Broadcaster Press 13 October 29, 2019 www.broadcasteronline.com October 2019 Vermillion High School’s Student Newspaper beats. Next comes the title track, a joyous yet simultaneously eerie ode to the European railway system of the same name. Singer Ralf Hütter also name drops David Bowie and Iggy Pop, two big fans of the group. The album transitions to “Metal On Metal,” a short interlude with industrial drum beats evoking the sounds of the trains the band would have ridden on, before it quickly segways into “Abzug,” a reprise of the title track, which still doesn’t get boring, even with all its repetition. If this album is a long train ride, the next song “Franz Schubert” represents the last moments before a passenger nods off to sleep. A dreamy melody repeats throughout, as the gentle, rolling hills of some German countryside pass by outside. The brief “Endless Endless” echoes the sole word in the title to bring the record to a close, and the passenger finally succumbs to their weariness. Kraftwerk is the most influential band you’ve probably never heard of. The German group started their career in the early 1970s as a competent, yet unexciting, experimental rock band that were a dime a dozen in Germany’s ‘krautrock’ scene. Their legacy truly started in the middle of that decade, as they shifted to an electronic-pop sound which inspired the entirety of 80s synthpop, influence later burgeoning genres such as house and electro, as well as being a common staple for samples in this little known style called hiphop. My focus in this review will be on my favorite of Kraftwerk’s releases, their 1977 masterwork TransEurope Express. The album opener is “Europe Endless,” a ten minute track with stacking synth melodies, each more euphoric than the last. The hypnotic instrumental combined with simple lyrics makes the song breeze by as fast as the landscape outside the trains that inspired the piece. The haunting “The Hall Of Mirrors” follows, with reverb and delay on the instruments sounding as spacious as the title implies. “Showroom Dummies” leads off in a familiar fashion: a pretty synth melody starts the song before the drum machine and main chord progression follow. The structures of these songs may be repetitive, but they certainly don’t run out of ideas. This particular track is the most hard-hitting, and sounds like it could be neatly covered as punk song (infact, hardcore punk band, Big Black, would later cover the Kraftwerk song “Das Model”). The lyrics tell a story of mannequins coming to life and going to a club, keeping with a common theme in their music of the blurring of the human and non-human, portrayed as much in their lyrics as in their robotic Kraftwerk and this album’s influence can be measured in obvious ways: songs from this release alone have been sampled well over 20 times, including by stars such as Madonna or Jay-Z. But there are also more intangible respects in which this record has had a tremendous reach. Who knows how many artists heard it and were inspired to create their own music, and in turn how many of those inspired artists influenced others? The answer, to be exact, is...a lot. It may sound simple by contemporary standards, but if you dig deep enough in TransEurope Express, you’ll find it has a lot of heart for an album occasionally dismissed as “robot music.” Vermillion.K12.SD.US Whether the upcoming holiday’s roots are in warding off evil spirits, the traditional Celtic celebration of Samhain, or the costume boom that ravished the clothing racks of the 1930s, today Halloween is marked by our population dawning a new identity through costume. But what happens when the identity a person becomes on Halloween is a group of people's identity yearround? That is a case of costume-based Cultural Appropriation, and it is not okay. From Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, to former ‘Dancing With The Stars’ Professional and Judge, Julliane Hough, many people are guilty of cultural appropriation when it comes to how they brought a costume to life. This reporter is hoping the following guidelines help Vermillion High School and the Vermillion Community to clearly understand the negative cultural impact that an application of black make-up to a white face could have. • Do not wear/do Brownface. • Do not sexualize traditional minority cultures. • Do not wear traditional minority cultural outfits. • Do not make a caricature out of ethnic groups. • Do not wear or adorn any culturally significant items that are not of your own culture. • Do not perpetuate stereotypes. • Do not dress up as a survivor of any tragedy you are not a part of. For instance, do not go trick-ortreating as Anne Frank. • Avoid trivializing or poking fun at anyone else’s struggle. Specifically that of at-risk populations such as people who are elderly, mentally ill or homeless. The Halls of VHS Without Context “I can squeak too. Like really squeak!” -Lunchroom “We just played fifty games of Tic-Tac-Toe and I lost by one” -Math Class “I think they had it right with debt prisons.” -Lunchroom WordSearch Overall Grade: A+ Photo Courtesy of Kling Klang Studio The Tufted Deer BY EMILY NAU • • They can reach a top speed of 70 km/hr! • The only living animal in the Genus Elaphodus. • They live in mountainous forests. • Photo Courtesy of GOOGLE IMAGES Their life span is 7 to 12 years. They eat leaves, twigs, grasses, fruits, and other kinds of plants. CAMPUS Visit Days 1 18 7 Wednesday, December 18 CAREER EXPLORATION EVENT Friday, February 7 20 Friday, March 20 5 W. CHERRY ST. VERMILLION 13 624-4444 Tanager Merchandise, Greeting Cards, Candies, Home Decor and Bush Dry Cleaning Services! Friday, November 1 605-367-6040 | admissions@southeasttech.edu SOUTHEASTTECH.EDU/VISIT Wednesday, May 13 CAREER EXPLORATION EVENT