Music

Vale & Year Create A Perfect Record: A Quiz

By Clinton Doggett

Part One - Quantitative Reasoning

1. What is Vale & Year?

a. a traveling duo of jugglers

b. a two-piece band from Pittsburgh

c. a team of wine-tasting connoisseurs

d. an Irish football (soccer) club

2. Which of the following elements can be found in Vale & Year ?

a. Dave Bernabo, Carnegie Mellon Finance student, 21; a guitar jangling shy guy turned syllable-dragging folk-rock crooner/rasping howler.

b. Greg Cislon, Schoolteacher, 28, short in stature, oozing with charisma, mild-mannered dude turned agile, jolting drum machine. His percussion is spiritual.

c. A crazed, enthusiastic relationship, not only with melody, but with the vastness of sound and its bottomless potential to move.

d . Ridiculously sincere passion and dedication for art and ideas.

e. all of the above

3. How did Dave and Greg meet?

a. They were both hired by Miramax to adapt George W. Bush's yet-to-be-released memoir, Create a Perfect History , into a screenplay. They discovered the other to be musically inclined and decided, instead, to make an album by that title instead.

b. On eBay, the two found themselves outbidding one another on the same vintage musical instruments. When they noticed the recurrent usernames, they decided to join forces and share their respective instrumental collections to form a supergroup.

c. The two played together for a few years in the local Boxstep before splitting off to form Vale & Year nearly two years ago, a move that they described as driven by it being time for Dave and Greg to do their "own thing." Despite the 7-year gap in age, Dave and Greg went to the same high school (North Allegheny) in the North Hills of Pittsburgh. They were offered a sweet bounty to play a show at Carnegie Mellon, and took the offer. And after only one show they entered the studio (H-Hour) to work on their broodingly gorgeous, alt-something debut, Create A Perfect History. The name 'Vale & Year' is derived - not from an expression you don't know the meaning of - but from Dave and Greg's attraction to the broadness of the two words. Plus, it sounded cool.

d. Dave is Greg's son, making Greg (at the time) the most virile 7-year-old in the history of the world.

4. In the following equation, let v ? y equal Vale & Year's new album, Holy Music and Art! Find the value of x :

8 x = v ? y

a. The Periodic Table

b. Dirt McGirt

c. Is this cumulative?

d. Awesome/Glorious

5. Earlier this year, Vale & Year released the first in a series of "Field Recordings." How many releases are they slating for this series?

a. 12

b. 12

c. This is a trick question. There is no such thing as a "Field Recording."

d. 12

6. Considering the answer to the question above, if Vale & Year had a fictional disease it would be:

a. Influenza

b. Studiohermititis (the addiction to recording music, resulting in long hours in the studio and an obsession with sounds)

c. Freedomlovia (the obsessive love of freedom)

d. Convolutiawriteria (the becoming of a convulted writer)

Part Two - Reading Comprehension

Read the following passage carefully and choose the best answers to the questions below.

To use words to describe Vale & Year's Holy Music and Art! seems an utter disservice to band - the nuances, the layers, the cuts, the shits and giggles, the spliced dissonant vocals, the percussive shrieks, the grab bag instrumental aesthetics. Is this the best I can do? Holy Music is a goliath, a two-disc exuberant celebration of the recording process, a striking collection of broken up folk, punk, post-folk, anti-punk, Rock and Roll, and Avant-Pop. It's all here, shifting in and out between triumphant buildups, the sweeping guitar lines of Dave Bernabo, the spasm-prone percussion of Greg Cislon, the melodica and the xylophone, the crunchy bayou geetar slams and the calculated finger pickings. There isn't a single boring - or unbeautiful or jarring or careless or flubbed - moment on the entirety of Holy Music! It is, in fact, a perfect record.

7. From what you can gather, how does the writer feel about Holy Music and Art!

a. He is indifferent. He heard about it from some guy on the street and shrugged, saying, "Yeah, maybe I'll check it out sometime."

b. He is troubled and unsure how he feels. He has listened to it numerous times but doesn't really know what to say about it. He'll get back to you.

c. He is most obviously obsessed with the record and hopes it gets the recognition it deserves.

d. He clearly can't stand the record.

8. When the writer refers to "grab bag instrumental aesthetics," what is he talking about?

a. He is referring to the recording's tasteful incorporation of variant sounds, instruments, and musical styles - its predilection for purposeful, engaging, and careful eclecticism.

b. I'm not sure what the writer means. I hate him.

c. He is referring the shifting emotional tones of the record, and the spirit and artistic poise which give way to such shifting.

d. a and c, but not b.

9. In all, judging from this passage, what do you think the writer would most like the reader to do upon finishing this quiz?

a. Buy Holy Music and Art! as soon as the reader can.

b. Listen to the record ad nauseam, at volumes unhealthy for human ears.

c. Contemplate a musical career and realize, upon listening to it, that you could never do anything as good as Holy Music!

d. all of the above.