#Hunting Scope

[kaiserouo]

[screamingcrows]

I mean, is he even trying-

[talos-stims]

source

[buzzingroyalty]

Now why on earth is tumblr showing me ads of coyotes straight up getting shot by snipers

[schismusic]

Untitled piece on worried music (or some shit)

This piece has been floating around, shapeless and structureless, for the better part of four months now. I don't particulary care to give it any sort of unifying theme, or to put it into comparison with autobiography as I usually do. This will have to stand on its own as an ostensibly gratuitous exploration of various levels of preoccupation in music that I like. This being said, hope you enjoy the dive and you find something worthwhile to listen to. For those of you who hoped to read more about my very boring personal life, well, it's this way or the highway this time. I'm really bad at this, aren't I?…

Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (don't worry, I will no longer subject you to this long ass name and will stick to the conventional acronym) live in this weird limbo where they might be among the longest-running acts to originate from the late '70s and yet at the same time are by and large considered by most a one-hit wonder. And to be fair, Enola Gay could very easily be the single best synthpop track ever recorded, thereby rendering other tracks from the same genre functionally useless to people who do not care about synthpop. I, however, care a lot about synthpop. But I also care a lot about a different, very underrated aspect of synthpop: its paranoia.

There's a really cool piece by Mark Sabatini on the Red Wedge magazine. The piece opens with a picture of peroxide-hair David Sylvian sitting in front of a Prophet-5 and is dedicated to Scott Walker and Mark Hollis, so it's basically just tailor-made for me right out of the gate. More importantly, however, it underlines the important relationship between some of the earliest bands in British synthpop and the concept of eerie in the Mark Fisher sense of the word, or some kind of uncertainty with regards to the future. The late 1970s sit at the cusp of a special time in contemporary history, not just because of what Sabatini notes, i.e. the passing of the torch between two decades that came to symbolize two completely different visions of the world (political, social, economic, cultural). The early Eighties would turn out to be some of the most tense years in the entire Cold War. A record like This Heat's Deceit is a direct byproduct of a terrifying climate of impending doom, faced with a dry sarcasm only the sense of rushing to an early grave could grant. In the Yellow Eyes post I also added a number of other examples, none of which strictly relevant to this exact post. One would think that OMD's preoccupation with being, at once, "ABBA and Karlheinz Stockhausen" would force them to a more sideways approach to these same feelings. To an extent, this is true, in that they very rarely discuss current-day topics in a direct way. I am specifically writing about, of course, Enola Gay, but take for instance a track like Telegraph. I remember sending it to Dog a while back and their reaction was quite priceless. Not only did they define it as "whimsical" and "faelike", wow!, but they also very acutely pointed out "something sinister about it just under the surface … it feels subtly dangerous".

This is technically true for the entire Dazzle Ships album. From the first moment we are in Prague, a weird place to be in the year 1983. A sampled trumpet fanfare loops around, a voice speaking in Czech, that same fanfare theme rearranged for a full orchestra. Then it hits you with a song titled, I shit you not, Genetic Engineering. The little children, the future in our hands, feel like more of a menace than they do a promise. They are to be controlled. International tackles rampant nationalism. Radio Waves echoes Kraftwerk and ties back into Telegraph. Of All the Things We've Made, a heartwrenching controlled melodic burst sounding like it could fit straight into the Disco Elysium soundtrack, reflects on the rift between Cold War superpowers with touching longing for world peace. And yet the most representative track of the whole lot might be Time Zones. A mess of jambled radio hourly signals: around the world in barely thirty seconds, codified conventional human behaviour presenting itself in the barest possible function, the capability to tell time. I've always been terrified of radio hourly signals. I remember car trips in the night, the mechanical nightingale chirping before the five boops right before the hour ended. I remember silent screens with sudden noises and an impersonal voice telling the time. So sterile it felt inexorable, the same way doom is.

On the other hand, this barely controlled element of quiet terror – a shift of the mask revealing an inhuman grin? – can at some point just burst into a more direct feverish sense of impending death. This is where a band like Sunrise Patriot Motion comes in. According to this incredible interview with Invisible Oranges, not only is every SPM release a piece in an ongoing story (so far there are two, so you're still in time to get in on the action before it gets too complicated), but Black Fellflower Stream – record number one – was actually itself the product of a driving obsession. In the words of Will Skarstad himself:

"For the first time ever Yellow Eyes was all over the place, but with this, we were like, twice a week, every week getting together. We got into this crazy routine, got obsessed, let’s finish this record. We were just so psyched about it."

Yes, the Skarstad brothers are once again involved. Not that much of a surprise, to be completely fair to you. Their guitar work with Yellow Eyes somehow manages to transcend the usual arrangement tactics of black metal, sounding less and less like cookie-cutter true-Norwegian imitators by the millisecond. While a record like Immersion Trench Reverie perfectly illustrates that, in SPM that same reality-warping harmony is bent in the direction of a post-punk-tinged beast, retaining however the powerful drive and pulse of metal. The brothers, ever so self-conscious, call it their "nu metal" project. I'm not inherently opposed to the idea: Deftones's Chino Moreno is notoriously a massive Japan and Duran Duran fan, Korn's Jonathan Davis got into makeup because of the Cure's Robert Smith. Where the fundamental difference with classic nu metal comes in is probably in the themes. Specifically, Black Fellflower Stream details the psychological journey undergone by a man who, in a religious stupor, comes to believe that he can dig a hole deep enough to find oil. Military symbolism, Catholic imagery relating to mystical ecstasy, incoherent autobiographical babbling, all tied together with the progressively clearer and unavoidable understanding (as per My Father Took Me Hunting in the Snow's liner notes) "that he is the sun, and, as the day ends, so will he."

Musically, in these two records, anything goes. Dungeon synth-inspired fake-ass FM keyboard preset sounds leave space to chugging heavy rhythm guitars, interspersed with yelled (more so than screamed) vocals courtesy of Andy Chugg and incredibly imaginative sampling and sound layering. The musical landscape painted by all of these elements, brought together in such a way that it feels miraculous for them to actually coalesce, is one of absolute military terror, where personal life and one's past are exploded into shrapnel, transform a delusional pretense into a mission of quasi-religious penance. One certainly wonders how long the experiment can go and how it can evolve. But I, for one, am glad that I got to hear these two records, and can't wait for any new music coming our way. Even if it means delving into horrifying visions of petrol war.

But what happens when this state of worry, paranoia almost, comes to essentially burn a hole into reality itself, detaching from average parameters of direction, time, weight, emotion? My guess is you get something close to the latest Ben Frost record. Not one to be intimidated by loud noises, Frost's body of work evolved from forlorn, cinematic guitar to progressively more Dangerous, noisy and aggressive territory. By the time A U R O R A hit it was hard to see where the project would go next. I would argue this was true for Frost as well: the vulgata around The Centre Cannot Hold (and its related EPs and singles) seems to be that it was a bit out of focus, speaking euphemistically. I don't disagree, regardless of my affection towards Threshold of Faith specifically. But Frost's arrival to a deviant, eldritch post-metal form sounds like it holds the key to a new fascinating approach.

The idea of "blending metal and electronica" will bring some of my older followers back to the Prodigy, or Nine Inch Nails, or Godflesh, or even Atari Teenage Riot if we want to force it a bit. On the other hand, some of my slightly less old followers will probably be catapulted into horrible traumatic nightmares of generic 2010-era metalcore bands incorporating keyboardists, brostep mid-range drilling FM modulation, overcompressed guitars and autotuned vocals. I'm proud and happy to report that, if anything, Scope Neglect swings more in the first direction than it does in the other one, but it's not a matter of sound as much as it is a matter of approach. Greg Kubacki (Car Bomb) provides absolutely crushing guitar work – not to mention Liam Andrews (My Disco) and his devastating bass guitar – sounding very much like abstracted takes on his main band's tracks. Yet the guitars sound heavily compressed, laser-focused on filling the mids in a very djenty way (look mom, I said djent in 2024, do I get an award for this?). This is, by design, as modern metal as it gets: and yet it sounds nowhere near as cauterized.

Not just because of the arrangements. And granted, the arrangements go a really long way to achieve the core idea of the record; but Frost's processing of the sounds turn Kubacki's cerebral bursts themselves into inhabitable, inhospitable spaces – bedrock for mind-crushingly heavy atmospherics – which are only then left to be filled with the listener's own imagination and a minimal number of sparse effects and austere melodies. Much in the same way as Autechre (and we're back!), this record comes to build the very spaces it describes, setting aside cinematic tactics – except, maybe, on closer Unreal in the Eyes of the Dead – in favour of an architecture of impossible terrors and, well, a worry and paranoia so imposing and totalising that it transcends discernible form, solid structure, anything but the (very few) bare and basic sonic referents it alludes to.

[guzsdaily]

First Day, Not a Lot

Daily Blogs 290 - Aug 21st, 12.024 Today was my first day in the job! Aaaannd, there wasn't a lot. Just meeting to know about the company, how they operate, meet the people in charge, etc. But it was good, and apparently I'm entering with another junior in the job, so at least someone to relate and mutually help. To be honest, I'm not that anxious, I kinda remembered myself that code in companies is the same level that code written alone, but just written by another person, and it was somewhat funny seeing "TODO: ... "s and "HACK: ..."s comments in the codebase.

Nonetheless, I wasn't assigned any tasks yet, they use agile in the project, so I will probably have to wait until the end of the sprint to really do something. Which is good, since I have some time to familiarize myself with the codebases and people.

Being sincere, the only thing that seems to change now is that I have less time to work on my own projects, and that's it. I'm kinda remembering to myself that, even tho it's my first job, it is still a job, so I will treat it as so and not be so excited.

What makes me happy is my projects, my work, and that where I'm still focusing.

Today's artists & creative things Music: Novocaine - by The Unlikely Candidates

© 2024 Gustavo "Guz" L. de Mello. Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

[kollectorsrus]

[theinfinitedivides]

second My Dearest related post today but Only Skin from Ys and Divers from the eponymous album 🤝🏼 Ryang Eum longing for a man who will never love them in exactly the way they deserve

[gynandromorph]

This one is always funny to me because there are Fat Insect apex predators (whales, snakes, poisonous frogs) and there are also herbivores who aren't Fat Insects (hippos, pandas, elephants) and have no natural predators

[floorpancakes]

im used to being a bargain hunter but getting two dream dresses so close together and so many deals feels so surreal...wah...

im gonna have to pay fees on some items but its still so weird to know i just own dresses ive wanted since 2011 like that....and the heart e dress and missing overskirt ap jsk were quite frankly crazy deals

shame i missed out on the viviko ap tartan dress set and the pasta dress but I'll be keeping an eye out for them in the future elsewhere 🙇

there weren't many items i wanted when i was in town w my parents (either too overpriced or waiting on sales cause nothing else was a need item) and all my plans with friends went nowhere so i had a little more funds to play with, hopefully next month i can cover shipping and fees and then actually get to hang out with my friends, ik they're always busy but it sucks not being able to hang with them even with all the fat sick person anxiety that holds me back rn. hopefully i can get better in the near future and be able to wear all my beautiful collection, im collecting beautiful things until the day i can be beautiful too i guess

anyways, hopefully i can get some cool stuff next month or use the money on positive experiences. for now this past month or so's haul has been pretty crazy . you don't find <£15 ap/meta/baby/etc dresses like you could back in 2017-18 (which made up the majority of my wardrobe back then) but i know my way round a bidding or sales site! i can always find a deal! not like i have time to do much else eheh

[gardenof-eda]

👗Shopping, a ballet.👗

✨🩰✨

[nightvision4less]

One of the primary advantages of a thermal monocular is their ability to see in complete darkness. Unlike traditional optics that rely on visible light, a thermal monocular detects heat emitted by living creatures. This capability allows you to observe wildlife during the night or in dense, low-light environments where conventional binoculars or cameras might struggle. Whether you’re tracking nocturnal animals or observing early morning activity, a thermal monocular ensures that you don’t miss any action.

[haikewargame]

Excellent performance: This SVD 4X26 rifle scope has 4x magnification, Range setting scale: 1000m, FOV 6°, Deflection setting scale: ±10mil.

Infrared photosensitive screen design: The latest SVD 4X26 rifle scope in 2024 has a new infrared photosensitive screen switch, which can open or close the infrared photosensitive screen window, and has a good use effect at night.

Multi-layer coated lens: high light transmittance and clear imaging.

Side mounting design: can be installed on a variety of sniper rifles, such as AK rifles

Sturdy and durable: aluminum alloy shell, shockproof and waterproof.

[pieterhb]

Predator Caught Through the Scope - The Hunt Begins! 

[thefirstvanishingmemories]

Spotting Scope Advantages Every Outdoor Enthusiast Should Know

What do a hunter, a target shooter, a bird watcher, a wildlife photographer, and an outdoor enthusiast all have in common? They could all benefit from one specific piece of equipment: a spotting scope. It’s an essential piece of gear that can significantly improve your long-distance viewing, way more than regular binoculars or telescopes could. With the specialised features, it can provide you…