Amelodic

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's... kill yourself.

As many predicted (and hoped) they would, Radiohead has released a new song, "Burn the Witch." The song finds the band back in song mode, mixing acoustic instruments and an electronic beat while a restrained but insistent string section provides a nervy, increasingly frantic accompaniment to a classically paranoid lyric about messenger shooting, mob rule, and alienation and one of those indelible Thom Yorke head voice melodies. I've only listened to it like 10 times in the last 45 minutes, but so far I'd say "Burn the Witch" is exactly what you want from Radiohead in an election year. (And the video is The Wicker Man meets Davey and Goliath, which is to say A+++.)

Glimpses of the team we might wish to see amidst the poor touches and ill fitness of preseason; Shipp the story as his astute, silky second half leads Chicago to friendly win

There are those who will tell you that Harrison Shipp wasted four years while playing at Notre Dame. They'll tell you that he would've been better served signing up first thing with a football factory - who knows, maybe even our own little factory here in Chicago - honing his game, obsessively, day and night, working on bending a shot far-post after a wall pass, grinding on opening his hips and switching it wide.

But there are some players - and I would posit that Harry Shipp is one of them - whose primary contributions, past the simplest physical requirements, are mental: They broaden the play, sense the approach of runners not yet seen, or know in a moment that the presence of the destroyer here means that there's no cover in the hole there. For those few, perhaps, the repetitive demands of the training pitch, useful as they are in the control of the ball, need supplementing with a movement of Mozart, a view of Frank Lloyd Wright, or a few pages of García Márquez.

If Shipp is the argument for liberal arts in the football, then Saturday's 2-0 friendly win over DC United became one of the (very early, and still inconclusive) bits of evidence in favor. The Notre Dame graduate's sprightly follow of a Benji Joya post-knocker in the 48th gave the Fire the lead, and his clever, swashbuckling run through the left side of the penalty area set up Grant Ward for the second.

Grant that, as always, we should bear in mind the NSFW advice of Mr. Winston Wolf. Allow, also, that this was a preseason workout against a DC United bench that doesn't quite pass the sniff test. Still, Shipp managed a goal and an assist in 45 minutes of play. What's more, his every touch seemed purposeful, controlling tempo and space, alertly challenging but never foolhardy. After his promising first 30 minutes against college kids last weekend, a most tantalizing debut against MLS competition. We shall see, but it's exciting, no?

Notes

• I compared the Fire's 4-1-4-1 to New England's from last year in the pregame comments, and nothing I saw tonight changes that comparison much. If this is the formation CF97 stick with this season, I'll be delighted, as a fan of fluid football based upon movement. The high defensive line is a work in progress, but it necessarily must be at this point in the season.
• Anangonó as the point of the spear: Yucko. Of course, it's very early, but JLA had no joy against Parke and Boswell, his battling looking more like flailing. This could be down to him just not being in form yet, or it could be down to the traditional CF97 Designated Player half-year fade.
• Marco Franco had a tough introduction to the first team, twice holding DC United onside on lavish long balls from the back and struggling to make an impact on the offensive end. Franco's positioning was all-of-this or all-of-that, either barreling into the right channel or three yards deeper than Hurtado, the cover back. The guess here is that this is all rookie head-static, and that Franco will come good, but it bears watching.
• Interesting that Soumare got the nod ahead of Berry alongside Hurtado. Baky looked solid in his ungainly way - he certainly gave Eddie Johnson plenty to think about, and he passed the ball well, showing ambition where it was merited. Berry, though, looked very smooth in the second half; this is a battle that has yet to play out.
• Tottenham product - and potential Chicago loanee - Grant Ward was impressive in the second half. Direct and athletic, he dominated the Fire's right flank. While his goal was created entirely by Shipp's brilliant layoff, it is the kind of chance we've seen countless trialists screw into the 10th row, and he finished it with cold-eyed aplomb.

More from Hot Time In Old Town

Follow @HotTimeOldTown Follow @SBNationSoccer

• MLS Transfers: Fire Win Joya Lottery
• Fire Preseason: CF97 Win Opener 1-0
• O Captain My Captain: Logan Pause and the Armband Conundrum
• 1998: A Great Year in Chicago - The Fire Are Born!
• Words About Shapes: Schrödinger's Team

In a review of Japanoise: Music at the Edge of Circulation, Scott McLemee defines the genre of Noizu:

The term is a neologism in Japanglish (cf. Franglais) referring to the underground movement or milieu devoted to producing — and enduring – squalls of atonal electronic sound blasted at incredibly high volume. Noizu stands in relation to hardcore punk or extreme heavy metal band something like the roar of a jet engine does to chamber music. Connoisseurs call the sound “harsh,” at least when they are praising a performance or recording.

The “noisician” works with a set of electronic boxes that distort, echo, or clip the frequencies of a sound; they are sometimes connected to one another according to a plan, and sometimes by chance. “Outputs go back into inputs,” [author David] Novak writes, “effects are looped together, and circuits are turned in on themselves. Sounds are transformed, saturated with distortion, and overloaded to the point that any original source becomes unrecognizable.” By the end of the performance, “the circuit is overturned, the gear is wrecked, and the network is destroyed.”

The point is to create, in Novak’s words, “the biggest, loudest, and most intense invocation of sonic immediacy imaginable” — sometimes blasting the audience into “a state of hypnosis, dreaming sleep, or trance.” …[T]he question of whether Noizu is a category of music is a question of taste and, even more, of definition – including self-definition, since there are people in the Noizu scene who insist that it is an experience utterly distinct from music.

(Video: Noizu artist Merzbow)

For Record Store Day 2013 deluxe hiphop reissue label Get On Down are releasing a double flexi-disc dedicated to the TR-909, with a 20 page booklet by Get On Down co-founder Joe Mansfield. The two-flexi discs include sounds taken from the TR-909, plus explanations read by rapper Schoolly-D, plus instrumental remakes of two of his drum tracks.

The Record Store Day release is a precursor of a larger book on the drum machine by Joe Mansfield, which will be out later this summer. Titled Beat Box: A Drum Machine Obsession, the book will include an introduction by Wire contributor and author of How To Wreck A Nice Beach, Dave Tompkins, and includes details of 75 drum machines taken from Mansfield's personal collection.

Get On Down are also pushing out a vinyl edition of their chess box version of GZA's Liquid Swords for Record Store Day. More details incoming here.