Floating (Jape song)

"Floating" is a 2004 single by the Irish band Jape, taken from the second studio album, The Monkeys in the Zoo Have More Fun Than Me and described as "Jape's trademark song". Co-produced by David Kitt, the single was the first release from the album and was generally viewed by critics as the standout track on the album. In 2007, it featured on the EP, Jape is Grape, for which a video was made. Brendan Benson of The Raconteurs is a known admirer of the song and has performed a cover version during live shows.

Reception

"Floating" was a popular single on late night alternative music radio shows in Ireland. The national broadcaster RTÉ described the song as "part drugs story and part love song" and noted its "quirky instrumentation and Gregorian chanting". It described the lyrics as having "a definite feel of amateur philosophy at 5am" but it said that that was "not necessarily a bad thing".

Cover versions

The song was famously overheard being played in Whelan's in Dublin by the musician Brendan Benson who immediately requested a copy of the album. A friend at the venue informed the band of this development following a show at The Bloom Festival during The Rose of Tralee festival in County Kerry. Benson then praised Jape in The Guardian (however, the newspaper spelt it "Jabe") and rang the song's writer to inform him he would be covering "Floating" with his band The Raconteurs. Benson did not actually receive permission to cover the track although it has been said that he would have been allowed to had he asked. Jape witnessed the cover live at the Olympia Theatre and was later to describe it as "a great moment". "Floating" is also covered by the Belgian bastard pop duo Soulwax during their DJ sets.

Damping

Damping is an influence within or upon an oscillatory system that has the effect of reducing, restricting or preventing its oscillations. In physical systems, damping is produced by processes that dissipate the energy stored in the oscillation. Examples include viscous drag in mechanical systems, resistance in electronic oscillators, and absorption and scattering of light in optical oscillators. Damping not based on energy loss can be important in other oscillating systems such as those that occur in biological systems.

The damping of a system can be described as being one of the following:

For example, consider a door that uses a spring to close the door once open. This can lead to any of the above types of damping depending on the strength of the damping. If the door is undamped it will swing back and forth forever at a particular resonant frequency. If it is underdamped it will swing back and forth with decreasing size of the swing until it comes to a stop. If it is critically damped then it will return to closed as quickly as possible without oscillating. Finally, if it is overdamped it will return to closed without oscillating but more slowly depending on how overdamped it is. Different levels of damping are desired for different types of systems.

Floating (play)

Floating is the name of a stage production created and performed by "emerging Welsh performance artist" Hugh Hughes, in collaboration with British touring theatre company Hoipolloi. It tells the story of the Isle of Anglesey floating away from the mainland of Wales and voyaging around the world. Hughes performs alongside actor Sioned Rowlands. Hughes introduces the story to the audience and re-enacts the story, playing himself, with Rowlands playing all the other parts.

Floating won a Total Theatre Award at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Following its run in Edinburgh, the show has continued to tour to venues and festivals across the World including Sydney Opera House, Barbican Centre, Barrow Street Theatre in New York and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in Vancouver.

Since Floating, Hugh Hughes has created two new stage shows, Story of a Rabbit and 360.

In September 2011, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a new version of Floating as an Afternoon Play.

References

Book

A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is a leaf, and each side of a leaf is a page. A set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book, or e-book.

Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, and so on). An avid reader of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, bookworm.

A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books can also be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 unique titles had been published. In some wealthier nations, printed books are giving way to the usage of electronic or e-books, though sales of e-books declined in the first half of 2015.

Book (disambiguation)

A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side.

Book or Books may also refer to:

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals.

Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre works of American creators like George M. Cohan. The Princess Theatre musicals and other smart shows like Of Thee I Sing (1931) were artistic steps forward beyond revues and other frothy entertainments of the early 20th century and led to such groundbreaking works as Show Boat (1927) and Oklahoma! (1943). Some of the most famous and iconic musicals through the decades that followed include West Side Story (1957), The Fantasticks (1960), Hair (1967), A Chorus Line (1975), Les Misérables (1985), The Phantom of the Opera (1986), Rent (1996), The Producers (2001) and Wicked (2003).