Robin Speth’s Synapses of a Storm Cell is a painted snapshot of a dynamic moment.

“I try to capture the excitement and movement of an event like that,” said Speth about his 2023 airbrush painting. “It seems to be between a snapshot and a time-lapse. I want to showcase the movement because you get to see something that isn’t always seen.”

Synapses of a Storm Cell also showcases Speth’s interest in storm chasing.

“I found a filmmaker on YouTube named Mike Olbinski, and he does this amazing time-lapse footage of storms,” he said. “It was seeing those and getting a sense of how they move. I wanted to try to make a larger piece. I will also say that with the clouds, they came out messing around in my studio. I figured out how to do them over the course of a day.”

Speth’s painting is one of 30 pieces featured in his latest exhibit, Decoherence, at the University of Michigan’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens.

“One Track Mind” features a Washtenaw County artist or band discussing one song from their latest release.

Standout Track: No. 4, "Rain (We Are Alive)," by Ann Arbor vocal-looping artist Ki5 from his new four-track EP, Mind, with guest vocals from Aviva Match. The artist born Kyler Wilkins writes uplifting, soul-centric, a capella pop that is usually built by him sampling his own voice to provide the harmonic and rhythmic beds of his songs as well as the melodic leads. On some previous releases, Wilkins has strayed outside of vox-only jams and incorporated the likes of drums, synths, bass, and viola, but for "Rain," it's just body parts—mouth and hands—to make all the sounds, including the liquid percussion. "'Rain' was inspired by a want to encourage presence by engaging with senses of hearing and touch," Wilkins said. "The first set of lyrics are 'Be free / Listen to the rain / We are alive,' and that very simply is an invitation to the present using hearing. The rain sounds [here] apply to the sense of touch through their creation with hand-clapping and snaps."

UMS and the City of Ypsilanti are once again filling up the old Freighthouse with a month full of artists and musicians. "UMS at the Freighthouse" is a twice-annual residency in the historic building that offers a diverse lineup of local creatives putting on a variety of shows, all of which are all either free or pay what you wish. This year's spring residency runs April 9-25, and Ypsi residents get priority access with early registration starting Tuesday, February 24, at 10 am. The general public can register for shows beginning on March 10.

Here are the performers and events for the April residency; click on the performance to go to UMS's website page for the event:

When I was a child, the mere mention of “summer school” was enough to scare most kids straight.

Little did I know then that many of my Asian American peers across the country were not only drilled and educated all day, every day in the summer, but for hours each afternoon during the school year, too.

U-M Stamps School of Art & Design professor Angela Chen’s new book, After School 課後, chronicles the author’s experience growing up (during the ‘90s and aughts) in this competitive subculture—both as a student and as the child of Taiwanese parents who owned a “supplemental school” called Futurelink, initially housed in a strip mall in Temple City, California.

“As a kid, none of us really wanted to be going to after school,” said Chen. “In Chinese, we call them buxiban … and in English, we refer to them as ‘cram schools,’ but among ourselves, as children, we called them ‘hell.’ Like, we hate going there. Nobody likes it. We all wish we could be at home, playing video games, or just with our families, having a nice cookie and milk snack or something. … But at the same time, as an adult, one thing I think about now is how a lot of my social life happened at Futurelink. Even though we were forced to study and do workbooks all the time, even in those 10 minutes of recess, or waiting for the van to pick us up and take us to Futurelink, a lot of social life happened in those in-between moments. … I have very fond memories of those moments in particular.”

The Radar tracks new music by Washtenaw County-associated artists and labels.

This week:
Animal Trial, Dennis Proctor, G.B. Marian, Redwood Ride, DAViS, Marc Hannaford, Jerry Arlen, and Will Kaye.

“One Track Mind” features a Washtenaw County artist or band discussing one song from their latest release.

Standout Track: No. 6, “Amaretto,” from Fearless Amaretto (they/them). The Ypsilanti artist’s latest EP, Diary of Amaretto, is an exploration of passion, intimacy, and authenticity in relationships. Each song is like a personal journey entry, examining Fearless Amaretto’s thoughts and feelings about different romantic encounters.

On “Amaretto,” they’re educating potential suitors about how to approach them. “Navigating sex and relationships as a witch, or even as an intuitive or empathetic person, is always interesting," Amaretto said. "I’m often presented with suitors who talk a big game with no follow-through, or have feelings they want to explore with me, but are afraid to speak up. ‘Amaretto’ is that song to let them know to shit or get off the pot. Either make a move or move aside, because someone is waiting for their chance. You are that witch! I hope people hear this song and are reminded that they are not only desired, but they’re also deserving of people who won’t play about their desire for you. Tell them not to call your name unless they’re about that life.”

During an intro to playwriting class at Michigan State University seven years ago, Cole Hunter Dzubak found inspiration for his first play, Afterall, in an unlikely source: Oasis’ 1995 megahit "Wonderwall."

Given a prompt from his professor to write a play based on an existing piece of media, Dzubak said he ran with the idea of deconstructing what have become different interpretations of the song, repurposing them in his own story.

Originally believed to be a story about songwriter Noel Gallagher’s then-girlfriend and future wife, Gallagher later corrected the record that "Wonderwall" was actually a song about an imaginary friend “who's gonna come and save you from yourself."

Dzubak’s obsession with the song and its two supposed meanings made him realize what he had to do.

“Afterall is really about that idea of those two interpretations of the song kind of being pitted against one another, and it forces the main character to pick: imaginary friends or love of his life,” Dzubak said.

After years of tinkering, Dzubak and Ypsilanti’s Neighborhood Theatre Group will debut Afterall as its latest production, with shows set for February 27 through March 1 and March 6-8 at the Back Office Studio in Ypsilanti.

The Mythic Chaos: 50 Years of Destroy All Monsters exhibit at Cranbrook Art Museum focuses much of its energy on the visual art side of the Ann Arbor-formed collective, particularly the early years with original members Cary Loren, Niagara, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley.

But as Frank Uhle's Pulp story, "Collecting 'Chaos'," notes, there were several editions of Destroy All Monsters (DAM) on the music side, with Benjamin and Laurence Miller passing through the band as well as Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and MC5 bassist Michael Davis.

A 1994 CD box set, 1974-1976, co-compiled by Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, features Destroy All Monsters' early experimental recordings. But for many people, the musical style most associated with DAM can be heard on the proto- and avant-punk singles and live recordings starting in 1977, which are centered on Asheton's jackhammer guitar and Niagara's angry-goddess vocals.

DAM's first official record was 1979's "Bored," written by Niagara and Asheton, with Davis on bass, Rob King on drums, Laurence Miller on guitar, and Benjamin Miller on sax. The B-side, "You're Gonna Die," was co-written by Loren, but he had left the band by the time of the recording.

The Niagara and Asheton-led version of DAM recorded three additional singles, which have been compiled several times with the "Bored" 7-inch, and there's a slew of rough-and-ready live recordings out there featuring a lot of Stooges songs in the setlist. The core duo then morphed into Dark Carnival, sticking with roughly the same sound and setlists as DAM before calling it a day in 1998.

Below is a selection of 1977 and beyond recordings by Destroy All Monsters, from Asheton and Niagara-led live shows in Ann Arbor to the original version of DAM reuniting for concerts in California and Japan in the mid-1990s.

Flames, with all their energy and implications, burn through Kelly Hoffer’s new poetry collection, Fire Series. In the way that fire reconfigures the landscape, the poet shares, “I am constant in my remaking, making / my memory in my own image.”

What is there to remake? Hoffer’s poems reply that anything can be vulnerable: grief, one’s mind, rooms, a body, words. The poem “Firebreak” looks for some stability that is not there and inquires, “how do you protect a body from language, / be it poison or polish or pith?” There does not seem to be a way to find immunity from the ever-present flame, tangible or metaphysical, because when “I open / my chest to the weather” the poet finds things like “sentimental white-hot pining.”

As in her previous book, Undershore, Hoffer continues to engage with form in Fire Series. In the poem “chemical lace / day series,” she offers the same poem twice, the first spanning several pages and the second repeated but with select words and letters grayed out to form a lace-like new poem from the remaining text. Several poems take a repeated Bible verse, Genesis 3:24, and give it the erasure treatment as well, though again, none of the words are fully gone, only grayed out. These poems bring a literal “remaking” while finding new meanings and outlooks.

Poems in Fire Series spark with the sensuality brought by the heat of the blaze, with titles like “Pluming” and “the faces of a diamond.” The poem “Field holiday” concludes:

Kameryn Alexa Carter is an MFA student in the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan and the co-editor of Emergent Literary. Her new book of poetry is "Antediluvian," which follows 2025's "New Amerykah Part Two: Return of the Ankh," which is about Erykah Badu's 2008 album.

We're publishing Carter's poem "Whoso list to hunt" from "Antediluvian," and below it she answered a few questions about her work.