the vibraphones and it definitely conjures up images and stories.


The finale piece of the Sandbox Percussion program was Ricardo Romaneiro's Sub Pulse—a pounding sonic experience utilizing live sound design together with a 180-degree wall visualizer & projection mapping by Christian Hannon. It was a gripping piece that fully used the resources in the Verboten space.

The opening music by Noision (analog electronics, Vasko Dukovski on bass clarinet, Justin Abrams on cello) was a mesmerizing prelude to the evening. There was also Ramin Abrams on solo bass, and a fantastic solo performance on the Theremin.

Sandbox Percussion will be returning to Verboten in March. For more information and show details visit verbotennewyork.com and sandbox percussion.com.