#Synthesize Effigy

[coockie8]

This pic of Syn, Magna, and Liam has been in the works for quite a long time, but it's finally finished, and I hope y'all enjoy it.

For a little extra fun; there's a Changeling, a Leprechaun, and a Vampire in this pic. Guess which is which

y'all better know 'cause everyone I've asked irl can't tell and I, personally, think it's really obvious, so you guys better get it lol

[justforbooks]

Ryuichi Sakamoto was not a man cut out to be a pop star. As a teenager, he liked the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but his abiding passion was New York’s underground avant garde art scene – Joseph Beuys, Fluxus, Andy Warhol – and its accompanying experimental music: he was fond of pointing out to interviewers that he was born the year that John Cage composed 4’33. At university, he studied the work of modern composers Boulez, Stockhausen and Ligeti; he had a particular interest in the challenging electronic compositions of Iannis Xenakis. The first album to bear Sakamoto’s name, 1975’s Disappointment/Hateruma, was a collaboration with percussionist Toshiyuki Tsuchitori that consisted entirely of free improv. If he was going to have a role in the Japanese pop world at all, it was in the background, using his keyboard skills and interest in the fast-developing world of synthesizers to find employment as a session musician.

But a pop star was exactly what Sakamoto became, at least for a time. A 1978 session for singer Haruomi Hosono led to the suggestion that they should form a band with drummer Yukihiro Takahashi. Yellow Magic Orchestra went on to become both the biggest band in Japan – inspiring a degree of paparazzi attention and screaming fervour among fans that Sakamoto seems to have loathed every minute of – and the first Japanese artists to find more than novelty or cult status in the west.

Yellow Magic Orchestra were successful, but they were groundbreaking too. The convenient shorthand was that they were the Japanese Kraftwerk, although in truth, YMO didn’t really sound like Kraftwerk at all. Alongside the synthesizers, they used guitars, bass and acoustic drums. They were more straightforwardly aligned to disco: their debut album even featured an electronic version of the deathless “ooah ooah” whoop from the Michael Zager Band’s Let’s All Chant. You could detect the influence of jazz fusion and, later, the UK’s ongoing ska revival. Like Throbbing Gristle, they appeared fascinated by the kitschy 1950s exotica of Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman, which had featured traditional Japanese instruments and quasi-“oriental” melodies; Yellow Magic Orchestra’s biggest international hit was a version of Denny’s 1959 track Firecracker.

Equally, you could see why the Kraftwerk comparison stuck. Both bands shared an obsession with technology – Yellow Magic Orchestra were pioneering in their use of sequencers and samplers and they introduced the world to the sound of the Roland TR-808 drum machine – and a belief that being cutting-edge experimentalists didn’t preclude them from writing fantastic pop songs. The Sakamoto-penned Behind the Mask, from 1979’s Solid State Survivor, was covered by Michael Jackson, ostensibly for inclusion on Thriller, although it was dropped from the final tracklisting; it was eventually turned into a UK hit by, of all people, Eric Clapton.

Both YMO and Kraftwerk were interested in the detournement of Anglo-American pop: just as Kraftwerk borrowed from the Beach Boys on Autobahn, so YMO covered the Beatles’ Day Tripper and Archie Bell and the Drells’ Tighten Up, the latter in cartoonish Japanese accents. They also shared a dry sense of humour, which in Yellow Magic Orchestra’s case usually fixated on western prejudices and fears about east Asians. On the cover of Solid State Survivor, they dressed in red Mao suits, enjoying a drink with an effigy of the late dictator. While the US fretted about an influx of Japanese cars and technology damaging their economy, 1980’s X∞Multiplies featured a series of sketches, one featuring a sinister Japanese businessman signing a contract, another featuring an American who realises his Japanese host can’t understand English and lets rip with a torrent of racist abuse: “The Japanese are pigs, yellow monkeys, they have small cocks and short legs.” As a moral panic erupted over the deleterious and addictive effect of the Taito Corporation’s Space Invaders games, Yellow Magic Orchestra’s records literally sounded like arcade games: their eponymous debut album was packed with interludes featuring their bleeping noises and tinny Game Over death marches.

And, like Kraftwerk, Yellow Magic Orchestra proved vastly influential – or rather, it took the rest of the world a little while to catch up: there was something telling about the fact that Solid State Survivor wasn’t released in the UK until 1982, at the height of the synth-pop wave that YMO had presaged. By then, their music had found its way into the collections of DJs and producers in New York’s burgeoning hip-hop scene – they were apparently astonished when the audience on Soul Train began breakdancing when they performed Computer Games – although it was a track from one of the solo albums Sakamoto had begun releasing concurrent with his career in YMO that had the biggest long-term impact. Riot in Lagos, from 1980’s B-2 Unit, had been recorded in London with reggae producer Dennis Bovell, and was apparently inspired by the Afrobeat of Fela Kuti. It remains an astonishingly timeless and effervescent piece of electronica: if you didn’t know it and were told it was released last month, rather than 42 years ago, you’d believe it. Abstract but funky, it cast a considerable shadow over dance music: it was big club hit on release, helped shape the sound of electro and turned the head of hip-hop producers including Kurtis Mantronik. Drum n’ bass producers Foul Play sampled it, and you can hear its influence in the music of 90s electronic luminaries Aphex Twin and Autechre.

Yellow Magic Orchestra split in 1983. If Sakamoto had left it at that and returned to modern classical music, he would already have earned himself a place among the era’s greatest pop innovators. But with the release of Nagisa Ōshima’s film Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence, in which he also starred, he began a career as a soundtrack composer that clearly suited his temperament far better than the Beatlemania-like scenes Yellow Magic Orchestra had provoked at home. It would lead him to work with Bernardo Bertolucci, Pedro Almodóvar, Brian De Palma and Oliver Stone, among others, and be showered with awards, including an Oscar and a Golden Globe.

But the vocal version of Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’s haunting main theme, retitled Forbidden Colours, also cemented a partnership with former Japan vocalist David Sylvian that had begun with the 1982 single Bamboo Houses/Bamboo Music. Along with Can’s Holger Czukay and experimental trumpeter Jon Hassell, he became part of Sylvian’s repertory company for a series of extraordinary albums that attempted to reimagine 80s pop in a more expansive, exploratory and pensive way.

They seemed to reflect Sakamoto’s own position within pop after Yellow Magic Orchestra. Sakamoto’s solo albums largely contained music that existed at one remove from whatever else was happening, in a space where he could follow his own path. On 1989’s Beauty and 1991’s Heartbeat, it sometimes seemed as if he was constructing his own brand of the exotica that had entranced YMO, blending eastern, western and African influences together, assembling eclectic and improbable guest lists that, on Beauty alone, included Youssou N’Dour, Robbie Robertson, Robert Wyatt, Brian Wilson and Prince protege Jill Jones.

It wasn’t as if Ryuichi Sakamoto needed to be at the centre of pop culture in person: thanks to sampling, the centre of pop culture was never that far from his music. In recent years, it’s been borrowed by the Weeknd, Justice, Burial, the Beastie Boys, Jennifer Lopez, Brandy and Freddie Gibbs.

In the late 70s, the other members of Yellow Magic Orchestra had called him the Professor, a jokey nickname that contrasted Sakamoto’s intellectual bearing with his unwanted role as the group’s main heart-throb. It was a title Sakamoto seemed to grow into more and more in his later years: recording minimalist albums with German artist Alva Noto, providing ambient scores for art installations, releasing live orchestral and solo piano recordings of his compositions. There are clips of Yellow Magic Orchestra in the 2017 documentary Coda, which showed Sakamoto returning to work following a diagnosis of throat cancer, but it’s still hard to square the young pop star who stares imperiously down from his apartment wall in a portrait by Andy Warhol with the man in his late 60s, learnedly discussing classical organ chorales, the purity of the sounds he recorded during a trip to the North Pole and whether a piano going out of tune represented “matter struggling to return to a natural state”.

The album Coda depicted him working on, async, was released in 2017. It combined Bach-inspired piano pieces with monumental drones, distorted synthesisers and ambient field recordings. The artists who lined up to remix its tracks came from the leftfield cutting-edge of electronic music: if you wanted evidence of how widespread Ryuichi Sakamoto’s influence was, the fact that his work was clearly an inspiration for the likes of Arca and Oneohtrix Point Never and had been sampled by Jennifer Lopez on a US No 1 single seems a reasonable place to start. Contemplating his mortality in 2017, Sakamoto said he wanted to make “music I won’t be ashamed to leave behind – meaningful work”. By any metric, he already had.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[suu-zu]

I don't hate AI as a tool, I think it's a fantastic technological development and the doors are wide open for it to be built upon in a way that will genuinely make it easier for humanity to exist, I've already started implementing it into my job to eliminate busy work and repetitive tasks that don't need much human support.

What is absolutely shameful though is the direction we're heading in that instead of AI being used to better our workflows and free up humans to simply be human, we instead have this situation where people are so hell bent on consuming content that they are directly engaged in, or are super excited about, automating humans out of creative pursuits.

I find it unforgivable that the timeline we ended up in is the one where people are happy to consume effigies formed of stolen artwork, or synthesize an entire persons voice.

Maybe I'm a little close to the cut here, it's hard to be impartial when both of these examples are my interests and my creative hobbies but all around I see people cheering as they're going through the slow process of being sterilized and there's nothing I can do about it.

[upst--rs]

darker brain pattern

skip to the part where i say you are my favorite illusion

consciousness sounds like a dial-up modem falling asleep

a narcolepsy of thoughts becoming simulacra more each time they wake up.

at 18 bits per second Stephen Hawking down- loaded just a few mp3s of the Universe

dark matter throughout the P2P. wits flickering out constellations' shapes, like an ocean breaks syntax, shimmies snapshots: vice-verisimilitude.

every asterism, named, dead-named, re-named, secularized and transfixed, comes with an asterisk.

'father, i want to kill you' said Jim Morrison, said the Romans, who said it was the Jews;

every bit of crucial fiction was made into an effigy, was Aphrodite and Athena, named, dead-named, re-named Mary, christian- and homogenized.

skip to the part where i say you are my favorite illusion

where poetry is the shadow cast by fascists

shadow boxing is an Olympic sport, one oppugning him- self, inside half-rings; brackets without Ls, Hegelian syntheses

a genre of synth played in ballrooms, arrhythmic beats, achtung cardiacs, heartbreak waltzing out of the left ventricle of Germany; an http for sins (of omission)

daemons sending endless bits of demons in frustration-free packets: the one(s) that won't go phishing, net zero.

pseudo-onymous, the answer to "what's in a name?"

changes all the time

skip to the part . . .

[creepy-crowleys]

[A security feed is uploaded.]

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT - initiate the hexenwulf signal - RECEIVE - initiate the digital howl - A PLACE WHERE YOU HIDE FROM WOLVES, THAT'S ALL ANY ROOM IS - pack mentality as an algorithm - WITNESS - The Manufactory: Breached.

[There’s an obvious change in the atmosphere compared to any of the previous feeds. Something about it feels sick, even over video.

At some point over the last few days, the facility’s lights have dimmed, replaced with the red glow of the emergency lighting system. 

The audio feed is distorted by crackling whispers, layered so densely most are unintelligible. An occasional wail of anguish pierces through the noise, only to be answered by synthesized howls from somewhere in the distance.

Crowley has to force the elevator doors open, stepping aside enough to let a young girl through first before following her into the first chamber. 

And then she freezes.

The color drains from Crowley’s face as her eyes flit about the dimmed, reddened room. She takes an unconscious step back, bristling with fear... until Anima slips her smaller hand into Crowley’s and gives it a reassuring squeeze. They have each other at least.

Anima is speaking. She seems distant.]

Anima: Did you hear the music box? I did. And it heard me. Anima: It became excited when I came near. It began to sing. The music box listens to me. Anima: The music box says, “I am the Engine of Gaia. I cleanse the Filth. I sing the lullaby.”

[She looks up at Crowley for her own reassurance.]

Anima: Would you like to see? Crowley: Of course I would.

[The PA welcomes them warmly over their conversation. The drones and effigy trying to repair the entryway, less so. Anima flits away to safety in a shower of hexagonal motes of golden light, leaving the threats for Crowley to handle with ease.]

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 7, Number 10

Chillingsworth Surfingham is Dust’s first ever musical teddy bear.

That craptastic summer is done, no more heat dome, or fires, or inland hurricanes and or continual threat of catastrophe, and we greet the change of seasons with a sigh of relief. Now that things have calmed — and cooled — down, we can dig into the piles of new releases in acid folk, jazz, metal, punk, rap and, our favorite, unclassifiable, to find what’s good and what’s not. This month’s sonic explorers include Jennifer Kelly, Bill Meyer, Ray Garraty, Justin Cober-Lake, Ian Mathers, Chris Liberato, Bryon Hayes and Jonathan Shaw.

Adeline Hotel — The Cherries Are Speaking (Ruination)

The Cherries Are Speaking by Adeline Hotel

When we last caught up with Dan Knishkowy, he was mostly concerned with improvised guitar, tracing smoke-wispy blues licks in the ruminative Good Timing from earlier this year. The Cherries Are Speaking deploys a more varied collection of sounds: a jaunty, jazzy saxophone from David Lackner, some lush and evocative strings from Macie Stewart and piano, the instrument that Knishkowy turned to in the long months of the pandemic. The result is a set of songs that veer more towards baroque pop than stripped down country folk. The title track, for instance, swells with lavish sonics, a fluttery flute, some vibrato-laden violins, a blowsy soft-toned saxophone. The piano parts are clear but simple, picking out sparkly counterpoints to Knishkowy’s blues vocals on “Raspberry Stains,” adding arpeggiated flourishes to “We Go Outside.” Knishkowy’s longtime rhythm section of Sean Mullins and Andrew Stocker offers subtle, jazz-infused grounding, while guest vocals including Eric D. Johnson (more in Bonny Light Horseman mode than Fruit Bats), Caitlin Pasko and Vivian McConell (from V.V. Lightbody) fill out his quiet melodies. You might not even realize there’s no guitar at all in The Cherries Are Speaking until you check the credits. You won’t miss it. There’s plenty to hear without it.

Jennifer Kelly

 Robbie Avenaim / Chris Abrahams / Jim Denley—Weft (Relative Pitch)

Weft by Robbie Avenaim, Chris Abrahams, Jim Denley

If I told you that there’s a new record by a trio that includes Chris Abrahams, and it consists of one 45-minute-long track, you might think that you have a pretty good idea how it sounds. And if you said, “it sounds like the Necks,” that would be understandable but also inaccurate. While this trio, does, like the Necks, operate in the zone of long-form, spontaneous music-making, both the instruments used and the personalities wielding them ensure that this sounds different from any trio you have ever heard. Abrahams sticks to synthesizer, with which he cultivates an insectoid environment embedded with quietly glassy interludes. The breathy curlicues, low blows and amplified keypads of Jim Denley’s bass flute lob sounds out of said environment as comfortably as frogs conversing in a country pond. But it is Robbie Avenaim, a frequent associate of Oren Ambarchi, who really sets this session apart. He plays prepared typewriter, running its rustle and clatter through an unidentified chain of preparations that makes one forget where the sounds came from and further focuses the ear upon the way this music establishes its own space for the duration of its existence.

Bill Meyer

Atræ Bilis — Apexapien (20 Buck Spin)

Apexapien by Atræ Bilis

This debut full-length from Canadian filthers Atræ Bilis is quite uneven and unoriginal. The band runs through all possible types of death metal (skipping only grind-infused ones). The lowest point is two tracks with the similar structure. “Open the Effigy” and “By The Hierophant's Maw” both venture too close to deathcore territory. The highest point is probably “Hymn of the Flies”, highly technical with sound signatures and changes in tempo and punchiest riffing. The rest of the CD falls in between and will be rightfully forgotten after a week or two.

Ray Garraty

Bevel — Angler Senses (Astral Editions)

Angler Senses by Bevel

You have to respect a man who tells it like it is. “I love my cat more than I could ever love you,” pledges Via Nuon, who is the singer, guitarist, and “all the other instruments not played by these jazz guys”-ist of Bevel. Many individuals who have sustained long-term relationships with both humans and felines know exactly how he feels. And as you listen to this album, which is confined to the humble realms of the digital and cassette-spheres, you will have other experiences of understanding. For while this album is being released on Astral Editions, which is mostly devoted to stuff too fringy for the Astral Spirits jazz label, a couple decades back this record would probably have gotten released on Secretly Canadian and gotten a high-profile review on Pitchfork. Maybe the latter will still happen, and maybe that imaginary reviewer will tell you the same thing as me — Mr. Nuon knows what he’s doing. His skills as a guitarist and baroque pop arranger are beyond reproach, and the vulnerability imparted by his singing makes up for his challenges at nailing each and every pitch. And when you listen, he speaks truths that are no less true for being as mundane as your life. All respect to his cat, and to him, too.

Bill Meyer

 Cherry Cheeks — S-T (Total Punk)

S/T LP by CHERRY CHEEKS

Cherry Cheeks makes a brash, herky-jerk kind of punk rock, with clanky chunky bitten off bass fighting off brutalist drumming and a guitar crashing through from the floor upstairs. It sounds like a band, but it’s actually the one-person, pandemic project of one Kyle Harms, originally from Orlando, but now relocated to Portland, Oregon. There’s a degree of conflict in these songs that makes the one-person business faintly unbelievable, but if you haven’t had an argument with yourself these long COVID months, you’re probably doing it wrong. In any case, the stop-start aggro of “Go Outside,” will likely sound good to anyone who likes Bodega. The fanciful yet forceful stomp of “Two Bugs,” may call to fans of Terry. In “Boxes,” the bassline banks off walls and caroms off angles, while a firestorm of guitar rips through whatever it leaves standing. The cut, perhaps inspired by Harms’ recent cross-country move, rattles a chorus of “Everything comes in boxes, boxes” that is unnervingly aggressive. There are wild swirl of keyboard and tunefulness pushed to Jay Reatard-esque levels of agitation, and all in all, 25 minutes of pure fun.

Jennifer Kelly

 Chillingsworth Surfingham — Chillingsworth (ATOM)

Every few years we need a surf guitar revival. Usually, it takes a Tarantino movie or some indie-rockers taking a vacation. Probably it's no indication of an imminent revival, but the Bobbleheads' John Ashfield gets to the beach in a new way. He's created a teddy bear alter-ego named Chillingsworth Surfingham, and given him free range of his Dick Dale collection. Were Ashfield simply rehashing the old tropes, this Chillingsworth album could simply slide into your novelty pile and await its time in the cutout bin (or whatever the new version of that old pile is). Ashfield finds more interesting routes, though, adding some psych and some darker material to the sounds. After the first few seconds of opener “Coronado,” he never fully plays to expectations. “Cowboy a Go-Go” toys with the ideas, but undercuts any attempts to enforce solemnity. “I Was There” highlights the shadier side of the genre while adding synth flourishes for a strange sort of experience. Ashfield's joy in the music runs throughout the disc, but that doesn't mean he hasn't worked at crafting something original. Both fun and intriguing, Chillingsworth Surfingham turns out to be a stuffed animal that does more than just play around.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Eluvium — Virga II (Temporary Residence)

Matthew Cooper started his Virga series of ambient albums out of creative restlessness and nostalgia, not the kind of cooped-upedness that’s led to so much similar work (crucially, the first instalment was in late 2019), but the sonic darkness of the first half of Virga II might make listeners wonder if the focus of the project has shifted in the interim. Not that the growling static of “Hallucination I” or the billowing noise of “Scarlet Hunter” are totally new registers for him, it’s just that you might need to go back to debut Lambent Material in 2003 for comparison. In the second half, though, the calmly glowing shoals of “Touch Returned” and the title track get closer to what Virga I was doing; both sides are equally compelling, the storm and the calm after, and it will be interesting to see whether Cooper takes these new generative tools he’s built and goes farther afield with them; there’s clearly fertile territory out there.

Ian Mathers

 Los Esplifs — Estraik Back (Self-Released)

Estraik Back by Los Esplifs

Los Esplifs reinterprets the clip clopping, side-swaying, heavily percussive forms of the cumbia with a lived-in love. The band, mainly a duo of jazz organist and multi-instrumentalist Saul Millan and Afro Cuban All Star Caleb Michel, brings jazz fusion and kraut rock into its fiery interpretation of “Y El Monsoon,” but plays “Otro Pais,” relatively straight, with intricate multi-timbred percussion and languid, ultra-romantic vocals. “Galaxia” puts a psychedelic sheen on cumbia’s off-beat thumping cadences, little frills of organ and swathes of wah wah’d guitar curling out of the steady rhythm. “Tekno Cumbia” pushes the traditional form even further out on a limb, with sing-song-y synths and rave-y four on the floor. The disc closes with an odd “Eskit,” in which gravel-voiced Spanish speakers seem to argue about whether they are Latino or LatinX, but why put things in boxes? Estraik Back certainly doesn’t.

Jennifer Kelly

 Glenn Echo — Fixed Memory (Self-released)

Fixed Memory by Glenn Echo

Glenn Echo, an experimental songwriting project headed by Matt Gaydar, has been around for a little over half a decade, moving steadily during that time from a fairly standard, whispery, guitar-based confessional indie folk towards something odder and more elaborate. Fixed Memory layers scratchy found sounds, electronic elements and unsettling rhythms over its plaintive melodies, landing somewhere in the vast spaces between, say, Iron and Wine and Radiohead. Some of the songs, “Moon and Wine,” for instance, are well-executed but conventional, their feathery picking and soft harmonies needing not much more than a guitar, a mic and a stool to take shape. But “Hearth” is edgier and more remote, powered by chilly synthetic tone-washes and skittering electronic rhythms, and sung in an eerie tenor that evokes Thom Yorke (and it’s perhaps worth mentioning that one of the very earliest items on Glenn Echo’s bandcamp.com page is a Radiohead cover). And yet Gaydar never lets complexity swamp the pensive prettiness of his melodies. “Drink Up This Fire” has a careless, jazzy lilt to it, sung at a murmur and framed by the slightest, most transparent bits of guitar. Solo songwriters are a dime a dozen, but this is more interesting and better.

Jennifer Kelly

 Havukruunu — Kuu Erkylän Yllä (Naturmacht Productions)

These Finnish mutants are usually slotted into the pagan black metal subgenre but only the final track “Talvikuu,” describing an ancient battle, betrays the band’s pagan roots. It’s probably the weakest cut on the whole EP, and who needs another battle hymn in Finnish pagan upholstery anyway? Seven-minute-long “Mustan merkin enteen alla” is another failure, attempting cosmic metal but delivering only clichés, from keyboard to clean vocals. Still, the first three cuts save the day with straight ahead, no-experiments, filthy vomit of black metal at Archgoat-like speed and a no hostages approach to riffing.

Ray Garraty

 Izzy Johnson — earth tones (Driftless)

“If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you,” proposes the Michigan state motto. It seems that Izzy Johnson would agree. In a press photo for their debut album, earth tones, the lifelong Michigander sits serenely in a field of spent wheat, soaking up some winter sun. Meanwhile, in the video for “Loving,” Johnson and pup take a walk through the peaceful, snowy forests of the state’s southern nature preserves. But the album’s ethereal soundscapes are elemental in ways not implied by its title: Johnson’s vocals blink to life suddenly like fireflies, casting a warm, blurry aura around them before flickering out again. And their guitar playing has the fluid feel of a warm country breeze, with slow-picked lines that trail off like colorful streamers into the sonic ether, blending with harp, flute, keyboard, and more. It’s a beautiful place to visit, whether you’re just stopping to enjoy the view, or looking for somewhere to go get lost.

Chris Liberato 

 La Luz — S-T (Sub Pop)

La Luz by La Luz

Seattle’s all female surf punk band, La Luz, waited until the fourth full-length to make an eponymous album, but this one is good enough to want your name on. The band, led by Shana Cleveland (who has made some very fine solo albums lately, too), brings a cool, melodic polish to songs that flicker with Nuggets fire. “In the Country,” which circulated as a single earlier in the summer, layers cooing, sighing vocals over a desert dry instrumental that’ll remind you of Ennio Morricone. “The Pines” is even better with sharp, slicing surf licks, tambourine-jangling beats, and an undeniable undercurrent of wistful melancholy. Cleveland is a talented guitarist steeped in surf, soul and freakbeat, but she doesn’t wallow in history, instead bringing these forms cleanly and clearly into the modern day.

Jennifer Kelly

 Sylvin Marc / Del Rabenja — Madagascar Now Maintenant ‘Zao (Souffle Continu)

Madagascar Now by Sylvin Marc / Del Rabenja

The France-based Souffle Continu label has reissued a handful of albums created by or associated with pianist Jef Gilson, and this one is the most exciting of the bunch. Multi-instrumentalists Marc and Rabenja, both from Madagascar, were in the jazz combo Gilson named after the African island nation’s people: Malagasy. On this recording they share bandleader and composer duties, with most of the compositions crafted by Marc. The A side features a modern take on traditional Malagasy song forms. Rabenja’s compositions feature the valiha, a tubular harp that sounds sort of like a zither. Traditional xylophones and tambourine-like instruments provide accompaniment. Marc takes Madagascar into funk territory, aided by the elastic bass of his cousin, Ange “Zizi” Japhet. Japhet and Marc also pull off some seriously bad-assed vocalising; could they just be Madagascar’s answer to James Brown? On the flip the band, which also includes Gerard Rakotoarivony on bass and Frank Raholison on drums, establishes themselves as a force capable of cranking out post-bop and free jazz. Rabenja switches to tenor sax and Fender Rhodes, while Marc takes up the bass. The three Marc-penned pieces swing either jauntily (“Del-Light”) or urgently (“Ô Ambalavoa ‘City’” and “Rotaka”). The latter is a fiery blast that shows off the instrumental prowess of this quintet. Lovingly restored on vinyl, Madagascar Now is an essential artifact for those interested in the Malagasy sounds — both traditional and jazzy — of the 1970s.    

Bryon Hayes 

 MVW — CLASSIC$ (AWAL)

Michael Vincent Waller has so far been known as a composer, and as MVW he’s not so much moving away from that world as applying it to a new context. Specifically rap, and the most striking thing about his inaugural CLASSIC$ EP under the new moniker is just how natural he and fellow producer Lex Luger make all the orchestral elements feel on these tracks. Whether it’s Jaydonclover providing sung interludes (and possibly the de rigeur producer ID at the beginning of many of the tracks) or the way Chicago rapper Valee nimbly darts around and through the beats, strings and other elements, CLASSIC$ makes what you might call orchestral trap and, even more impressively, never makes it sound like a novelty mashup. Among the brief tracks, the Valee showcase “Still Do” and trio cut “Really Wanna Know” stand out, the former for its loveliness cut with Valee’s verbal astringency and the latter for how woozy and off-kilter the looped string figure feels, perfectly underpinning each rapper. The possibilities are, to say the least, intriguing.

Ian Mathers

 Yann Novak — Lifeblood of Light and Rapture (Room40)

Lifeblood of Light and Rapture by Yann Novak

Serial ambient producer Yann Novak’s music is a cathartic exercise for him. Slowly Dismantling, his previous album for Room40, dealt with impermanence and identity; this collection of compositions is meant to overcome a twisted sort of fatalism. Ironically, the actions we take to escape the destructive tendencies of our own species often lead to the destruction of our own minds and bodies. Novak sees the hedonistic escape of his past reflected in humanity’s reliance on technology and its various distractions today. It’s a very salient viewpoint, especially considering that certain social media channels have recently come under fire for poisoning our youth in the name of profit. Sonically, the four extended pieces that Novak offers are far more hopeful. He synthesizes organ-like chords that waft in bright, colorful patterns. This isn’t necessarily cheerful music, but it is the almost sanguine antidote to the gloominess of Ravedeath, 1972-era Tim Hecker. With Lifeblood of Light and Rapture, Novak intended to shine a little light in a time of almost insurmountable negativity, and he has succeeded.

Bryon Hayes

  Offset Jim — Rich Off The Pack (Play Runners Association)

Offset Jim runs out of things to say ridiculously fast – in the first minute of this release. For the next 21 minutes, he strains to find new ways to say the same thing, repeating words in different combinations. Always down to earth, he’s downright pedestrian here. His usual skill with hooks is missing, too. A few guests fill out his uninspired verses, including AllBlack, EST Gee, Babyface Ray and Aitch. It’s hard to believe but they have even less to say than their host. A song called “Make No Sense” says it all: if you are rich off the pack why record such dull music? It makes no sense, really.

Ray Garraty 

 Brigid Mae Power — Burning Your Light (Fire)

Burning Your Light by Brigid Mae Power

Fresh off a string of well-regarded full-lengths, which began with her self-titled Tompkins Square album in 2016 and culminated in last year’s Head Above the Water, the Irish folksinger shows no qualms about taking on the big guns. This six-song covers EP reinterprets canonical material in fragile, idiosyncratic style. What her version of Aretha Franklin’s torch jazz, gospel-choired “It Ain’t Fair” gives up in sheer force and power, it makes up in flickering, soul-searching sensitivity. The manicured, polished twang of Patsy Cline’s “Leavin’ on Your Mind,” gives way to spare, pensive desolation. Dylan may swagger and howl and declaim in his original “One More Cup of Coffee,” but Power asks quietly, gracefully, stoically for a little more time with a lover on his way out. These melancholy songs—rounded out by cuts from Songs:Ohia, Townes Van Zandt and a traditional folk tune—don’t get in your face; they seem instead to ask you to respect the singer’s reticence. She doesn’t need to yell to get your attention.

Jennifer Kelly   

 Sorguinazia — Negation of Delirium (Iron Bonehead Records)

Iron BoneHead Productions · Sorguinazia - Black Spell Of Supremacy

You don’t hear a lot of black metal coming out of Canada — but it’s north and it’s white and it’s really, really cold. Conditions seem propitious. This new LP of kvlty, nasty black metal by Sorguinazia suggests that the Canadian tundra and charnel tar sands can produce music as hopeless and tormented as that which comes from more notorious climes in Scandinavia. Sorguinazia comprises a duo who identify as Xolaryxis and Axczor and make songs that have a sort of tidal action, swirling and churning with vertiginous, weirdly forceful playing. It’s pretty interesting: Xolaryxis’s guitar has the requisite icy brittleness, but his notes also bend and distend. At 42 minutes long, Negation of Delirium makes for a whole lot of bending and distending. Luckily, Sorguinazia saves some of the best stuff for the end of the record. “Saraswati” starts with a field recording of rain, a familiar element of many atmospheric moments on black metal records; eventually a distant drumbeat thrums under the sounds of rainfall, and there’s an occasional metallic jangle, perhaps a tambourine. The band lets that ride for well over three minutes. It’s simultaneously meditative and suspenseful. The sounds fade, there’s a moment of silence, and then “Neuromancy” commences; it’s a particular venomous version of the band’s characteristic black metal chaos. It’s hard to say why Saraswati, Hindu goddess of music, erudition and art, might be invoked just before such a savage sonic experience. Transcendence through decadent musical magic? But why Hinduism? Maybe the band digs the sensory overload of much Hindu iconography and ritual. At their best, Sorguinazia’s songs gesture toward such experiences. They’re a black metal band worth watching.

Jonathan Shaw

Zelma Stone — The Best (Self-Released)

The Best by Zelma Stone

Chloe Studebaker, who records as Zelma Stone, has had a rough few years, losing an older brother, her mom, her grandfather and a close friend in succession. But with this third EP this year, she seems to be gathering her strength and getting on with things, assuring us, on “Money Honey,” that “I’m fine now, I’m fine now, I’m fine.” She is certainly a velvet-voiced singer, murmuring soothingly then kicking it up into a blues-y diva-ish crescendos. And she’s got a way with laid-back rock tunes that simmer until they boil but never lose their tunefulness. A crack band helps her get these songs across, including Tyler English from Everyone Is Dirty, doing some evocative pedal steel and electric guitar, and jazz bassist Jodi Durst, here laying down a soulful underpinning. Studebaker reminds me a whole lot of an artist named Arrica Rose (sometimes heading the Dot Dot Dots). They share a vocal timbre, but it’s more than that. They’re both polished but genuine rock interpreters who can sing and play and lead a band in a rock goddess way that has become far less common than it used to be. I’d say she’s considerably more than fine.

Jennifer Kelly  

 Various Artists — Blackford Hill Transmissions Vol. 1 (Blackford Hill)

Transmissions / Volume One by Various artists

The Scottish experimentalists here run the gamut from unearthly folk to space age electronics and sometimes bring them into alignment. A 31-track compilation curated by Blackford Hill proprietor Simon Levin features a few medium well-known names like King Creosote, whose fragile tenor wafts over the hums and moans of wheezing synths in “Stopping Out (Concrete Antenna Reinterpretation)”, and Richard Youngs in full electronic mode in “Thought Plane 2020” with wobbly beats made of notes that phase in and out of pitch. Many of these artists seek to bridge natural and cyber-derived music, as in the gorgeous “Oxgangs Elegy” from Water of Life, which merges the sound of running water and wildlife with cool, meditative synth sounds and a dopplering siren that comes from far away. Rob St. John of Water of Life makes another rather impressive appearance in “Surface Tension,” which merges piano and autumnal string arrangements and a guitar in a cut that hovers magically about a foot off the ground in meditative tranquility. Classically trained Emily Scott, who sometimes performs with Modern Studies, contributes a serene chamber string-and-voice reverie in “The Garden,” while Mac Tella Nan Creag wreathes a stoic traditional Scots tune with whistling synth tones in “Lament for the Sons of Uislu.” Ultramarine’s “Ebbtide (from Blackwaterside)” is abstract and lyrical along the lines of Jon Hopkins work, while Andrew Wasylyk’s “Adrift Amid a Constellation (Tommy Perman Remix)” sets percolating synth motifs atop a steady four-on-floor dance beat. There’s a lot here, and you will undoubtedly find your own favorites. The search is part of the fun.

Jennifer Kelly

 Various Artists — Tymbal (Fuzzy Panda Recording Company)

Tymbal by Destroyer of Worlds

Depending on the type of news you consume, you may not have heard about Brood X at all, or it might have been practically all you heard about through May and June of this year. One of the many notable things about cicadas, of course, especially en masse, is just how loud they can be. So, DC’s Fuzzy Panda Recording Company provided 25 different musicians with hours of field recordings of Brood X, and then asked them to produce tracks using only those sounds as source samples. Given the number of those trying their hand and the rather singular nature of cicada sounds, it’s not too surprising that a decent number of the resulting tracks on Tymbal sound at least part of the time like anyone who’s lived around cicadas might expect them to sound. That doesn’t mean those more straightforward attempts don’t have their own buzzing, restless energy, though, and the places where contributors do stretch further and turn the cicadas into something more striking (the stuttering computer sound of Chester Hawkins’ “Plague Madrigal,” Small Craft’s luminous “they, like the comets, make but a short stay with us,” and the closing and impressively self-descriptive “Brood X Mechanical Dancebot '38” by Love of Ruins, to take just three examples) make Tymbal something special. 

Ian Mathers 

 Wreche — All My Dreams Came True (I, Voidhanger)

All My Dreams Came True by WRECHE

Surely one of the more bizarre recordings to be issued anywhere this year, Wreche’s All My Dreams Came True is the product of one John Steven Morgan, an Oakland-based composer and keyboard player with a serious love for black metal. So far, so good — but check out the first half of “Mysterium,” a combination of flowing, new-age piano; lush, melodramatic synths; percussion that manages to blast but also to sound jazzy and restrained; and Morgan’s strangled screams. It’s completely bananas, a synthesis of musical styles that have no business being in conversation with one another, much less being in a band together. The song’s second half gives itself over to compositional forms that are recognizably blackened — especially if one has in mind the more performative and epic modes of black metal — but the instrumentation and musicianship retain the stamp of Morgan’s singular hand. And the record only gets more spectacularly strange; see “The Darkling Thrush,” which starts with what feels like a nod to Chopin, and then explodes into operatically scaled intensities. And then the song goes on like that for over nine minutes. The freaks at I, Voidhanger have an ear for this sort of wackiness, and a knack for presenting recordings like All My Dreams Came True without any winking or smirking. The record itself is an undecidable thing, dancing forever on the threshold that separates access to idiosyncratic genius from uncomfortable voyeurism—that feeling you get when you’re prying into someone’s private obsessions, with all the infernal distortions that inform an obsession suddenly on naked display. The more you listen, the more you’re convinced that there’s something profoundly moving about Morgan’s music. He sure can play.

Jonathan Shaw

[mst3kproject]

The Vindicator

 We’re heading back to Canada, the True North Strong and Free that brought us The Final Sacrifice.  Our indie movie scene up here is pretty weird and very cheap, and this is a prime example of the latter.  It’s a dimly-lit, badly-directed ripoff with shitty effects and a has-been headliner. The perfect thing for Pearl to throw Mike’s way in between her other cruel experiments.

A research guy named Carl is killed in a Science Accident at EvilCo, so his bosses save his brain to make into an indestructible cyborg I hereby dub RoboCrap.  Boy, that’s a great idea.  Not like he’ll escape and go on a rampage.  EvilCo’s boss decides that the only way to get him back is to hire Hunter, a ninja lady played by the closest thing this movie has to a star, Pam Grier. By using RoboCrap’s wife Lauren as bait, they lure him back to EvilCo for a final confrontation.  Somehow this all results in people being able to land on Mars.  I don’t know. I don’t care.

So despite a title that’s supposed to invoke The Terminator, this is in fact a ripoff of Robocop, and it’s very, very bad.  Almost Future War bad, where they really shouldn’t have tried to make this movie on this budget.  I can say in its favour that it did understand what was interesting about Robocop and tried to ape that rather than just showing us a cyborg killing people, but it still gets it all wrong.

Let us start with RoboCrap himself – I know his name is Carl because people keep yelling it at him.  He’s obviously the Alex Murphy of this story, the guy whose death is co-opted to create a killing machine, and who eventually turns this weapon against his creators while reclaiming his humanity.  They do this wrong at every stage.  RoboCop made sure we got to know Murphy just well enough to feel for his death and be interested in him rediscovering himself.  When we meet Carl we see that he’s at odds with his boss over funding, but this isn’t particularly compelling, and the only thing we know about him on a personal level is that his wife is pregnant.  It’s kind of like Hawkeye in Age of Ultron, where the existence of a family is treated as a substitute for characterization.

Having failed to humanize Carl, the movie then fails to dehumanize him.  RoboCop presented the title character to us very much as a machine, with very little idea, at first, how much of Murphy was left in him.  Carl still knows who he is and soon finds out what he is, and there’s never any doubt even among the bad guys that there’s still a human being under all that machinery.  This is illustrated best by the movie’s own visuals – one of the way’s RoboCop hid Murphy’s humanity was to cover his eyes.  The Vindicator covers everything but Carl’s eyes.

While I’m on that topic, the suit design is terrible.  Robocop had an easily recognizable silhouette that looked convincingly mechanical while not being distractingly complex. RoboCrap here looks like he’s made of garbage.  There are far too many little parts and the lighting is so bad you often can’t see anything but a mass of vaguely metallic stuff.  Even in daytime shots, you never really get an impression of what this being looks like or what any of this junk does.  The fact that you can see the actor’s eyes mostly just emphasizes that this is a stupid costume with a guy stumbling around inside of it.

Look at that.  This shot would be forty times better if he were standing in front of the yellow van, where he’d stand out, instead of in front of the scrap metal he blends right into.  Morons.

I guess the wardrobe department’s reasoning for leaving the eyes uncovered was that it would allow the actor to emote.  It’s too bad they hired a crappy actor.  He’s bad as RoboCrap, and worse in the early scenes where he’s just supposed to be Carl.  The worst thing he does is shout NOOOOOOO during the science accident, which is so awful it’s hilarious.  Then not only do they show it to us again in flashbacks, they also have him go off on another NOOOOOOO when he realizes he’s killed a bunch of people in a sewer. You can’t watch this and take it seriously.

A poorly-handled main character will kill a movie very effectively, but The Vindicator does just about everything else wrong, too.  The EvilCo boss’ reasoning for creating this cyborg never makes any sense – in fact, it makes so little sense that other characters keep pointing out how dumb it is!  When you know something in your movie is stupid, the last thing you want to do is draw attention to the fact!  Nor do we ever really know what it is Carl’s trying to achieve.  He hangs around in the sewer, leaves cryptic messages for his wife, and defends himself from a biker gang and from Hunter’s mercenaries.  Eventually he reprograms himself to remove the insta-kill mode they inexplicably installed in him, but that happens offscreen and is rather anti-climactic. The insta-kill is established for us in a scene with a lab chimp, where the CEO of EvilCo literally pokes the animal with a stick until it gets so pissed off at him it dies of a heart attack.  This is established like it should be a plot point, but we never even see anyone concerned that Carl will Rage To Death.  The movie has totally forgotten about it by the time we get that far.

Similarly, we never find out what Carl was threatening to ‘blow the whistle on’ when he argues with his boss.  EvilCo is up to some shifty stuff to be sure, but as far as I can tell from the movie we see, it’s all disguised.  The development of the robotic limbs was undercover as advanced prosthetics, the indestructible shell was a spacesuit, the mind control was only for use on animals, etc etc etc.  Even the people developing this stuff were surprised when the CEO had them bring it all together to create RoboCrap.  What did Carl know?  We never find out, because the movie never mentions it again.  I figured he would try to use secrets as leverage but nope.

Another really weird plot point has to do with the synthesizer in Carl’s house, which apparently has a short circuit or something that picks up radio broadcasts.  RoboCarp uses this to communicate with Lauren, but it’s never clear why this is necessary.  He’s perfectly able to speak, and there’s no reason why he couldn’t just phone her. Using the synthesizer doesn’t even accomplish anything in the plot – EvilCo has the house bugged, so they’re listening in on the conversations anyway!

The list of crap goes on.  There’s an annoying little kid playing in a junkyard who sees RoboCrap and asks him if he’s from outer space.  Like the ape raging itself to death in the opening scene, this kid is introduced as if he ought to be important to the plot, but he isn’t – he just stands around going ‘ooooh’ as RoboCrap lifts cars, and then he’s gone. I guess we should be glad of that, because it means we’re not obliged to put up with his ‘cute’ antics for more than a couple of minutes.  At the same time, he’s still annoying, and since he doesn’t do anything important, he’s also pointless.

One of the biggest ruined opportunities in the movie was the character of Carl’s co-worker Bert.  When they’re introduced they seem to be good friends and Carl asks Lauren to contact Bert for him so that he can ask for help.  Bert meets Carl, but it turns out to be a trap by EvilCo, who have rewarded Bert for his help with a promotion.  This makes Bert, and the conflict between his loyalty to his friend and his loyalty to his job, potentially quite interesting… but then it turns out he’s just an asshole, who only hung out with Carl at all because he was in love with Lauren.  When Lauren rejects him, he tries to kill her.

This means we don’t have to feel bad about it when RoboCrap kills Bert a few minutes later, and neither does RoboCrap himself. But honestly, it would have been a way better movie if we did.  Carl and Bert’s friendship was one of the only relationships in the movie that was properly established, and having Bert actually blackmailed into betraying him, and Carl actually forced by his programming to murder his friend, would have had far more emotional impact.  Carl is horrified by his own killing but we don’t really feel that when his victims are criminals and his evil bosses.

Is there anything good in this movie?  There’s a few things here and there.  The lab animals that escape from their cages to kill the scientist who’d been torturing them did richly deserve that revenge.  There’s a scene in which some extremely creepy dolls are used to emphasize that Carl has become an uncanny effigy of humanity or something, and it goes on way after we’ve got the idea but it’s all right.  It’s also established that RoboCrap will only kill in self-defense, when a perceived threat activates the insta-kill.  He states that he doesn’t want to kill people but cannot control this programming – so the bad guys repeatedly bring violence upon themselves when they attempt to attack him.  This is clearly intended to be ironic and kind of works.  Hunter’s suicide, when it’s very unlikely RoboCrap was actually going to kill her, functions on a similar level.

Man, this movie is bad, and it’s not even bad in a fun way – it’s just bad. It ‘got’ what made RoboCop worth watching but it still couldn’t do anything with that, and everything it could have done with what it had, it fucked up.  The result reminds me of that Fix Auto commercial where the kid flails around and ends up whacking his mom’s car instead of the pinata. They could have had something tasty, but instead they just made an expensive mess.

[bigyack-com]

When Department Stores Were Theater

After the hundreds of jobs going poof and the thus-far inadequate discounts, the saddest thing about the closure of Barneys New York is that its signature naughty window displays will recede even further in collective memory.A Hail Mary campaign earlier this year imploring shoppers to go inside even as the store declared bankruptcy (“STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT STRUT”) was but a faint echo of the era when subversive tableaus of papier-mâché public figures, found objects, condoms on Christmas trees and the occasional scampering vermin mesmerized crowds, offended cardinals and even sold some clothes.But “we’re in a post-window-display world,” said Simon Doonan, the Barneys O.G. window dresser, in a telephone interview, noting the “impenetrable facade” of Dover Street Market, heir apparent to the luxury avant-garde. Its New York entrance has only small, high apertures above pedestrian eye level.“In the old days, window displays were the primary form of marketing — fashion was the same as butcher shops and fishmongers,” he said. “Now, if you’re waiting till someone walks past your store, you’ve lost the fight.”Indeed, the bustling new Nordstrom on 57th Street dispenses with traditional boxed-in display windows entirely, replacing them with a shallow, wavy facade that John Bailey, a spokesman, assured would be festooned with red and white lights come Black Friday. The facade is “an interactive viewing experience for customers walking by,” he wrote in an email, “connecting the shopping experience in store to the energy of the city.” (And the energy of customers’ phones.) A young employee at the central help desk said elliptically that “our windows are our customer service.”Gather ’round, children, and let Auntie Alexandra tell of when department stores, now mostly glassy, anodyne places you go to exchange online purchases, used to put on a show. Sometimes more entertaining than the theater.First, though, a quick gallop through what remains of New York’s holiday windows in 2019, and the hopeful cornucopias within.At the doomed Barneys flagship on 61st Street, there was of course bubkes, just signs reading: “Everything Must Be Sold! Goodbuys, then Goodbye.” Inside on the fifth floor, female customers were listlessly flipping shoes to glance at the soles and calculate the markdown, as if with muscle memory from the much-lamented warehouse sale. Four creaky flights up, the power lunch spot Fred’s, named for Fred Pressman, Barneys’ charismatic chairman who died in 1996, was full — even as a worker held a headless naked mannequin steady by her neck on a hand truck, waiting for the elevator to go down, down, down.A few blocks away preens Bergdorf Goodman, the beautiful princess whose holding company, Neiman Marcus, muscled recently into the Hudson Yards, like a watchful mother-in-law moving into the guest cottage. There are no old-school windows at the gleaming new Neiman, being that it’s high up off the dirty street in a mall (and incidentally charging kids $72 per head for breakfast with Santa). But at Bergdorf, David Hoey, the store’s senior director of visual presentation, and his team have gamely produced a concept called Bergdorf GoodTimes. Literally gamely. Like, filled with actual games.One window was captioned “Queen’s Gambit” (chess); another, “Jackpot!” (pinball); another, “Winner Take All” (casino — perhaps a dry subconscious commentary on the high-stakes state of retail). Around the corner, a life-size board game, “Up the Down Escalator,” was dotted with fictional gift cards, coin of the online-shopping realm.Mr. Hoey’s sophisticated, colorful creations did not seem intended for little ones — and anyway those were scampering around across the street, splashing in small pools and peering into mirror-glass “sky lenses” outside the Fifth Avenue Apple store. Paging Dr. Lacan!Further east on 59th and Lexington Avenue, dear old Bloomingdale’s was flagrantly violating several of the decorative precepts set out by Mr. Doonan in his seminal 1998 book, “Confessions of a Window Dresser: Tales From a Life in Fashion.” Specifically: “do remember that technology is boring” and “don’t incorporate sex.”If Bergdorf is rolling the dice on the future of the department store — eroded perhaps irrevocably by Amazon’s mighty, corrosive flow — Bloomie’s is searching the stars. Not the celebrities whose daffy effigies used to populate Mr. Doonan’s windows, mostly with enthusiastic cooperation (Madonna, Magic Johnson, Norman Mailer, Prince, Queen Elizabeth), but a lavish commingling of astronomy and astrology titled Out of This World.Robots were placing ornaments on a tree and sitting at a synthesizer ready to play the carol of your choice at the push of a button. Google Nest, a sponsor, was poised to turn on the tree, the lights; the fire. And astronauts were floating in a “3, 2, 1, Gift Off,” or was it a “GIF Off?” Female mannequins embodying various figures of the zodiac were outfitted like go-go dancers, all pearls and feathers and curvature: propped up against each other on a pedestal as a recording played of John Legend singing, incongruously, “Christmas in New Orleans.” Inside, on the main floor, one embodying Cancer the Crab hung upside down from the ceiling: eyes closed, suspended over a hoop, hand-claws splayed, rotating slowly. Her bared, inverted legs conjured less the #MeToo era than the infamous “meat grinder” photo of the June 1978 Hustler magazine that feminists used to protest on Manhattan sidewalks.

Razzle-Dazzle in the Mezzanine

Mr. Doonan had called from Los Angeles, where he was, among other activities, promoting a monograph to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Maxfield, the boutique there. This even though when he was in the window-dressing business, “I was very anti-anniversary and I vetoed all of them. They just made the company seem old and boring. It looks dusty.”Though I agree 100 percent and moreover think the ascription of significance to particular numbers is as ridiculous as astrology, it also happens to be the 40th anniversary of a seismic and undersung event in department-store history: when the performer Elaine Stritch was the M.C. of an elaborate fashion show at Liberty of London, the emporium known for its fine fabrics. (Many women in those years still sewed household clothes from patterns.)Arranged by Peter Tear, then Liberty’s head of marketing and publicity, and choreographed by Larry Fuller of “Evita,” the show somehow managed to cross-promote the low-tar Silk Cut cigarette with a silk congress happening in London. Concordes were deployed with top models on board. Cocktails were concocted by the Café Royal down the road. Fifty-odd designers contributed special outfits for the occasion, including Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Yves Saint Laurent.Another was David Emanuel, who, with his wife and partner, Elizabeth, would design the show’s bridal gown (and later Princess Diana’s).“People gasped,” he said, remembering the Liberty event on a crackly trans-Atlantic phone line. “They were aching for ‘larger than life.’” Mr. Emanuel described Stritch — subject of my recently published biography, “Still Here” (hey, it’s the selling season) — in a sequined tuxedo jacket, singing among other numbers “Falling in Love Again” à la Marlene Dietrich to the enraptured ladies who lunch who had paid five quid admission apiece for the show, which ran thrice daily over the course of a week. “It has more punch and pulchritude packed into its 51 minutes than most West End musicals twice as long,” one newspaper commented.Mr. Doonan theorized that Liberty, fighting a dainty, twin-set image, had taken inspiration from what the storied retailer Marvin Traub was doing then at Bloomingdale’s. “The whole thing was that the store was the stage — the razzle-dazzle of flash and pizazz and lo and behold, there’s a swimwear fashion show with Pat Cleveland coming down the escalator,” he said. “Every day was ‘curtain up!’ at Bloomingdale’s.”Truly, what could be more of an ultimate fantasy set than the department store of yore, with its infinite “costumes,” props and built-in risers, its endless potential for comedy, dance, drama and even horror? Florenz Ziegfeld’s pre-code movie “Glorifying the American Girl,” showcasing his Follies, starts in one. The heroic airman in “The Best Years of Our Lives” returned to work as a soda jerk in another; ennobled by the theater of war, he chafed at his diminishment in the feminine one of trade.Barbra Streisand gamboled through Bergdorf in 1965 for her TV special, trying on fur coats and hats, spritzing perfume and singing a Fanny Brice-ish medley of “Second Hand Rose” and “Brother Can You Spare a Dime” to funny and glamorous effect. James Goldman and Stephen Sondheim’s “Twilight Zone”-inflected broadcast musical, “Evening Primrose,” was set in a department store called Stern’s, and featured a poet played by Anthony Perkins remaining after-hours, giddy at the idea of the creativity that his solitude, enhanced by all the products he needs, will stimulate. At one point he stands on an escalator belting, “I’m here! I’m here!” foreshadowing the famous anthem in Goldman and Sondheim’s own “Follies” taken up late in life by Stritch. (Later a young woman he discovers there sings of remembering snow: “Soft as feathers/ Sharp as thumbtacks.” She had been left there, in Hats, as a child by her preoccupied mother, but now with climate change the lyric sounds like prescient ecological lament.)Even after the fiasco of Andrew McCarthy at Philadelphia’s Wanamaker’s (R.I.P.) in “Mannequin” 20 years later, and the slow creep of the suburban mall, there was yet another remake of “Miracle on 34th Street.”“Where did Auntie Mame go when she lost all her money?” Mr. Doonan reminded. “Selling roller skates at Macy’s.”It’s hard to imagine, though not impossible, that department stores will remain important sites of commerce and culture much longer. But the largest one in the city is not about to go quietly. At Macy’s, which takes up an entire block, there is a jumble of every sort of window.There are old-fashioned windows devoted to the story of Virginia O’Hanlon, the little girl who wrote to The New York Sun in 1897 asking if there was still a Santa Claus. Around the corner, there are high-tech windows giving voice to a little girl who wants to be Santa Claus. And around another corner: still other windows filled simply with giant Barbies. Being female in the early 21st century is nothing if not a series of mixed messages, but this attempt to empower seemed already antiquated; if Mr. Doonan were still working on windows, surely he would have gone straight for Mx. Claus?The ghost of Barneys yet to come is at Saks Fifth Avenue, which has licensed its former rival’s name, and where windows have been themed with glittering corporate efficiency to the international blockbuster “Frozen 2.” This may delight the tourists, but city dwellers remembering the craft and chance and silliness of the old holiday extravaganzas — when the designers and the famous people and the window dressers were all sticking pins in each other, and the audiences crowded four-deep on the pavement for the free sideshow — will probably be left cold. Source link Read the full article

[orderoftheavengers]

Pure Cunning 

Summary: Never before have we seen so much ambition and cunning in a witch otherwise so righteous and selfless

House: Slytherin

Species: Human

Blood status: Pureblood

Wand: Snakewood, 12 inches, Wampus hair

Serpent Rings: A Wakandan creation, these enchanted silver snake effigies are capable of a number of destructive spells

Broom: Nah. Prefers Apparation, or if she must, Floo Powder and Portkeys.

Patronus: Leopardess

Specialties: Invisibility, Transfiguration, Legilimency, Defense Against the Dark Arts

Sorting "If you were not so stubborn you might make a good queen." "Because I am stubborn I would make a great queen!"

She is a spy—willingly, unlike Black Widow—and while she is certainly loyal to those she loves, she lets her emotions and personal principals guide her more than her sense of duty to tradition. She will stop at nothing to see the the right king on the throne, and pushes for change in Wakandan policies overseas. Naikia is possibly the purest of all the Slytherins we’ll meet; she’s never broken her country's law, except when the villain was king! And her personality has almost none of the usual Slytherin assholery. (Fact: My spellcheck recognizes “assholery” as a world...though DA's does not.) Like most Wakandans, Nakia attended Wakanda's advanced school of magic. Nakia accepted being sorted into Slytherin with all of her other "disagreeable" traits. She took to wearing elaborate green robes almost daily, often with silver trim and/or a serpentine motif.

Story

Nakia was born and raised in the wizarding nation of Wakanda. Concealed with a number of powerful spells, Wakanda has spent centuries closed off from not only the Muggles, but even the rest of the Wizarding world. Until recently, only the magical have been allowed to live in Wakanda; born squibs were exiled upon birth. As a scout, Nakia spent years in communities all over the world, both Magic and Muggle. What she witnessed made her determined to see Wakanda open up to the rest of the world. She went so far as to express a desire for the Wizarding World in general to open up to the Muggles, and offer the benefits of magic to help lessen starvation and disease.  At Hogwarts, she was brushed off as an unusually bleeding-heart Slytherin. But her ex-boyfriend, King T'Challa, eventually began to listen. Wand With how widely-traveled and and curious about the world Nakia is, it's no surprise her wandwood is from a continent on the other side of the Atlantic. (Snakewood is native to South America.) Salazar Slytherin's wand was snakewood, and Garrick Ollivander refused to use it in his wands. Like her House and opinions, Nakia's wandwood was the "bad" kind... that would help save her country, and the world. The wampus is a six-legged magical mountain lion found in the States. According to Pottermore, only Cherokee wizards have managed to synthesize its fur into wands. Once again, Nakia has a wand element from the other side of the world. The wampus has a number of abilities, among them rumored to be legilimency. Patronus The African leopard is the same species as its black panther, just with a more colorful coat. Her spots help her become nearly invisible in the brush, as she stalks her prey and watches her territory from the highest tree branch. She is one of the only animals besides Man to hunt for sport. Although she is one of Africa's most recognizable species, she can be found in several other parts of the world as well. She is flexible, vicious, beautiful, and difficult to (cough) spot. She is nocturnal solitary, but not entirely antisocial. If you can get close to her without having your face bit off, she is playful and incredibly wise. Hiding in Plain Sight Though Nakia is not supposed to be attending Hogwarts most of the time, she frequently appears in all four commonrooms, wearing Wakandan-patterned versions of all four uniforms. She is good friends with fellow spy Natasha Romanoff, as well as Gamora, and fellow Slytherin social justice activist Christine Everhart, and of course Princess Shuri. She'll also sometimes exchange information with Mad-Eye Fury, though she does not work for him.

In both battles against Thanos, Nakia was kicking ass with her snake-blades so fast that it was literally impossible to see her. While everyone knows she is accomplished at invisibility and teleportation, many also question whether she is secretly an animagus as well. She has declined comment so far.   Notes: I combined elements of Nakia's various outfits, since I couldn't decide on just one. It's really a happy coincidence that Nakia's highlighted traits are cunning and stubbornness, and that her canon fashion is so delightfully Slytherin. Unless maybe the costume designer is a Potterhead?

[katalyna-rose]

Uthenera

He couldn’t remember anymore.

The sound of her voice could no longer be conjured in his mind, and the touch of her hand no longer existed in his thoughts. He couldn’t remember the exact shade of her eyes anymore, and the texture of her hair had been lost. He tried to sketch her again, as he had done so many times, but the slope of her cheek looked wrong and he couldn’t fix it. The drawings he’d made of her when he still had her to reference had crumbled to dust over the long centuries since her death, and he no longer remembered what she looked like.

It tore a hole in his chest wider and more ragged even than the one he’d had when he realized that his people had not thrived in his absence, that the Veil had taken all that they were from them. He’d made a promise to her that he would never forget yet he sat in a tent with his sketchbook and charcoal and he could not even draw her face.

But he remembered her heart. Var lath vir suledin! She’d meant every word with every fiber of her being, and she had loved him to the end. She’d taken her final breath in his arms, warm and safe and loved. He remembered her sorrow as she touched his face one last time and whispered, I don’t want to leave you alone. But she’d had no choice as the Beyond called her away.

He returned to her grave once more because he had forgotten once again. He could not bear to see it but once every millennia when he forgot the sound of her voice because it hurt too much to be reminded of all that he would never have again. He dropped his pack and sat in the embrace of the large roots of the ancient willow tree to wait.

“You’ve returned,” a voice whispered across the breeze, and he shuddered with the memory of its previous owner. “You come back to me so rarely and it has been so long, I did not think to see you again.”

He turned to find the source of the voice and saw the spirit hovering above him, veiled by trailing branches. He stood to greet her properly and said, “Will you come down and show her to me again?”

“Why?” the spirit asked, remaining where it was. “This doesn’t help you. You come here so infrequently and ask to see, but it only causes you pain. It hurts you to come here, to see what has become of her, yet you keep coming back anyway. Why?”

“I made a promise,” he told the spirit.

“A promise to hurt yourself with a memory you would be happier without?”

“Don’t say that,” he snapped, then cringed as the spirit began to retreat. “I apologize for my rudeness. I am in pain only because I no longer have her at my side. But I need the memory of her or it will hurt worse to know that I have broken my word.”

“She would understand,” the spirit cooed, drifting from the branches but not solidifying into the form he needed to see. “She never wanted you to linger like this, trapped in the past.”

He was quiet for a moment, knowing the spirit was right but not knowing how he could possibly move on. “She was everything to me,” he whispered at last.

The spirit sighed and he could sense its disapproval, but its form wavered, shivered, and then coalesced into the woman he’d loved for so long. She was exquisite, all cheeks and big violet eyes, pale hair falling like waves of silk down her shoulders and back. He smiled at her and cupped her cheek to feel the softness of her skin, then drew her into his arms to feel her against him, to smell the roses and lavender in her hair. He’d tried many times to recreate the scent, to keep her with him in some small way, but there was something about it that he couldn’t copy, some scent of her skin that he couldn’t synthesize. Her arms came around him in return and they stood there holding each other in silence for a long while. When at last he released her she put her hands on his face to smile at him.

“There you are, vhenan,” she said, as though greeting him after an afternoon apart. “I’ve missed you.”

“I have missed you more than you could know, ma sa’lath,” he replied, his voice breaking. Fingers combed through her hair, traced the shape of her full lips, trembling all the while. “My Lyna, you are so beautiful.”

Her smile widened, pleased. “You always say that,” she told him, laughter in her tone.

“It will always be true.” They stood there a while longer, indulging in little touches. His heart soared to see her once more, even if it wasn’t real, even if she couldn’t stay.

When reality hit him once more with the knowledge that she was dead, that even her body no longer existed, she wiped his tears and sang a lullaby that she’d learned from her Dalish clan. Even that song had been lost to time and she was the only one who still knew it.

“I’m here, I’m here,” she crooned to him when the tears would not slow.

He held her gently, kept her close, and shook his head. “You are not. I loved you more than anything I have ever known, but you exist now as a memory and a tree. You asked me to bury you as the custom of your people dictated and I thought it would bring me comfort to know that you endure here, in this beautiful tree. But it does not. You haunt me still. But I cannot, I will not leave you behind.”

She sighed, sorrow on her face, and wiped at his tears with her thumbs. “Oh, vhenan. I never left,” she sighed to him. “I am here in every step you take in this world I helped to build. I am in every spirit you greet, in every sapling that grows healthy and strong. I am in our people, who thrive at last because of us. And I am in you.” She pressed her hand over his heart. “You endure because I asked it of you, because I wanted you to find happiness again. But now you linger in agony and your face has been forgotten by our people. A wanderer now, they do not know what you have done for them. Isn’t it time to rest, my love? You don’t need to do this to yourself any longer.” She stepped back and gestured at the great forest that surrounded the tree her body had grown. “Look at this place. Each of these trees holds my memory, a forest grown from me. I am here in this wood and I am in this world. My memory will never fade to nothing.” She stepped into his embrace once more. “But you, my love. You are fading. You are so tired.” Her hands cupped his face, thumbs stroking the dark circles under his eyes. “It’s time to rest.”

***

The hikers found a secret place within a forest older than time itself, where the spirits spoke languages they didn’t know and peered at the strangers from the branches of trees that twined together like lovers. At the heart of the forest was the largest willow that they had ever seen, a stream passing beneath its roots to keep the forest fed.

Lovingly embraced by the roots of the willow, which grew around it but caused no damage, was a stone coffin where an elder slept, body untended and likely dead. The hikers approached, curious but cautious, and a spirit smiled at them from the branches of the willow just above the ancient tomb.

There was no debris of the forest upon the surface and the carving was as clear to the eye as the day it was set in its place. The effigy was of an elven man who held in his arms an elven woman. The man was carved at rest, eyes closed and deeds done, but the woman seemed to meet their eyes with a kind smile as she watched over her lover. The coffin was big enough only for one.

A hiker found the text on the side of the coffin and alerted her companion, but they couldn’t read it. The dialect was so old that they couldn’t decipher it until the spirit in the branches above them floated gracefully down. It sat on the edge of the effigy and lovingly stroked the stone face of the man. Suddenly the text was perfectly legible.

“He promised he would not forget her, and she promised their love would endure. She exists in every tree of this forest, in every breath you take, and he lost himself to her, but he did not die alone. Here lies Solas in the embrace of his lover Lyna, once of Clan Lavellan. May they find each other’s souls in the Beyond and never be parted again.”

In silence, and not understanding the tears of mourning they shed, the hikers left the lovers to their embrace. It was not a thing meant to be witnessed by the living, and it left a mark upon their hearts.

[wigginsgray8-blog]

The smart Trick of juin That No One is Discussing

References to dance can be found in quite early recorded background; Greek dance (horos) is referred to by Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch and Lucian.[seven] The Bible and Talmud seek advice from quite a few situations linked to dance, and consist of more than thirty various dance conditions.[8] In Chinese pottery as early since the Neolithic interval, groups of consumers are depicted dancing inside a line Keeping hands,[nine] and the earliest Chinese term for "dance" is found prepared during the oracle bones. Right here you find curriculum penned to assist the Instructor and university student to aid the training of dance being an artwork form. Consists of Strategies for K through 12 quality concentrations. Indian classical audio offers accompaniment and dancers of nearly all the models dress in bells all over their ankles to counterpoint and enhance the percussion. [forty three] Some, including the maypole dance are common to several nations, while some including the céilidh and the polka are deeply-rooted in only one tradition. Some European people dances including the square dance have been brought to The brand new Earth and subsequently grew to become portion of American tradition. By 1981, a completely new kind of dance new music was building. This songs, created making use of electronics, can be a kind of well-known music generally played in dance new music nightclubs, radio stations, displays and raves. For the duration of its gradual drop within the late 1970s, disco became motivated by computerization (the primary notable thoroughly synthesized disco strike was "I Feel Adore" by Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte with lyrics by Donna Summer season). " He writes: "... simulachres les dis ie vrayement, pour ce que simulachre vient de simuler, & faindre ce que n'est level." ("Simulachre These are most properly called, for simulachre derives from the verb to simulate and to feign that which is not really there.") He up coming employs a trope in the memento mori (recall most of us need to die) custom plus a metaphor from printing which effectively captures the undertakings of Dying, the artist, as well as the printed book in advance of us where these simulachres of Loss of life barge in around the living: "Et pourtant qu'on n'a peu trouver selected moreover approchante a la similitude de Mort, que la personne morte, on d'icelle effigie simulachres, & faces de Mort, pour en nos pensees imprimer la memoire de Mort moreover au vis, que ne pourroient toutes les rhetoriques descriptiones de orateurs." [11] ("And however we can not learn any another thing additional close to the likeness of Demise in comparison to the dead them selves, whence arrive these simulated effigies and pictures of Loss of life's affairs, which imprint the memory of Dying with more pressure than all the rhetorical descriptions with the orators at any time could."). Illustrations are western ballet and contemporary dance, Classical Indian dance and Chinese and Japanese music and dance dramas. Most classical varieties are centred upon dance on your own, but functionality dance can also surface in opera and various types of musical theatre. These illustrations are actually quickly selected and should comprise sensitive content. Go through far more… Annonce le seven juin Le secrétaire britannique au Trésor doit annoncer avant le 7 juin la décision de la Grande-Bretagne. Paladin Danse wears a full set of Brotherhood of Steel T-sixty electric power armor, minus the helmet. Following Blind Betrayal He'll up grade to an X-01 electric power armor suit. Not like other companions, he can not be commanded to depart his electricity armor, plus the areas usually do not look in his inventory. A weekly pole has proven which the president's recognition is declining. A weekly poll has shown that the president's acceptance is declining. danse can be assembled in a lot less than forty five minutes. Suitable instructions for assembling is presented in addition to buyer treatment executives on-line are there to help you. Taking the time necessary to find out about home furniture shopping is vital to mastering it. When you want to save cash and yet get what precisely you will need, without the need of sacrificing excellent, Meaning doing all your exploration. This information will get started you off by supplying quite a few recommendations which will allow you to inside your quest. Whilst even further study is probably required, I've go through from a handful of sources that the Females are quite proud of their prolonged hair and Hence the khaliji dance usually consists of the tossing of free, extended hair from facet-to-facet, just like the “shaking of drinking water out with the ear. This is the website of an organization that aims to offer companies and information for folk dancers, folks dance leaders and people dance teams in the course of The us and Canada.

[grindpromotionrecords]

Finally back in stock! On their debut full-length LP for Sentient Ruin Canadian/American gore/war noise butchers Bestial Putrefaction reach the zenith of total audial barbarity, hoisting atop a fuming stockpile of severed limbs and rotting flesh the foul banner of total gore and immorality. A remastered compilation featuring their recent self-released "Gore Drenched Barbarism" EP on side A and their previous self-released debut demo tape on side B, the "Eternal Flesh Ripping Chaos" LP (an obvious ode to the legend of early Carcass) condenses all tracks released so far by the band under a new single effigy of total continuous terror, bringing to light the senseless audial savagery that paved the deranged duo's emergence from the nethermost pits of depravity and established them as an authentic living monument to complete chaos and inhumanity. Synthesized from the most outlandish outer limits of bestial war metal, goregrind and pure noise, the band's barely held together terrorscape stands out as an authentic and barely explainable absurdity, as it launches into senseless exaggerations of audial violence and barbarity borderlining both the shocking and the unexplainable. In its horrid twenty-six track, twenty-eight minute onslaught of total inhumanity and abandon "Eternal Flesh Ripping Chaos" sees Bestial Putrefaction chaotically condense the violence and perversion of diverse extreme entities like Revenge, early Carcass, Chaos Cascade, Archgoat, and Pissgrave with Japanese noise and crasher crust to wage a violent and gruesome war against the purity and dignity of christendom and execute a vile act of ultimate and definitive defilement toward the human race and all its manifestations in every shape and form. #bestialputrefaction #sentientruinlaboratories #deathmetal #blackmetal #chaos #noise #blackeneddeathmetal #heavymetal #extrememusic #vinyladdict #vinylgeek #vinylgram #vinylrecords #vinylcommunity #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinylcollector #records #recordcollection #recordcollector (presso Bassano del Grappa) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWdrCB-IxIR/?utm_medium=tumblr

[doomedandstoned]

A//TAR Perform “Arcana” Live at Ceremony of Sludge

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

It was the last live performance I attended in 2020, before orders were given by the Governor of Oregon to shelter in place. I'd heard about the novel coronavirus outbreak and the still mysterious disease it caused, COVID-19, but was crossing my fingers it hadn't spread too far into Portland yet. This was, after all, the annual Ceremony of Sludge! A tradition for nine years and counting, organized by Witch Mountain's Justin Brown. It brought together some of the most impressive new and long-standing heavy underground acts that the Pacific Northwest had to offer.

Everyone was in good spirits. No one had yet heard about the notion of social distancing, wearing masks, or taking that occasional sip from your buddy's beer. For one brief night, we could let our hair down (well, some of us who still have hair to boast of) and have a good time, as naive as that may sound in retrospect.

Four incredible bands took the stage on that March 6th eve at the World Famous Kenton Club, where I've shot many a show. On this Friday evening, I decided to leave the Canon at home and just let myself enjoy the music first hand, as so often my experience of live performances is through the lens (which I rarely peel my eyes from).

Today, Doomed & Stoned is premiering footage from that very night, revealing the song "Arcana" from A//TAR (or Alltar, should you prefer). If you haven't encountered them before, their sludgy-doom and post-metal stylings, with touches of atmospheric mysticism and Near-Eastern sound, establish the five-member outfit as truly one of a kind.

You'll recognize some of the members from other bands around town: Hound The Wolves, Tigers on Opium, Sixous, to name a few. The Portland scene tends to cross-pollinate a lot, which I suppose accounts for the creativity behind Alltar's unique sound.

I asked Frontman Juan Carlos Caceres about how these remarkable doom fantasias (and "Arcana," in particular) spring to life:

We have a pretty set in stone approach to writing our music. The musicians will compose riffs and string them together into a loose arrangement. However in this band, one of the creative choices we make is that Tim will title the arrangement. Once the music has a flow or is sounding like a song, they will pass it along to me and I will take that “title” and use it as the inspiration for the lyrical content and story of the song.

From there I’ll come in with arrangement ideas and help produce the song into its final arrangement by adding vocals/synths, and ultimately shaping how the song plays out from anything like needing things to be repeated for a certain length, to adding other sections that help the music sound like a song and not a string of riffs.

This can make for a long process to the end result, however with “Arcana” it actually came together very quickly. If I recall correctly it was two rehearsals. The song originated from a riff Colin brought to the table and the band spent a rehearsal coming up with some parts. They emailed it to me along with the title “Arcana”. I was deeply intrigued by this title and the fact that the word means secrets/mysteries. I quickly dove into writing the lyrics and had a full working version ready to go for the next rehearsal.

Deep in our genetic makeup, are the stories of centuries, the stories of evolution, the stories of failure, and the stories of progress. I gravitated quickly to this thought process and used the concept “Arcana” to tell the story of a message hidden deep within us, that guides us, whispers to us, but we are only aware of it through intuition and practice.

As to the meaning of "Arcana" and the influences driving the four songs on the setlist for the forthcoming album, 'Live At Ceremony of Sludge IX' (2021), Juan adds:

One of my favorite books is 'The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind' by Julian Jaynes. He proposed that the human brain existed in a bicameral state until about 3000 years ago. The theory is widely disputed but nonetheless I find the concept of our growth of consciousness fascinating.

There are hints of this in the lyrics, along with hints of evolving further into our next state of being. I really like to use phrases that portray a strong visual imagery that the listener can perhaps interpret in several ways. With this song, I wanted the listener to be curious whether we are in the past, present, or future.

Are we conscious automata? Are we free willed? Are we guided by things planted deep in our subconscious and genetic make up? Unlocking the mysteries of our consciousness and our DNA to propel ourselves into the next cycle of life, is what this song is about.

Performance Stills by Stephanie Savenkoff

Deep thoughts indeed to guide this deep cut from an album that will surely leave its mark upon you. "Arcana" is rich with esoteric atmosphere, enhanced by thoughtful instrumental details, brimming with attitude, carried by transcendent vocals that stir the heart with its cryptic creed.

Out February 12th, Alltar's Live From Ceremony of Sludge IX can be gotten on compact disc, as well as in digital format (pre-order here).

Give ear...

A//tar - Arcana

Lyrics

Messenger Show yourself Deep your roots plant themselves Further than time itself Unfolding

Whispering in my ear Only things I can hear Forever unknowing Unfolding

Library Circuitry Loops caught infinity Only you only me

Unfolding Unfolding Unfolding Unfolding

Mystery hidden deep in the sea Buried underwater effigy There is a message carved onto it Only one human can know of it Only one human can know of it

Open ocean Part ways for us all Open ocean Part ways for us all

All knowing Arcana Genetic permanence

DNA AND palindrome Mirrors speak in parables Offering miracles Unfolding

Splice open chromosomes Rewire what we know Binary in revolt Unfolding

46 deep in me 46 let me be Shadow step out of me

Unfolding Unfolding Unfolding Unfolding

Mystery hidden deep in the sea Buried underwater effigy There is a message carved onto it Only one human can know of it Only one human can know of it

Open ocean Part ways for us all Open ocean Part ways for us all

All knowing Arcana We are genetic permanence

All knowing Arcana

Some Buzz

Bring your pain, your loss, and your love and place it on the Alltar, as we honor those that came before us. Emerging from the Pacific Northwest region, Portland’s Alltar set out a two-fold reminder: one, of the potency behind a doom, sludge, and post-metal blend; and two, of just how good live music will be once it returns. After the successful release of their début Hallowed, the quintet’s next move is to release a live record commemorating a stunning set at Ceremony of Sludge in their hometown, which saw a stacked bill including Usnea and Brume shake The World Famous Kenton Club back in March.

“Ceremony of Sluuuuudge, baby!” comes booming through the speakers from vocalist Juan Carlos Caceres, whose amiable attitude contrasts with both the Ozzy-like wailing and harsher screaming - both of which hitting impressive peaks on “War Altar”. The lyrics draw from a wide range of topics; in the bands’ words, “the triumphs and tribulations of human-kind. From the technical and artistic birth of society’s achievements in art and technology, as well as the rise of power, war, destruction, and the control of humanity.”

Live at Ceremony of Sludge by Alltar

One unusual feature of this release is just how damn good the mix is for such a young band in a festival format. Aside from the vocals soaring and shrieking, the drums pop and crash, the bass rumbles with menace, and the cavernous rhythm guitars are hypnotic. The five work seamlessly to stir the genre-melding pot, the contents of which contain pinches of Neurosis’ Souls at Zero, Amenra’s Mass series, latter-day Elder, and Cult of Luna.

The record itself is akin to a beast that awakens - it starts with smooth guitar lines interwoven with Moog synthesizers on “Arcana”, while by the time “Cantillate” rolls around, there’s an unfolding crescendo of crunch. And then, just as the audience recovers from the devastating closer, a simple “thank you, we’re Alltar, Glasghote is up next!” It’s over in a short space of time, but that’s the beauty of live albums - there’s always the replay button.

Alltar is:

Nate Wright - drums  (Hound the Wolves, Tigers On Opium)

Tim Burke - guitars, samples  (ex-Boneworm, Hound the Wolves, Electric Ring, ex-Skull Island)

Colin Hill - guitars, samples

Juan Carlos Caceres - vocals, Moog synthesizers  (Tigers On Opium, ex-Sioux, Hound the Wolves, The Hungry Ghost)

Casey Braunger - bass  (He is Me)

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[sciencespies]

Smithsonian Elevates the Frequently Ignored Histories of Women

https://sciencespies.com/history/smithsonian-elevates-the-frequently-ignored-histories-of-women/

Smithsonian Elevates the Frequently Ignored Histories of Women

Historians remember September 1781 as the month the Continental Army began its last major land battle, bolstering the rebel Americans’ morale and breaking Britain’s will to fight. But something more prosaic happened that month when 13-year-old Betsy Bucklin sat down with needle and thread to work on her sampler. She was not alone: Countless girls of the era stitched samplers to show off their most advanced needlework skills. As Bucklin sewed in her Rhode Island home, she worked the delicate silk threads into the shapes of animals, trees, flowers and people.

Upper-class girls like Bucklin did not go to war. Instead, the war came to Bucklin’s sampler as she stitched. “While hostile foes/our coasts Invade/in all the pomp of war arrayd Americans be not dismayed nor fear the sword or Gun,” she sewed. “While innocence is all our pride and virtue is our only Guide Women would scorn to be defyd if led by WASHINGTON.”

Did Bucklin write the patriotic verse herself, or did she stitch it at the behest of her sewing teacher? The answer is lost to history. But Bucklin’s sampler still exists today, a testament to past girlhood and the passionate sentiments held by women during the Revolutionary War.

Betsy Bucklin completed this sampler work in September 1781 just weeks before the decisive Battle of Yorktown.

(Smithsonian Books)

More

Bucklin’s handiwork is one of the hundreds of artifacts featured in Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity, and Vision from the National Collection, out now from Smithsonian Books.

Packed with ordinary objects made and used by American women, the book considers their contributions to the nation’s history through the lens of the things they invented, created and owned. It’s a sampler unto itself, taking a wide-ranging tour through the Smithsonian Institution’s massive collections and pulling out everyday items with extraordinary tales to tell.

An axe, a cup and saucer, a charm bracelet and a tea-length gown might seem ho-hum if not for their origin stories. But the book provides context that justifies their inclusion in the national collection and casts them in a new light—as part of American women’s legacies of agitation, resistance, struggle and change.

The axe was carried by a reform-minded member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, a coalition that thrust women into political activism on an anti-alcohol platform, in the 1870s. The cup and saucer were created in the 1930s by Belle Kogan, a pioneer of industrial design. The charms were chosen by suffragist and Equal Rights Amendment author Alice Paul, who added a new one to the bracelet each time a state ratified the ERA during the 1970s. And the gown was worn at the 1959 high school graduation of Minnijean Brown, one of the Little Rock Nine, when she accepted her diploma.

Brown was among the nine black students who were the first to attend all-white high schools during the desegregation battles that roiled the South after Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional in 1954. But she didn’t graduate from Central High School; after being expelled for defending herself against the attacks of racist students, she completed her high school education in New York. (A suspension notice from one of the times Brown fought back against white students’ sustained harassment is included, too.)

“With its sheer white overlay and delicate floral pattern, the dress belies the difficult—and at times ugly—journey of attending and graduating from an integrating high school in the 1950s,” writes curator Debora Shaefer-Jacobs of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

Science writer Maia Weinstock designed a Women of NASA LEGO prototype, “Ladies Rock Outer Space,” featuring from left: Margaret Hamilton, Katherine Johnson, Sally Ride, Nancy Grace Roman and Mae Jemison.

(Smithsonian Books)

More

Synthesizing more than 400 years of American women’s history into 248 pages is an ambitious and nearly unachievable task. Curator and historian Michelle Delaney, the project’s director, acknowledges the challenge. “Curators and archivists suggested over two thousand objects for this volume,” she writes. “We are seeking to restore a history too frequently ignored.”

A focus on historical resistance, reform, protest and backlash helps break through what might otherwise be a historical logjam. So does the book’s attempt to give women of color their due. The compendium goes beyond a focus on famous women of color (think: Sojourner Truth and Oprah Winfrey) to incorporate the lives of less-celebrated women, like Mississippian artisans who created clay effigies of divine women between 1400 and 1600 and Natalia Flores, a Mexican American Chicagoan whose quinceañera gown is included.

This 1959 tea-length dress belonged to Minnijean Brown, who was one of the Little Rock Nine who helped to integrate an all-white high school following Brown v. Board of Education.

(Smithsonian Books)

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Volunteers in the Women’s Temperance Union, who took their demands to the streets with prayers and hymns—and sometimes an axe—gained political agency, forcing changes in their communities and nation.

(Smithsonian Books)

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This suffrage wagon served as a traveling podium, makeshift newsstand and rolling billboard.

(Smithsonian Books)

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Designed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, the volume is crammed with 135 essays by 95 Smithsonian authors and images of 280 artifacts from 16 Smithsonian museums and archives. But the collection, produced by the Smithsonian American Women’s History Initiative, “Because of Her Story,” goes beyond statistics. Taken together, the artifacts and essays breathe life into ordinary and extraordinary moments in American women’s lives.

At first, Delaney says, the question of how to do justice to American women’s lives in a single volume seemed overwhelming. “It took us a long time to break free of a really patriarchal chronology,” she says. Instead of focusing on American wars and politics, says Delaney, the book’s editors tried to tell a story through the lens of American women’s everyday lives—stories that intersected and ran parallel to the nation’s unfolding story. “We talked a lot about how the personal is political,” says Delaney. “There is something to be said for how each personal life is affected by the state of the nation.”

Tellingly, the book’s most powerful pages are the ones that show women in their most personal pursuits: the activism of a grieving mother, the labor of an entrepreneurial cook, a persecuted sculptor’s masterpiece, a marginalized midwife ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work. Mundane, world-changing and everything in between, each artifact speaks to lives that, stitched together, track the trajectory of American women and the nation they shape, serve and sometimes struggle against.

#History

[idiosyncraticwordsmith]

I got back to replaying ME1 and MAN did I forget how GOOD the first Sovereign interaction is.

The timing of it is perfect - this is the middle of a heavy assault on the enemy headquarters and you’ve just received the same vision that started all of this - and now you’re encountering the real master of this darkness, an entity whose very first introduction is to call you a “rudimentary creature of flesh and blood” saying that “you touch my mind, fumbling in ignorance, incapable of understanding.”

All of that in the most intimidating, groaning, synthesized voice I’ve ever heard. It’s like ancient oak being bent and refusing to break put through a vocalizer. You instantly know, between the background music (A+ composition btw) and the appearance of this holographic effigy and the sound of its ancient, eldritch voice, that this isn’t just about some terrorist or about galactic conquest - this is something much deeper, much darker, and much more horrifying. And then his words, especially such lines as “We are the end of everything” and “You exist because we allow it - you will die, because we demand it”, confirm that fear. And he offers no explanation. No answers. Ask him all the questions you please, he doesn’t care, he will simply remind you how insignificant you are.

It’s a scene that gives me goosebumps every time, and I honestly feel like it’s a pinnacle moment of contemporary sci-fi.

[eclatecerise-blog]

The Definitive Guide a maison neuve constructeur

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