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trashcankitty12 · 4 years ago

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Tecna Headcanons

Tecna Mode, the Guardian Fairy of Zenith would like to make your acquaintance.

She’s a tad sassy, a bit of a show-off when it comes to her projects, and a video game expert.

(All headcanons are for my main au verses, “Balance/New Company of Light” and “Left”.)

-Tecna tends to be reserved in her emotions, but just as her family knows, her friends (and Timmy) quickly learned that Tecna can be rather affectionate when she feels safe and loved.

-As a Zenithian, Tecna has an easier time learning new technological systems and how to rewire electronics.

-She also tends to be able to see at night. Not better than nocturnal animals, but better than most Magical Dimension people.

-Tecna is also somewhat immune to being electrocuted. Somewhat. (Lightning attacks by storm harpies and Stormy aside, electricity doesn’t bother her. In fact it sort of wakes her up.)

-Tecna is really close to her parents, partially due to her being an only child, partially due to her curious nature putting her in the middle of her parents’ work because she was determined to help.

-(She didn’t necessarily want to be an only child, and her parents had wanted another… But Magnethia had had a hard enough time getting and staying pregnant, that they felt Tecna was more than enough.)

-Tecna may have been a bit of a spoiled child… Her parents made sure to get her the latest technology when it came out, and they gave her her own workspace when she got older.

-As close as she was to both of her parents, she’s closest to her mother. Magnethia loves having Tecna help out at her and Electronio’s workshop. They have created many new gadgets and gizmos together, including specialized robots to do household chores. (Which is why Tecna has no idea how ‘obsolete’ cleaning tech like brooms and vacuums and mops work.)

-Because of Zenith’s climate, most animals and plants do not live/thrive there. So Tecna has had minimal contact with non-robotic plants and animals. Which led to quite a shock when she came to Alfea and saw all the greenery and the birds. (And Kiko and Flora’s plants.)

-Tecna, as a Zenithian, isn’t as bothered by the cold climates as other people would be. In fact, it’s the heat that bothers her.

-Which is why she’s not a fan of the beach. She doesn’t mind going and hanging out with her friends, but the heat and the sand and weird feeling of the ocean just sort of… Bugs her. (Which is why she stays more on the actual beach and wears specialized shoes to keep sand away from her feet.)

-Tecna has a major sweet tooth and has ‘borrowed’ from Stella’s secret stash of chocolates before. (Please don’t tell Stella…)

-She doesn’t like veggie meals much. It’s the textures and slight tangy tastes that turn her away from them. (And as a Zenithian, she doesn’t need them as much.)

-Physically speaking, she’s not in the best shape. She’s like… Bare minimum shape to pass Griselda’s and Real Avalon’s classes. (She’s decent enough at running away and decent at feats of climbing, but trying to be acrobatic or trying to physically fight with her fists or feet is difficult without her winx/fairy forms).

-She’s not a strong swimmer either. But Layla has helped her get to be decent enough that she can make it to her destination without getting herself hurt or drowned.

-Layla has also helped Tecna get better at dancing, which has in turn helped Tecna with her rhythm and dance video games. (Take that Rubis!)

-Tecna is extremely competitive when it comes to games. Video or board or card games with Tecna can lead to arguments and a smug Zenithian fairy. (Bloom even brought some from Earth to try and trip Tecna up… Monopoly and Uno are no longer allowed on Alfea’s school grounds. Thanks, guys.)

-She may not have the best grades at Alfea, but it’s not her fault… Well, not entirely. Okay so she could stand to study more… But her projects just need a little more tweaking. (Please Ms. Faragonda, understand.)

-Tecna doesn’t have the best handwriting… But her typing skills are out of this world.

-Tecna doesn’t have a big appetite, but when she’s hungry, just hand over the plate. (She doesn’t just get hungry, she gets hangry.)

-Everything has to have a place. Tecna’s workshops/workrooms may be messy and unorganized due to everything always being used, but her actual room and desk? Spotless. Everything put away neatly. (And she tries not to look over to Musa’s side of the room when they were still sharing a dorm. That’s not her mess or her side, it’s not her problem.)

-Tecna is sort of a mom friend. But she’s the sort of mom friend who will be telling you why what you did was stupid while she’s bandaging you up. (“Dammit Layla, I told you this would happen. Why did you think you could jump from that height without your wings?” “Musa bet I couldn’t do it.” “Why do I even bother?”)

-(Yes, Tecna has swearing problem. But only around friends or on her own. She tries to tone it down around parents or those who are in charge.)

-Digit, despite being just as big a gamer and tech guru as Tecna is, is also more in touch with her emotions (thanks to having roomed with Amore for so long). Which is great, because Digit helps Tecna naturally learn more about her own emotions without pushing or pressing. (And damn does it feel good to see Tecna and Timmy being more open with each other.)

-Tecna is unabashedly an anime fan. (Or at least, the Magical Dimension’s version of anime.) And she loves comics. (Which shocked her when Stella showed her her own collection. They may have a few get-togethers just to talk about their favorite comics now.)

-Tecna first transformed at 12, after trying to protect a younger cousin from an incoming snowstorm they had gotten lost in. Thankfully it helped her boost her power to signal for her mother and aunt.

-At Alfea, Tecna is part of the STEM club, anime club, robotics, and gaming club. Thanks to her and a few other Zenithian fairies, Alfea’s robotics club finally beat out Red Fountain’s.

-Speaking of Red Fountain… Tecna may have borrowed Timmy’s badge to enter into Red Fountain’s weaponry.

-(She was always curious about how Red Fountain’s weapons and ships worked, and the best way to figure that out is to take it apart and put it back together… She may have even upgraded a few things… Please don’t tell Saladin.)

-Tecna didn’t thrive as well as she claimed while in Omega. She just didn’t want her friends to feel guilty about not coming for her sooner.

-She understood why it took so long. And it was lucky that she was used to Zenith’s frigid temperatures. But it just… She did her best.

-She had to fight like hell most days, trying to keep herself alive and safe.

-And once she was back at Alfea… She had nightmares. (Which she logged into her tablet to try and help herself with later.)

-Eventually, during spring break, she went home and talked it all out with her parents. They had a hard time letting her go back to Alfea after that, but they knew they couldn’t keep Tecna from her education or from her friends.

-(The nightmares eventually faded a bit. But they still haunt her from time to time.)

-Before the whole Earth mission, Tecna and Timmy were one of the first couples to move in-together without any of the other members of their teams.

-They got an apartment on Zenith near their university. (They still go to their classes, though they take them mostly online these days. And they still keep the apartment, though it’s mostly a glorified work space now.)

-Tecna surprisingly gets along really well with Riven. They help each other with their respective partners and they like to build and work on projects together. (And play video games. They’re both super competitive and watching them go at it is like watching a train wreck. It’s awful but you can’t look away.)

-Tecna finds Flora to be the hardest to converge with. Their personalities and feelings on different issues tend to clash and it makes it difficult to meld together.

-Surprisingly, Tecna finds Stella to be the easiest to converge with. It’s like they just complement each other on a new wavelength.

-Tecna didn’t have any interest in music until rooming with Musa. After a few months into their rooming situation, she asked if Musa would teach her how to play an instrument because she felt it’d be cool to come up with her own soundtrack (for a video game project she’s been working on since she was like 12). Musa got Tecna a keyboard and the rest is history.

-She doesn’t get emotional about a lot of things, keeping a cool and level head to focus on facts is a Zenithian trait after all, but when someone messes with her projects or belittles her work or comes after the people she loves? You’re gonna get fucked, and not in the good way. (She has a real temper when she blows up, and people tend to get electrocuted.)

-Once they started their Earth mission, Tecna had to mentally fight herself every day to not upgrade or complain about Earth tech. (“Bloom… How the fuck do these people live like this?!” “Tecna…” “Please. Just one computer. Let me upgrade one computer.” “People will notice and we have to keep a low profile.” “Dammit Bloom!”)

-Tecna has several projects going on any given day, and since dating Timmy and having been bonded to Digit, they’ve been included in helping her with them.

-Most are gadget-based projects, things that girls need immediately or things that can help them. Some are robotics or engineering/vehicle based. But the one she’s the most proud of is the video game she’s still working on. (It’s almost done and she hopes to be able to publish it soon! Maybe sooner than expected since she’s got backing from Sky, Stella, and Layla.)

-Tecna’s main goal, after all this craziness with being a Winx Girl is over, is to take over her parents’ business and to further the Mode Brand of tech. (And maybe even expand into the video game departments. Depending on how her video game goes when she finally releases it.)

#winx club #winx club au #winx club headcanons #winx club tecna #winx tecna #winx tecna headcanons #guardian fairy of zenith #tech guru

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ducavalentinos · 5 years ago

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Hello ! Could you tell me facts about the life of Cesare Borgia? Thaanks.

So, I really wanted to make this a short list with basic facts, but somehow it ended up becoming a longer, detailed list with my favorites facts alongside facts that aren’t very well known or mentioned, here it goes: - Cesare received an outstanding, carefully planned education. He was brought up at Rome by private tutors until the age of twelve, in 1489 he left Rome to attend La Sapienza of Perugia, where he studied the foundations of law and the humanities, being placed under the charge of the preceptor Giovanni Vera of Archilla, to whom btw, he remained warmly attached until Vera’s death in 1503. In 1491 he continued his studies in Civil and Canon law at the University of Pisa, attending the lectures of Filippo Decio, one of most rated lecturer on canon law of his day. There he also became more acquainted with the Medici family, through Lorenzo de’ Medici sons: Giovanni de’ Medici and his brother Piero. - Paolo Pompilio, a Spanish scholar, dedicated his treatise on verse-writing, the Syllabica, to Cesare, where he praised him as ‘Borgiae familiae spes et decus’ (the hope and ornament of the House of Borgia). - His father, as Cardinal and Vice-Chancellor, invested a long list of benefices upon him, to name only a few: when he was seven years old, pope Sixtus IV conferred upon him a prebend of the cathedral’s chapter of Valencia. In 1483 he received the title of rector of Gandia and archdeacon of Játiva. Later on, with pope Innocent VIII he was granted the position of treasurer of Mallorca’s cathedral, following that of canon of Lérida, Archdeacon of Tarragona and then treasurer of Cartagena’s cathedral. By 1491, Innocent at last granted him the bishopric of Pamplona. - He learned the art of bullfighting from the Spanish members of his father’s court and it became one of his life passions. Whether in Rome or in the Romagna, at any celebration, there was almost always a bullfight and he was almost always participating himself. - He also loved hunting, so he was always looking for good hunting dogs and falcons. On May 28th, 1497 he even sent one of his men, Enrico, to Germany to request from the Archbishop of Mainz some “well-trained and sagacious hunting dogs; their quality to be more important than their number.” - He was the first person in the history of the Church to resign the cardinalate, eventually becoming commander of the Papal armies. - He was briefly hostage of the Colonna during the conflicts of the French Invasion in 1494, and later on hostage of the king of France, Charles VIII. Although that time, he escaped their camp at Velletri, with the help of a man named Francesco del Sacco, officer of the Podestà of Velletri, who was waiting for him with a horse. Cesare sped back to Rome going to the house of one Antonio Flores, where he stayed for a night and informed his father of his presence. The next day, he withdrew to the city of Spoleto, and remained there until matters cooled off. - In 1497, a sword was forged for Cesare, known as “the queen of swords”, for his visit to Naples as papal legate, to crown the new king, Frederick of Naples. Its design was attributed to many artists including Michaelangelo, but it is more likely that the artist was Pinturicchio. And the blacksmith/sword engraver was Salomone da Sesso (c. 1465- c.1504–21) who after his conversion to Christianity assumed the name of Ercole dei Fedeli. (more details about the sword here x) - Cesare appeared wearing a horned mask in the guise of a unicorn during a theatrical performance, in one of the many festivities held in honor of his sister Lucrezia’s second wedding. Unicorn are known symbols of female chastity, possibly a reference to Lucrezia and her wedding night, but it also shows off Cesare’s own sense of humour, since it was well known to all present that he was anything but a chaste man lol. And the unicorn horn, according to a Greek physician had the ability of protecting people from sickness and neutralizing poison, which could have been another humourous remark from Cesare in reference to his family’s reputation of using poison to dispose of their enemies. - His best known mistress was Fiammetta Michaelis, she was a cultured courtesan from Florence, but who lived in Rome since 1473 most likely. Her relationship with Cesare was such that even after his death in 1507, she continued to sign herself as Fiammetta Ducis Valentini (of the duke Valentino). And her will in the city archives was headed ‘The Testament of La Fiammetta of Il Valentino.” - On May 10, 1499, he married Charlotte d’Albret, and before his departure from France he appointed her governor and administrator of all his lands and lorships in France and Dauphiny. He also made her heiress to all his moveable possessions in the event of his death (a little more about that here x). On December 1501, he personally selected precious gifts to be sent to her acquired from Venice. It included moulded wax, white sweetmeats, fine sugars, syrups, nine barrels of Malvoisie, oriental spices, oranges and lemons and all kinds of cloths. - Under his patronage, the first printing press of any importance was established in Italy. It was set up at Fano by Girolamo Sancino in 1501. One of the earliest works was the printing of the Statutes of Fano for the first time in January 1502. - About his administration staff, also in the year of 1501, we know he had a beautiful young woman from Bologna named Jovanna, working for him in his chancery. She’s described as a “degnissma scriptora”, she wrote letters and maybe did other secretarial duties as well for 14 ducats. - Whether it was treachery or a legit, reasonable move against Guidobaldo's own plans of treachery against him, the fact is that Cesare acquired Urbino without bloodshed in any of the towns, in a brilliant coup that amazed the whole of Italy (and terrified the nobility lol). While leaving a military contingent at Camerino, Cesare road north through the Apennines, between Nocera and Urbino he covered more or less sixty miles in forty-eight hours with a mixed force of 2.000 men. Before anyone else knew, he had already took Cagli, inside the Duchy of Urbino. Simultaneously, two other points were taken too, Montevecchio and San Lorenzo. Di Naldo, one of Cesare’s captains came from the east. These three armies converged towards the capital of Urbino then, where they met with the castilian and the garrison was rendered by him. A few hours later Cesare himself entered the city without any resistence. - The famous Sleeping Cupid by Michelangelo that Cesare gifted it to Isabella d’Este when he took Urbino in 1502 had a history together. He had previously been the owner of this piece. Cardinal Riario Sforza bought in 1496, but apparently when he found out that the piece was a modern piece and not an antique, he didn’t wanted it anymore, so it was displayed across the street of Cesare’s palace and he bought before the end of the year and later on send it as a gift to Guidobaldo da Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino. - A popular canzona of the time, Donna contra la mia Voglia by Filippo de Lurano (c.1470-c.1520) was Cesare’s favorite song. (There is an excellent version of it too by conductor and composer Jordi Savall). - As another step to secure the unity of the Romagna, Cesare did a reform in legal administration of great importance, he established a supreme Court of Appeal, named the Rota, influenced by the famous Court of the Vatican with the same name. He appointed as The First President, a newly created office, to Antonio di Monte Sansovino, a distinguished jurist with high integrity, and who was universally beloved. This Appeal Court sat in the seven main cities of the Romagna: Fano, Pesaro, Rimini, Cesena, Faenza, Forlì and Imola. If it was necessary, this Court would sit for as much as two months. All expenses were met by a payment from each of these judicial circuits of 200 ducats per annum. - In October 1500 Pinturicchio wrote to Cesare asking for the grant of a well to be put in one of the lands pope Alexander VI had bestow on him and his descendents at Chiusi, a city in the province of Siena, but near Perugia. Pinturicchio went himself to see Cesare at Diruta to request for all the necessary permission. Cesare issued a letter to Alfano Alfani, vice-treasurer of Perugia, making the request and saying that: “he had again taken to his service Bernardino Pinturicchio of Perosa, whom he always loved because his talent and gifts; and he desires that in all things he should be considered as ‘one of ours.” This initial request wasn’t honored so Cesare wrote again to this Alfani reinforcing his wish to be granted within that year. In 1501, Pinturicchio was given an annual payment as Cesare’s personal painter as well. - Cesare hired Leonardo da Vinci as a military architect and engineer in the spring of 1501, he entrusted him with all sorts of projects, in Cesena for example he asked that Da Vinci planned a new quarter of the city with wilder streets, sidewalks, parks, and a functioning sewage system and many other improvements. He also issued papers from the city’s headquarters for the construction in Cesena of a new university building, a palace to house the Rota. - Cesare also commissioned Da Vinci to work on an alterpiece, that is now lost unfortunately, at the Santuario della Beata Vergine del Piratello, outside of Imola. Some scholars agree that Da Vinci at the very least begun this painting, but it was not finished by him. There are some sketches he made that are called: Three views of a bearded man and it’s generally accepted to be Cesare, in what might have become a portrait of him in this alterpiece. - Right after he conquered a city, it was Cesare’s policy to issue a stem proclamation against plunder, guaranteed the property of the citizens. At Forlì he took measures to safeguard the convents, listening to all complaints of ill-treatment or robbery at the hands of the soldiery. On December 7, 1500, he hanged from the windows of his headquarters, two of his own men, a Piedmontese and a Gascon soldier, who had disobeyed his orders against plunder in the town. On the 13th of the same month, other offenders followed the same fate as the first two, which showed his zeal and the level of his commitment for the interests of his Forlivesi subjects. - At Cesena, as in other places in the Romagna, that same policy was applied, the usual disorder was put to an end, and civic automony was fully restored, along with the suppresion of aristocratic feuds, which resulted on econonical security and internal peace. - During the conquest of Faenza, the only city where Cesare met a true resistance, he retired to Cesena through the winter months while the siege kept going there. One night, he was walking around the city when he found a baby girl abandoned in the street, he commanded the baby to be nursed, and settled an ample dowry on the baby’s mother until she was of marriageable age. Afterwards, when the father refused to acknowledge the girl as his own, Cesare himself acknowledged the girl and she was baptized that day. - On March 29, 1501, when he was informed of Beatrice of Naples arrival at Cesenatico, twice Queen of Hungary and of Bohemia, and sister of Frederick of Naples, he send off his staff to greet her and to present her with a 'royal gift'. He ordered his lieutenants to honor her in every city in the Romagna and the Marche region, where she made her way back to Naples. - On 1502, Cesare and his father, Rodrigo went on a boat trip to Piombino and the island of Elba so that Rodrigo could officially take possession of these territories Cesare had recently conquered. Everything went smoothly, and they were on their way back when a violent storm began, hitting them hard. During 5 days they wandered aimlessly. Everyone, but Rodrigo, were quite anxious and scared. At the second day, the crew saw an English ship, and Cesare proposed to go to this boat to request for help, but Rodrigo refused, not wanting to request help from strangers. Eventually they made it back ashore, but it was a close call there for them for awhile. - After the masterstroke at Senigallia, where he successfully arrested his conspiring condottiere, the city was in total confusion, and a part of Cesare’s infantry were starting to sack the city, so Cesare in full armour and on horseback gave orders for his men to stop the sacking immediately, he then gathered some of his captains and went about the city streets putting a stop to the abuses that were starting to happen, some soldiers however, refused to obey his orders, and they were promptly executed there for their disobedience. - On 25 October, 1506 he managed to escape the Castle of La Mota, in Spain, a fortress that at that time worked as State prison, of maximum security, and where he was imprisoned. With the collaboration of his chaplain, and a servant of the governor's, named Garcia, along with the outside help from Count of Benavente, a powerful lord from the neighbourhood, who visited him regularly, he managed to climb down the 40 meter high tower with a rope, and if memory doesn't fail me, he was the only prisoner to have ever managed to escape this prison lool.

#anon ask #ask answered #cesare borgia #césar borgia #house borgia #historical facts #a few of these facts are only found in cesare italian bios #(alvisi and sacerdote)#and some of them are not found in any biography about him at all #if the internet wasn't a thing #and if i wasn't so curious and obsessed #i'd have died without ever knowing about it basically djsdjsjd #and i find that unacceptable and it shows how his own biographers tend to ignore a lot of interesting details about his life #bc they are usually stuck on this same ridiculous formula of presenting him #and some of these info doesn't fit in the general profile they like to present him as nor with their narratives #so it's mostly ignored by the vast majority of them #anyways idk if that was what you wanted anon #but i hope you like it!#it was fun to make it #<3

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randomvarious · 5 years ago

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The Sugarhill Gang - “Rapper’s Delight” The Best Rap Album of All Time Song released in 1979. Compilation released in 1999. Hip Hop

“Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang is the most important song in the history of hip hop music. Period. It was the genre’s first commercial record and it sold millions of copies around the world. It suddenly introduced white people and everyone outside of the tri-state area, as well as countless people in other countries, to a Bronx-born, organic subculture whose popularity had previously grown through mostly word-of-mouth. It’s not the first hip hop song ever recorded (that honor belongs to “King Tim III (Personality Jock)” by The Fatback Band), but historians unanimously agree that it is indeed the genre’s runner-up record. And without its commercial success, hip hop might have only become a late 70s-early 80s New York fad, only to be cherished by its small set of original participants and Pitchfork-reading hipster types who wax nostalgic about those halcyon CBGB’s and Max’s Kansas City days where the city’s various strains of new wave, glam rock, punk, art punk, no wave, and the like all converged.

But I’m here to tell you that this iconic song, the one that made hip hop a viable commercial enterprise and enabled it to eventually become the biggest music genre on the planet, is actually a total fraud. And that’s for a couple reasons. Now, before you go all Rocko lavender hippo lady on me, let me just say that “Rapper’s Delight” is by no means a bad song. In fact, it’s one of the greatest songs ever made. But it was a total fucking cash grab, too; an absolute sellout record. And that’s ironic because, for a genre that’s had so many insufferable purists who bristle at the idea of inauthenticity (full disclosure: I was one of those people), they have no problem with calling this song an indispensable piece of “real” and “true” hip hop music.

Let me explain some hip hop history, first though.

Hip hop culture began in the south Bronx in the summer of 1973, about a full six years before “Rapper’s Delight” came out. It was started by a DJ from Jamaica named Kool Herc. Herc is the genius who figured out how to isolate the instrumental break on a record and extend it by having two copies of the record and lining up the second one to start after the break from the first one finished. This allowed people to dance to the same beat for extended periods of time, which gave birth to breakdancing and dance battles. Another thing the extension of the break enabled was rapping. Rapping came out of toasting, a Jamaican DJ tradition in which the DJ would bust out a nifty and rhythmic, spoken-word rhyme, often shouting out someone of note who was in attendance. But then that eventually morphed into an extended series of rhymes, which gave way to the MC.

Rapping at that point was largely a poetic, improvised stream-of-consciousness. MCs would rap for minutes on end, displaying their mental dexterity as they would do their best to keep on beat and try to make sense while rhyming the last word of each line with the next.

That’s where Sylvia Robinson comes into this story. Robinson was an R&B / soul / funk / disco artist and producer who had appeared plenty of times on the R&B charts and landed a top-three national hit with “Pillow Talk” in 1973. In 1979, she started her own label, Sugar Hill Records, which would become the most important hip hop label in the early part of the next decade. Robinson’s first interaction with rapping didn’t come inside a Bronx club or at a Bronx block party though. It was instead at her niece’s birthday party in Harlem, where DJ Lovebug Starski was doing a bit of call-and-response with his audience.

From The Independent:

"The DJ [was talking] over the music, and the kids were going crazy. He would say something like, 'Throw your hands [up in] the air' and they'd do it," she recalled. "All of a sudden, something said [to me]: 'Put something like that on a record, and it will be the biggest thing you ever had'. I didn't even know you called it rap."

At first, Robinson had no takers. No rapper or DJ she approached thought making a hip hop record was a good idea. It was just a fun thing people did at parties. It wasn’t something that would ever end up being profitable. According to cultural critic Harry Allen, when Chuck D of Public Enemy first heard that rap was going to be put on records, he asked, “'How are you going to put three hours on a record?' Because that's the way MCs used to rhyme. They'd just rhyme and rhyme and rhyme for hours."

But Robinson would eventually find some people to rap on a record. It’s unclear whether or not it was her son or her herself who initially found the first member of her rap group, but it happened at a pizza shop in Englewood, New Jersey, where Big Bank Hank was spotted rapping while working his shift. Robinson then brought Hank out in front of the parlor to audition. The next member, Master Gee, would then audition in her car, followed by Wonder Mike. Robinson couldn’t decide which rapper she liked most, so she decided to sign all of them. And thus, the Sugarhill Gang was born.

However, it should be noted that Big Bank Hank, Master Gee, and Wonder Mike were absolute nobodies at the time. They weren’t serious MCs or DJs. The guys who had been putting it down since hip hop’s inception like Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Grandmaster Flash, and Kool DJ AJ had never had these guys rap on their stages before. They were total amateurs.

But Robinson didn’t care and not long after she signed them, “Rapper’s Delight” came to fruition. The #1 song in the country at the time happened to be Chic’s “Good Times,” and coincidentally, it was also a superb beat for rapping over. Robinson probably thought that using an uber popular instrumental for her rap record would move units, too, and ultimately, she would be proven right. She enlisted a funk band called Positive Force to recreate the “Good Times” instrumental, and, incredibly, they and the Sugarhill Gang pumped out “Rapper’s Delight” in a single nineteen-minute take. There were no lyrical flubs and no mistakes by any of the players. It was an amazingly efficient use of studio time.

That nineteen minutes was then pared down to 14:30 and the recording was pressed to wax and then went to sale. However, “Rapper’s Delight” failed to catch on at first. Radio DJs were reticent to play such a ridiculously long song and hip hop party DJs had no idea who the Sugarhill Gang was. But once a radio version was cut, which is the version I’ve posted today, the record got radio play, which then translated to immense record sales. It made the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #36, while hitting #4 on the R&B chart. And it became an even bigger hit outside of the U.S., reaching the top-five all across Europe, Canada, and South Africa. It also sold literally millions of records. The second hip hop song to ever be recorded for commercial purposes was a suddenly and completely unexpected global phenomenon. Hip hop had hit the big time.

But outside of the fact that this monstrous song was clearly a mere ploy to make money and was actually not an organic piece of Bronx-bred hip hop culture, there was even more fraudulence to it. Big Bank Hank, the second MC to grace the track, actually stole all of his verses from another rapper, the legend Grandmaster Caz. Caz was a member of a foundational hip hop group called The Cold Crush Brothers, who were known to rap at parties in the Bronx. Hank offered to become Caz’s manager and took out a loan to upgrade Cold Crush’s soundsystem. Then, to pay off that loan, he got a job at the pizza shop that he was eventually discovered in. But when he was seen rapping while working and was quickly auditioned afterwards, he used Caz’s lyrics. So, when Hank introduces himself on “Rapper’s Delight” with, “I’m the C-A-S-A, the N-O-V-A, and the rest is F-L-Y,” know he is spelling out one of Grandmaster Caz’s nicknames, and without his permission. And to this day, Caz hasn’t seen a single dime from “Rapper’s Delight”’s sales. Criminal shit.

But in the grand scheme of things, despite that bad sleight on Caz and the ultimate motive to record the song, “Rapper’s Delight” is still, by absolute happenstance, a masterpiece. It’s not just one of the first hip hop records, but it’s just so infectiously fun. But because of how fun it is, another thing that apparently pissed off other rappers at the time was that the song wasn’t about anything important. A lot of rappers were angry at the conditions in which they lived and they thought it was lame that a bunch of outsiders had cashed in on their artform while not even channeling any of the south Bronx’s inner rage. But a few years later, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five would release hip hop’s second unmitigated classic, “The Message,” a socially conscious-painted picture of the South Bronx. And it was released on, funnily enough, Sugar Hill Records.

There’s a moral or something to this story somewhere. Without the selling out and without Big Bank Hank’s lyrical theft, who knows where hip hop culture would be today? “Rapper’s Delight” sure wasn’t made for the purest of reasons, but it exposed hip hop music, and then eventually the actual authentic Bronx culture, to the entire world. Had Sylvia Robinson not seen dollar signs in this fun and unique party gimmick, would Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five or Afrika Bambaataa or Kurtis Blow become household names? Would hip hop ever be sold commercially? Would the following, more lyrical Def Jam wave with acts like Run-D.M.C. and LL Cool J ever happen? And then would N.W.A happen or the Native Tongues posse with A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, Busta Rhymes, Queen Latifah, and Black Sheep? I could go on, but you get the picture.

#hip hop #hip hop music #rap #rap music #old school hip hop #old school rap #music #70s #70s music #70's #70's music #70s hip hop #70's hip hop #70s rap #70's rap

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herbivorousxenomorph · 5 years ago

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Analysis: Meddling Kids, Stranger Things, and IT

For this analysis on worldbuilding in media, I would like to draw the reader’s attention to three related pieces of media. Those are: IT, Stranger Things, and Meddling Kids. I am sure that many reading this will be familiar with at least one of the above, though for those less familiar I will provide a brief overview.

Stranger Things is perhaps the most likely to be recognized today, a Netflix original about three main groups of characters set in the 80s. The first group is a group of kids who find a mysterious girl in the woods while searching for their missing friend. The second group is the parent of the missing child and the local sheriff. And the last is a group of teens who discover a monstrous creature in the woods. Later seasons shift the groups somewhat but it is largely helpful to think of each season as a set of 2-3 hour intertwined movies each about their own group. The main elements presented in the show are made to evoke nostalgia for the 80s in the audience, psychic powers, strange alien dimensions and creatures. Even in those who may not have lived through that time period themselves, the themes can carry their own resonance. The plot, aesthetic, and world are all evocative of that time and of media from that time.

Stephen King’s IT can almost be read as the dark inverse of Stranger Things, though it came out first and actually was written in the 80s. IT concerns a group of 7 childhood friends who find and confront Pennywise, a murderous shapeshifting clown plaguing their town, as well as said friends discovering that said evil was not fully defeated 27 years later into their adult lives. The main perspective is from the characters as adults, with kid sections being framed as flashbacks from the adults. IT deals directly with the nostalgia cycle, having its 27 year cycle built into the narrative, that being the ‘hibernation’ between each round of killings committed by Pennywise. The ‘world’ shown in the book of Derry, Maine, is essentially fueled by Pennywise, and the price payed is murdered children. When the monster is finally vanquished the town is almost entirely destroyed. This presents an interesting case in convergence between character and worldbuilding, Pennywise is Derry, and Derry is Pennywise. By the end of the nearly 1200 page novel, you almost feel as if you know the town as well as a kid who grew up there might.

Laslty on our list is Meddling Kids, which I would wager is the least well known of the three. Meddling Kids is a book written by Edgar Cantero, and can best be described as ‘what if the Scooby Gang found *something* that wasn’t just a guy in a mask, and it haunted them for years’. The book is mainly told from the perspective of ‘Andy’ the stand-in for Daphne. Who after a little over a decade has wound up a depressed and mentally damaged mess and wants nothing more than to finally defeat whatever evil plagued her and her friends as youths. After reuniting with Kerry (Velma), Nate (Shaggy), and Tim (Scooby) the gang returns to the small town of Blyton Hills (note the absence of Peter/Fred, who in the book committed suicide, being unable to cope with what they had seen). to finally confront what they weren’t able to as children. After the gang returns to Blyton, they slowly unearth and confront the truth of what happened to them as children, and the horrifying reality of what lurks under the lake adjacent to the town that was their childhood. The book builds a world reminiscent of similar works (such as the Scooby Doo franchise, and the already mentioned IT and Stranger Things) and takes place in (you guessed it) the late 80s.

All three of the above works deal mostly with a town rather than any larger kind of unverse or world. Aside from IT which has connections to the Dark Tower, another of King’s series, though those are a lot more relevant to those who have a larger knowledge base for King. IT is actually quite relevant in his cosmos, as Pennywise’s true form is one of the eight major gods/animal deities of his shared universe, and IT more than most of his books is tied into the King-verse. The shared worldbuilding theme is in a past and a place that you in some way want to get back to yet also dread doing so entirely. In Stranger Things the town itself takes its toll on one of the main characters to the point that they eventually leave, the mysterious events that take place there inflicting further scars on them each season (though the show is not yet over). In Meddling Kids the characters were traumatized by the events in Blyton, resulting in the alcoholism of one, committing to a psychiatric ward of another, imprisonment of the PoV character, and suicide of the gang’s former leader. Yet the way the characters finally break free from the town’s influence over them is by revisiting it. And in IT, as mentioned before, the town is literally the monster. Every aspect of racism, sexism, homophobia, and every other horrifying human element is amplified and projected further by the malevolent entity that haunts the town. And as a line in the book itself would say, another definition for haunt is a feeding ground for animals. As the animal in question feeds off of the suffering and pain just as it creates more in turn.

The small towns in each of these works are all toxic and horrifying environments yet the characters and readers both are drawn back to them. The initial pull of nostalgia and eventual release from it into a newly clear future is an element used in each of the stories. IT does this by virtue of simply being long enough to document the painful and pleasurable moments of the character’s experiences, the joys and terrors of being a child in a rural-ish town in the 80s. The overwhelming power and also absence of authority in changing situations and the all consuming dread as the reader realizes the scope of Pennywise’s influence in the town. Stranger Things does this by emitting most of the casual racism, sexism, or homophobia that would have been a lot more prevalent in the era the show takes place in. Instead condensing into a more palatable version contained and expressed by a few characters and scenes. The horror elements are downplayed but still shown, and the monsters’ own world being a grim reflection of our own further plays into the worlds’ themes of dark (and true) versions of the past. Lastly, Meddling kids (and IT) have the main characters literally be pulled back into the town of their past to confront and evil they had thought defeated. Each media piece draws the readers and characters back into themselves with the bait of nostalgia and remembrance, and then bites back with half remembered horrors and locals so intrinsically tied to them that the two are the same element. A past that is remembered fondly, and demons that are slain once and for all. For all the horror that happens in each, the evils are ultimately beaten if not forgotten. They are stories of overcoming what the characters came from, and how the physical locations these stories come from are important elements in these types of narratives, the themes baked into the locations and the locations only reinforcing the themes with resonant ideas for the audience.

Blyton Oregon, Derry Main, and Hawkins Indiana. While they may only be small and fictional towns, in their own works, they encompass the meaning of entire worlds.

#worldbuilding analysis #meddling kids #stranger things #IT

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umbraastaff · 6 years ago

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I’ve just been thinking--it’s about time I make a proper index for my TAZ fics, huh? Also contains: mini-series, ficlets, goof posts, and lyric comics.

(All of the fics are rated G, or T at most for McElroy-appropriate language.)

FICS

I Saw Seven Bounties | Canon Compliant, Enemies to Friends, Complete | Mostly lighthearted, episodic recounting of Kravitz and Barry’s rivalry throughout those first twelve years on Faerun. 24K. -->Extras: Lich Eyes, Fantasy Starbucks, Alt POV for Chapter 1 & Chapter 5, Sorry

They Say Fire Took Phandalin | Small-town supernatural/sorta-haunted-house AU | Fresh out of grad school, Barry Bluejeans takes a job and a house in the rural nowhere-town of Phandalin. And it’s not like he thought fitting in would be a walk in the park, but the people there all act really weird, and it’s almost like they’re expecting something of him, too. 11K/~20K.

What Can’t Be Done Alone (Detective Squad) | Canon Divergent, Found Family, Fluff | AU where the voidfish works a little better, and Angus never finds the Bureau. Instead, he finds a strange lich in a cave, and he most certainly continues to work this case and not gradually get adopted instead. 18K/~22K. -->Extras: Drangus AU Oneshot

If I Wanted to be Funny I’d Name This Fic “The Time Belt” | Futuristic sci-fi AU feat. time travel | Taako meets the only people in years who recognize the Institute’s name. Known time criminal Barry Bluejeans continues to evade law enforcement. 2K/??.

Overgrowth / Undercurrent | Roleswap AU, Johnchurch, Pining, Twoshot, Happy ending optional | Overgrowth is a oneshot that follows John, the Starblaster’s chief diplomat, through a series of parleys with Merle, the center of the plane-consuming mass of plants that’s been chasing his crew. Undercurrent is a sequel about their post-canon reunion. 4K + 6K. --> Extras: PLAYLIST by @merle-casts-zone-of-truth

Davenport Remembers | Post-canon, Oneshot | Davenport meets with his crew members to try to reconcile his anger with Lucretia, or to decide whether he should. 1.5K.

MINI-SERIES

AU Where Taako is a Lich - Pretty much what it says on the tin here, folks!

Baritz (ask series) - A fusion of Barry and Kravitz, who took over my blog and answered asks for a while. (He originated in the Gallows/S&S lyric comic.)

Good Adventures (Good Omens crossover) - The Antichrist’s wishes summon the wrong boatful of aliens. Thankfully, it seems they’re apocalypse experts. [with plot-ideas help from @avijohann.]

Omen Zone (Good Omens crossover 2) - Barry is a demon. Kravitz is an angel. Kravitz probably won’t ever admit that they’re friends.

Pokémon: Century Version (Pokémon crossover) - Stolen Century AU where they’re all pokémon trainers. Faerun spin-off: Double Trouble

Till Death, Don’t Let’s Start - Barry fucks up. Kravitz is present.

Very Normal Blog Posts (ask series) - In which Garfield is not at all dangerous, and I am perfectly fine. <alt: chronological link - desktop only>

COMICS & ART

Gallows/Steady and Stronger (Double lyric comic) - Canon-divergent AU where, as the world is ending, Barry gives up to Kravitz. [Image description version]

[Lyric Comics] - Other, shorter lyric comics based on single verses of songs.

Dear Scientist’s Log (series) - Illustrated ship logs from Barry J. Bluejeans.

Movie Madness (Comic) - Barry obsesses over the unforgivable.

Palette Prompts (Arts) - Art from art meme prompts.

Pregananant (goof comic) - You know the one.

REAPER (Comic) - Baritz fuses with Lup.

These Jeans? (Animatic) - Barry advertises jeans.

They’re Both Tessa Thompson (Comic) - Lucretia has a nightmare. Barry reassures her.

War (Goof comic) - prompt: "taakitz with CAT”

What’s bigger than this? - The Red Robe.

FICLETS

Back Soon - Kravitz leaves a note with unfortunate wording.

Bodyswap: Barry & Davenport - During Wonderland.

Casual - AU where the red robe talks like a normal person.

Command - Barry misuses his magic.

Davenport - There’s something unsettling about that butler.

Hangin’ Out - Lup and Magnus.

Harvest - Roleswap AU: Barry is the Hunger.

Healing Necromancy - Merle tries to teach Barry some tricks.

Hope - Barry knows she’s still out there.

How Long? - Taako is frustrated.

In Pieces - The staff.

Liches Forget Too - AU.

Lucretia Forgets - In which there was a mistake with the voidfish ichor.

Lup’s Robe - Gifts from Taako.

Mourning Glories - The flowers in Merle’s beard.

New Years - Celebrations and fears.

Parole - Barry and Kravitz bonding hours.

Phone a Friend - Baritz (the fusion from Gallows/S&S) meets Angus.

Raising the Dead - Barry has to use his crew members’ corpses. [sequel]

Robbie...? - Magnus breaks into the brig immediately after Petals to the Metal.

Second Apocalypse - Based on that one party liveshow. What was the rest of the crew doing, again?

3 Sentence Fics - Pairing + AU prompts.

Smartstone - Lup gets stuck in a Stone of Far Speech, instead.

Stir Crazy - Barry waiting for a new body to grow. Thoughts of Lucretia.

Writing Things Down - In case you forget (again).

You Remember - Taako remembers.

PROMINENT GOOFS

Barry’s Dead - But he’s fine! Calm down!

Character Development - Joke’s on you, DM!

Crystal Kingdom - An absolutely bonkers arc.

Dealer - Merle pun.

Decapitate Me - for making this post

Don’t Care - Taako during the finale. [bonus]

Epilogue - Bracer struggles. [bonus: 1, 2]

Explain the Hunger (Good Omens crossover) - Magnus explains the hunger to Aziraphale and Crowley. They react in varying ways. [with cursed art contributions from @avijohann and @mspainttaz]

Fifteen Dollars - Plus interest. [Bonus]

Fullmetal Kingdom - They’re the same, right?

Gender - And lack of roles.

Gnomes Don’t Exist - They’re all aliens, actually.

Hot Diggity Shit - Been a while.

Icon Confusion - The saga of people thinking my icon is a carrot. [chrono link - desktop only]

Incomprehensible Denim - Jeff Angel’s illegal pants.

In Case it Changes Anything - Taako, Kravitz, and lies.

Irresponsible Teens - Magnus and Lucretia get into trouble.

I Saw Seven Nerds - That’s the post.

Gogurt - Taako’s crimes.

Learning to Drive - i.e. Barry & Davenport Bonding(?) Hours.

Live Shows - The general mood.

Lucretia’s Efforts - A proper meme? On my TAZ blog?

Lup Said No Thanks - That time Magnus was in a tree.

Magnus’ Death - So many close calls.

Nearest Middle-Aged Woman - Clint’s characters’ friends.

Necromancy? - You must be mistaken!

Ned’s Aliases - The Truth.

Pirate Debt - Davenport during that one liveshow.

Punch Squad - SQUAD!

Reaper Cloak - Thoughts.

Relic Names - She probably changed them.

Responsible Necromancy - Good and bad ideas.

Resume - It’s not like they thought it would be relevant.

Schools of Magic - And the Sash was what, again?

Self Care - Respect the dead, please.

Server Shenaniganry (art) - TAAKO THE CAT, NO!

Soulmate AU - Where your soulmate’s greatest enemy is on your wrist. [alt]

Stern’s Truth - You Know.

Taako’s Last Name - Taako’s last name.

Team Composition - The post where everyone wants to argue with me about what qualifies as a wizard.

Third Option - Taako saves the day.

You’re Laughing - End of Suffering Game.

THEORIES/MECHANICS/THOUGHTS

Aloof - Holes Taako refuses to fill.

Barry’s Lucky Possessee - Graphic novel theory hopes & dreams.

Catpiling - Stolen Century thought.

Davenport’s Deaths - Sucks when you always wake up driving.

Death Leaves a Mark - Stolen Century AU concept.

Everyone Else - Some people didn’t get perfect endings.

Fantasy Nonsense - lore about the word “fantasy,” as in “Jesus Fantasy Christ.”

Fragments - Magnus’ memory.

Forgiveness - Old post about the crew’s thoughts on Lucretia’s actions.

Forgot to Erase - Lucretia’s errors.

FULL TIMELINE POST - the Balance timeline.

Gauntlet - (disproven!) Theory about the final relic, from before it was confirmed in the show.

Gnome Nicknames - Thoughts on Cap’nport.

High School AU - Some old headcanons.

Home World Names - The pattern in surnames (or lack thereof) on the IPRE’s homeworld.

Hour - This isn’t a thought so much as an Actual Thing That Magnus Said before the time loops had started, which is absurd.

Idiots in Love - The IPRE’s collective braincell was lost for all of Legato. [2]

Liches, Alone - Being stuck as raw emotion for an awfully long time.

Losing Julia - And subsequent developments.

Love - What was remembered and forgotten.

Love Without Fear - Thoughts on bonds during the Stolen Century.

Memory - Barry actually shouldn’t have remembered anything.

Nickname - Memory of Lup.

Paladin Barry Theory - Converging evidence on Barry’s multiclassing.

Paradox AU - blueprint for 8th, 9th, 10th, etc. Bird AU of your choice(s). (Extra)

Phylactery Mechanics - How liches differ.

Produce Flame - Mechanics of John killing Merle.

Recklessness - THB’s actions recontextualized.

Relic Schools of Magic - They don’t have them!!!

Relicswap AU - Where all the birds get swapped out.

Seven Birds as Gods - Ask-prompt thoughts.

Staring at the Sun - The birds and their light sensitivity.

Story, Song, & Sorcery - Effects on the young population.

Sword Tornado - Magnus Mechanics. [bonus: Time Warlock]

The Good Place AU - A series of crossover thoughts.

Tree Climbing - Davenport shenanigans.

Unique Magic Types - [and combo styles]

What Killed Maureen - hint: it wasn’t Fisher.

#the adventure zone #taz balance #mine #index #there were a fair few in here that id forgotten about too!#god i hope i didnt mess up any of these links

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flightfoot · 6 years ago

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Trials of Apollo Fanfiction recs/my Trials of Apollo Fanfiction Masterpost repost

So originally I was just collecting other people’s trials of apollo fanfics, but then I started writing my OWN fanfics and needed a place to link to them on my blog, so I combined them! Like with my other Masterposts, I will keep the original version of the post updated.

Olympian Pain by @authorgirl1111: Shows all the Olympians - plus several other gods - reactions to Apollo’s deadly quest in The Burning Maze, and their efforts to help him. Well, usually help him.

Demigod’s Grief by @authorgirl1111: Sequel to Olympian Pain. Shows all the demigods’ reactions to the events of TBM and of Olympian Pain.

Do gods have pity? by @moodyseal: Python’s defeated. Or so they think. He gets in one last shot…

Pretty much all of @garecc‘s Of Immortal stories. There are twenty of them currently, I’m not gonna list them all individually.

Were I that Burning Star by @californiannostalgia: Apollo interacting with various other gods after the events of TOA.

Fading by timelessmemories20: Apollo thinks about how he’s forgetting his life as a god, and he worries.

Wake Up Call by @bubblegumwitchswriting: Hermes visits Meg and Apollo.

The 6 weeks verse by AppleJuice(Capolleon): An AU of the 6 weeks after The Hidden Oracle. Contains a lot of Apollo, Leo, Calypso bonding, and a little bit of Meg.

The Lullabies We’ve Forgotten by Eternal_State_Of_Voorpret: Meg becomes a pianist.

Promise by TheEternalEmpress: Apollo makes a promise to Meg.

How to grow Hyacinths with Love and Care by timmy_cardiac: Meg teaches Apollo how to grow hyacinths.

Grief by oneshotagency: Reactions to Jason’s death.

The Sun’s Rays by Wyrenfire: A collection of oneshots centered around Apollo.

Bid Them Goodbye by emolyy03: Another fic of reactions to Jason’s death. This one includes Apollo’s reaction, though, which is rare to see.

Jason Grace and the Demigods of Asgard by Darkanny: Jason died with a weapon in hand and is taken to Hotel Valhalla.

Wildfire by Emily_P: Nico senses Jason’s death, and informs Percy and Annabeth.

Waking in the Night by Hyaunty: Apollo bleeds out and dies, cold and alone on the forest floor.

a ficlet by @avid-author-activist: Apollo tells Thalia what happened to Jason.

Another ficlet, this one based on a writing prompt, by @fallensun: A universe where everything is the same except Apollo actually acted hurt from Cade and Mikey

Trials of Apollo One-shot Series by ArtJunkyard: The sun crashes into the ground in front of Apollo and Meg. A familiar face is behind the wheel.

A Spark of Hope by @moodyseal: Annabeth and Percy arrive at Camp Jupiter after Caligula’s second attack on the camp. By the ruins and the expressions on the Campers faces, they knew there’d been tragedy. But they hadn’t been told of the tragedy that had befallen one of their dearest friends.

A Cruel Occasion by @seductivegrapethrowing: Apollo goes on some date nights with Commodus. Commodus makes a request.

Something I’d wish I’ve never had to do by mad_chesch: fanfiction of The Trials of Apollo one-shot series. Apollo has to tell Lester’s mom about what happened to her son.

Six Weeks Stuck in the Backseat of a Bronze Dragon by Blue_Rive: Apollo’s, Calypso’s, and Leo’s road trip during the six week gap between THO and TDP.

The Moon Shines Brighter Than The Sun by @moodyseal: Apollo and Meg get lost in the woods.

Hogwarts School of Divinity by ArtJunkyard: ToA x Harry Potter crossover. Apollo knows which House he DOESN’T want to get sorted into.

Why’d you steal my bag/Guess I have to help you get to class/Whoops I guess we’re friends by @neela-chaan: Hogwarts AU. Apollo makes a friend.

Where Fate Lies by MsAngelAdorer: Emmie’s life from when she was a kid through TDP.

A ficlet by @authorgirl1111: Apollo’s essence is consumed by Caligula.

The Sun Between The Fangs by @naehja: Apollo is captured by Commodus during the events of TDP and promptly passed along to Python. The gods and demigods search for Apollo, trying to rescue him before he dies - or worse.

blind dates by @neela-chaan: Britomartis is a Litpollo shipper. Maybe. Probably. Or she just likes blowing people up. It’s probably the latter.

*Insert bs poetic title here* by @neela-chaan: Lit adjusts to life at the Waystation. He has scars from all those years living under abusive authority figures, but his new family tries to help as best they can.

———————————————————————————————–

My fanfiction:

Breaking Free: Apollo’s dead, and Meg is summoned by Zeus to face the consequences. But she will not allow anyone, even Zeus, to push her around anymore

Delos Days: Sequel to Breaking Free. Meg, Artemis, and Leto take baby Apollo to Delos to recover and grow up a bit.

Convalescence: Sequel to Delos Days. Apollo has started regaining his memories and his ability to speak as he grows, including the memories of the people he’s lost… and those he’s afraid he might lose. Meg, Artemis, Apollo, and Leto make their way to Camp Half-Blood to reunite Apollo with his mortal family. But not all the reunions are happy ones.

Second Chances: Sequel to Convalescence. Apollo and Meg journey to the Underworld so Meg can claim her domain, and give a second chance to a lost soul.

Nightmares: This was a prompt fill for a post asking people to imagine Apollo in THO comforting one of his younger children after they have a nightmare, allowing them to crawl into bed with him and generally being a good dad.

Memories of Godly Selfishness Masterpost:

A Convergence of Apollos: Percy’s having a bad day, and Grover’s having an even worse birthday. The god Apollo has tasked them with bringing back one of his rogue automatons by sunset, something that neither of them want to do, but they don’t have much choice in the matter. Then two kids fall out of the sky, and Percy’s day gets much, much stranger.

Last Days of a Meat Puppet: Part of the Papadopoulos Fam AU created by ArtJunkyard. Lester Papadopoulous wasn’t some empty shell that Zeus shoved Apollo’s soul into… at least he didn’t used to be.

Commodury: Commodus elects to send one of his minions to kill Apollo and his friends instead of trying to kill them himself. Nothing unusual or alarming about that… until they found out who his minion IS.

#trials of apollo #the trials of apollo #toa #lester papadopoulos #meg mccaffrey #masterpost #fanfiction

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hopeuranus · 5 years ago

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Music Analysis of Chicken Noodle Soup by J-HOPE ft. Becky G

Music transcends geographical boundaries. CNS is the ultimate language.

The original song of Chicken Noodle Soup was released by DJ Webstar and Young B in 2006. J-hope, as a well-rounded K-pop idol who’s known for his extraordinary rapping and dancing skills, demonstrated his ingenuity as a music producer this time with a completely overhauled version of Chicken Noodle Soup, of which the achievements and chart data have claimed his undisputed success around the world.

From a flat surface to a multi-dimensional work – tribute and enrichment

Let me start by explaining how J-hope turns a flat surface into a multi-dimensional work. For instance, there is a circle on a plane, and it can evolve into a sphere. The sphere retains its circular shape, rather than taking form of other geometrical structures such as a square or a line. In a similar vein, J-hope transforms the original song, a circle, into his new work, a complex and multi-dimensional sphere.

The following paragraphs will illuminate how J-hope has uplifted Chicken Noodle Soup, and I highly recommend you to listen to it while readinig this article so that you can capture these details.

youtube

To begin with, you can hear a bass melody accompanying human voices throughout this song after the intro part. This bass melody is in accordance with the beats of electronic drums, and together they consist the loop part of the entire song. This loop keeps going on till the end, except some parts where it is deliberately left out.

There is a descending scale which is made with synthecized brass instruments in the first verse of “Chicken Noodle Soup”. It is, in fact, a tribute to the original song by keeping its whistle sound. The new whistle sound, simulated with brass instruments, imitates the sound effect of an old steam locomotive. It epitomizes J-Hope’s music style, bringing upbeat feelings despite not being as expressive as the original song. In addition, J-Hope applies multiple sets of rhythm composers and electronic synthesizers, exquisitely and specifically tuning to each part of the song. There are about as many as six sets of drums, so that Chicken Noodle Soup gains an eloquent beat from these arrangements.

I have to bring up another interesting instrument which J-hope uses in the joint between the verse and the hook of CNS, and that is bar chimes, or wind chimes as we normally call them. Their crisp and whimsical sound unveils the second half of the song, adding a lively yet mysterious atmosphere to it. After Becky G finishes her vocals and right before the song enters its pre-chorus part, there comes a very short interlude. Within these fleeting seconds, the interlude consists of wind instruments, string instruments as well as percussion instruments. Connecting to the hook part at the very last section of the song, this interlude also serves as a relatively short loop which is combined with the bass and electronic drums J-hope uses at the beginning. However, the song does not end there abruptly. It is well wrapped up with percussion instruments, probably maracas.

Most of the human voice flows by J-hope have at least two soundtracks. One of them is what we can obviously hear in the main track, the other vocal harmonies. Harmonies in this song are in acapella style. In order to add texture as well as dimensions to his voice, J-hope utilizes different vocal placement and melodic phrases in order to record the tracks of harmonies, including Becky G’s vocal part. Moreover, he applies a sound effect called “double”, which means tuning down a track after recording it so as to amplify and enrich its sound. Thus, listeners will gain better auditory experience. J-hope never breaks away from the original “circle”, and yet he makes it into a multi-dimensional “sphere” with his professional and idiosyncratic talents in music production. This is how J-hope, as a music producer, vigorously exhibits his unique style in Chicken Noodle Soup, whilst paying the most proper tribute to its original version.

From surface to insights – cultural compatibility and diversity

Besides the above texts which I have explained in a straightforward and easy-to-understand fashion, there are actually a few more ideas J-hope puts into Chicken Noodle Soup that deserve mentioning and sharing, such as electronic synthesizing, remixing, sampling and orchestrating. Chicken Noodle Soup is more than a simple song, as it encompasses a whole array of memories and meanings. That’s also part of the reasons why it gained a worldwide attention once it was released. For one thing, the original version holds collective memories of an ethnical group as well as a generation of people, so it resonates greatly with everyone. On top of that, it is a trilingual song in Korean, English and Spanish, so it can circulate from one group of listeners to another, from one generation to a few. At the end of the day, a thousand people can appreciate this song from a thousand perspectives. During the ASEAN-Korea Commemorative Summit in 2019, Foreign Minister of Korea, Kang Kyung-wha, mentioned Chicken Noodle Soup in her keynote speech. She spoke of it as a super-popular song, as well as an exemplary case in which culture, creativity and talents converged and ignited a global trend.

From an idol to a producer – pain and gain

As I gather and read through the materials to promote J-hope, I realize that he keeps an extremely high and strict standard to himself. To be perfectly honest, much of the knowledge involved in his music production has exceeded the scope which an idol could normally know of. But with each of his high-quality works, Jung Hoseok is steadfastly growing from an idol into a professional producer. Allow me to quote a sentence in the dance analysis written by @HopeWorld_Spume (from weibo), “Jung Hoseok is an absolute hard worker who has talents.” The same applies to his music. He did not learn music production until his debut, but now he can deliver a masterpiece like Chicken Noodle Soup. No words can do justice to the labor and pain he puts into his learning process and practices. I cannot hold but exclaim while I read analytical articles written by other fans: What an outstanding person he is! For all the pain he pays, he deserves every nice thing in this world.

Author/Special thanks to @落日与蝶馆长 (weibo) Sources/尼摩船长泼辣黑 Proofreading/泼辣黑 Translate/高清画质

#jhope #jung hoseok #BTS #hoseok #chicken noodle soup #analysis #magazine

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jaimistoryteller · 5 years ago

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Bloop

Thank you anon for the bloops!

Going with Declan from CLV

He loves the witcher games and books, mildly confused by the recent show and why Geralt would have something of a denial going on with his obvious soulmates, though really, he should have properly courted both, not just been an ass (at times) or used a wish to bind them together.

Send a bloop, get random fact about a character!

@pen-for-sword

#bloop game #thank you for the bloops #all the bloops appreciated #particularly on bad days #and it's been a few of them #CLV Declan Connor #Converging Lives Verse version #Anonymous #writerblr #writeblr #WIP Share #please send me all the bloops #i need bloops #EG ~ 2 #i'd love some bloops

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converginglives · 7 years ago

Text

dearbluetravelers replied to your post “How do people in Converging Lives know when they’ve found their soul...”

Huh that’s unusual but interesting!

*nods* a lot of folks don’t realize that it is the soulmate draw that encourages them into areas with their soulmate, so it’s mostly only recognized in people who travel for really long distances, rather than those in the same area, despite the fact it’s the same thing.

#dearbluetravelers #writerblr #April 2018 CLV Event #Last Day of the April 2018 Event Stuff #Converging Lives Version verse #crossposting #Converging Lives chatter

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dustedmagazine · 5 years ago

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Dusted’s Decade Picks

Heron Oblivion, still the closest thing to a Dusted consensus pick

Just as, in spring, the young's fancy turns to thoughts of love, at the end of the decade the thoughts of critics and fans naturally tend towards reflection. Sure, time is an arbitrary human division of reality, but it seems to be working out okay for us so far. We're too humble a bunch to offer some sort of itemized list of The Best Of or anything like that, though; a decade is hard enough to wrap your head around when it's just your life, let alone all the music produced during said time. Instead these decade picks are our jumping off points to consider our decades, whether in personal terms, or aesthetic ones, or any other. The records we reflect on here are, to be sure, some of our picks for the best of the 2010s (for more, check back this afternoon), but think of what follows less as anything exhaustive and more as our hand-picked tour to what stuck with us over the course of these ten years, and why.

Brian Eno — The Ship (Warp, 2016)

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You don’t need to dig deep to see that our rapidly evolving and hyper-consciously inclusive discourse is taking on the fluidity of its surroundings. In 2016, a year of what I’ll gently call transformation, Brian Eno had his finger on multiple pulses; The Ship resulted. It’s anchored in steady modality, and its melody, once introduced, doesn’t change, but everything else ebbs and flows with the Protean certainty of uncertainty. While the album moves from the watery ambiguities of the title track, through the emotional and textural extremes of “Fickle Sun” toward the gorgeously orchestrated version of “I’m Set Free,” implying some kind of final redemption, the moment-to-moment motion remains wonderfully non-binary. Images of war and of the instants producing its ravaging effects mirror and counterbalance the calmly and increasingly gender-fluid voice as it concludes the titular piece by depicting “wave after wave after wave.” Is it all Salman Rushdie’s numbers marching again? The lyrics embody the movement from “undescribed” through “undefined” and “unrefined’” connoting a journey toward aging, but size, place, chronology and the music encompassing them remain in constant flux, often nearly but never quite recognizable. Genre and sample float in and out of view with the elusive but devastating certainty of tides as the ship travels toward silence, toward that ultimate ambiguity that follows all disillusion, filling the time between cycles. The disconnect between stasis and motion is as disconcerting as these pieces’ relationship to the songform Eno inherited and exploded. The album encapsulates the modernist subtlety and Romantic grace propelling his art and the state of a civilization in the faintly but still glowing borderlands between change and decay.

Marc Medwin

Cate Le Bon — Cyrk (Control Group, 2012)

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There's no artist whose work I anticipated more this decade than Cate Le Bon, and no artist who frustrated me more with each release, only to keep reeling me in for the long run. Le Bon's innate talent is for soothing yet oblique folk, soberly psychedelic, which she originally delivered in the Welsh language, and continued into English with rustic reserve.

Except something about her pastoralism seems to bore her, and the four-chord arpeggios are shot through with scorches of noise, or sent haywire with post-punk brittleness. In its present state, her music is built around chattering xylophones and croaking saxophone, even as the lyrics draw deeper into memory and introspection, with ever more haunting payoffs. It's as if Nick Drake shoved his way into the leadership of Pere Ubu. She's taken breaks from music to work on pottery and furniture-making, and retreats to locales like a British cottage and Texas art colony to plumb for new inspirations. She's clearly energized by collaboration and relocation, but there’s a force to her persona that, despite her introverted presence, dominates a session. Rare for our age, she's an artist who gets to follow her muse full time, bouncing between record labels and seeing her name spelled out in the medium typefaces on festival bills.

Cyrk, from 2012, is the record where I fell in, and it captures her at something close to joyous, a half smile. Landing between her earliest folk and later surrealism, it is open to comparison with the Velvet Underground. But not the VU that is archetypical to indie rock – Cyrk is more an echo of the solo work that followed. There’s the sharp compositional order and Welsh lilt of John Cale. Like Lou Reed, she makes a grand electric guitar hook out of the words “you’re making it worse.” The homebound twee of Mo Tucker and forbidding atmosphere of Nico are present in equal parts. Those comparisons are reductive, but they demonstrate how Cyrk feels instantly familiar if you’ve garnered certain listening habits. Songs surround you with woolly keyboard and guitar hooks, and one can forget a song ends with an awkward trumpet coda even after dozens of listens. The awkwardness is what keeps the album fresh.

She lulls, then dowses with cold water. So Cyrk isn't an entirely easy record, even if it is frequently a pretty one. The most epic song here, reaching high with those woolly hums and twang, is "Fold the Cloth.” It bobs along, coiling tight as she reaches into the strange register of female falsetto. Le Bon cranks out a fuzz solo – she's great at extending her sung melodies across instruments. Then the climax chants out, "fold the cloth or cut the cloth.” What is so important about this mundane action? Her mystery lyrics never feel haphazard, like LSD posey. They are out of step with pop grandiose. Maybe when her back is turned, there's a full smile.

Who are "Julia" and "Greta,” two mid-album sketches that avoid verse-chorus structure? Julia is represented by a limp waltz, Greta by pulses on keyboards. Shortly after the release, Le Bon followed up with the EP Cyrk II made up of tracks left off the album. To a piece, they’re easier numbers than "Julia" and "Greta.” The cryptic and the scribble are essential to how Cyrk flows, which is to say it flows haltingly.

This approach dampens her acclaim and her potential audience, but that's how she fashions decades-old tropes into fresh art. She’s also quite the band leader. Drummers have a different thud when they play on her stage. Musicians' fills disappear. She brings in a horn solo as often as she lays down a guitar lead. The closer tracks, "Plowing Out Pts 1 & 2," aren't inherently linked numbers. By the second part, the group has worked up to a carnival swirl, frothing like "Sister Ray" yet as sweet as a children's TV show theme. Does that sound sinister? The effect is more like heartbreak fuelling abandon, her forlorn presence informing everyone's playing.

Fuse this album with the excellent Cyrk II tracks, and you can image a deluxe double LP 10th anniversary reissue in a few years. Ha ha no. I expect nothing so garish will happen. It sure wouldn't suit the artist. In a decade where "fan service" became an everyday concept, Le Bon is immune. She's a songwriter who seems like she might walk away from at all without notice, if that’s where her craftsmanship leads. The odd and oddly comfortable chair that is Cyrk doesn't suit any particular decor, but my room would feel bare without it.

Ben Donnelly

Converge — All We Love We Leave Behind (Epitaph)

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Here’s the scenario: Heavily tatted guy has some dogs. He really loves his dogs. Heavily tatted guy goes on tour with his band. While he’s on the road, one of his dogs dies. Heavily tatted guy gets really sad. He writes a song about it.

That should be the set-up for an insufferably maudlin emo record. But instead what you get is Converge’s “All We Love We Leave Behind” and the searing LP that shares the title. The songs dive headlong into the emotional intensities of loss and reflect on the cost of artistic ambition. The enormously talented line-up that recorded All We Love We Leave Behind in 2012 had been playing together for just over a decade, and vocalist Jacob Bannon and guitarist Kurt Ballou had been collaborating for more than twenty years. It shows. The record pummels and roars with remarkable precision, and its songs maniacally twist, and somehow they soar.

Any number of genre tags have been stuck on (or innovated by) Converge’s music: mathcore, metalcore, post-hardcore. It’s fun to split sonic hairs. But All We Love… is most notable for its exhilarating fury and naked heart, musical qualities that no subgenre can entirely claim. Few bands can couple such carefully crafted artifice with such raw intensity. And few records of the decade can match the compositional wit and palpable passion of All We Love…, which never lets itself slip into shallow romanticism. It hurts. And it ruthlessly rocks.

Jonathan Shaw

EMA — The Future’s Void (City Slang, 2014)

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When trying to narrow down to whatever my own most important records of the decade are, I tried to keep it to one per artist (as I do with individual years, although it’s a lot easier there). Out of everyone, though, EMA came by far the closest to having two records on that list, and this could have been 2017’s Exile in the Outer Ring, which along with The Future’s Void comes terrifyingly close to unpacking an awful lot of what’s going wrong, and has been going wrong, with the world we live in for a while now. The Future’s Void focuses more on the technological end of our particular dystopia, shuddering both emotionally and sonically through the dead end of the Cold War all the way to us refreshing our preferred social media site when somebody dies. EMA is right there with us, too; this isn’t judgment, it’s just reporting from the front line. And it must be said, very few things from this decade ripped like “Cthulu” rips.

Ian Mathers

The Field — Looping State of Mind (Kompakt, 2011)

Looping State of Mind by The Field

On Looping State of Mind, Swedish producer Axel Willner builds his music with seamlessly jointed loops of synths, beats, guitars and voice to create warm cushions of sound that envelop the ears, nod the head and move the body. Willner is a master of texture and atmosphere, in lesser hands this may have produced mere comfort food but there is spice in the details that elevates this record as he accretes iotas of elements, withholding release to heighten anticipation. Although this is essentially deep house built on almost exclusively motorik 4/4 beats, Willner also plays with ambient, post-punk and shoegaze dynamics. From the slow piano dub of “Then It’s White,” which wouldn’t be out of place on a Labradford or Pan American album, to the ecstatic shuffling lope of “Arpeggiated Love” and “Is This Power” with its hint of a truncated Gang of Four-like bass riff, Looping State of Mind is a deeply satisfying smorgasbord of delicacies and a highlight of The Field’s four album output during the 2010s.

Andrew Forell

Gang Gang Dance — “Glass Jar” (4AD, 2011)

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Instead of telling you my favorite album of the decade — I made my case for it the first year we moved to Tumblr, help yourself — it feels more fitting to tell you a story from my friend Will about my favorite piece of music from the last 10 years, a song that arrived just before the rise of streaming, which flattened “the album experience” to oppressive uniformity and rendered it an increasingly joyless, rudderless routine of force-fed jams and AI/VC-directed mixes catering to a listener that exists in username only. The first four seconds of “Glass Jar” told you everything you needed to know about what lie ahead, but here’s the kind of thing that could happen before everything was all the time:

I took eight hours of coursework in five weeks in order to get caught up on classes and be in a friend's wedding at the end of June. Finishing a week earlier than the usual summer session meant I had to give my end-of-class presentations and turn in my end-of-class papers in a single day, which in turn meant that I was well into the 60-70 hour range without sleep by the time I got to the airport for an early-morning flight. (Partly my fault for insisting that I needed to stay up and make a “wedding night” mix for the couple — real virgin bride included — and even more my fault for insisting that it be a single, perfectly crossfaded track). I was fuelled only by lingering adrenaline fumes and whatever herbal gunpowder shit I had been mixing with my coffee — piracetam, rhodiola, bacopa or DMAE depending on the combination we had at the time. At any rate, eyes burning, skull heavy, joints stiff with dry rot, I still had my wits enough to refuse the backscatter machine at the TSA checkpoint; instead of the usual begrudging pat-down, I got pulled into a separate room. Anyway, it was a weird psychic setback at that particular time, but nothing came of it. Having arrived at my gate, I popped on the iPod with a brand new set of studio headphones and finally got around to listening to the Gang Gang Dance I had downloaded months before. "Glass Jar," at that moment, was the most religious experience I’d had in four years. I was literally weeping with joy.

Point being: It is worth it to stay up for a few days just to listen to ‘Glass Jar’ the way it was meant to be heard.

Patrick Masterson

Heron Oblivion — Heron Oblivion (Sub Pop, 2016)

Heron Oblivion by Heron Oblivion

Heron Oblivion’s self-titled first album fused unholy guitar racket with a limpid serenity. It was loud and cathartic but also pure beauty, floating drummer Meg Baird’s unearthly vocals over a sound that was as turbulent and majestic as nature itself, now roiled in storm, now glistening with dewy clarity. The band convened four storied guitarists—Baird from Espers, Ethan Miller and Noel Harmonson from Comets on Fire and Charlie Sauffley—then relegated two of them to other instruments (Baird on drums and Miller on bass). The sound drew on the full flared wail and scree of Hendrix and Acid Mothers Temple, the misty romance of Pentangle and Fairport Convention. It was a record out of time and could have happened in any year from about 1963 onward, or it could have not happened at all. We were so glad it did at Dusted; Heron Oblivion’s eponymous was closer to a consensus pick than any record before or since, and if you want to define a decade, how about the careening riffs of “Oriar” breaking for Baird’s dream-like chants?

Jennifer Kelly

The Jacka — What Happened to the World (The Artist, 2014)

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Probably the most prophetic rap album of the 2010s. The Jacka was the king of Bay rap since he started MOB movement. He was always generous with his time, and clique albums were pouring out of The Jacka and his disciples every few months. Even some of his own albums resembled at times collective efforts. This generosity made some of the albums unfocused and disjointed, yet what it really shows is that even in the times when dreams of collective living were abandoned The Jacka still had hopes for Utopia and collective struggles. It was about the riches, but he saw the riches in people first and foremost.

This final album before he was gunned down in the early 2014 is full of predictions about what’s going to happen to him. Maybe this explains why it’s focused as never before and even Jacka’s leaned-out voice has doomed overtones. This music is the only possible answer to the question the album’s title poses: everything is wrong with the world where artists are murdered over music.

Ray Garraty

John Maus — We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves (Upset The Rhythm, 2011)

We Must Become the Pitiless Censors of Ourselves by John Maus

Minnesota polymath John Maus’ quest for the perfect pop song found its apotheosis on his third album We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves in 2011. On the surface an homage to 1980s synth pop, Maus’ album reveals its depth with repeated listens. Over expertly constructed layers of vintage keyboards, Maus’ oft-stentorian baritone alternately intones and croons deceptively simple couplets that blur the line between sincerity and provocation. Lurking beneath the smooth surface Maus uses Baroque musical tropes that give the record a liturgical atmosphere that reinforces the Gregorian repetition of his lyrics. The tension between the radical ironic banality of the words and the deeply serious nature of the music and voice makes We Must Become Pitiless Censors of Ourselves an oddly compelling collection that interrogates the very notion of taste and serves an apt soundtrack to the post-truth age.

Andrew Forell

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society — Mandatory Reality (Eremite, 2019)

Mandatory Reality by Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society

Any one of the albums that Joshua Abrams has made under the Natural Information Society banner could have made this list. While each has a particular character, they share common essences of sound and spirit. Abrams made his bones playing bass with Nicole Mitchell, Matana Roberts, Mike Reed, Fred Anderson, Chad Taylor, and many others, but in the Society his main instrument is the guimbri, a three-stringed bass lute from Morocco. He uses it to braid melody, groove, and tone into complex strands of sound that feel like they might never end. Mandatory Reality is the album where he delivers on the promise of that sound. Its centerpiece is “Finite,” a forty-minute long performance by an eight-person, all-acoustic version of Natural Information Society. It has become the main and often sole piece that the Society plays. Put the needle down and at first it sounds like you are hearing some ensemble that Don Cherry might have convened negotiating a lost Steve Reich composition. But as the music winds patiently onwards, strings, drums, horns, and harmonium rise in turn to the surface. These aren’t solos in the jazz sense so much as individual invitations for the audience to ease deeper into the sonic entirety. The music doesn’t end when the record does, but keeps manifesting with each performance. Mandatory Reality is a nodal point in an endless stream of sound that courses through the collective unconscious, periodically surfacing in order to engage new listeners and take them to the source.

Bill Meyer

Mansions — Doom Loop (Clifton Motel, 2013)

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I knew nothing about Mansions when I first heard about this record; I can’t even remember how I heard about this record. But I liked the name of the album and the album art, so I listened to it. Sometimes the most important records in your decade have as much to do with you as with them. I’d been frantically looking for a job for nearly two years at that point, the severance and my access Ontario’s Employment Insurance program (basically, you pay in every paycheck, and then have ~8 months of support if you’re unemployed) had both ran out. I was living with a friend in Toronto sponsoring my American wife into the country (fun fact: they don’t care if you have an income when you do that), feeling the walls close in a little each day, sure I was going to wind up one of those kids who had to move back to the small town I’d left and a parent’s house. There were multiple days I’d send out 10+ applications and then walk around my neighbourhood blasting “Climbers” and “Out for Blood” through my earbuds, cueing up “La Dentista” again and dreaming of revenge… on what? Capitalism? There was no more proximate target in view. That’s not to say that Doom Loop is necessarily about being poor or about the shit hand my generation (I fit, just barely) got in the job market, or anything like that; but for me it is about the almost literal doom loop of that worst six months, and I still can’t listen to “The Economist” without my blood pressure spiking a little.

Ian Mathers

Protomartyr — Under Colour of Official Right (Hardly Art, 2014)

Under Color of Official Right by Protomartyr

By my count, Protomartyr made not one but four great albums in the 2010s, racking up a string of rhythmically unstoppable, intellectually challenging discs with absolute commitment and intent. I caught whiff of the band in 2012, while helping out with editing the old Dusted. Jon Treneff’s review of All Passion No Technique told a story of exhilarant discovery; I read it and immediately wanted in. The conversion event, though, came two years later, with the stupendous Under Color of Official Right, all Wire-y rampage and Fall-spittled-bile, a rattletrap construction of every sort of punk rock held together by the preening contempt of black-suited Joe Casey. Doug Mosurock reviewed it for us, concluding, “Poppier than expected, but still covered in burrs, and adeptly analyzing the pain and suffering of their city and this year’s edition of the society that judges it, Protomartyr has raised the bar high enough for any bands to follow, so high that most won’t even know it’s there.” Except here’s the thing: Protomartyr jumped that bar two more times this decade, and there’s no reason to believe that they won’t do it again. The industry turned on the kind of bands with four working class dudes who can play a while ago, but this is the band of the 2010s anyway.

Jennifer Kelly

Tau Ceti IV — Satan, You’re the God of This Age, but Your Reign Is Ending (Cold Vomit, 2018)

Satan, You're The God of This Age But Your Reign is Ending by Tau Ceti IV

This decade was full of takes on American primitive guitar. Some were pretty good, a few were great, many were forgettable, and then there was this overlooked gem from Jordan Darby of Uranium Orchard. Satan, You’re the God of This Age, but Your Reign Is Ending is an antidote to bland genre exercises. Like John Fahey, Darby has a distinct voice and style, as well as a sense of humor. Also like Fahey, his playing incorporates diverse influences in subtle but pronounced ways. American primitive itself isn’t a staid template. Though there are also plenty of beautiful, dare I say pastoral moments, which still stand out for being genuinely evocative.

Darby’s background in aggressive electric guitar music partly explains his approach. (Not sure if he’s the only ex-hardcore guy to go in this direction, but there can’t be many.) His playing is heavier than one might expect, but it feels natural, not like he’s just playing metal riffs on an acoustic guitar. But heaviness isn’t the only difference. Like his other projects, Satan is wonderfully off-kilter. This album’s strangeness isn’t reducible to component parts, but here are two representative examples: “The Wind Cries Mary” gradually encroaches on the last track, and throughout, the microphone picks up more string noise than most would consider tasteful. It all works, or at least it’s never boring.

Ethan Milititisky

Z-Ro — The Crown (Rap-a-Lot, 2014)

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When singing in rap was outsourced to pop singers and Auto Tune, Z-Ro remained true to his self, singing even more than he ever did. He did his hooks and his verses himself, and no singing could harm his image as a hustler moonlighting as a rapper. He can’t be copied exactly because of his gift, to combine singing soft and rapping hard. It’s a sort of common wisdom that he recorded his best material in the previous decade, yet quite apart from hundreds of artists that continued to capitalize on their fame he re-invented himself all the past decade, making songs that didn’t sound like each other out of the same raw material. The Crown is a tough pick because since his post-prison output he made solid discs one after each other.

Ray Garraty

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