Indifference in Heaven

In Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields is a destination only accessible after death, a place reserved to the heroic, righteous few who were granted admission to the paradisiacal dimension. In reality, Elysian Fields is a Brooklyn-based musical duo, whose sonic surrealism confirms the mythos of their name…

Cáo Xuěqín’s 18th century novel, Dream of the Red Chamber, little known in the West, is a Chinese national epic, occupying a role in the literature of China roughly akin to that of Shakespeare in English. With its principal plot arc of two beautiful, sensitive and aristocratic young people whose love affair is doomed, the play it most resembles is Romeo and Juliet. Despite this resemblance, the fabric from which Dream of the Red Chamber is woven is shot through with many unfamiliar and unsettling threads.

The ultimate compendium of a half century of the best music, now revised and updated. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die is a highly readable list of the best, the most important, and the most influential pop albums from 1955 through today. Carefully selected by a team of international critics and some of the best-known music reviewers and commentators, each album is a groundbreaking work seminal to the understanding and appreciation of music from the 1950s to the present. Included with each entry are production details and credits as well as reproductions of original album cover art. Perhaps most important of all, each album featured comes with an authoritative description of its importance and influence.

Although they surely qualify as one of England's most successful thrash metal bands, Lancashire's hapless Xentrix ultimately came to epitomize all of Great Britain's relatively insignificant contributions to speed metal – as compared to the genre's utterly dominating American bands. Formed in 1986 (as Sweet Vengeance, in the town of Preston) by vocalist/guitarist Chris Astley, guitarist Kristian Havard, bassist Paul MacKenzie, and drummer Dennis Gasser, Xentrix started life, not surprisingly, as a Metallica cover band, gradually drawing attention to themselves on the U.K. pub circuit and with their 1988 demo, Hunger For…. Fledgling Roadrunner Records soon took notice and signed the band, releasing their debut album, Shattered Existence, in 1989, and, later that year, the now infamous Ghost Buster EP…