In last week’s issue, we spoke with ambient composer Steve Roach about the 30th anniversary of his landmark album Structures from Silence. Originally issued in DIY fashion on cassette by Roach himself, the three-song suite quickly gained notice. On April 15th, the album sees deluxe treatment courtesy Projekt Records. In addition to a clarity-enriching remastering job, the new edition features 2012 and ‘13 recordings by Roach that find him exploring the Structures sound and style from his Timeroom studio in the Sonoran desert south of Tucson.We ended up with more material than we could fit into the feature, so enjoy this extended Q&A with Roach and a sneak peek at his next project.

Tucson Weekly: I understand that you drove race cars in your youth?

Steve Roach: Growing up in Southern California in that era of the ‘70s — the whole spawn of the baby boomer wave — motocross was really kind of born in southern California. I was right where it was all emerging. If I wasn’t out hiking in the desert I really embraced this sport that was right in our backyard. It wasn’t as incongruent [with music] as you would think, because there’s a real kind of discipline you have to have. If you’re going to do it, you have to be fully awake and present. Your life depends on it. You’re completely in. You’re inside of it; your life depends on it. That set the tone.

That makes sense in relation to your music.

The thing that really shaped me in that time was a lot of time spent in the deserts outside of San Diego. Just in quiet, in silence, [listening to] desert sounds, the sound of the space itself. Tuning into that. My parents introduced me to that while world before I could drive. We’d go out desert camping, that sort of thing. We’d go out into the mountains of San Diego and to the ocean. So later on when I was able to start driving myself to these places, I might start out in the mountains mid-day and watch the sunset at the ocean. Those kinds of landscapes and atmospheric dynamics set the tone early on for me as an artist in terms of the kinds of spaces I wanted to be in and draw from.

It's crazy up at the legislature right now, what with the recent passage of the budget and the rush to push through a bunch of bills so everyone can go home. And, not surprisingly, it's crazy time as well. Five Republican legislators went to Mesquite, Nevada, over the weekend to support the rancher, Cliven Bundy, whose cattle have been grazing illegally on government land and thinks he should be able to keep them there, regardless of the law.

Several state lawmakers traveled to Mesquite, Nev., over the weekend to support rancher Cliven Bundy, who is in a standoff with federal Bureau of Land Management officials over Bundy's two decades' worth of unpaid grazing fees.

Rep. Bob Thorpe, R-Flagstaff, had returned to Phoenix in time for Monday's floor session and urged members of the House of Representatives to support Bundy. Thorpe also said that if he is re-elected, he plans to introduce legislation in 2015 that would assert the primacy of county sheriffs in enforcing the law in their counties. That's a central tenet of the sovereignty movement, which rejects much federal control.

In addition to Thorpe, Reps. David Livingston, R-Peoria, and Kelly Townsend, R-Mesa, traveled to Mesquite, along with Sens. Judy Burges, R-Sun City West, and Kelli Ward, R-Lake Havasu City.

Monday's legislative speechifying included impassioned statements by some of the travelers about the federal thugs trampling on the rights of citizens of Nevada.

Here are some highlights of the adventure, which I found in a post by Facebook friend Anna Johnson.

The latest piece of street art by Banksy went missing, but it magically reappeared in the most unlikely of places.

During an interview with CCTV, Broad Plain Boys Club Manager Dennis Stinchcombe said he removed Banksy’s “Phone Lovers” from a wall on Clement Street and plans to sell it for hundreds of thousands of pounds to save the club.

“I feel like it was a gift out of the sky,” Stinchcombe says.

The club’s security footage captured Banksy and an accomplice—dressed as workman—installing the vandalism on Sunday morning. Many of the locals aren't happy with Sitnchombe’s decision, but he claims it was a gift from the prolific graffiti artist. This doesn't seem out of character since Banksy has sold his personal work for $60 and less on street corners.

The club is allowing the public to view the art until it's sold.

Nancy Tokar Miller, an acclaimed painter often called Tucson's best artist, died Tuesday after a long illness.

She was known for her shimmering near-abstractions of land, sea and sky, painted in brilliant, liquid colors.

Born in 1941, Tokar Miller grew up in Los Angeles, near the ocean, but she had lived in Tucson since 1968. She studied art at the University of Arizona, earning a master's in 1971. She traveled the world with her beloved husband, Walter, and what she saw — in Asian jungles and Moorish cities — made its way into her art back home in her Tucson studio. In recent years, she was inspired by the sandhill cranes on Arizona's Willcox Playa and the beaches and mountains of Hawaii.

"We're extremely saddened by the loss of our longtime friend and artist," said Hannah Glasston, director of Etherton Gallery, which represented her. "Her death is a huge loss to us personally and to the community. She worked so hard and stuck to her vision. Her beautiful work, fortunately, is still here."

No services have yet been announced.

I had the privilege of reviewing Tokar Miller's her work many times. Below the cut is a piece I wrote in the Weekly in 2009 about her retrospective at the University of Arizona Museum of Art and a smaller show at the Temple Gallery.

I was never good at Jenga, or anything that requires a steady hand. Caterpillar used the 320E, TH514C, 277D, M316D and 349E to play a monstrous game of Jenga. One crane operator on the ground directed five other Cat drivers while they maneuvered and reordered 27 massive wooden blocks one at a time.

It’s been 25 years since Nickelodeon’s Hey Dude was on the air. But the memories still haunt the abandoned set at the Tanque Verde Ranch. Florida filmmaker Adam The Woo made a special trip to the outskirts of the Old Pueblo and captured some footage of the hardly memorable set to one of Nick’s earliest attempts at live action television.

From A.V. Club:

Although intended as lighthearted, mildly Jackass-esque amateur reportage, Adam The Woo's videos frequently have a spooky, haunted quality that makes them feel like miniature "found footage" horror movies, minus the violence. That's certainly true of his Hey Dude travelogue, in which the still-cheerful-looking facades barely conceal devastated interiors. Even more sinister is Adam's visit to a nighmarish Flintstones-themed roadside attraction, which gives off a definite Chernobyl/post-apocalyptic vibe. (Those poor goats!) Even Adam The Woo's uptempo, punky theme song doesn't detract from the gloom at the heart of these videos.

That’s strange, we don't see a mention of a Hey Dude tour in the Tanque Verde Ranch program.

There was a simpler time when a device like the cassette player was a practical household item. Now, that ancient piece of technology has been long forgotten, and a good way to stump a know-it-all child. Benny and Rafi Fine recorded the reactions of various young people of Generation Z while they try to figure out how to operate the retro device.

Needless to say, the cassette player won.

“This is a rip off because you want to listen, but you can't because you don't have any headphones,” said a seven-year-old.

Honestly, I can't remember when was the last time I seen a tape player, but I do remember listening to Eminem’s Marshall Mathers on my Sony Walkmen in middle school.

Since the vinyl revival, tapes are making a slow comeback. According to the video, over 22,000 cassettes were sold in 2011. You can buy your very own tape player for around $20 on eBay, or dig around your parent's storage unit.

As the deadline for FEC fundraising reports closes in, Congressman Ron Barber's team tells the Weekly he has raised more than $422,000 in the first quarter of 2014.

While that's a big number for Barber, it still lags behind the nearly $450,000 that likely GOP opponent Martha McSally reported raising last week.

Barber is still outpacing McSally in total dollars raised for the 2014 cycle. Team Barber spokeswoman Ashley Nash-Hahn tells The Range that the campaign has raised more than $1.6 million since the beginning of the cycle and has more than $1.2 million cash on hand.

“The reason our campaign has more cash on hand than Martha McSally's is that Southern Arizonans support Ron Barber,” said Nash-Hahn. “Since McSally has been adopted by the Koch Brothers, she will have a well-funded campaign, and that's why she would do exactly what the Koch billionaires tell her to do if she went to Congress—vote to eliminate the minimum wage, increase health care costs for seniors and raise taxes on middle class families. She would even vote to privatize Social Security. Southern Arizonans know that we can't trust McSally to look out for us."

The CD2 race promises to be on the top-watched races in the country.

A super-group of two, Broken Bells played to a packed house that expected the best on Sunday night, April 13 at the Rialto Theatre. Minds, and expectations, were blown. The duo, comprising producer and recording artist Brian Burton, aka Danger Mouse, and the Shins' James Mercer delivered a 360-degree experience that was perfect in every discernible detail. The crowd was in thrall from the moment they took the stage with a full band, designer-furniture-worthy keyboards, lights and cameras pointing in every direction and a video backdrop we would have probably paid to see as a movie. It was like being in a music video, and if there was a crack in the perfection anywhere, it was this: The show was at least 45 minutes in before Mercer seemed to respond warmly to a crowd in the throes of adoration. The music, it should go without saying, was sublime; 

It’s no longer The Truth. It’s no longer “Right Talk for Tucson.” But it is more local, and it will hope to use that local appeal to improve its standing against the nation’s top talker.

KQTH 104.1 FM, the market’s lone news/talk FM, will on Monday follow the lead of stations in other cities and move its best known talent out of morning drive in hopes a local presence will cut into KNST AM 790’s mid-day talk advantage with Rush Limbaugh. Jon Justice, who has locked down KQTH’s more traditional morning talk slot since its launch seven years ago, will broadcast his program from 8:30 to noon weekdays.

Limbaugh dominates other syndicated talk programs, but has experienced ratings lags in some markets that have countered with local programming. On the surface, it’s a counterintuitive move. The thought has been putting the station’s most listened to element in morning drive, but whereas morning drive—the roughly 5:30 to 9 window when people prepare for work—has been radio’s traditional hotspot, of late that has applied more to music based formats than the talk model.

To my recollection, this is the first effort a Tucson talk station has made to go with live, local programming in middays opposite Limbaugh.

In place of Justice in morning drive, 104.1 will add a news block hosted by Program Director Bill White. The news block, a series of reports that generally includes national, state and local news, weather, sports and traffic, also features opportunities for the host to chat about the day’s topics of note before returning to the next block of headlines.

The news block is generally fast-paced, and if done well, times nicely with listener driving habits, which tend to average in the neighborhood of 20 minutes in Tucson. It’s also a format that has been dreadfully underrepresented in this market, largely the result of cutbacks.