#Demonology and AI Art

[thesagebrushkid]

Everything you asked me about AIers and more,,...UPDATE!

I added three more points to my take on people that abuse the right and skills of humanity to generate AI ART.

People ask me about my view point on AI ART and so here it is:

If you paid someone to create a picture for you, telling them what you want to see in the picture, does that make YOU an artists?? NO! And the exact same thing can be said for AI. You did not create the image. There-fore you are NOT an artist. You are just a narrator. You gained no experience from it, you gain no true feeling of self-worth, you used no true skills nor assets. And the AI program cannot be called an artist because only a human can create art. SET - POINT - MATCH. GAME OVER. I WIN. CASE CLOSED. YOU LOSE. GO TO JAIL, DO NOT PASS GO, DO NOT COLLECT $200. CASE CLOSED. BAILIFF TAKE THESE AI LOSERS AWAY.

1) If you use AI to create images (the proper term is IMAGES, NOT ART) Then you are lazy, a thief and essentially a murderer. You are also an advocate of Satan and all divine powers of evil.

2) If you do not list the images you are posting as rendered by AI, you are a liar.

3) If you render AI images and post them but do not have a profile filled out, you are a coward.

4) If you claim you cannot draw and that's why you use AI to create images, you are a karen and a bullshit artist of the highest degree.

5) If you ask me to forgive you because you feel you can create "art" by "uttering a few words to a computer" the answer is no. You are a pathetic karen of a life form and you deserve no forgiveness. If that's the only way you can create then becomes a writer and leave the REAL art to REAL ARTISTS. if you REALLY want some art made, PAY A REAL ARTIST. Sorry if it takes more than 15 seconds to get done. but you are not the center of the universe.

6) If you call yourself an "artist" and what you create is "art" then you are a moron and need to go back to school and learn what art is.

7) If you call yourself my friend and say you support my art and career but go behind my back and use AI, you are a two-faced bastard.

8) If you use AI to create any form of porn or sexual fetish images, you are a pervert, mentally deranged and need serious intervention. Not to mention a Boy/Girlfriend.

9) If you consider "INSPIRATION" and "THEFT" as meaning one of the same thing, in the terms of "AI ART" (or anything for that matter) then you are a totally uneducated buffoon for not even knowing the different meanings of the two words and need to go back to school.

10) If you live in the USA and render AI images, then sign them and put them up for sale, you are (as of the latest governing laws of 2024) committing a crime and officially labelled a criminal in all forms of the word.

11) If you print out AI images and host them at a convention or museum as ART, then you are not only a liar, criminal and a thief, but you are a pathetic piece of wasted air and flesh that needs to be (censored)

12) If you claim your ADHD or Dyslexia prevents you from learning to draw, you are a pathetic narcissistic sot. There have been great painters throughout history with mental and physical problems bigger than yours. So, cry me another river KAREN!

13) If you put a watermark on AI images, you are a serious piece of shit and are ignorant about the laws currently in play against "AI art."

14) If you hide your AI image and ask for a donation to see them, you are breaking the law and need to be arrested.

15) If you tell your computer to render the image a God or any other religious figure head, you are a sinner and breaking your own faith's moral codes. Remove yourself from the world of the living please.

16) If you use an AI program to render images of any Aboriginal or Native People from anywhere in the world, you are an immoral turd fest and no better than the people that treated them centuries ago.

17) If all you do is render images of underage boys and nothing more (clothed or not), you are a Pedophile and you need to have your member, and hands chopped off with a dull axe and locked away for life.

18) If you use AI to create images to spread hate, lies, fear and violence to people you are prejudice against, you are just the product of Satan's seed and a Daemonette's egg. From Hell you were born and back to Hell you WILL go.

19) If you claim that you are "expressing yourself" with AI art", you are an asswipe. You are lying to yourself and no, you are not expressing yourself. Expressing yourself comes from inside yourself and artistic talent, be it traditional art, music, or dance. It comes from inside you; your heart, mind and soul. You are not expressing yourself; you are lying to yourself.

20) If you dare utter "what is the harm?" you are inhuman and you deserved to be dragged into the street and (censored). Today 4/2/2024 NYC is starting to post AI art on subway tunnels and on billboards. That alone had taken jobs away from a reported 52 REAL ARTISTS, not to mention food off the tables for their families, utilities unpaid, rents and mortgages unpaid. But I guess you do not care if kids go hungry. Just do not complain when you see more people living on the street because YOU PUT THEM THERE!!!!!

21) If you say you do not have the mind to learn art, then you are a born loser. If you were able to graduate HS, College, learn to drive a car, restore some old furniture, do laundry on your own and play sports, you can learn to draw. you are just a Lazy Loser looking for any reason to cheat your way through life.

22) If you tell yourself, you do not have the talent to be an artist, that makes you a Double Loser and even more Lazy. You are not BORN an artist; you teach yourself art. Do you seriously think that it's going to happen overnight or in an hour? AI generators are not art generators, they are a dangerous and addictive drug. and they are being used to create the most dangerous lies this world has ever seen.

23) If you post your AI shit on X/Twitter, you are most certainly a Demonologist. Just admit it and take a sip of the orange Kool Aid. From Hell fire you were wrought and to the brimstone of Hell you will return.

24) If you feel humbled by AI generators of any sort, that's not the true feeling of what it is. What you are feeling is addiction and embraced by the lies you are surrounding yourself with. If you think that's "humbleness" you are feeling, then you have utterly no idea what the word Humble means and you certainly have no love for humanity. Please Stick a Pistol in Your Mouth and...(censored). You are a waste of air and flesh. I so feel sorry for your folks for wasting their time to give birth to your deplorable life.

25) If you say AI generators are "just a toy" then you are Piece Of Shit and I dare not dwell on what toys you had as a kid. Nuclear Bombs and Radiation, more than likely. Something that steals and takes away the livelihood of others is NOT A TOY. What do you give kids for their Birthday and Christmas? Battle Axes, Cyanide and Dynamite??? But forgive me, I forget, you do not care who you hurt. All that matters is that quick wank you get making porn art. Thats clearly more important to you than a woman feeding her kid or someone being able to pay their bills. I see.

26) If you claim your dyslexia is what stops you from learning art and that's why you use AI generators, you are a lying factory of turd and a Manipulative Karen. If you can sit there and type a series of prompts for hours to get what you desire over and over, you are NOT DYSLEXIC. you are just a Moron using the world to get what you want. If you can sit or lay there for an hour typing in prompts, you can sit there and learn how to draw and paint. Oh, I am sorry it takes time and patience. And I am sorry if you may actually learn a new skill set. Gods forbid you do something constructive with your Pathetic Life. And if you collect government money because you claim to be dyslexic but can still type prompts for hours, you need to be arrested for embezzling and lying to the government.

27) If you create AI art to make porn because you feel you are too ugly to get into a relationship with someone, then you are a helpless case of crap. And you never will find someone so long as all you do is hide yourself in the dark corners of your house and wank off to images of 7 fingered and 3 legged people created with AI. And you are right....No REAL human being will want to be with you. You think you are ugly? Yeah, well you are. Your soul is filthy and so is your mind. You never will get that dream guy you are asking the computer to make. About the only people that MAY want you is another AI renderer. And really, what sort of life would that be? Two pathetic losers living together, living fake lives? YOU ARE ALL JUST UGLY LOSERS!

28) If you know all this and still play with AI generators anyway, you are a Demonic Monster. And I most certainly pray for your destruction. Just put a gun in your mouth and take yourself out of the gene pool.

===============================================================In short, AI art is NOT ART and never will be ART. Art can only be created by human beings. No other creature on this planet. Art is the product of imagination, study, time, practice, technique, style, control and love. Art is not JUST expressing yourself, it's the ability to step back and look at the completed work and gain a sense of accomplishment, be its good or bad. And from that completed work, we learn how to improve. Art comes from the mind, heart and the soul. AI imagers are not artists. It takes away the very things that make us human.

I seriously do not care if this post causes me to lose any or all of my watchers with this post. I would rather have no watchers at all than a whole bunch of demonic AI crime lords on my board, there just for a quick steal or sexual fix. And I find solus in that when the time comes, all the people that use AI generators are destined for hell.

If you are an AI "art creator", you are a pathetic piece of life form that need to be publicly executed and your body rocketed into the sun for all the sin, harm, lies and evil you create. Go ahead and lie to yourself and the world. Show us exactly who you are. It will make it easier for us to find you and make Satan's job so much easier when your time comes.

[scarmille]

via pinterest

[marshmallowfairbanks]

Art: Mighty Oak

[reachartwork]

neon sins series

asmodeus, belphegor mammon, abaddon, satan beelzebub, lucifer

[deepdreamnights]

Stolas 

“I hear you want to learn about plants and precious stones.”

Midjourney AI:  The Demon Stolas, screech owl with long, ostrich legs, wings outstretched, screeching, grown of crystal and flame above head, stepping from flaming summoning circle of blue flame, outside Aldi, storms overhead, apocalyptic, surreal

[r3v3rsid3]

[•] resoñar al Bosco _

25.4.23

[blanksoullesseyes]

[julian-invictus]

Blood, Gold, and Oil: The Cult of Mammon

Made in Collaboration with Wonder App

[haveaseathuman]

This completely safe chair is made from a living demon trapped in totally secure resin. Growling is completely normal.

[theneoncaster]

This October I'm running a MASSIVE TTRPG streaming event on TheNeonCaster Twitch channel - 7 one-shots across the month, GMed by myself and memberso f my Actual Play community!

The lineup is as follows:

Saturday 14th October 4-6.30pm BST/11am-1.30pm EDT: Death in Space - Old Mountain Home 7-10pm BST/2-5pm EDT: Eat the Reich - Grave Hage

Sunday 15th October 7-10pm BST/2-5pm EDT: Spire x Blades in the Dark - Chant of the Void Sea

Saturday 21st October 3-6.30pm BST/11am-1.30pm EDT: Delta Green - Operation Excelsior 7-10pm BST/2-5pm EDT: Justicar - AI Attorney: Asimov's Law

Saturday 28th October 3-6pm BST/10am-1pm EDT: Ritual - Digital Demonology 7-10pm BST/2-5pm EDT: Mork Borg - Under A Caged Star: Stellar Ascension

More info on what each games like (and teasers on their vastly different art directions) after the cut.

Starting off on Saturday 14th October is Goblin VTuber Sheela Ornthalas running Death in Space! Channelling retro spacefaring anime, a group escaping an old space station join the crew of a certainly suspicious ship.

Also on Sat 14th Oct, @urbanfriendden runs the so-fresh it-bleeding Eat the Reich from Rowan Rook & Decard! To defeat the nazis in the Hague, rebel artists dropped the Bosch Bomb, unleashing oil paint horrors. Now, vampire agents finish the job.

A surprise Sunday session on the 15th October is a fusion of Spire and Blades in the Dark, run by yours truly!

A spiritual sequel to our previous minicampaign in Blades in the Dark, Escape to the Void Sea. Hedonist gang Smile, the Widest wade into a growing conflict between practitioners of Radio and Ocean magic.

On Sat 21st October we have Boston drag queen and AP performer Juicy Garland running Delta Green! In present-day NYC, a series of murder victims are inscribed with occult markings. Can the Agents find the killer before they strike again?

Later on Sat 21st Oct is Irregular Joe running courtroom drama RPG Justicar from Nevyn Holmes. In the name of justice, even AIs stand trial! A surreal, improvised court case with VTubers, stock photo models and... pancakes?!

Our last event day is Sat 28th Oct, featuring a channel first - a solo RPG! I'm running the coming-soon Ritual from Hive Mind Creates. I'll be chanting, inscribing and tarot reading to protect myself from demonic attack!

And our final show! Following a previous coastal horror one-shot on our channel is a sci-fi hack of Mork Borg, run by Tom Greenwood. As a planet mined to exhaustion orbits the Caged Star in its twilight years, a group of scavengers look to a space elevator to escape.

Phew! That's a lot of shows! We collectively put a huge amount of work into making this event happen, so please so join us on The Neon Caster twitch channel across the month, and share with other TTRPG-loving folks you know!

[dalle2]

“The weekly meeting of the Prestonpans Amateur Demonology Society goes horribly wrong when, due to a sub-standard sacrificial goat, their fiery pentacle in the basement of the Scout Hall calls forth the terrifying, eldritch form of The Dark Lord Santa.”

Created by DALLE, AI that can create realistic images and art from a description.

Sharing is caring!

Substack: dalle.substack.com

Twitter: @Dalle2AI

The heading of this post was used to generate the image, src

[gaystation4]

Hey I'm pretty sure that demonology art you just reblogged of the geisha woman is AI

The tattoos meld into each other in the way most typical of AI art

i didnt zoom on it before but yeah the one on her tit was just a weird blob of a face. deleted

[kaiiscottage]

── ୨୧ Welcome dear! 🍡⁺ 𓂂

🌷Hiii my name is Kaii but you can also call me Vivy or Milo :D!🌷

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┈ ୨୧ 💐About me:

✿ 18 | she/her but any pronouns are fine! | Bi/Ace/Demiromantic | Latina | INFP

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◌˚ 𓂂Basic dni criteria like racists,homophobes/transphobes or lgbtphobic people in general,ableists,zionists,xenophobes,pro-lifers,Terfs,sexists etc

◌˚ 𓂂Pro-shippers/Maps/P*dos

◌˚ 𓂂 Anime dude bros , people who fetishize wlw or mlm relationships,people who sexualise underage characters,NFT/Ai Art supporters those kinds of people :3

◌˚ 𓂂HATE vividly any of my interests

┈ ୨୧ 🍃BYF:

☆༚.I'm mainly active on:

🌼 ig: xc.lartand/kaiiscottage [priv acc] 🌼 MAL: Bluexia3 ~

🌼 Anilist: Bluexia3 🌼Tw*tter: kaiiscottage

☆༚.English IS NOT my main language so I'm really sorry if I make any typos or mistakes 😭😭

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☆༚.This is an SFW blog since,well,I'm asexual but there might be slight nudity and some blood so please be aware of that!

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☆༚. If you need cw for anything let me know!

🦋˚✧I'll update this post whenever I need to add new stuff or remove it but for now enjoy your stay :) ♡! ༉‧₊˚‬~

[marshmallowfairbanks]

Art: Mighty Oak

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 6

Whatever happens, Bobby Conn will always be fabulous

Greetings from the never-ending sameness! It must be Friday since we’re doing a Dust, but we are not exactly sure which Friday and, indeed, which day of the week comes after that. We have not had a haircut in a while, and we’re wearing the most comfortable, least fashionable things we own, but we have not quite given up, because, you see, we’re still listening to music. Here are short missives from our respective quarantines, covering experimental psych, fey orchestral pop, slow rolling sine waves, disco-glittering satire, solitary black metal and assorted other musical manifestations. Contributors included Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Jennifer Kelly, Jonathan Shaw and Michael Rosenstein.

Eric Arn & Jasmine Pender — Hydromancy (Feeding Tube)

hydromancy by eric arn & jasmine pender

Hydromancy is the ancient practice of divining the gods’ intentions by staring for long periods into a pool of water. Eric Arn, an American guitarist who has been based in Austria for the last decade and a half, seems to have picked up at least one message from the cosmos, and he is acting upon it. Feeding Tube Records is his home. Hydromancy is his third release on the label, and like its two predecessors, it carves out a unique zone within a large and ever-spreading field of inquiry. Arn’s spent time playing psychedelic rock, free improvisation and solo acoustic explorations, and worked with players from Texas, New England and Vienna. This time he’s partnered with an English cellist, Jasmine Pender, on two side-long ponderances of resonance. The title is apt; the musicians seem to be regarding the surface of their sound, first letting ripples and reflections guide them, but ultimately peering beneath the surface into darker, persistent currents.

Bill Meyer

ARTHUR — Hair of the Dog (Honeymoon)

On his sophomore album, Philadelphia songwriter ARTHUR disguises ruminations on addiction, anxiety, pain and paranoia in summery cloaks of experimental pop. The combination of whimsy and woe is nothing new, but it’s a fine balance. In Hair of the Dog, complex arrangements surround naïve-sounding melodies, hinting at inner turmoil.  

The album incorporates whispers of disco in “No Tengo,” a low key Caleb Giles rap interlude on “Something Sweet,” swinging 1960s horns on “William Penn Island” and a choir of children on “You Are Mine.” The magpie eclecticism holds together beneath a voice that can err on the side of mannered. It is most effective when direct and unadorned as on “Simple Song” where a woozy waltz and detuned guitar bridge underline the poignancy of the lyrics: “In a couple of years/You lose a couple of friends/You lose yourself and you start over again/I don’t have patience/All that I know is addiction.” There is a lot to like here even if at times ARTHUR treads too hard on the path of whimsy.

Andrew Forell

Gaudenz Badrutt — Ganglions (Aussenraum)

Ganglions by Gaudenz Badrutt

“Connect” is the not the first words that 2020 is going to wear out, but it’s in the running. Veteran Swiss electronic musician Gudenz Badrutt could not have foreseen the present situation when he was making this LP, but it speaks to at least one aspect of it. Perhaps the barrages of commercials dropping the word “connect” by corporations interested in currying your subconscious good will has you pondering the networks by which that state is accomplished and sustained. Badrutt’s music is assembled from sine waves and feedback systems, which he layers and interrupts to make sound that flickers and surges like an audio rendering of your nervous system in various states of load-carrying and overload. Listen closely, and you can ponder your place within the system. But if you’re sick of thinking, feeling, and awareness, turn this shit up and it will blot out whatever offends you.

Bill Meyer

  Nat Baldwin — Autonomia I: Body Without Organs (Shinkoyo)

AUTONOMIA I: Body Without Organs by Nat Baldwin

Nat Baldwin is a published novelist as well as a singer and double bassist with several solo records and a long-time stint is a member of the Dirty Projectors on his cv. His versatility does not come at the expense of focus; indeed, Autonomia I (so named because there’s a second, cassette-only volume) show that he knows how to get a lot out of a particular idea. This LP was inspired by a broken bow, which he employs (sometimes in concert with an intact one) on five of the LP’s seven tracks. When one of your tools is unreliable, you have to be ready to scramble, and there are moments when it sounds like he’s trying to recover from or get ahead of his implement’s waywardness. But those also sound like moments of opportunity; whether he’s exploring rattle of a loose part against his bass’s body or using that bow to obtain non-prescribed tensions from his strings, he organizes his instrument’s unusual sounds into quick-moving, provocatively shaped constellations of sound.

Bill Meyer

Bonifrate—Mundo Encoberto (Self-released)

Mundo Encoberto by Bonifrate

Pedro Bonifrate is one-half of the Brazilian psych outfit Guaxe, this solo album (according to Google translate “overcast world”) springs from the same trippy, laid-back but multi-instrumented roots. Lush like the rainforest that surrounds him, playful and full of bright colors, this eight-part composition unfolds in the manner of a particularly vivid dream. “Parte 1” mutates freely over its 11 minute duration, stirring to life in a rush of strings, slipping into beach-y mildly hallucinogenic balladry, trying on a bit of Syd Barret-ish whimsy, crescendoing in clangorous guitar overload. Hard to say if Bonifrate played all the instruments, but the album has an idiosyncratic euphoria, as if it were lifted in one piece from the vivid contours of one person’s mushroom trip.

Jennifer Kelly

 Bobby Conn — Recovery (Tapete)

“It’s a disaster, the one we’ve been waiting for for years, and now we get to see how this thing ends,” croons the one-and-only Bobby Conn in his glam-shuddering, disco-sleek tenor, and sure, 2020 in a nutshell, got it in one, congrats! Who’d have thought that Conn’s arch, satiric performance art could be a form of comfort here at the end of the world? Who’s have supposed his stylized excesses would seem not an iota too much? Conn, as ever, is sharp and topical, pondering all the oppressed sub-groups left out of the “Good Old Days,” (against a swaggering Phil Spector beat), mourning the xxx-rated theaters put out of business by Pornhub in “Bijou,” skewering big data’s intrusions in the synth-operatic glories of “Disposable Future.” But what’s always separated Conn from mere satirists is the elaborate, over-the-top quality of the music he makes. “Recovery” with its scatted bassline, its frenetic syncopation, its funk precision—it all works as music way before you start to chuckle at the lyrics. Conn is as much a character in the long-running graphic novel that plays in his head as a bandleader, but don’t underestimate the bandleader. There’s art underneath all that eyeliner.

Jennifer Kelly

Curanderos — Raven’s Head (Null Zøne)

Raven's Head by Curanderos

If you’re looking for something to cure what ails you in these uncertain times, Raven’s Head might be your balm. You won’t need a prescription, since the tradition of shamanistic healing precedes the AMA, and the particular configuration of healers here — John and Michael Gibbons of Bardo Pond + Scott Verrastro of Kohoutek — models a cooperative approach that more conventional leadership would do well to emulate. The combination of personalities also tips you off to what to expect. Verrastro is a colorist, using the metal parts of his drum kit to keep the listener aware of the dimensions surrounding the listening space, but he also provides just enough forward momentum to keep the music moving at a fogbank-rolling pace. The Gibbons match liquid lead and coarse riff with practiced ease; they’ve spent a lot of time in such cloudy spaces, and they breathe deeply of the inspirational atmosphere.

Bill Meyer

Discovery Zone — Remote Control (Mansions and Millions)

Remote Control by Discovery Zone

“Sophia Again” is a sci-fi mini-story, presenting the conversation between an AI creature and her creator, talking about the self, the meaning of life and the joy of connection, as bubbling arcs of synthesizer sounds jet off into the ether. It is, perhaps, the most literally futuristic of the cuts on this gleaming, synth-centric album, though the whole thing is polished to an other worldly, not quite natural glow. JJ Weihl, the artist behind Discovery Zone, also works in Fenster, a Berlin-based psychedelic pop band of a similarly polished, dance-referring (but not dance) aesthetic. Here, she works solo in luminous abstractions of crystal clear sound. The pleasure comes in the purity and beauty of voices, synths, drum beats, which sound like Sophia might have made them while learning to be human; they are a little too perfect to be wholly man-made.

Jennifer Kelly

 Esoctrilihum — Eternity of Shaog (I, Voidhanger)

Eternity Of Shaog by ESOCTRILIHUM

An epic of esoteric demonology from Ashtâghul’s one-man black metal project Esoctrilihum, Eternity of Shaog presents as ten songs, most of which bear titles like “Exh-Enî Söph (First Passage: Exiled from Sanity)” and “Amenthlys (5th Passage: Through the Yth-Whtu Seal).” One gets the sense that there is a cosmology being built—but even Google has a tough time tracking the references to the many, many Eastern mythic systems in the repertoire. The provisionally good news is that Eternity of Shaog is a bit less musically spastic than its predecessor, The Telluric Ashes of the Ö Vrth Immemorial Gods, an even longer record released just last year. Say what you will, Ashtâghul is prolific. On this new record, you get his signature combination of black metal speed and snarl and an ambitiously (that’s the kind word) proggy compositional sense. The transitions this time around are less violent, the riffs are pretty good and plentiful synths build out to lush soundscapes. The musical textures are rich, but the bad vibes dominate. It’s hard to say what malign presences you’ll be summoning into your home if you play this stuff as loud as seems intended. Maybe keep some holy water handy.

Jonathan Shaw

Fire-Toolz — Rainbow Bridge (Hausu Mountain)

Rainbow Bridge by Fire-Toolz

As Fire-Toolz composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist, Angel Marcloid conjures mosaics from such disparate elements that one wonders how the music hangs together. Yet what at first seems like a chaotic, fractured farrago coalesces into a cohesive picture of her world that simultaneously bewilders and awes. Catholic in source and meticulous in construction Rainbow Bridge is an uncompromising and often stunning dash through Marcloid’s mind. Treated vocals that evoke death metal or JG Thirwell at his most outré, passages of twinkling synth and arena guitar, elements of 1980s Japanese ambient music, fusion jazz and Chiptune slot together like Jenga blocks that wobble but never quite collapse.

Marcloid’s project of musical excavation, reclamation and transformation perhaps mirrors her experience as a non-binary transgender person and the atomization of many tracks on Rainbow Bridge read as a meditation on the contingency of identity and the struggle for place within/outside social constructs that define acceptability and “taste”. On the other hand, sit back, push play and prepare to drift along with the ambient flow then be jolted from reverie by glitch and noise. Much like the world really.

Andrew Forell       

 Jacaszek — Music for Film (Ghostly)

Music for Film by Jacaszek

Music for Film collects the Polish composer Jacaszek’s scores for three movies — the 2019 documentary He Dreams of Giants, the 2008 project Golgota wrocławska and the 2017 film November. Haunted, evocative, disquieting and gorgeous, these ten soundscapes infuse the sounds of electronics, strings and samples with dread. “The Iron Bridge” turns sampled voices and slow throbs of cello into dance with death and memory, while “Liina” picks up eerie vibrations just out of focus, like a camera accidentally recording a ghost. “Dance” hurls electric bolts of tremulous sound—they sizzle with aftertones—then picks out a morose melody in plucked strings. All is dark, subdued, ominous but velvety, sensually smooth. Not having seen the films, I can’t guess the subject matter, but let’s assume there’s no laugh track.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Kontrabassduo Studer-Frey — Zeit (Leo)

Double bassists Peter K Frey and Daniel Studer has spent the better part of the 21st century performing as a duo, but they don’t seem to have felt pressured to rush out a recording documenting their music. This CD includes selections from 2004, 2007, and 2018 that were made at home, in concert, and in the studio. But despite the variety of sources and occasions, this album feels quite cohesive, which is a testament to integrity of their partnership. They rarely play similarly at any given moment, but their contrasting techniques and frequency ranges evince a balance makes even the tracks with contributions by clarinetist Jürg Frey and cellist Alfred Zimmerlin feel like the work of one massive, multi-bodied bass.

Bill Meyer

 Marlin’s Dreaming — Quotidian (Self-Released)

Quotidian by Marlin's Dreaming

The trick of putting soft, flickery voices in front of raging guitars is not a new one, but it’s still worth trying, especially as well as Marlin’s Dreaming does on “Outward Crying.” This sweeping, soaring, but fundamentally introspective tune blasts and blares in a sensitive way, the guitar noise parting like drapes for the singer’s disconsolate confession that he’s leaving this town. The town in question is Auckland, New Zealand, and you can certainly make connections to antipodal fuzz icons, especially the Verlaines. Yet there’s a bit of romantic swoon here in cuts like “Sink or Swim,” which links Marlin’s Dreaming’s diffident lo-fi pop with the baroque gestures of Roxy Music. This is the band’s second album and rather poised given their short history. Marlin’s Dreaming out loud in soft colors and blistering fuzz, and it’s a good one.

Jennifer Kelly

 Christian Rønn & Aram Shelton—Multiring (Astral Spirits)

Multiring by Christian Rønn & Aram Shelton

Some musicians stake their claim within a particular locale, and others tour the world. Alto saxophonist Aram Shelton’s done a bit of both. You could say he’s a serial resident; over the past couple decades he’s been based in Chicago, Oakland, Copenhagen, and now, Budapest. But his recording history lags behind him. His latest release is a cassette recorded in April 2018, and it stands apart from anything he’s done to date. Credit for that lies partly with his choice of partner, Danish keyboardist Christian Rønn. Rønn’s instrument here is a Wurlitzer electric piano, augmented with effects that play up its reverberant qualities, but played without much reference to the way people used to play the thing when it was omnipresent in the 1960s and 1970s. Instead of nailing down a groove, Rønn posts reverberant signposts that Shelton can snake through or lays out undulating surfaces that the saxophonist can sail over. Either way, Shelton plays with a darker and softer tone than has been his wont in the past, casting a pall of eerie foreboding over this gradually evolving music.

Bill Meyer

Snekkestad / Guy / Fernandez — The Swiftest Traveller (Trost)

The Swiftest Traveler by Snekkestad / Guy / Fernandez

Englishman double bassist Barry Guy (b. 1947) has been shuttling between free and composed musical zones for over half a century, longer than the similarly versatile Scandinavian reeds and brass multi-threat Torben Snekkestad (b. 1973) has been alive. Catalan pianist Agusti Fernández (b. 1954) traverses similar terrain. And all three shift fluidly between conventional virtuosity and astutely applied extended techniques. The trio’s rapport is so strong that one supposes that however the album got its title, it wasn’t the result of some musical contest. They’re builders, not destroyers. Still, the rapidity with which these three musicians move from event to event is undeniable. Sparse stasis morphs into quick runs up and down the keyboard; a dense, high-velocity onslaught transforms into intricate, three-part counterpoint. The quickness with which the music changes and the completeness that it expresses from moment to moment make this a very satisfying performance.

Bill Meyer  

 Various Artists — Quilted Flowers: 1940s Albanian & Epirot Recordings from the Balkan Label (Canary Recordings)

Quilted Flowers: 1940s Albanian & Epirot Recordings from the Balkan Label by Canary Records

The word “Balkanized” has the dubious distinction of having acquired extra-regional meaning, to the point where it now signifies a whole divided into smaller, mutually hostile regions. But some of the Balkan musicians who moved to New York City pulled together to play on each other’s gigs and recordings. The Albanian multi-instrumentalist, Ajdan Asllan, who ran the Balkan record label, partnered with musicians from Greece and Bulgaria on both a musical and business level, and kept the company running into the LP age. This collection pulls 11 sides of instrumental and vocal music that originated on his home turf, but if your ears have previously pricked up in response to rural music from Greece or Anatolia, you will want to hear this stuff. A pair of clarinets or a violin usually carry the melodies, sometimes chased by sharp-pitched vocals that spread out in ragged but lusty unison, and always carried by unevenly accented rhythms articulated by vigorously strummed stringed instruments.

Bill Meyer

 Otomo Yoshihide & Chris Pitsiokos — Live in Florence (Astral Spirits)

Live in Florence by Otomo Yoshihide & Chris Pitsiokos

Live in Florence documents a meeting between Otomo Yoshihide on guitar and turntables and Chris Pitsiokos on alto sax and electronics at the Tempo Reale Festival in Florence, Italy. This was the final date of a six-day European tour by the duo, and they’re primed from the first crackled sputters and blasts. The two thrive on these sorts of boundary-crushing forays and their seven short improvisations careen along with frenetic, brawny energy. The two deploy jump-cut pacing and shredded attacks from piercing overtones and feedback to frayed overblown sax and turntable crackle to manically angular reed lines and searing electronic bursts to chafed sax amplifications and thundering rumbles. Even on pieces where they start things out a bit more subdued, the two quickly ratchet up the intensity with torrid, barely-controlled vigor. There’s a slight respite on the sixth piece, with Otomo’s chiming guitar harmonics laying a resonant field for Pitsiokos’s breathy chirps and bent tones but even here, they arc to waves of feedback and skirling reed fusillades by the end. The final piece starts with shattered electronics and spitting reeds and mounts into bellowing din, exploding to the finish of the exhilarating 37-minute set.

Michael Rosenstein

[lunapaper]

Album Review: ‘Miss_Anthropocene’ - Grimes.

Grimes’ latest album Miss_Anthropocene is about a ’psychedelic space-dwelling demon or beauty queen who “relishes the end of the world.’ Or each song is supposed to be a ‘different embodiment of human extinction as depicted through a Popstar Demonology.’ Or it’s a modern day allegory for the cult of celebrity… I’m not sure. And I don’t think she really knows, either.

It might be unfair to define a woman by her relationship, but with Tesla CEO Elon Musk (the human embodiment of Hank Scorpio) so heavily entwined with Claire Boucher’s life and work at this point, it’s hard to ignore.

Though always – to put it lightly – a little left of centre, the Canadian singer’s worldview seems to have become even more skewed over the past couple of years. She’s defended Musk’s GOP donations and union-busting tactics. She’s claimed AI will render live music obsolete. She bullied Poppy (allegedly). She has a recipe for butter toast that’s to die for. She removed ‘anti-imperialist’ from her Twitter bio. She supposedly got experimental eye surgery to cure her seasonal depression. She didn’t bother Googling ‘am I gregnant?’ before thinking ‘sure y not?’ She apparently goes by c now (her italics). It’s so hard to take Grimes seriously now that I initially thought her pregnancy was just a fake meme (It still became one, nonetheless).

And now she wants to make climate change ‘fun.’ Y’know, that thing that’s slowly killing the planet? But whatever Grimes has to say about it is buried under a thick fog of ambience and pseudo-intellectual statements. 

The only track that comes close to addressing the subject is ‘Violence’ (ft. i_o), sung from Earth’s point of view and depicting its relationship with humans as an abusive one, its celestial synthscape pretty but dull.

The rest of the album, on the other hand, proves a mixed bag. ‘So Heavy I Fell Through The Earth’ evokes the image of a slow motion battle scene, crafting a dark sci-fi opus as Boucher contemplates the loss of self during pregnancy. ‘Darkseid’ is a doom pop dirge that sees the singer upstaged by the rapid helium pace of Taiwanese rapper 潘PAN (formerly Aristophanes), whose lyricism – when translated – is heartbreakingly poetic (‘My thoughts die inside the caves/Become some dark green, algae-like decorations on the stones’), unlike Boucher’s clichéd mantra repeated over and over. ‘4ÆM’ brings Bollywood to the 90s rave, inspired by the 2015 film Bajirao Mastrani that envisions a cyberpunk romance of sorts. ‘New Gods’ is a stormy sci-fi ballad that stretches Boucher’s high-pitched vocal to greater heights, though she has the gall to describe said gods as ‘like the Sailor Scouts.’ That and it seems to be the song I like that every other critic hates, go figure…

‘Delete Forever,’ meanwhile, is a wistful mix of twee indie folk and rugged country balladry confronting the US opioid crisis, written on the night Lil Peep died, though it’s later contradicted by the erratic ‘My Name Is Dark,’ gleefully stating over a glitchy, dystopian beat: ‘I don't need to sleep anymore/That's what the drugs are for.’ It’s a track Boucher admits she had trouble fitting into the wider canon of Miss Anthropocene.

Final track ‘IDORU,’ however, is probably what would happen if The 1975 re-recorded Panic! At The Disco’s 2008 album Pretty.Odd. with its mix of flourishing horns, atmospheric synths and bird calls, giving it a intergalactic, Disney-like quality. But like many of the tracks on the record, it overstays its welcome.

For an album about making climate change ‘fun,’ Miss_Anthropocene feels rather claustrophobic, and like Musk’s own tendency to do, there’s quite a lot of style over substance. The instrumentals are suitably ghostlike but largely repetitive. Most of the lyrics read like something out of r/im14andthisisdeep, bordering on unintelligible. Where 2015’s Art Angels (which Boucher has since referred to as ‘a piece of crap’) was a glorious pastiche of 90s pop kitsch and kawaii art punk, Miss_Anthropocene is the worst thing an album full of ethereal nu-metal could be: just okay. For a far superior take on it, you’re better off listening to yeule’s brilliant 2019 debut Serotonin II. No doubt it’s what Grimes wishes Miss_Anthropocene was…

It also feels grossly self-indulgent. With the total upheaval of her life these past five years, Boucher, the future Queen of Mars, has all the luxury in the world to think up ways to make climate change ‘fun,’ a mere novelty. It insulates her from the effects of any impending doom. Whether she likes it or not, she is part of the establishment now. 

Though sonically pleasing, Miss_Anthropocene can also remind you of the worst aspects of celebrity activism: uniformed, pompous, egocentric and severely out of touch.

- Bianca B.