#I think I consciously listen to more jazz/classical

[waugh-bao]

[cherrylng]

2004 Absolution Interview - Matthew Bellamy [CROSSBEAT Muse Special Book]

"The music that I find the most emotional is the music written by the 19th century Romantic composers, and that's one of the pieces of music that has influenced us the most."

Interview from 2004, in which he [Matthew] talks about Muse's core = emotion. Interview with Hidefumi Harima

You are making and playing very emotional music with Muse now, but when was the first time you felt an uncontrollable emotion welling up inside you? 「Hmmm…… I think it was probably when I started thinking about playing music. I felt that desire to bring something inside of me to the surface. I think I was 12 or 13 or something like that. That was when I first picked up a guitar and I also played a bit of piano. That's when I realised that there was a feeling inside me that I hadn't felt before. I also realised that even when I was playing simple music, I was very focused, and I was aware that my life was being projected onto it. It was a very simple, very pure emotion. That's how I got into music.」

Are you a very emotional person in everyday life? 「Yes, I am (laughs). I think the music reflects in some way what I experience in my life. It could be an event, or a lot of different events. There are hopes and fears from the past, in a positive way.」

However, it's not as intrusive as Muse's music, is it? 「Haha (laughs). I think music is a projection of what's going on inside me. Not just what you can see from the outside. For example, an argument with your girlfriend, or the fear you felt at something you saw on the news - the things we hold inside are very complex, aren't they? You can't always see it from the outside. Maybe what's inside me isn't always linked to my life. That's why I like music, and I guess my deep inner life, which is invisible in my everyday life, corresponds with music.」

Why do you think you can express your emotions so freely in music? 「I think it just comes naturally. I don't consciously try to put something into it. Both music and emotion can't exist without the other. My music exists because of my emotion, and in a way, my emotion exists because of my music. If it wasn't for the music, I might not have even realised that my emotions existed. I guess music breathes life into it and makes you realise that emotions exist.」

What is it about Muse's music that appeals and resonates so much with the listener, that it makes some people cry because of their emotions? 「Especially with the last album, we didn't hesitate to show a different side of ourselves. We didn't hesitate to express a very simple, positive hope, or the opposite. Bands nowadays tend to show only one side of themselves, the side they think is cool or fashionable. But we want to be more open and show different sides. Even if it's an uncool side. And I think people can relate to the side of you that you might be a bit embarrassed about. We want to express that 'something' through our music, especially the 'something' that society wants to hide.」

You are a very technical player, whether on guitar or piano. Do you need a certain amount of technique in order to fully express your inner emotions? 「Some of our songs don't need any technique at all. And some of the songs are not well constructed, they're just a bit of a mess. But I don't think it's a bad thing to have technique. For example, if you want to express a grand emotion in a song, you need technique. If you don't have technique, you're limited in what you can do. Of course I like both technical music and non-technical music. But when it comes to expressing emotion, which is the opposite of physical expression, I think you need technique.」

Jimi Hendrix and Tom Morello are your guitar heroes, but do you have anyone in the non-rock genre? 「I like Villa-Lobos (Heitor Villa-Lobos: a highly eclectic Brazilian classical musician who was also influenced by European music) and some very unusual composers from the early 20th century. Jazz is…… It's not guitar, because I don't know much about jazz guitar. For blues, I like Bob (Robert) Johnson and …. If it's piano, then Ray Charles or Nina Simone.」

"If you want to express a grand emotion in a song, you still need technique."

On stage you're exploding with emotion, but at the same time you're also playing difficult guitar parts. How do you strike a balance between letting yourself get carried away with the excitement and playing calmly? 「The music I find the most emotional is the music written by the 19th century Romantic composers - Rachmaninoff, Debussy, Liszt, Berlioz - composers who were technically geniuses, yet still expressed their emotions to the fullest extent. And I would say it's one of the most influential influences on our music. If you look back at the history of pop music over the last 40-50 years, it's a combination that's hard to come by. It's technical and emotional music. A lot of emotional music is rough and simple. On the other hand, technical music is always progressive and not very emotional. So we wanted to be in between the two, and we wanted to do something that had never been done before. But our technique doesn't compare to the jazz and classical people…… They are ten times better than us. We are, well…… We're just good for rock (laughs). I've done it.」

Does your music make you cry? 「Hmmm (laughs)…… I don't know. …… I don't think so. Sometimes when I play music I reach a point where I transcend the act of crying. I think crying happens when you still have a clear awareness of yourself, but when you're playing music it can feel like even that awareness has slipped away. Sometimes when I'm on stage I get a feeling similar to crying…… It's more like a feeling of rapture, like being overwhelmed…… It's more like that. It's the opposite of crying.」

Do you ever lose control of your emotions? 「There are times when I play music and I feel like I'm going overboard. Not just when I'm playing music, but also when I'm introverted, when I'm playing music all the time and forgetting to eat and sleep, when I can't communicate with people. I've been in that state for about four weeks a couple of times. It's like I can't go about my day-to-day life normally anymore. I don't think it's a bad thing. Also, I often get drunk and can't do what I need to do properly, especially when I'm making an album (laughs).」

(laughs) "Dramatic expression" has the fate that it has to be even more stimulating when the audience gets used to the stimulation. What are your thoughts on this? 「Certainly we make dramatic music, and there's some of that on this album. I think dramatic songs have a certain inevitability of characterisation. Like playing a character in a fictional world, away from the day-to-day life in the normal world. One of the things I wanted to achieve with this album was to show a side of myself that I hadn't shown before, but I don't think it necessarily has to be sadness or joy. It can be a fictional world. 'Apocalypse Please' is a case in point. It's a very exaggerated world, so it's very far from reality, but it exists somewhere in your mind. Maybe it's a moment of upset, maybe it's a moment of fear. That's what that song exaggerates. Other songs with that kind of drama are "Butterflies and Hurricanes" and "Blackout". I think it's good to write about those feelings that you don't remember once they've passed. I think I've learnt a lot from this album, and I hope to use that in the future. But whether it's going to be more dramatic, that depends on how many fictional worlds we incorporate. We're very careful about the balance between the fictional and the real.」

When you're young it's one thing, but as you get older your emotions tend to calm down, so I think it takes both physical and mental strength to continue using "extreme" or " insane" expressions. 「Haha, I see (laughs).」

"Sometimes when I play music, I reach a point where I feel like I've transcended the act of crying."

What about you? Do you still find it hard to imagine yourself no longer being able to express yourself intensely, or only seeking calm comfort? 「I don't know, but I think there's always been a weird contrast in what we do. Song by song, album by album, everything. It's better to have multiple contrasts than to be simply just loud or quiet, or minimal or epic. There are two contrasts on this album, one dramatic and one realistic. It's hard to predict what's going to happen next, but if I get old and slow down and become an old and boring person, I'll probably start making slow, old and boring music (laughs).」

When you're making a kind of excessive music, are you going for that kind of thing from the stage of writing the melody? 「We basically write the song first, but we have an immediate instinct about what it's going to sound like. For example, 'Apocalypse Please' was written from the piano part, and the sound of the piano and the chords already took me into a fantasy world. So it's all about how it sounds. And then I write the lyrics according to what emotions are contained in it. So both piano and guitar are essential to songwriting. It develops into a wide range of soundscapes and gives me new ideas. Simple, straightforward chords open up a warm landscape, while complex, epic chords open up a fantasy world that you wouldn't normally think of.」

I see. Good expressions are often so awesome and extreme that you can't help but laugh, and I think Muse's music has some of that in it. What are your own thoughts on this? 「When I pursue music, I find myself going in…… I think it goes in a grandiose and fantastic direction. Like the Flaming Lips. Stuffed bears on stage, big balloons popping up. I like that kind of direction, like going back to my childhood (laughs). I don't know if we'd do something like that now, but I can see why the Flaming Lips did it. That's what happens when you're confronted with lyrics that are ultimately emotional. When you simplify it, you're going back to your childhood, I suppose.」

Have there been times when you've listened to or watched something you've done and laughed at the excessively dense expression? 「Well, I think it happens all the time (explosive laughter). When I'm making an album, I'm so focused on not making mistakes and playing better that I can't really listen to it objectively until much later. I can also watch live shows on video after I've forgotten all about them, so I can look at them objectively. It's quite interesting when you do that (laughs).」

Then, please comment on artists who express themselves in such extreme ways. First of all, Freddie Mercury of Queen. 「(laughs) He's great. He did comedy on the ground, you know. I think he's the one who's done the bicycle songs ("Bicycle Race") and the big-ass songs ("Fat Bottomed Girl") with the musical excesses, and he's the one who's done the real comedy. I respect him a lot. Because he did it without any shame. He did a lot of things that I would have been too embarrassed to do (laughs).」

Indeed. Marilyn Manson is next. 「He's…… He's not showing all the sides that he has. Basically, he's just showing a certain side of himself. He's only showing a certain twisted side, a dark fictional world that he has, that's all he's showing. And I think he's always conscious of trying to take himself in a serious direction. He's a good artist. Especially when he does something like that, there's probably no one else who can do it right. But I don't think he's going to get any wider than that.」

Then there's Slipknot. 「(Laughs) They only show one side of themselves too. That's fine up to about three songs, but if you listen to any more than that you get bored.」

It must be difficult to keep releasing as much emotion as possible every night on a long, gruelling tour, is there anything you do to avoid that? 「The secret is, when we make music, we try to create clues that naturally draw something out of us. When we make music, we always try to make something that makes us feel something. The music has to move me, it has to release my emotions. There are some of our older songs that don't work, but we don't play them anymore. All the songs we play live are the ones that just sound like the song itself.」

Who are some of the artists that you feel are as good or better than you in terms of "emotion"? 「I think the Flaming Lips are more emotional than us. Jeff Buckley's 'Grace' is amazing on that album, not to mention the others (laughs). The rest is…… that's right. For composers, I'd say Rachmaninoff. My girlfriend studies psychology and she has a list of the psychological states of artists from all over the world (laughs), and all my favourite artists are in the same category. Wagner, Rachmaninoff, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Debussy all seem to have multiple personalities (laughs).」

I see (laughs). What do you think about that yourself? 「(laughs) I don't think I'm one of them. Because they are real geniuses. At best I can understand something of their inner life. I don't think they have any mental illness. Maybe a little bit…… Maybe (laughs).」

COLUMN Matthew Bellamy's pick of the five most emotional albums

1. 'Simon & Garfunkel Greatest Hits' (1972) Simon & Garfunkel 2. 'Grace' (1994) Jeff Buckley 3. 'I Put A Spell On You' (1965) Nina Simone 4. 'Incesticide' (1992) Nirvana 5. 'A Night at the Opera' (1975) Queen

(1) It's very emotional. I first heard Simon & Garfunkel when I saw the film 'The Graduate', and I think the song portrays the emotions of the characters. I love that film and have seen it many times. The music is linked to the emotions of the teenagers as they grow up.

(2) It's very pure and the production is perfect. The performances capture it at its best.

(3) It's like a protest song, with a lot of bare emotion. I heard she wasn't a very nice person (laughs). I don't know her personally (laughs), but she was a hard person to get on with. I guess she was the type of person who projected her emotional self directly into her music.

(4) This work shows that it was made by someone who committed suicide. You can feel it from the music, but also in the lyrics there are frequent references to suicide. Words like 'lost purpose' and 'emotionless' also appear. That's a kind of emotion too.

(5) This is also a completely different kind of emotion. It's an unusual world of experimentation, as if something that had been suppressed for a long time had finally exploded and created a fantasy world. It's like Freddie's sexuality had been suppressed for so long that it exploded. But it was something that wasn't really socially acceptable to be open about in the first place.

Translator's Note: Just one more interview and we're basically done reading through this special booklet.

[9800sblog]

https://www.tumblr.com/9800sblog/752490189676560384/httpswwwtumblrcom9800sblog752413680504897536?source=share

Can you do the same with P1harmony?

p1harmony tarot reading

current vibes

all

10 of pentacles, the tower reversed, wheel of fortune, the sun

they're all up to something, not about money, being the most famous singer or having the most likes, notice the 10 of pentacles is about the material, not money exclusively. some people don't notice that fandoms are alternative culture, they're making up their own society of people who think, feel and create similarly to them, so they're being careful of what they're letting out to the public, their fans get it tho. they're not underrated, messy or lame, they know what they're doing by not being completely mainstream yet ;)

shuffled song:

keeho

9 of pentacles reversed, ace of pentacles reversed, the star

"good luck trying to figure me out", I see a lot of research in here about things people may think don't affect him but are directly linked to him. he gives old money vibes, old school jazz clubs, etc. he's purposefully being messy and confusing, like how your room has a disorganization that you understand tho. I think behind the scenes people are expecting/asking him to build an empire he already has.

shuffled song:

theo

4 of wands, 10 of wands, ace of swords reversed (hidden beneath the), judgement, ace of wands

may be preparing for a new comeback, hiding a lot of who he really is, his ideas and projects, "got plans we ain't made yet". he holds a lot of creative control, more than people think, which is interesting and very beneficial to him, he's connecting to family, blood or found and lying a lot!!!! hahahah

shuffled song:

jiung

4 of pentacles reversed, ace of cups reversed, the sun, the fool

also being misleading on purpose, their next release may have a lot to do with that + superheroes/60's science fiction concept. he's having a good time lately, chilling, lying, enjoying classics (things that never die), he may be reading a lot, drawing, and not really trying a lot, being lazy. as if people keep yelling at him for unnecessary things that have nothing but also everything to do with him. he may be excited for halloween.

shuffled song:

intak

5 of swords, knight of swords, page of wands, death reversed

exactly the same vibes as jiung but in his own style, he looks like a very very lazy person, aka looks for the easiest, simplest ways to do incredibly difficult things, and relaxes while doing them. like fishing, demands a lot of knowledge, patience, time and physical strength, but you just sit and wait for the fish to do the work for you.

shuffled song:

soul

6 of cups, the high priestess, 8 of pentacles reversed, the devil

first love vibes, this is one lazy group of people tho omg. he's doing a big big mess while doing nothing, he may be trying to get back to who he used to be as a kid, in hopes to have back what he used to have. the song explains the entire spread and vibes, just listen.

shuffled song:

jongseob

3 of pentacles, the empress, 8 of swords, 2 of cups

they're very lazy, but I wouldn't wanna have them as an enemy, let that be a warning. they're working together, with other people, friends and family towards a common goal, "at the end, we only pursue the value of goodwill", will being the keyword here. consciousness is important business for them, he wants to live an easy and simple life, and that's what he's doing, "why aren't others just doing whatever they want?", yellow submarine - the beatles another relevant song.

shuffled song:

[noirandchocolate]

:) If you have the time and would like to, I wondered if you’d share some of your favourite j-pop / anime songs? I think you have excellent taste whenever you share your opinions, so I’d love to listen to your favs.

Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for sending this, I love getting asks and you're so sweet. PS your art is super cute, love your colors! (I'm gonna reblog some as soon as I'm done answering this. <3)

...wait. MEG!??!?!?! i THOUGHT I recognized that art style! OH MY GOD how long have you been following me and I didn't know?? ;___;!! Hello how have you been!? AAAAAAH!

Okay, I will calm down and. Answer the question asked. XD; Anime music! Here's some tracks I really love, in no particular order and also I'm all over the place style-wise.

"Blue" from Cowboy Bebop is one of my all-time favorites. Honestly the whole Cowboy Bebop soundtrack is amazing and lives up to the hype for sure with its jazz/Old West style with spacy and harder and more modern vibes.

"Ashita Kuru Hi" from Kobato. was the next one that popped into my head! This song gets several different versions throughout the anime, because it's a tune the main character sings all the time, different verses for different events. It even gets a Christmassy reprise in one episode! This is the full, basic version of it featuring music box. But this piano-opening version with more sweeping instruments plays over the finale credits... While I'm at it, I WILL plug the entire soundtrack. It is ADORABLE and is nice sweet background music for work and study.

Gotta give a shoutout to Mob Psycho 100's opening themes for sure. They're all so good and seat-dance provoking. "1" is my favorite of them, it's so intense!

"Yuzurenai Negai" from Magic Knight Rayearth is really nostalgic for me, being the theme from one of the first anime I ever bought bootleg fansubs of from a shady man at a monthly comics expo. XD It's definitely a "classic anime" kind of song, with that adventurous shoujo feel.

"Matsuri Uta" from Blue Seed is one I was introduced to without having ever seen the anime it's from and I still like it. It has a slow, quiet start and is just a very pretty piece. (I like to sing along to it, hehe.) Here's another arrangement without the lyrics but with more instruments.

WHILE I'M ON Megumi Hayashibara...I'll also rec "Give a Reason" from Slayers. It's so punchy and upbeat and really inspires a person to get up and GO! You know what? Here's "Get Along" too.

I could recommend any of "Cardcaptor Sakura"'s opening and closing themes, but "Hitorijime" sticks out to me as a funky little track that's just extra fun to listen to. In the same vein is "Groovy!" and the video features a hypnotically bouncing Kero-chan so you can't lose.

I could fill an entire post of its own with Sailor Moon music but instead I will gesture wildly at "Moon Revenge" from the R Movie and yell that it features one of my favorite things in any anime song--vocals by the cast.

SPEAKING OF...here's another one of my ultimate favorite anime songs of all time, "Yamerarenai Yamerarenai" from Tenchi Muyô! The entire main voice cast going absolutely ham in character singing about all the little pleasures in life. Absolutely delightful!

Okay last one for this post because this is probably way way too long as it is. "Party Night" from Di Gi Charat! Specifically the Hyper Parapara version. I love this shit so much. This is the music video version because I can't resist, but here's the full song.

Okay! I'm outta here! Thank you again for asking, it was fun to follow my stream of consciousness and just post whatever fun thing popped to mind next. XD

[groovesnjams]

"coelacanth" by glass beach

DV:

So far no one's really bought my "glass beach are zoomer Animal Collective" comparison, for various reasons, mostly credible, but I'm still clinging to it by my fingernails and Grooves N Jams dot com does not have an editor obviously, so. I think of the first time I heard "Slippi," the sense that I had no idea what I was listening to or where it might go next. I think of how half their songs seemed to run on a first-idea-best-idea ethos that sometimes resulted in chaos or boredom but sometimes reached transcendence. I think of how they clearly got more out of drugs than I've ever managed. and these are all things that Animal Collective, classic millennial hipster band, has in common with glass beach, psych-pop zoomer group. Especially on "coelacanth," which throws in some early-period Panda Bear pyrotechnics on the drums for good measure. I like "coelacanth" more in concept than execution - it never quite coheres, the lead guitar isn't as hooky as it could be, and maybe it needs to let those interludes breathe a little more even if it means making the song nine minutes instead of almost seven. But there's something exciting happening here, even if it's not totally clicking into place yet. As another millennial band once put it, do not ignore the potential.

MG:

Um, but this is math rock? "coelacanth" has more in common with the "Eruption" solo than anything Animal Collective ever did, let's not drag those well-meaning improvisationalists into what is actually a highly composed post-rock dirge. In its boredom and recalcitrance, I suppose I do hear something kind of millennial -- it's like Bella Swan, or her wardrobe, at least. As it pertains to Gen Z, well, they are trying so, so hard to bring jazz back to the national consciousness and I think that's where "coelacanth" best fits. As much as mainstream media loves to complain about their short attention spans and irreverence for history and its import, I've always felt it's like avocado toast and Applebee's. glass beach are capable of dizzying complexity (less complexity next time, please) and clearly want to tap into some erstwhile dormant vein of creative expression. There's nothing new under the sun, this is sure to remind everyone of something.

[cinnabar-music]

All of the references in Almost (Sweet Music) by Hozier

First id just like to say this song is amazing in so many ways and there's a lot to talk about. 

“The song kind of references, yknow, a lot of what memory tends to do to music when we listen to it.”

I love the almost immediate syncopation in the guitar, it sounds like it shouldn't fit but it fits perfectly to create this incredibly satisfying, very classically jazz rhythm. The bass also follows this rhythm a few octaves lower reinforcing it. I especially like that it doesnt really feel like jazz. Its heavily inspired by jazz but its not jazz, because lets be honest sometimes jazz is a bit much. This song has a very warm, sunshiny feel to it that makes you really want to think of happy memories, which fits perfectly with the theme of the song being memories.

The percussion is made up of clapping and tap dancing which i think is a really nice touch, Since the song has a lot to do with memory. A big part of music is the community built around it. In the music video so many of the memories you see of different people playing music involve playing music with other people. The clapping and snapping and dancing, along with a chorus of different voices singing different parts in the background; it all makes this song feel like a whole room of strangers singing along to the same song. Which, by the way, is a very magical experience. Music has a way of tying people together and making memories that last a lifetime and I think this song demonstrates that perfectly. 

The song has references to so many important artists in jazz. “The kind of narrative of it is made up of jazz standards, so its this kind of stream of consciousness sort of idea.”

In the very first verse we get the line “Played from the bedside is ‘Stella by Starlight,' That was my heart, the drums that start off ‘Night and Day.” 

“Stella by starlight” is a song written in 1944 for the movie “The Uninvited,” and was later covered by many famous musicians like Miles Davis, Ray Charles and Robert Glasper. While “Night and Day” is a famous jazz song originally written by Cole Porter, and sung by both Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. 

In verse 2 theres references to Duke Ellington and Chet Baker, two pivotal musicians in the jazz genre and in music in general.

 And in the 3rd verse alone we get several great references. 

First we get “The very thought of you and am I blue?” which is a reference to “Am I Blue?" a blues standard that was written by Harry Akst and Grant Clarke in 1929. 

Then comes “A love supreme seems far removed” which references “A Love Supreme” an album (considered by many to be the best jazz album) by John Coltrane, an American jazz saxophonist. 

Next “I get along without you very well some other nights” which is a reference to chet bakers song “I Get Along Without You Very Well.” 

“Reporting Russian lullabies” a reference to either Ella Fitzgerald’s “Russian Lullaby,“ OR John Coltrane jazz song also called “Russian Lullaby.“

“She'll turn to me awake and ask, "Is everything alright?" which references “It’s All Right With Me,” originally written by Cole Porter

And we’re still not done cause in the chorus we get “Sweet music playing in the dark” which is a reference to “Slow Swing and ”Sweet Jazz Music" by Jelly Roll Morton and “Dancing In the Dark” by Duke Ellington. “Be still, my foolish heart” being a reference to “My Foolish Heart” a popular song and jazz standard published in 1949 by Victor Young and Ned Washington. 

To end this, i dont think think ive ever said reference more times in my life and i dont think ill be saying it again for a while. This song has so much going on in it that all of this was only a small part of the song as a whole and i know this was probably way too long to read but i still think it was worth it.

[692]

[jonathankatwhatever]

It’s 6 Sept 2024. The recovery from surgery is odd. I never realized people breathe while eating. I gulped food because I had to put the air in the same way. A more precise, localized description is that I gulped air because breathing through my nose was difficult even that even when relatively clear I had trouble taking in enough air to feel comfortable. It takes work to generate a more localized description.

I’m having trouble concentrating. Hearing a live piano/bass duo while having chocolate coffee thingy.

Trying to get to the math. I was thinking about D5 foldings, and trying to work out a visible in gs terms reason why the quintic fails. I almost lost consciousness visualizing D4 because I saw a box appear on the left, slide sideways, and then to the right again, the same going back the other way so each arrangement was equal and thus the potential for division, and for division algebras, is enabled by adjusting the relationships. BTW, this also enables the concept of quotienting in sets, in which we run a slider over and count out some elements or attributes or operations.

This became super hard when I tried D5. Same procedure. When I reach moving 3, I see that creates 2 on either side or 1 on both. That means the pieces link in D3 the same as they do in D2, with that sliding over.

Regularization over more layers. That means choices must be made which means specific solutions only. As in, the gsProcessing over D5 adheres to coherence, consistency and persistence, the ccp, and that means there’s a limited number of states, another view of the n-1 problem. Or to put it simpler, you can’t expect D3 to unravel because the nature of D3 is that’s cross-stitched, so therefore D5 reduction through Regularization is constrained in the sense that it only has outcomes which fit ccp. That doesn’t mean the D5 gsProcess is limited to that fit, but that this is the fit.

Not sure what that means. I’m listening to these guys play wondering how such a style developed. I’m talking classic jazz duo. They’ve played together a lot. Know all the licks.

I’m sticking with the old idea, which is inherent in what we’re talking about here, that gs construct but D5 is sort of caught in the gsProcess as D6 meets D3. Gets folded or squashed out of sight. This gets at the difference between 0Space and 1Space again, that 0Space can also have higher dimensions, and those are attached to 1Space reducing to those higher dimensional existences within D3-4Space. There are pentagons, after all. And higher dimension models which we can pop onto screens.

I need to take a break.

[racingtoaredlight]

K2 of Guitar

Originally, I was going to title this "The Mount Everest of Guitar," but that doesn't do it justice. K2 is far more fitting.

The difference between Mount Everest and K2 might be a few hundred meters of height, but the difference in difficulty and danger makes the two seem worlds apart. Yea Mount Everest has claimed dozens of lives...but it's relatively accessible.

K2 is not, by any means. Some CEO with bottomless pockets might be able to afford a team to haul his ass up Everest, but that's a suicide mission on K2.

Andres Segovia's arrangement of the final movement of JS Bach's Violin Partita no. 2 "Chaconne" is K2 for guitar. But the section I want to highlight in particular is 4:30-6:00.

The Bottleneck.

***

The metaphor of K2 is so fitting.

This piece is about 14 minutes long. A goddamned eternity. It has to be memorized, because of course it does. I'm not trying to be an asshole here but most of you would have trouble LISTENING to a 14 minute piece, once, without fucking around on your phones or getting distracted...let alone spending months learning to play it.

The technical challenges are so monumental, they gatekeep. Your shred gods, country chickenpickers, jazz ninjas...they won't attempt this piece to the point it barely enters consciousness. Without that right hand, this piece is impossible...much like without incredible technical climbing skills, climbing K2 is just fantasy.

Huge, daunting, difficult...all of those things apply to both K2 and Bach's Chaconne. But what makes both of these truly difficult is the unpredictability.

***

Ok, so what's the big deal? Doesn't look that scary.

To get to the summit of K2 you need to get through The Bottleneck. What this picture doesn't tell you is that overhanging serac can break away at any time. When climbers make that left turn, they have to get through there as fast as they possibly can...at altitudes over 8,000m.

The other thing that picture doesn't tell you? Perspective. That picture makes it look relatively flat...

But in reality, it's hanging directly over the heads of any climber trying to get through The Bottleneck. In the 2008 disaster that killed like a dozen climbers, the serac broke loose and created an avalanche, severing all the lines down to their camp.

However, even this picture doesn't give you the perspective of just how ridiculous this part of the mountain is. Keep in mind, that serac is hanging DIRECTLY overhead, while climbers are dealing with an incline this severe...

Now forget the instantaneous avalanche danger, and just think about the sheer difficulty of that incline, at that altitude, and that should give you an idea of just how ridiculous this mountain is.

***

This is the same clip as the one at the top. 4:30-6:00.

To get to this point, a guitarist has to navigate increasingly tricky counterpoint, understanding their fingerings with both hands every bit as carefully as a mountain climber making sure their next step is on solid footing. Simply getting here is no simple feat.

And then...this.

The aspect of this performance that most blows me away is the predictive fingerings. If you're keenly aware, you'll notice him shifting chords before a section is done...this is not setting up the next chord, it's putting him in position for the chord changes after that. It's precise, deliberate, practiced...and if you aren't familiar with this concept (few guitarists outside the classical world are), you might find yourself playing the correct chord and then falling into a bottomless pit when the one after that comes.

Every, single, individual step has to be accounted for and executed perfectly...because if not, the whole piece comes screeching to a halt. There is no margin for error. There is no quickly fixing some slop. It's instant musical death.

***

The speed of that counterpoint, the technical difficulty of those chords, the relentless tempo...it all would make for an absolutely brutal 90 second etude. The Bottleneck would make for a torturous climb at 4,000m.

But the reason I'm highlighting both the Bottleneck and this section of the Chaconne is because of their extreme difficulty that's couched in an already preposterously difficult endeavor. He's still got 8 minutes of really, really hard music to go...

I also chose this version because it's not the best.

***

This man, Reinhold Messner, is the greatest mountain climber of all time.

What Messner was known for was climbing mountains without supplemental oxygen. Something considered suicidal actually made some sense, if you think about it. Go back up and look at that serac...wouldn't it make sense to carry as little weight as possible and spend as little time in the oxygen-deficient environment as your speed can manage?

And that's what Messner did. Instead of worrying about supplies, he worried about technique and strategy and speed. And if you check out his outrageous Wiki, you'll see it paid off quite well.

Guitarists...well, those that are really, deeply into the instrument...have the same reverence for Julian Bream. Why did I pick a relatively average version of Chaconne*? Because visuals help tell the story, and those difficult chords deserved to be highlighted.

*average relative to performances of Chaconne...because there is nothing at all average about being able to play this piece tip to tail.

***

But now I want you to listen to this version...5:08-6:45.

What he is doing here is beyond words.

First off...how fucking good does that guitar sound? My goodness, if you're listening on laptop speakers or your phone, try listening to this on something decent. This is a Hermann Hauser II guitar, from his peak period, in the hands of an absolute master.

I've made some allusions before about virtuoso musicians being sadistic or playing with their music like a cat toys with a trapped mouse...this is not the case here.

Metaphorically follow me here...

What he's doing with this section is like someone doing cartwheels and somersaults through the Bottleneck. Forget the fact that this is a good 10-15% faster...everything about this is to excess in as ego-less a fashion as you can get. It's not about impressing people or parlor tricks, it's about bringing the music to its full potential.

Listen to all the embellishments and accents he adds without ever once losing the groove. His control over dynamics, his patience in letting the section build over multiple bars, the way he's changing the tone by where he's picking is...I mean...it's fucking breathtaking, it's as good as it possibly could ever get.

His technique is on full display, but never takes center stage over the music.

At 6:20, he really strongly emphasizes the bass...but then listen how he gradually, smoothly melds it back in with the treble voice. You can hear those bass notes get warmer and warmer as he gradually moves his hand closer to the guitar's soundhole.

But then...then...6:34...oh my fucking god. Oh my fucking god, those arpeggios he slams in there. Jesus fucking Christ, at that speed, at that difficulty...Jesus fucking Christ. You won't hear that in the version I put on top. Because, shit, there are a handful of these freaky modern virtuosos from China or Eastern Europe or some shit that have the chops to pull that off, but none of the musicality.

***

Really, really good shit. Julian Bream is a god, and I should probably write some more about him, because he was a pretty interesting character.

He was born to a working-class British family, and his dad was a music lover who was really into jazz and modern styles of music. However, his dad thought Julian would never make a living playing classical guitar and always discouraged it.

Regardless, he went to the Royal College of Music in London for piano...where he got yelled at for practicing guitar...so he quit and joined the Army. When he joined the Army, they laughed at him because he brought a lute to basic training...and then the band leader laughed when he brought a lute to the orchestra's auditions. So he joined the jazz band.

Bream wasn't a formal student of Andres Segovia's, they got together for a few impromptu lessons and Segovia helped him out professionally and financially...it was pretty clear that Bream had his shit together really well, and Segovia didn't want to get in the way, rather encourage (unlike Segovia's relationship with John Williams).

For example...Segovia's right hand technique was something he considered sacrosanct. When the young John Williams was studying with him, Segovia was rigid and dictatorial about technique to the point of outright dismissal of a player for going a different direction...but Bream's right hand was extremely idiosyncratic and he used it in far more ways than Segovia ever did, but you never hear anything about Bream having poor technique (except from the man himself).

And there you have it...after that he pretty much because the greatest classical guitarist of all time, and the only guitarist to have anywhere near the stature of Segovia, the all-time god of the instrument. Listening to Bream's version of Chaconne, especially that middle section? It's easy to see why he's revered the way he is.

Because there aren't many guitarists who can metaphorically cartwheel their way around K2's Bottleneck.

[vivy-nx]

i feel like trying to learn how to make music is really weird nowadays. or maybe at least for me it is. the internet allows one access to just. so so so much interesting unique sounds and styles of music you’d never be able to hear in the past where that wasn’t accessible for most people. not even just music, but like all sorts of different kinds of musicians talking about how they make music. it’s more clear than i think it could have ever been before that there’s not really any rules at all for what music has to be or do. and this all makes a lot of sense to me just logically, what with all the other stuff i learn about (outside of music) that’s different from what some might expect and i can learn to accept. the problem now becomes understanding exactly what kind of music i really want to make. i’ve certainly narrowed it down a little bit because i like working with digital audio workstations and i am familiar with that kind of thing and i’m used to it, and i know what i like listening to from others, which is to say largely stuff that utilizes chiptunes and synths alongside samples of real instruments and stuff like that, but even that feels like it’s a very very small tip of the iceberg. i like melodic sounding things, but how do i go about making a melody myself? how do i go about figuring out what key would be best suited for a song i want to write? how do i take abstract ideas that largely tend to manifest as words and translate them into sounds, pitches and rhythms. i used to consume so much music theory youtube you’d think i would have picked up on some of these things by now, but i open up my daw and i pick a key at random and kinda half-consciously construct a 4 chord progression that kind of resolves and i don’t know what to do with it. maybe i put drums over it. mess with the tempo. i feel like i’m missing basic fundamentals, but i can’t really place what they are exactly, besides like, harmony. and it’s not like i haven’t written music before. like i know what intervals are, i can construct a chord. i’ve made some songs i’m happy with. but i just always feel like i’m kind of aimlessly wandering in the dark looking for some nugget of inspiration and then sometimes i can get myself to make a song. i’m not really going through a thought process and putting puzzle pieces together in my mind, and seeing what fits, i just bang rocks together until there’s a spark and i don’t know why. i have inspirations but i don’t know how to go about actually like, channeling them. i feel like the kind of music education i need isn’t so much learning the rules of classical music or whatever, i could just go to a music school for that, (though it probably could indirectly get me where i want to go), but like, specifically learning the conventions and styles of the music i actually do listen to. and that’s a damn shame because i don’t think there’s really anywhere near as many resources for that kind of thing specifically, so i still feel pretty aimless. it’s kinda funny that i feel like improvising a saxophone solo for a jazz thing is easy enough for me to understand. there’s just some notes you can play and you play those. sometimes you focus more on some notes than others depending on the chords. sometimes my brain will remember a song from a video game that had a neat melody and i incorporate that into the solo for a bit. i’ve played piano a lot longer than that but 4ish years of playing saxophone regularly feels like it’s gotten me a more feature-complete understanding of my instrument and place in an ensemble than 9 years of playing solo piano. i honest to god don’t think i even actually learned how to read sheet music for either of the instruments i play. with saxophone i just see the note placement and i think of a hand position, whereas on piano i have like 3 notes that work as frames of reference (g on g clef, middle c, and f on f clef) and then for literally all of the 85ish other keys on the piano that i read off of any music my brain has to manually do the math every time i see any note to figure out where my hand is supposed to actually be. most of my piano music has the note name pencilled in adjacent to the note head because i keep getting caught up on re-processing these notes every time. this worked well enough that i could learn to play some songs, mostly with the help of muscle memory i’d build over time. but it was kinda dogshit for being able to analyze how the song actually functioned and achieved what it set out to. i don’t even take piano lessons any more because i just got bored of learning how to play new songs, even ones i liked, and the greater understanding of how music actually worked just didn’t really get much time compared to me fucking around trying to get my brain to press all the right keys at the right times. i have gone between the phase of “i have no idea how chords work” and “chords aren’t that hard to understand actually” more times than i think a normal person would. i think it’s so confounding to me because with some other interests of mine there’s other ways i sort of ground myself and understand what i’m talking about that i don’t have with music. with visual art stuff it’s pretty simple because you kinda just draw what you see, and we use language to describe what we see all the time so it‘s fairly simple to look up something specific, like “how to draw a night sky” or “how to do cel shading” or “how to use blending modes”. with computer programming it’s extremely straight forward, there’s just a huge documentation manual or something, spend most of my time looking off of that, and then if i have any extraneous problems i can usually just google error codes and figure out things from there. i don’t know how to google my problems with music and when i try it doesn’t usually feel all that helpful. i don’t wanna just glue myself to some arbitrary rules that i will find insufficient for making what i want to make but i need some kind of understanding of common techniques and things. i get stuck on this stuff all the time if i try to actually think about what i’m making and it drives me nuts. it feels really weird to have been making things this long and still feel like this. i don’t feel like i hold myself to as much standards with visual art or whatever. like i’m sure people could tell i haven’t been to an art college or studied anatomy or whatever but that doesn’t really stop me from doing what i want to do. whatever my thing with this is is a weird middle ground where on one hand i do sometimes manage to create things that i like but on the other hand i don’t know how to translate ideas into sounds so all i get is like once every 2 to 6 months i can open up my daw and use enough of my brain that i can make a song that sounds like a song and it feels neat and i still feel like i’ve learned nothing after the fact. it’s a weird place to be in. reminds me a bit of that thing from mario maker where they locked off some of the parts you can use because it’s easier to come up with creative ideas for things if you have less options, and then my fucking infinite ambition ass is just like okay but i want to make video games myself. present me with the fucking infinite possibilities that i may make whatever the hell i want. but yknow i have to know what that is first of course which is the big hurdle. there’s so much cool shit in music nowadays that it’s overwhelming and i want to do everything i enjoy which is not exactly the easiest thing to learn how to do i guess. anyway i hope you liked reading this giant wall of text. thoughts are weird.

[troutfishinginmusic]

Guide: Lesser-known nu metal albums that hold up

Nu metal is a genre that’s easily derided. It was caricatured as over-the-top angst, baggy jeans and casual misogyny. It was one of the biggest genres when I was first discovering music.

There was plenty of bad music, but to say it was all bad would be inaccurate. It was extremely diverse compared to other metal scenes. It also put issues like child abuse to the forefront, showing survivors they were not alone. Nu metal took a genre that was showing signs of wear and reinvented it. While it soon became saturated by faceless bands (as every popularized genre eventually does), it was important.

As the genre regains popularity, there have been plenty of retrospective lists about bands like Slipknot, Deftones and Korn. There have even been lists detailing some of the lesser known bands. The podcast Roach Koach has done a great job reassessing the genre (It was the catalyst for me making this list). In no order, here are seven nu metal albums you might be less familiar with but are worth your time. These all roughly come from the genre’s original era of popularity.  I’ve also put together a ranking of more established nu metal records at the end.

I love the first couple of Static-X albums, but Cannibal is truly a high-water mark. It’s catchy, concise and extremely heavy. While it has some more straight-ahead metal flourishes (guitar solos!?!), no one could mistake this for another band. And, if nothing else, Static-X is a definitive nu metal band. Cannibal seems to find Static-X revitalized after kicking out a problematic member. Vocalist Wayne Static (who died in 2014) knows exactly what he wants these songs to do. His barking delivery finds spaces in each of these spartan industrial rippers. It represents all the things I like about the genre.

Oracle represents somewhat of a break from the more straight-ahead nu metal sound of Spit, so it might not exactly fit on this list. But ultimately Kittie is forever tied to the genre (much like Deftones), even if they’ve branched out in other directions. Oracle doubles down on heaviness by incorporating death metal influences. Morgan Lander’s vocals kneecap a lot of her more melodically inclined nu peers. It also shows the band progressing, despite losing guitarist Fallon Bowman. When people dismiss the nu metal as an outlet for white male whining, though sometimes deserved, they overlook great albums like Oracle.

Apex Theory’s only album, Topsy-Turvy, is brimming with creativity. Much like System of a Down, which originally featured lead vocalist Ontronik Khachaturianon on drums, the band channels its Armenian heritage. Yet Apex Theory leans into something more melodic, mathy and possibly emo (in more of the At the Drive-In sense). Every aspect of this album feels so precise and thought out. Khachaturianon’s vocals can leap out like a barrage of stream of consciousness yet can just as easily smooth out. It might’ve been a bit too weird for radio but, in a world where SOAD broke, it certainly could’ve happened.

Apartment 26’s final album might be one of the strangest on this list. It’s apparent that it was made to be more “marketable.” Yet those touches make it even weirder. The production here is very polished, but this is still an album that incorporates swing jazz into metal through programmed horns. It’s that oddness, intentional or not, that benefits Music for the Massive. An added bonus is the great cover of “In Heaven” from David Lynch’s Eraserhead (the band’s name is a reference to the film). Apartment 26 easily surpasses its legacy as Geezer Butler’s son’s band on this album.

Taproot’s debut struck on something deeply vulnerable that the band has carried through on subsequent albums. What is often missing on those other albums, though, is the heaviness found on Gift. The band’s raw talent is on display here, recalling System of a Down’s debut. Like that album, influences peek through but the band sound fully formed and unique. Stephen Richards’ distinct vocals, while not for everyone, bend around every twist and turn of these knotty songs. The band moved away from the genre, but created some of its best work within it. Oh, and bonus points for instigating this.

Orgy’s goth-y, processed guitar crunch was often imitated (Deadsy, etc.) but has never exactly been replicated. Candyass in some ways seems like the obvious choice, but there are some awkward growing pains. And really Vapor Transmission is just as good and possibly better. The hooks are bigger, the band commits to the futuristic themes and vocalist Jay Gordon is at the top of his gender-bending industrial crooning game. Orgy remains notable in this era for poking holes in the genre’s inflated macho exterior at every turn. There’s something so transgressive about the way the band operated in nu metal.

New Killer America’s cover always caught my eye when I was a kid. Album art was and still is a big deal to me. I love how subtly gross this is. At the time it was more affecting than the over-the-top gore common on metal albums. It fits the music. Skrape wallows in heavy post-grunge sludge. As Ulrich Wild did on the Static-X albums, there’s a good balance struck between heaviness and accessibility. Skrape had a mysterious vibe that was missing from similar acts that had a tendency to over-share. Despite some awkward vocals/lyrics that come up, NKA is noteworthy.

Honorable Mention: Coal Chamber-Chamber Music, Powerman 5000-Tonight the Stars Revolt, Nothingface-Violence, Mushroomhead-XX, Sevendust-Animosity

Established Classics Ranking

1. Korn-Korn: This was the album that started the genre. Every element that other bands would copy is here. It also features some of the rawist emotion ever recorded (”Daddy”) and some great singles (”Blind,” “Clown”). Some of the lyrics are definitely dated, but there are few metal albums that are as influence and heavy (well, in terms of subject matter) as this.

2. Deftones-White Pony: This album defied every stereotype the genre had. It seamlessly incorporated trip-hop and post-rock influences without sacrificing any of the heaviness. This is the highpoint for a band that rarely has a misstep.

3. System of a Down-System of a Down: SOAD’s debut is heavy, political and completely left-field. It still sounds like nothing else. All of the band’s records are good to great, yet I love how the death metal influences poke out more on this one. That’s a personal preference I guess, I really could’ve picked any SOAD album.

4. Sepultura-Roots: This album is so unbelievably heavy. It’s such a bummer that Sepultura didn’t make a record with this lineup past this point. It’s political in a way a lot of nu metal wasn’t. It seamlessly incorporates the band’s Brazilin heritage. It up-ends any perception about the genre being light-weight.

5. Slipknot-Iowa: This is really the only album from this era that rivals Roots in terms of heaviness. The band draws from a different well than Sepultura, packing Iowa with horror movie imagery. Much of this was to no doubt channel vocalist Corey Taylor’s troubled childhood. There’s something so frantic and desperate captured on this album, which probably has to do with Ross Robinson producing it (he produced Korn’s debut, as well as a lot of other iconic records).

6. Incubus- S.C.I.E.N.C.E.: Few nu metal records are this legitimately fun. Every part of Incubus is bursting with stoned creativity here. It also channels its influences much better than its peers. Somehow metal riffs and bongos go together here. S.C.I.E.N.C.E. showed a more easygoing side of the genre that still retained all the heaviness.

7. Linkin Park- Meteora: Though Hybrid Theory has a lot of singles, I always preferred this one. I think the band forged a bit more of its identity here. It gets a bit heavier, yet retains all the pop smarts. Definitely worth revisiting if you’ve just re-listened to Hybrid Theory to celebrate its recent anniversary.

NOTE: Yeah, Limp Bizkit is not on this list. The band has some cool songs, but ultimately its albums are pretty scattered. Fred Durst is a lot for me to take. The rest of the band is amazingly talented, especially Wes Borland. If its exclusion is annoying to you, please make your own list.

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[nctinfo]

[TRANS] Johnny & Jaehyun’s interview with W Korea May 2020 issue!

Today was a day where we borrowed the cinematic imagination of the 1996 film <Romeo and Juliet" directed by Baz Luhrmann and created two Romeos. Both of you portrayed the 'Modern Day Romeo' well, how did you think the shooting went? Johnny: It felt like we came out to play. The setting too, it felt just like any small town in America. When I was leaning against the bed during the shoot, I danced excitedly while holding a bunch of grapes (laughs). Romeo, I think, is someone who is honest with his feelings and who wants to achieve love till the end. Thanks to this, regardless of what others might think, I had fun during the shoot. Jaehyun: From the Hawaiian shirts with palm trees to leopard print belts. Above all, the outfits were bold. The point of today was to act like someone who plays around and has always worn this kind of style. There was a scene [in the movie] where Romeo flips over the white blankets and plays around with Juliet, but it wasn't easy [to portray that scene] because of the blood that rushed to my face (laughs).

It’s a shame we don’t have a Juliet today. If you were to summon Juliet right now, what outfit would she appear in? And what do you imagine would be the first thing she says? Johnny: A simple outfit would be nice. For today’s shoot I was wearing a white short sleeved t-shirt and cream coloured jeans, so Juliet would have a similar vibe and would say ‘Are you doing well?’ filled with affection and excitement. Jaehyun: She’d appear in a white t-shirt and blue jeans. With a short ‘I missed you’.

There are two male leads in the movie <Romeo and Juliet>. There is Romeo who is a romanticist with rich emotions but who is hesitant in front of love, and there is Tybalt who is a calm strategist but sometimes emits fiery charms like a bulldozer. Between the two, who do you feel like you're similar to? Johnny: I think I'm similar to Tybalt who wants to be like Romeo. I'm the type of person to carry out something immediately when you decide on it. On the other hand, I want to learn from Romeo's attitude to be faithful and honest with your feelings the moment you fall in love. Jaehyun: I'm the opposite of Johnny. I think I'm Romeo who wants to resemble Tybalt's calm and analytical side. Normally, I'm the type to follow my feelings rather than reasoning, so if I had to choose between the two, it would be Romeo.

If some day your story gets made into a movie, what song would you want to be played in the ending credits? Johnny: On bright sunny days like lately the mood is refreshed and tender. If the movie will be about me in spring, then Mac Miller’s ‘Circles’ would be nice. If I ever get to make a movie in the future, any Coldplay song would be good. Coldplay’s music feels like home, music genres come and go, but in the end when I need stability I always seem to turn to Coldplay. Jaehyun: In my own movie, first of all I don’t think we need a post credit scene (laugh). I’ve always cherished Chet Baker’s ‘I fall in love too easily’. It’s a tasty song that you can listen to on repeat with an empty head, without thinking anything. Chet Baker’s trumpet performance and voice always strangely draw my ears in.

The title song 'Kick It' of your 2nd full album <NCT#127 Neo Zone> that was released in March actively incorporates the identity of cine kids hero, Bruce Lee. Taking over Bruce Lee's baton, is there a movie protagonist who you want to express musically? Johnny: Exactly two people come to mind. First, Brad Pitt from the movie <Fight Club>, I want to try a song with a strong beat with a fighter's unique fiery temperament. It would be great to incorporate the shocking twist of the movie. The other is Will Smith in the movie <The Pursuit of Happiness>. It's a 'life' movie I want to give five stars. No matter what twists and turns, it's a movie that eventually ends with a happy ending. It would be nice to sing [a song] with a message that even though it's hard now, you'll be happy in the end. A slow ballad would suit that, right? Jaehyun: Even though I acted as him today, Romeo would be fun [to express]. It would be a song that shouts love, but it would be perfect if it contains everything from joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure like in the movie. When I think of James Dean in the movie <Rebel Without a Cause> I imagine music that puts together spicey funky beats based on the old sounds of jazz bands. Recently I'm really into jazz, soul, and R&B, so a band sound is essential.

Even if it's not someone who everyone knows like Bruce Lee, is there someone you two consider to be a hero? Johnny: I don't really express it well normally, but my mom? I'm an only child that was born late, so I always stuck to my mother when I was young. Looking back, I think my mother was a person who sacrificed herself to her family but still valued her happiness. I want to resemble the way she always lives consciously while having fun. It was my mother who taught me how to feel and enjoy every moment. My mom often told me that the experience of 'trying' something is important. For example, I spent my childhood in the United States, and no matter what, we always celebrated the independence day, which is on July 4th, with family and watched the fireworks. On days when the moon was bright and full, we'd be outside watching it. Thanks to this, I think I've grown up as a person with rich emotions. Jaehyun: my grandmother. Despite nearing 80 years old, she had been a dancer until recently and is now retired. She doesn't miss the broadcasts I appear on and watches everything, and after the broadcast ends, she will always send me long KakaoTalk messages with feedback. Because she's a dancer, there are times when she points out my fingertips and neckline but in general, she tells me what kind of mindset I should have when it comes to life. I always get advice from teachers and people around me, but strangely, every word from my grandmother seems to really pierce me. [She tells me] Don't mind others, live enjoying everything you can take on. I still hold [those words] close to me.

It's been quite a while since the first stage you did in the name of NCT 127. What was the driving force behind you during this long time? Johnny: fans, members, family. Looking back, it seems like it was people that led me. Fans are the 'reason' for me to do something. The members are my companions who walk together for this reason, and wouldn't my family be my roots. Having a place to go back to is a completely different story. I think it's family that shows me that I can fall sometimes and that I have somewhere to go back to. Jaehyun: I was able to endure my trainee days purely because I liked music. It's the same now. Of course, our fans who like our music and who come and watch our stages are a great strength too. One difference is that, until now, I relied on the people around me and tried to lean my body on the 'crew', but I seem to have found a driving force within myself recently. I give myself strength by pushing myself or complimenting myself, that's how I find enlightenment within myself. In this sense, as a human, I feel like I'm going through a time of maturity.

If you could go back in time, what would you tell yourself if you could pat yourself on the back right before going up on the stage for the first time? Johnny: ‘Have confidence. Even if your spirits fall, work on everything’. I don’t know how it might have looked on the outside but my state of mind now seems to be very different from then. I’m much more free now. I kept telling myself that I’m nice and confident, and now I think I am able to stand confident like this. I don’t know why I only saw the flaws in the past. Now, rather than trying to make up for my weaknesses, I tend to focus on maximising my strengths instead. Jaehyun: ‘Do what you want, what you think is right and what you like. Of course I know you’ll do fine, but it would be nice to be a bit more daring.’

What are 3 adjectives that describe you? Johnny: Energetic, romantic, selfish. The last word I chose because I think in order to make another person happy, I need to be happy myself and only when I have a sense of security I can care for other people. Jaehyun: I like classic stuff so first of all, classic, continuous because I always try to learn and grow, and firm in terms of trying to remain as stable as possible.

What were you born with, and on the other hand what weren’t you born with that you’re trying to achieve? Johnny: Seems like I was born with curiosity. Like I’ve mentioned before, my mom has influenced me a lot. On the other hand I want to make passion my thing. Sometimes I look at the members when I’m lazing around. Everyone has their ‘one passion’! Jaehyun: Ever since I was little I would always fix the TV at home whenever it broke down. I think I’ve been born with dexterity. I seem to be good at sports, but I really need flexibility (laugh). I also want to break up with my short lived resolve. To speak, I lack persistence a little. When I really like something or if I have a clear reason to do it, my body moves. If there’s neither, I fall into the swamp of one short lived resolve to another. (laugh)

As a listener of <NCTs Night Night>, a show that was hosted by the two of you in the past, I think you were compassionate and were counselors who had shown more empathy than other people of your age. Today, let's write the concerns of you two. What's your biggest concern now after passing April 12th, 2020? Johnny: Although it's a little embarrassing to say it in words, my biggest concern these days is how to be a strength for the fans who we can't meet because of the recent situation. Most importantly, I don't want to be distressed and spend this time more meaningful. Jaehyun: What the heck to do at home! I'm the type to be very active. Nobody can go outside so I'm working hard in trying to find something I can do home alone. I've watched movies, listened to music and cooked, but I can't help but still feel the itch [to do something].

When you watch your web variety show <NCT LIFE>, you two are often seen standing in the kitchen. Is there any dish you want to make for that one precious person in the future? I wonder what the specific recipe is and what the mood of the day will be like. Johnny: First of all, I wanna make breakfast. Omelets are good to eat in the morning. Omelets are well made when you think 'even though it's bad, it's good'! Stir-fry onions and bell peppers until they become sweet, then sprinkle some pepper to finish it. The time would be good at 09:30 am when the sunlight is strong enough to see the dust. That precious one would be sitting in a chair (laughs). The table will be set with cutlery and two cups of coffee. So that you can open the morning in a relaxed and simple manner. Jaehyun: Samgyetang and stir-fried pork, is that too native? (laughs) If I had to choose one, I will pick the stir-fried pork that was also complimented on <NCT LIFE>. Sometimes only red pepper paste or red pepper powder is used for the sauce, but I tend to use both. It would be great if there was a pretty plate with fruit too, it's the perfect dessert.

Even if it’s not a cooking moment, what’s the time, place, thing or person that makes you the most gentle? Johnny: From noon to 2pm. I feel the most peaceful when the sun is shining at that time. I don’t really care about the place. As for a thing, a scented candle that I have received as a gift while filming <NCT LIFE> in Thailand. For people, anyone! Jaehyun: Late night nearing the dawn. I really like watching the night view. I think the Han River could make me the most gentle. Personal things like earphones or speakers. Being together with family would be nice.

As a person and as a musician, what time do you think you’re going through? Johnny: I always feel like I'm at the starting line. Even when I do the same thing, I have to have a new mindset in order to grow. Jaehyun: It’s a slow process for humans but I seem to be slowly becoming more mature. As a musician, when the time comes I’ll be looking from a distance thinking I’m making ‘my own’ thing.

Translation: Alex, Esmee @ FY! NCT (NCTINFO) | Source: W Korea Scans — Do not repost or take out without our permission!

[symphonic-scream]

What type of band kids would they all be? Ik you talked about their personalities as instrument players, but like, what about outside of actually performing? Here are some classic band kid type examples:

Is always playing something during practice, especially when the directors tells everyone to stfu, whether they’re showing off or if they just treat their instrument like a fidget toy

Godawful “bandkid” sense of humor, THE stereotype, gives everyone else a bad name

In-denial further-back chair who reeeally wants to believe everyone is on the same level here

Not the same type of band, but kid who got to experiment with the harp once and has never been the same since

Kid who consciously chose an instrument that’s bass/more background/never has solos and then complains about it

Kid who learns fun songs like rock, pop, or VGM melodies on their own time and then comes in early to show their friends

Band is family. Band is life. Band is the cult that I am a wholly devoted to

Band is okay. I like music, but idk if I’m gonna keep it up after I graduate. There are a lot of cringy weirdos here tho

As a big music person I’m sure you could think of more of these.

Wrow

Fun fact I spent 6 years in concert band, 2 in jazz band, 4 in marching band, and a summer at marching band camp so. I am very familiar with band kids, and my plan was kinda just, not to lean too into stereotypes? Cause even though they're sometimes very real, they don't exactly fit and often I find them over exaggerated

I don't think that's what you're trying to do but I just generally avoid it aha

I can give you a few random things I thought of though? To make up for not really giving you an answer

Marc is the only one who does proper wrist exercises. He learned piano at a young age and already has the wrist pain of someone 3 times his age. He wishes the others would listen

Nino keeps begging the jazz band director to let him sing

Juleka keeps trying to slide her chair behind the curtain so people can't stare at her

Uh

Luka switches to guitar for jazz band and Kagami plays upright bass? Juleka is on electric bass, Marc is on keyboard

I'll come up with more shenanigans later but they're in a boarding school and study other things but the music program is mandatory cause it follows that principle that musicians learn better or something idk this is fanfiction

[spectrumed]

1. piano

The brain is a musical instrument. How it sounds all depends on who is playing it. The keys, the strings, the tubes, the circuits, none of them make noise on their own. Some may argue (some very aggressively) that every instrument has one exact way that it should be played. That there is one correct way to play the piano, and then there’s several incorrect (deviant!) ways to play the piano. But a classically trained pianist will not play the piano in quite the same way as a self-taught jazz pianist will play the piano. Sure, the latter does employ some stylings unique to them. They have an idiosyncratic way of playing that makes their sound highly notable, possibly even sought after. While the former, the classically trained musician, they’ve been taught to minimise many of those quirky individual traits that could, potentially, distract from the classical compositions that they will be playing. In jazz, music is carried by unique characters and a strong sense of individualism. In classical, music is carried by tradition, norm, and history.

It should not be understood that the classically trained musician plays without soul or passion. While we, in the western world, have become more and more infatuated with the idea of the self-made artist, the amateur who makes their way to success and stardom solely through will, and quite often a manic compulsion to create, there is no wrong way to play an instrument. However you make it work, whatever sounds you are able to produce, you are playing that instrument. You are channeling your inner essence into the music you are performing, no matter what genre you belong to. No-one plays their instrument the exact same way, for certain, but everyone is playing with what they’ve got.

How do you think? You’re used to being asked “what do you think?” But how do you think? Do you see pictures in your head? Do you experience an inner monologue? Are you riddled with anxiety? Have you ever hallucinated? Do you think that you think good, or do you think that you think bad? If we return to our metaphor of the brain as a musical instrument, what sort of music do you think you’d play? Sure, there’s the classical world, and the jazz world, but of course, that’s hardly the music most people will listen to nowadays. Do you think in pop songs? Or do you think in big heavy metal epics? Or maybe what you are is a maniac for dance music. You may find like-minded friends who like the same kind of music as you do. I think that there is a correlation between what music we like and how we perceive the world. Does listening to a certain song send you back? Does a certain tune evoke memories that you may have thought were long since gone? I know that there are some folks out there who say that they do not care much for music, and while I don’t doubt that they absolutely do feel that way, I can personally not imagine where I’d be without my trusty set of headphones and my phone loaded up with a wide library of music I like. It seems to me that music is primal. Almost as if only by understanding music, can one come to understand consciousness. To nab a song title from Jethro Tull (the band, not the agriculturalist,) life is a long song.

But I do admit that I come from a biased perspective. Music means much to me. I’m no musician, but I think that partly stems from a desire to not see “how the sausage is made.” I’d like to be able to listen to a composition without feeling compelled to analyse it, or to study it. I’d rather eat the sausage without having to wonder what bits of the animals this meat came from. Is that the taste of a spleen or a testicle? There are plenty of other things in life to dissect and tear apart just to examine. Perhaps what I wish is to maintain an arcane approach to music. Perhaps I am too enamoured by the idea of the musician as a mystic able to tap into an elevated state of being, some spiritual realm divorced from our own. That look on the guitarist’s face when they successfully manages to convey just the right emotional tone perfectly with that solo. The frisson you feel when the song reaches its climax. That thing we call the sublime. To explain it, well, it simply feels like you are making something splendid mundane. It seems to rob it of its power. Or… Well, maybe that’s not it all. Maybe all I want is just a moment or two when I can relax and avoid thinking about things. For a moment, I’d just like to forget that I’m a person.

The world is so loud. Really, I can guarantee you that if you didn’t have those natural mental filters that we all have, you’d go insane. Every little sound. Every little bit of stimuli. It would all overwhelm you. It would burrow deep into your consciousness, and it would refuse to leave. Ever tried to fall asleep while hearing the dripping water from a leaky tap? Drip, drip, drip. Know how impossible that feels? Well, imagine if you had that feeling always, imagine if all noise felt that visceral and in-your-face. Lucky you’ve got those filters. Turns out, not everyone has them. I don’t. It fucking sucks.

Music is lovely, because music is organised. It has structure. You can listen to a song, remember it, and then follow along as you’re listening to it a second time. Music follows a pattern. There is a logic to patterns. But the everyday noises that surround us do not follow a pattern. Let me tell you, birds are infuriating animals. Sure, their individual little songs can be nice to listen to, but when all the birds of the forest come together, they don’t perform as an orchestra. No, they’re all just doing their own solo piece, completely oblivious to the sounds going on around them. I’m thinking that nature could have done well with a conductor. Someone competent to create order. To make it all just that bit more peaceful. I don’t have those filters others take for granted. I can’t ignore sounds. And that makes the world feel so loud.

It is neat to imagine the human brain as a musical instrument. You can imagine that seasoned player, that old session stalwart who’s played on all the most famous pop hits throughout the decades, and you want to imagine them playing with grace and finesse and showcasing all the amazing sounds that the instrument can produce. But the brain isn’t really some marvel of biological engineering. It’s not intelligently designed. It’s actually just a piece of meat hiding underneath layers of bone, skin, and hair. It’s a complex bit of meat, admittedly. It’s hard to understand exactly how the brain does work. But if you were to open up a person’s cranium, rather than feeling awe, you’d most likely feel grossed out. This thing that we’re supposed to think of as a miraculous product of millennia of evolutionary progress, it looks… Well, it looks awfully pinkish, and wrinkly, and frankly unpleasant.

We’re all mortal beings, made from squishy flesh and blood, scraped together from all that was available at the time. Sure, we may dream and fantasise about one day achieving those heights we aspire towards, to become that perfect superman, whose cognitive abilities put them on par with the mythological titans of the past. But really, we’re all just trying to do our best with what we’ve got. You may not be able to play the finest of Mozart’s many symphonies, the instrument that you’ve been given just simply isn’t up to snuff. Even if all you can play is Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, that shouldn’t weigh on your value as a human being. And besides, that’s still Mozart you’re playing.

I will undoubtedly get back to discussing music in later instalments of this blog. It is truly a major part of my world, and without the joys I associate with it, I would be in a far worse place. But I think that, ultimately, what I wish to arrive at, is the fact that our sensory perceptions have a significant impact on how we piece together our sense of self. While it may be an unnerving thought to consider, what would happen to our understanding of ourselves if we one day were to lose one of our major senses? I am sure that many people could go without their sense of smell. Humans have long since abandoned smell as a dominant sense. To a dog, on the other hand, to lose its sense of smell would be devastating. It would lose part of what it means to be a dog. For humans, we enjoy the scent of freshly baked bread, the whiff of somebody’s perfume, or the bouquet of some pricey bottle of wine. But that’s nothing to what dogs get out of their sense of smell. To a dog, its sense of smell is its world. Is a dog even a dog if it can’t sniff around? Do you think dogs ever take their sense of smell for granted?

I do not think that humans are what we eat, but I suspect that we may be what we perceive. Our consciousness does not exist independently of the world that surrounds it, but rather, it is formed by the outside stimuli it receives on a constant basis. The fury of noises, lights, smells, all kinds of impressions, it shapes you. It is what our memories are built on. I am not at all certain that there exists anything more to the mind beyond that. I doubt that we’ve got some immutable soul hidden underneath it all. Humans are the collection of thoughts and ideas that we’ve attached ourselves to throughout our lives, and naturally, if you’re neurodivergent, that process is going to happen differently to most. At times those differences will be large enough that it can create real conflicts with those others around you. Effectively, to be neurodivergent is to suffer constantly from culture shocks. To me, it is natural to loathe the cacophony of birds in the summer. Their screams feel like piercing needles embedding themselves into my skin. But I try telling that to others, and I’ve yet to find anybody who agrees with me.

So, am I just wrong? Am I mistaken? Am I a freak? Why can’t I just be like everybody else? Why must I be such a buzzkill? I can’t even enjoy birdsong, I really must be a pain to be around. How did it come about that I just can’t be normal? Normal. I want to be normal. It is and it will likely always be grossly underrated to just be normal. Normal people don’t know how good they have it. They’re just too normal to be able to perceive it. When you’ve never been without it, you don’t know what it is to miss it. Normalcy. Having a normal brain. Having others see you as a normal person. Only if you didn’t have it, would you know how great it is. Do you sometimes wonder if dogs know how much they’d miss their sense of smell if they ever were to lose it?

Then again, there is no such thing as normal, is there? If you were to take the world’s most average person, then that person would be abnormal. To be a person is to be unique. We’re all special snowflakes. Aren’t we?

You may not play your instrument in a conventional manner, but who’s to say what manner counts as conventional? It’s all just so arbitrary. Who’s to say you can’t play an acoustic guitar as a drum? Who’s to say you can’t treat your piano as a percussion instrument? Smack your cello with a flute, if you’d like. Isn’t it just delightful when you see a unique performer who is able to play their instrument in a way you could never before have conceived it being played? The novelty of it all. The absolute joy of being exposed to something different. Of seeing something that can barely be believed. You love things that are unusual, and you think people who are different should delight in being different. Surely, it is better than being normal and boring?

But is it all that bad to be boring? And you may love what’s different, but when it comes down to it, despite your positive inclination, you still perceive it as being the other. It is not you. It is not mainstream, it is underground. Secluded. Deviant. Those who truly do struggle to fit in with society, to be just like everybody else, they are constantly faced with these little reminders that they just don’t belong. They are humans (at least they think they are humans,) but they’re not like other humans they know. For as much as they get told that they should embrace their quirky nature as simply being who they are, it is hard to know what it is like to be not normal, when all you’ve ever been is normal. Sure, for a performance or two, it’s fun. It’s fun to get the attention, to be seen as having something others don’t have. But then, at the end of the day, all you want is to be able to fall asleep, without the birdsong outside your window keeping you awake.

[yasbxxgie]

The Artist’s Way: Writer-director Radha Blank ruminates on creative frustration and rejuvenation in her debut feature, The Forty-Year-Old Version

Fair warning: This interview with Radha Blank isn’t business — it’s personal. Right now, like at this very moment, Radha is being introduced to the world as the writer, director, and star of the remarkable new Netflix film The Forty-Year-Old Version. But I remember Radha in the 1990s, smashing open mics at Brooklyn Moon in N.Y.C., rocking a fitted N.Y. Yankees cap and big hoop earrings. I remember her jumping into cyphers and catching wreck (read: she can dance her ass off) at Club Kilimanjaro. I remember sitting in the audience of her play Seed in 2011 and thinking, Damn, homegirl can write. I remember witnessing the rise of her emcee alter ego and one-woman show RadhaMUSprime at Joe’s Pub in 2014 and thinking, Damn, Radha can rhyme. AND she funny AF. Because Radha was (and is) a part of a close-knit artists’ community, I also recall her hustle, the keeping-the-lights-on-while-trying-to-make-your-dreams-come-true shuffle we know so well. Radha worked as a teacher, she wrote for children’s television and for shows such as Empire and She’s Gotta Have It.

So when The Forty-Year-Old Version won the U.S. Dramatic Directing Award at Sundance earlier this year, the community rejoiced! This wasn’t just a win for Radha, it was a win for the people. Here was a film rooted in Radha’s own story, about a woman at 40; a Black artist trying to get her stories told — as a playwright and as a rapper; a daughter grieving the death of her mother. Radha told her story her way, down to shooting the streets of New York on 35mm film in black and white. The result is a whole, liberating mood. There’s even a nod to Prince’s Purple Rain.

Karen Good Marable: First of all, Radha, congratulations! The Forty-Year-Old Version is amazing. Your success feels so much like a win for Brooklyn. A win for us all. Thank you for writing it. Radha Blank: I really did make it for us — us being Black women, Black women of a certain age, Black women artists of a certain age. I didn’t think I’d be starting a whole new career in my 40s, but I think it speaks to what’s possible if you let go of other people’s ideas of where you should be in your life. If I listened to other people and gave credence to their ideas, I would not be here.

Amen. When you were younger, did you have the boxes to check, i.e., “I need to get this done by 30, I need to get this done by 40”? Were you that girl? RB:

I think I was that girl. And I always say this about aging: It’s never really about the person; it’s about other people’s perceptions that you then take on. I thought by 40, I would be married with a couple of kids, all of my work being published, theaters asking, “Can we do a revival of this play now?” I really thought once I decided to be a playwright, which was probably my mid-20s, I thought, Oh, by 40, I’m going to be set up. I will have a house. And I do have a house, but that came from Cookie and Lucious Lyon. They got me a house.

Come through, Empire. RB:

I feel like we’ve all been conditioned to think that 40 is: You’re an adult, you’re accomplished, you’re established. What me and my character share is there’s still all of these “who am I” moments, questions around identity. Especially when my mother died, I really had to figure out who I was, because so much of my life as a woman, as a person, as a Black American, as an artist, was tied to this woman. When she died, I really had no sense of myself. So I feel like my personal experience propelled me toward telling the story. We just don’t see women of that age saying, What do I do next? Am I happy? Is this enough?

Your mother — curator, visual artist, cinephile, and arts teacher Carol Blank — figures prominently in the film. She is a goddess and a guide, but she also represents a complicated lesson in what it means to be an artist. RB: Oh, listen, I feel like everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned from my mother — from my frustration as an artist to being a teaching artist for so long. That’s where I learned how to be a director, honestly. I didn’t go to film school. I did stand-up comedy and all this performance stuff, and my first example was my mother. She knew how to turn a phrase or a joke to get the kids interested, and if they weren’t, she wasn’t going to push it. I learned from her first, and I tried to match her energy.

I don’t know what my mother went through when she turned 40, as an artist. I know she was a mom of two by that time, but I gathered — especially because she was a teaching artist for so many years — that she was hustling, jumping between these different roles, trying to make sense of something for herself. In that way, I feel like the movie and my journey as an artist brought me closer to her. I was like, Oh, this is what you had to go through. And then you had two kids on top of that?

In the film, your character is also a teacher. As much as she tries to model support and positivity, sometimes the frustration seeps through. One line stayed with me: “Don’t think that because you created something, people will appreciate it.” RB:

Yeah, I have been bitter. I was able to transform that into a film; it gave me a story to tell. But I did feel that theater as an institution didn’t pay off, there wasn’t much of a dividend. I had done a play in 2011 called Seed, and everyone was like, “Girl, this is your breakout! This is your moment! This play is going on Broadway!” None of that shit happened. Theater was not responding in the same way. I was quietly devastated by it, and I think the movie is my exploration of the why. How come things didn’t happen for me? Here’s someone who has been trying for 20-something years and my biggest accomplishment was 10 years ago when I was 30. That’s why I invented the 30 Under 30 award for my character: The idea that accomplishments are amplified by one’s proximity to youth. There’s no 50 Under 50 award. Or 60 Under 60. Being young and doing something as an artist seems more of a cause for celebration. You know what I mean?

There’s also this theme of displacement that runs through the film. In addition to your protagonist feeling out of place in the classroom and in the theater community, she’s also setting a play, Harlem Ave, that deals with gentrification. RB:

So, my parents were gentrifiers in their own way in the late 60s and 70s, when they moved to the south side of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. They didn’t displace people, because what they and their artist and jazz musician comrades would do is take over dilapidated spaces that were considered unlivable — broken-down lofts and factories and storefronts — and create community. There was an investment in engaging the community that came before you, whereas now I think gentrification really is just about an opportunity for the person moving in — “Oh, look at this dope, cheap brownstone that I can get” — with no regard for what came before.

Right. RB: The same thing happens with these artistic institutions: They find a dilapidated space, they revive it and put a million dollars into it. Then when it comes to programming, the people on the stage don’t look like the people outside of the gate. They’re thinking of their silver-haired patrons, because those people can afford a $100 ticket, and that is who I feel most of the theaters cater to. So when diversity shows up on the stage, it’s a version of diversity that protects the audience from feeling bad about racism or sexism. They can still remain in a comfortable place, so they can come back next week or next month and see something for the $300 membership.

But then you brilliantly juxtapose said institutions with the battle rap in the Bronx. RB: I wanted to show these different hubs of art in New York. This film is about capturing an authentic New York experience, and so we shot that battle rap scene at a warehouse space at the tip-top of the Bronx. Art and culture are happening in these spaces that we’re not always focusing the camera on and that don’t have the multimillion-dollar renovation fund of a downtown theater. But this is theater. This is art.

Is that battle based on an actual show? RB:

Yes. Well, we recreated that. Babs Bunny, who people may recognize from Making the Band, created this brand called Queen of the Ring. If you go on YouTube, you’ll see their battle raps. I would watch them because I just needed to see women slaying shit and not being proper or polite. I just wanted to put it into a cinematic world.

Your pen is equally hard-hitting, Radha. Rhymes like “Poverty Porn” and “This Some Bullshit” do so much in revealing character, advancing the narrative. RB:

Thank you. I mean, I feel like if we’re stopping to listen to a song, it should still be about advancing the narrative. We’re still moving forward, riding on this person’s frustration, but into the next scene, next act, or what have you. I think it comes from being a playwright, making sure that everything is earned and not just thrown in there for novelty or because it’s colorful and interesting. I feel like RadhaMUSprime is probably an explosion of her consciousness, the things that she’d been suppressing.But yeah, I’m an emcee. I rhyme. The beautiful thing about the film is I didn’t have to become a professional rapper. I don’t feel like the movie is 8 Mile. I say the movie is 2 Mile,

because she’s not trying to go that far. She’s not trying to be a hip-hop star. For her, hip-hop is a meditation and it shows up in many ways, from the trap beat floating outside her window, to her freestyling in the mirror, or with the dudes in the basement cypher at Arlene’s Grocery.

In some ways, the moral and artistic struggles of The Forty-Year-Old Version remind me of Hollywood Shuffle, Robert Townsend’s 1987 classic. RB:

I appreciate that you bring up Hollywood Shuffle, because I know that because I’m Black and I’m shooting in black and white, people always make the comparison to She’s Gotta Have It. But I feel like my film calls back to Hollywood Shuffle, about a Black artist confronting the white gatekeepers on who gets to tell a Black story and how.

Exactly. And like Townsend, you wrote, directed, and starred in your own first feature film. How was that experience, and do you think you would do it again? RB:

I wouldn’t say I regret being in my film, but I think that there’s probably more of a fascination with my film because I’m in it. And I have too much respect for actors to call myself one. I don’t come from training. I don’t sit in these auditions day after day. I don’t have to endure seven callbacks for a role. I just think that when an audience is familiar with a face, it might make it easier for them to go down the line with this person. So while I don’t plan on being in another one of my films, I do plan on mining my family legacy for storytelling, and on telling stories where music is a driving force.I really want to be an auteur. I’m hoping that my stories get quieter. Very quiet, but very potent. A slow burn, but such a beautiful payoff. I want to make work like that.

Amen.

Photographs:

Radha Blank on set, t & m

Radha Blank with her fellow cast members

[passionate-reply]

This week, on Great Albums, we finally get around to discussing an industrial album--and we’ve started with one of the best there is, from the OGs themselves: Throbbing Gristle! (No, it isn’t jazz funk, I promise.) As always, full transcript under the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be talking about one of the most important albums in the history of industrial music, and certainly one of the most...infamous. If you’ve ever noticed this album hanging on my wall in my other videos, you may well have wondered how an album that looks like this fits in with the rest of the stuff that’s up there. This record is the pioneering industrial group Throbbing Gristle’s classic 20 Jazz Funk Greats, and it’s essentially a bait and switch. It looks like a dorky, “family band” record from the bargain bin, but when you put it on, it sounds like this:

Music: “What a Day”

...well, not really. I’ve fibbed a bit here, much like Throbbing Gristle lied to you with this album cover. “What a Day,” one of the most sonically abrasive tracks on this album, is actually the second to last track! They take a little time to warm you up to the heavier stuff, actually. The first two tracks, the title track and “Beachy Head,” are still not really “jazz funk” by anybody’s standards, but they ARE decidedly softer than some of the other stuff you’ll encounter here.

Music: “20 Jazz Funk Greats”

Things arguably don’t start really heating up until we reach the third track on the album: “Still Walking,” which introduces us to ear-splitting distortion, rapid, disorienting percussion, and buried, albeit deeply ominous vocals, sounding like the first “typical” Throbbing Gristle track. It’s dense and almost comically busy, almost exhausting to listen to--and yet we have only just begun.

Music: “Still Walking”

So, where do we go from here? 20 Jazz Funk Greats wouldn’t be the legendary album that it is, if it was a one-note knock-knock joke, a jack in the box that emerges fully within the first few minutes of the album. What I think it really excels at is its ability to keep us on our toes throughout its entire runtime--it goes back and forth between showing a slightly friendlier face, and peeling back the skin of that face to show us the gory skull underneath. The whole thing vibrates along that contrast. Side two of the album, for instance, opens with one of Throbbing Gristle’s best-known tracks: “Hot on the Heels of Love.”

Music: “Hot on the Heels of Love”

Positioned squarely in the middle of the track listing, and at the crucial point of opening the second side, “Hot on the Heels of Love” certainly seems crucial to the album. It reads as a sort of dark parody of Giorgio Moroder’s famous “I Feel Love,” in which the voice of Donna Summer stands nakedly alone in a sea of pulsating synthesisers. It’s a pretty quick rebuttal, too, given that “I Feel Love” was released just the year before! Despite those sultry, breathy vocals, courtesy of Cosey Fanni Tutti, there’s no mistaking this one for a disco hit--not with its harsh hi-hats and gritty, highly textural synth scrapes. “Hot on the Heels of Love” features minimal lyrics--and they’re almost insultingly vapid--but 20 Jazz Funk Greats also features two prominent tracks that are much heavier in lyrical content, which I like to think as complementary to one another: “Convincing People” and “Persuasion,” which appear on the first and second side of the LP, respectively.

Music: “Convincing People”

Taken alone, “Convincing People” is weird, but it’s so vague and disorganised that it’s hard to come to a firm conclusion about what’s going on the first time you hear it. Unlike “Still Walking,” the fairly minimal instrumental accompaniment makes it easy enough to make out what the words are, without the sleeve handy. But it’s also so repetitive that it’s bound to infect you with semantic satiation, and fog up your brain’s ability to pay attention to those lyrics. The clearest statement “Convincing People” seems to be making is that you’ll never convince people when you come across as someone who’s trying to be convincing...well, alright, I suppose. But what really gives this song a darker significance is its counterpart on the flip, “Persuasion.”

Music: “Persuasion”

Abrasive numbers like “What a Day” and “Still Walking” are physically uncomfortable to listen to, but “Persuasion,” like the earlier Throbbing Gristle number “Slug Bait,” unnerves you with its lyrics instead. It takes up the mantle of a narrator who’s clearly a predatory, sexually violent character, and once again, a fairly simple instrumental makes us confront this vile subject matter head-on, as though we are alone in the room with this creep. “Persuasion” and “Convincing People” are actually extremely similar, but the biggest difference between them is that “Persuasion” is the escalation of their shared basic idea, with its much more explicit lyrics, and use of dissonant, unpredictable human screaming sounds. It’s actually a great metaphor for understanding how this album works--it gradually pushes our boundaries as we listen, worming its way into our consciousness like some masterful manipulator. And it dovetails with how Throbbing Gristle frontman Genesis P-Orridge would later style herself as a charismatic cult leader, with varying shades of irony, in later projects related to “Thee Temple ov Psychic Youth.” As we’ve recently been told, you don’t convince people by coming across as someone trying to be convincing. Or do you?

As I alluded to in the beginning, the name and cover design of 20 Jazz Funk Greats are a sort of musical booby trap, to hopefully ensnare innocent victims. It’s not jazz or funk, it doesn’t have twenty tracks, and its seemingly quaint cover photo, featuring the band in sunny surroundings, actually has a dark secret: the spot it was taken at, Beachy Head, is the most popular suicide destination in Europe, and one of the most popular worldwide. It’s Britain’s highest sea cliff, a stark, sheer wall of chalk that looms over the English Channel, and just a few feet away from where Throbbing Gristle are standing, people regularly throw themselves off of it. It’s a place where delicate natural beauty meets the profound human sickness sown by our twisted, exploitative industrial world. It’s just one more insidious detail, that heightens the cruel spirit of the album’s visual identity. It’s worth remembering that Throbbing Gristle were, first and foremost, provocateurs. I think that may be a better way to think about them overall, compared to thinking of them as “musicians.”

In my day, I’ve often seen 20 Jazz Funk Greats recommended as a good introduction to Throbbing Gristle, and to industrial music as a genre, more broadly. Industrial is one of the very few genres of music that was given its common name by an artist and not an outside critic--and we have Throbbing Gristle to thank for coining it, so they’re inarguably industrial royalty. Their catalogue remains indispensable to understanding what industrial is about--like so many acts we consider seminal or foundational, the seeds contained here inform a great deal of subsequent music. The problem, though, is where to begin, since they were arguably more of a jam band than a studio act, with legendary live performances that probably influenced other artists much more than anything they ever pressed on wax. Their discography is hairy, peppered with live recordings, non-album A-sides, and releases whose official vs. bootleg status is unclear. If you’re looking for a traditional album listening experience--as many music enthusiasts often are--it’s hard to do better than 20 Jazz Funk Greats.

At the same time, though, I think there’s something to be said for respecting the fact that Throbbing Gristle were never trying to offer anyone a traditional listening experience. Just the opposite! 20 Jazz Funk Greats is a Great Album, for sure, and it’s also a bit more of a softball than some of their other work, which arguably makes it a bit more accessible. But is it really all that fair to try and wring an “accessible” experience from a band like Throbbing Gristle, when it isn’t particularly representative of their work? Or is it better to meet them head on and try to tackle them on what appear to have been their own terms? If you’re new to them, but want to understand Throbbing Gristle and feel literate in their work, I think I might recommend their 1981 “greatest hits” compilation, Entertainment Through Pain, better than I would any of their proper albums--particularly if you’re like me, and prefer their more aggressive cuts to the ambient ones.

Music: “Adrenalin”

I think my favourite track is “Walkabout,” even though I would argue it’s one of the least “industrial” sounding tracks here. It isn’t heavy, rhythmic, or sludge-textured, but instead serves as a sort of “breather” between “Persuasion” and “What a Day,” a brief, floating melody that drifts by like a cirrus cloud. It’s both playful as well as devious, wedging itself between some of the hardest-hitting stuff, looking like it might be a reprieve, but ultimately leading right back into harsh musical territory--like an abuser love bombing you between some of their worst behaviour. Perhaps “Walkabout” is something like a masochist’s after-care, a moment of healing and cooldown after the excesses of simulated abuse. Or perhaps it’s the stillness and disquiet peace of the grave, for those who meet their end at the hands of “Persuasion”’s narrator? Ambiguity and possible irony are an integral part of Throbbing Gristle’s particular danse macabre...so I’ll leave the rest of the interpreting up to you. Thanks for watching!

Music: “Walkabout”

[thekillerssluts]

Will Butler explains how his Harvard degree developed into his second solo album

“Yeah, it’s terrifying,” Will Butler says, pondering how it feels to be releasing music away from the umbrella of Arcade Fire.

“It’s the classic thing about all writers,” he continues. “The creative process makes them wanna puke the whole time they’re writing something, then they read something back and it makes them feel worse, then a year later they read it and think ‘yeah, it’s okay’. It’s a glorious experience, but it really makes your stomach hurt.”

On the one hand Will Butler is well accustomed to this writing process, being a multi-instrumentalist in the Canadian indie-rock band fronted by brother Win - Arcade Fire. But on his own terms, it’s an entirely new process. Butler’s second solo album Generations arrives five years after his debut Policy, a collection that rattled with a ramshackle charm and what he describes now as a ‘consciously very unproduced’ sound. Arcade Fire wound down from their Everything Now tour in September 2018, leaving Butler with the last two years of playtime. Most musicians, particularly those accustomed to big album cycles, set aside their downtime for family or other musical projects. Somehow Butler’s managed to do both while also completing a masters degree in Public Policy at Harvard.

“I went to school for a variety of reasons but there was an artistic side to it too,” he says. “I have always tried to let music and lyrics emerge from the world that I’m in; you fertilise the soil and see what grows. It was a way to better understand where we are, how we got here and what's going on. You know, ‘where am I from? What's going to happen?’” Both of these questions explored in his degree are used as fuel for Generations.

It’s easy to imagine an album by somebody who’s just pursued a Public Policy MSt to form in reams of political commentary, probably set to an acoustic guitar. However, Butler instead engages character portraits soundtracked by a broad range of thrilling sonics. Opener “Outta Here” is shrouded by a monstrous bass that lurks beneath the depths of the instrumentation before bursting out midway through. “Got enough things on my plate without you talking about my salvation,” he screams.

While the cage-rattling “Bethlehem” is mania underpinned by a thrashing guitar and bubbling synths that help lift the track to boiling point.While there’s no current world leaders namechecked or any on-the-nose political commentary across the LP, the angst of its contents is instantly tangible, backed by the intellect of somebody who’s spent the past few years studying the ins and outs of government processes. A perfect combination, you could say.

This fuel was partly discovered through Butler reconnecting with the music that defined his teenage years: namely Bjork, The Clash and Eurythmics. While these influences certainly slip into frame across Generations, they were paired with something of an unlikely muse: “I got into this habit of listening to every single song on the Spotify Top 50 every six weeks,” Butler explains. “So many of them are horrible, terrifying and just awful but there’s something inspiring about how god damn avant garde the shittiest pop music is now. Just completely divorced from any sense of reality - it’s just layers upon layers upon layers - it’s amazing. It’s like Marcel Duchamp making a pop hit every single song.”

We turn from current music to current events. Navigating Covid-19 with his wife and three kids in their home of Brooklyn, a majority of 2020 has been caught up in family time for Butler. “The summer’s been easier because everybody’s outside, whereas in spring it was like ‘it’s family time because we have to lock our doors as there's a plague outside.’” While being surrounded by the trappings of lockdown since his second solo album Generations was completed in March, the album itself wriggles with the spirit of live instrumentation, which at this point seems like some sort of relic from a bygone era."I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people."

The source of this energy can be traced back to the way the songs came together; they were forged and finessed at a series of shows in the early stages of the project. “It just raises the stakes. You can tell how good or how dumb a lyric is when you sing it in front of a hundred people,” he reflects. “It’s like ‘are you embarrassed because what you’re saying is true?’ or ‘is it just embarrassing?’ It’s a good refiner for that stuff. I think eventually rediscovering this album back in the live setting would be amazing - we’re a really great live band, it’s a shame to not be in front of people.”

Like his day job in Arcade Fire, Butler’s solo live group is something of a family affair - both his wife and sister-in-law feature in the band, alongside Broadway's West Side Story star, and the student of the legendary Fela Kuti drummer, Tony Allen. Together this eclectic mix of musicians conjures an infectious spirit through the raw combination of thundering synths and pedal-to-the-metal instrumentation; an apt concoction indeed for lyrics that are attempting to unhatch the bamboozling questions that surround our current times.

The timing for Butler’s decision to study Public Policy couldn’t have been more perfect, with his course starting in the Fall of 2016. “I was at Harvard for the election which was a really bizarre time to be in a government school, but it was great to be in a space for unpacking questions like ‘my god, how did we get here?!’” he reflects, with a note of mockery in the bright voice.

“I had a course taught by a professor named Leah Wright Rigueur. The class was essentially on race in America but with an eye towards policy. The class explored what was going to happen in terms of race under the next president. The second to last week was about Hilary Clinton and the last week was about Donald Trump. We read riot reports - Ferguson in 2015, Baltimore in 2016, the Detroit uprisings in the ‘60s and Chicago in 1919 - it's certainly helping me understand the last 5 years, you know. Just to be in that context was very lucky.”

As we’ve seen with statues being toppled, privileges being checked and lyrics of national anthems being interrogated in recent months, history is a complex, labyrinthine subject to navigate requiring both ruthless self-scrutiny and a commitment to the long-haul in order to correct things. The concept of Generations shoots from the same hip employing character portraits to engage in the broader picture.

The writing, at times, is beamed from a place of disconnect (“had enough of bad news / had enough of your generation”), from a place of conscious disengagement (“I’m not talking because I don’t feel like lying / if you stay silent you can walk on in silence”) and from a place of honest self-assessment (“I was born rich / three quarters protestant / connections at Harvard and a wonderful work ethic”).

“I’m rooted in history to a fault,” he says. “My great grandfather was the last son of a Mormon pioneer who’d gone West after being kicked out of America by mob violence. He wanted to be a musician which was crazy - he got 6 months in a conservatory in Chicago before his first child was born. He always felt like he could have been a genius, he could of been writing operas but he was teaching music in like tiny western towns and he had all these kids and he made them be a family band and they were driving around the American west before there were roads in the deserts - literally just driving through the desert! He would go to these small towns and get arrested for trying to skip bills and just live this wild existence.”

Butler’s grandma, meanwhile, was just a child at this point. She went on to become a jazz singer with her sisters and married the guitar player Alvino Rey. “The fact that me and my brother are musicians is no coincidence,” he smiles. “It’s not like I decided to be a musician, it’s down to decisions that were made at the end of the 19th century that have very clearly impacted where I am today. The musical side of it is very beautiful, it is super uncomplicated and a total joy to have a tradition of music in our family...but also in the American context - which is the only context I know - it's also these very thorny inheritances from the 19th century and beyond that influence why my life is like it is.

“For me it’s like, ‘I made my money because my grandpa was a small business owner’ or ‘my grandpa was a boat builder and got a pretty good contract in WW2 and was able to send his kids to college’. Both of which are so unpoetic and unromantic but it is an important thing to talk about, that's a personal political thing to talk about; there's horrifying and beautiful aspects there.”

The lament of “I’m gonna die in a hospital surrounded by strangers who keep saying they’re my kids” on “Not Gonna Die” could well be croaked by somebody on the tail end of a life lived on the American Dream. At times, Butler plays the characters off against each other, like on “Surrender,” which chronicles two flawed characters going back and forth played by Butler’s lead vocals and his female backing singers that undermine his memory; “I remember we were walking” is cut up with the shrug of “I dunno” and “maybe so”. “I found having the backing voices there gave me something to play with,” he explains. “Either something threatening to the main character or something affirming to the main character, just providing another point of view.”

Elsewhere, “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know” explores the feeling of being unsuitably equipped to unravel the complexities that surrounds us day-to-day. “The basic emotion of that song is very much ‘I don’t know what I can do’ which is an emotion we all have,” he ponders. “There’s also the notion that follows that, like ‘maybe don’t even tell me what to do because it’s going to be too overwhelming to even do anything’.”

Some of these portraits materialised in the aftershows Butler began hosting while on Arcade Fire’s Everything Now tour which found him instigating conversations and talks by local councilman, politicians and activists on local issues. “On some of the good nights of the aftershow town halls, you’d feel that switch away from despair and into action,” he says smiling. “The step between despair and action is possible, that sentiment isn’t spelled out lyrically on the record but it’s definitely there spiritually.”

“I learned anew what a treasure it is to have people in a room. Getting humans in a room can be absurd. And we were having from 5,000 to 15,000 people in a room every night, most of them local. I’m very comfortable with art for art’s sake; I think art is super important and it’s great people can like music that's not political. It was sort of like ‘well we’re here and I know a lot of you are thinking about the world and you’re thinking about what a shit show everything is. You want to know what we can do and I also want to know what we can do!’ So I put on these after shows.”"The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change."

Butler would find a suitable location near the Arcade Fire gig through venue owners who were often connected to the local music and comedy scenes to host these events. “The dream lineup would be to have a local activist and a local politician talking about a local issue because that’s the easiest way to make concrete change. Arguably, the most important way is through the city council and state government. The New York state government is in Albany, New York. The shit that happens in Albany is all super important so I wanted to highlight that and equip people with some concrete levers to pull.

“In Tampa we had people who were organizing against felon disenfranchisement, like if you’ve been convicted of a felon you couldn’t vote in Florida, and something absurd like 22% of black men in Florida couldn’t vote and there were people organising to change that - this was in 2018 - and you could just see people being like ‘holy shit, I didn't even know this was happening!’

“These were not topics I’m an expert in - it’s like these are things that are happening. The thought was trying to engage, I’m sad to not be doing something similar this Fall, I mean what a time it would have been to go around America.”

Understandably the looming 2020 election is on Butler’s radar. “It doesn't feel good,” he sighs. “I’ve never had any ability to predict, like 2 weeks from now the world could be completely different from what it is today. There was always a one-in-a-billion chance of the apocalypse and now it's like a one-in-a-million chance which is a thousand times more likely but also unlikely. It’s going to be a real slog in the next couple of years on a policy side, like getting to a place where people don’t die for stupid reasons, I’m not even talking about the coronavirus necessarily just like policy in general. Who knows, it could be great but it seems like it's going to be a slog.”

There’s a moment on the closing track “Fine”, a stream-of-consciousness, Randy Newman-style saloon waltz, where Butler hits the nail on the head. “George [Washington], he turned to camera 3, he looked right at me and said...I know that freedom falters when it’s built with human hands”. It’s one of the many lyrical gems that surface throughout the record but one that chimes with an undeniable truth. It’s the same eloquence that breaks through as he touches on the broad ranging subjects in our conversation, always with a bright cadence despite the gloom that hangs over some of the topics.

The live show is without a doubt Arcade Fire’s bread and butter. While Butler questions how realistic the notion of getting people in packed rooms in the near future is, he reveals the group are making movements on LP6. “Arcade Fire is constantly thinking about things and demoing, it's hard to work across the internet but at some point we’ll get together. It probably won’t be much longer than our usual album cycle,” he says.

You only have to pick out one random Arcade Fire performance on YouTube to see Butler’s innate passion bursting out, whether it’s early performances that found him and Richard Reed Parry adorning motorbike helmets annihilating each other with drumsticks to the 1-2-3 beat of “Neighbourhood #2 (Laika)” or the roaring “woah-ohs” that ascend in the anthem of “Wake Up” every night on tour. It’s an energy that burns bright throughout our conversation and across Generations.

https://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/interviews/arcade-fires-will-butler-new-solo-record-generations