Ashley Atkinson

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Undergraduate Art Students Revive Pittsboro Mill With Loom2 Exhibit

By Ashley Atkinson | April 25

A group of University undergraduates is once again bringing a defunct Pittsboro mill back to life with an exhibition of art created from and inspired by the historic building. Loom2, which opens Saturday, follows a similar exhibit held to great acclaim in December. "There's a sense of spiritual presence in the building, a religious aura to the space," said senior Jeffrey Waites, the exhibit's creator and co-curator. "I wanted to comment on that, that sense of past life."

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Lambchop Conjures Up Sultry Torch Singer Image

By Ashley Atkinson | February 14

Lambchop Is a Woman 4 Stars Nashville, Tenn., is known these days as a music-making machine that chews up aspiring country artists and spits them out as processed, identical pop products. So there must have been a short circuit the day the machine made Lambchop -- a band that transcends its country- influenced roots to create music that is unclassifiable, guileless and beautiful on Is a Woman.

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Lambchop Conjures Up Sultry Torch Singer Image

By Ashley Atkinson | February 14

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Signing the Dotted Line

By Ashley Atkinson | November 29

A contract can be the holy grail to a band or artist trying to make it in the music industry. Being "signed" has a cachet that putting out a compact disc from your basement just doesn't. But the way to a profitable record deal is fraught with danger. Contracts come in many shapes and forms, depending on the kind of label that offers them. But they're almost always written in a jargon that defies common English, and they can inflate to more than 40 pages in length. Artists shouldn't try to wade through the legal mire on their own.

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Ensemble Searches For Fitting Home

By Ashley Atkinson | November 27

The 68 instruments that comprise an Indonesian gamelan ensemble survived three months at sea, traveling by boat from the island of Java to a far-removed new home in Chapel Hill. Now the gamelan is on the move again -- there just aren't many spaces at UNC that requires a 25-person ensemble to play it and that occupies 460 square feet while in use. "You can't park your car at this University, how can you possibly park a gamelan?" asked Sarah Weiss, the ensemble's leader and a professor in the Department of Music.

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Dive Recommends

By Ashley Atkinson | October 11

"Freeway" The classic Little Red Riding Hood gets violently made over Oliver Stone style. A pre-stardom Reese Witherspoon and an exceptionally creepy Keifer Sutherland turn in dead-on performances in this disturbing-yet-hilarious modern folk tale. Studio One Soul, Various Artists The legendary Studio One puts a reggae twist on American soul hits of 1964-74. This compilation spotlights some of Jamaica's greats -- Jackie Mittoo, Alton Ellis -- and exemplifies how musical cultures mix and match.

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Concert Series Enters 6th Year of Entertaining, Fund Raising

By Ashley Atkinson | September 27

Carolina Union officials spent three years recruiting celebrity cellist Yo-Yo Ma to perform a Virtuoso Benefit Concert in Memorial Hall. They put equal effort into snagging this year's Virtuoso, Bill Cosby, as well as past performers like violinist Itzhak Perlman and soprano Kathleen Battle. "We were bringing world-class performers to a less-than-world-class venue and trying to show everyone that this university can support a higher level of entertainment than our facilities allow," Union Director Don Luse said.

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Ozomatli Delivers Politics, Latin Fire on Chaos

By Ashley Atkinson | September 20

OzomatliEmbrace the Chaos4 Stars Forget about Ricky Martin and J. Lo. If you're looking for the real Latin invasion, you'll find it in the L.A.-based Ozomatli -- a party band with a political agenda. While Ozomatli's sound is rooted in salsa, the group is as diverse as the city that spawned it: Ozomatli counts blacks, Chicanos, Cubans, Japanese, Jews and Filipinos among its nine members.

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Davis Leaves Drum Kit For Elegant Patterns

By Ashley Atkinson | June 20

4/5 Stars When local faves Milemarker left Chapel Hill for the greener post-rock pastures of Chicago last summer, drummer Ben Davis stayed behind. Letting the band that he had helped found in 1997 move on to bigger things without him couldn't have been easy - but Davis wanted to remain in Chapel Hill to raise his newborn son. And what began when he started to write songs for the piano alone in his bedroom soon evolved into a full-fledged ensemble.

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Ledger Takes On Starring Role

By Ashley Atkinson | April 30

LOS ANGELES -- Despite a role opposite Mel Gibson in last summer's "The Patriot," Heath Ledger doesn't have to disguise himself to avoid throngs of fans just yet.But in his new film, "A Knight's Tale," Ledger is the star. His name comes first in the credits, and his face is on the poster that adorns magazines and billboards nationwide. And after the film's May 11 release, fans are likely to come running. The 22-year-old Ledger isn't letting the prospect of idolhood get to him yet."I really don't sit around worrying about that," he said.