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unforth · 4 years

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Hi there! I absolutely loooove the destiel fic collection and think that it's a genius way to expose fans to fics that might not always get as much attention on fic recs and when searching on ao3. I was thinking of trying to create a similar collection for another fandom and was wondering if you have any tips? Or if there's anything that you wish you knew when you started it? Thank you!

Hi!! Just for openers, sorry I didn’t reply to this yesterday, my mom’s basement flooded and took with it all my writing time, sigh. ANYWAY. On to the topic at hand. How to make a “faves survey” for another fandom, and have it resemble what I’ve made for Destiel? Well, here’s what I’ve done, hopefully some of it will be applicable to you...

1. This is the most important part: Do NOT let it become or be perceived as a popularity contest. Never release the raw stats (except perhaps to a small number of people who you trust to help you). Never announce a “winner.” Never share a ranked list. Never act as if more votes equals better. Never ever suggest in anyway that your purpose to find “the best.” Treat people and fics who get one vote with just as much fanfare as people and fics who get 50 votes. I do release a “top 20″ list just because so many people asked, but even then, it’s in alphabetical order, and meant more as a snapshot. Encourage people to vote for their favorites that aren’t already in whatever collection you end up making, and encourage people to vote for things they don’t usually see on rec lists. Aim for an expansive range of types of fics being voted for, and make it clear - no ship shaming (or secondary ship shaming, if yours is ship-based like mine, rather than being general to a given fandom) or kink shaming.

2. Keep the survey super simple. People don’t read complex instructions, and they’re not going to want to rank lists or anything like that. You can see the one I use here. Feel free to emulate it, copy it, modify it for your own purposes. I used to just do boxes but people would routinely put in way more than 5/10, and while I didn’t really mind the extras, it greatly increased the amount of work I had to do, and since the survey routinely gets a couple hundred replies that I go through, I decided to make it a little harder for people to go over the limits. Don’t bother asking for people’s names or trying to validate the results. I’ve tried. People don’t want to put their names, and validation encourages people not to submit...AND doesn’t prevent cheating...so is really pointless. Just keep it anonymous, after four rounds I can say...that works best.

3. And, speaking of people going over the limits, and cheating...people will cheat. No matter how clear you are that number of votes don’t matter, no matter how much you insist that whatever data you’re collecting will only be used in so-and-so a way...you will spot people “cheating,” for various definitions of the word cheating. People who vote for their own works. People will submit multiple surveys. People will “ballot box stuff” for their favorite(s). People will list more than the maximums you’ve asked them to. People will submit works from other ships, and - though it’s never happened to me - if you make it fandom-general I’ll lay heavy odds at least one dumbass will submit for some other fandom entirely. It happens in different permutations every time, some more obvious than others, but it happens. And the conclusion I reached is...so fucking what? In the end, since the idea is to highlight as many different great works as possible...screw it. Let people vote for themselves. Let people ballot box stuff. Let people submit multiple surveys, or list more than whatever maximums you’ve set. In the end, since every work is treated as equal and one vote is worth as much as a hundred...if they’re cheating to up the vote count, it’s irrelevant, and if they’re cheating to vote for more works, then yay! more works to include! and basically the only thing I’ve found that reduces cheating is to make it absolutely clear to people that I’d really rather they not but ultimately I can’t stop them, so do their thing I guess? And it does help. I got less cheating each time I do it, or at least less that I’m able to catch lol. (as a side note - the one exceptions is the “works for others ships.” Those you can see listed on the “INELIGIBLE” sheet of the spreadsheet I link below, but I don’t add them to the AO3 collection.)

4. Spreadsheets are your best friend. You’re going to want some way to organize the data you’re collecting. I’ve got a public version of the sheet I use that you can see here. It’s pretty similar to my “private” version, except the private version includes actual vote counts, separated by which time(s) I did the survey that the work in question got votes. I mostly use that data so I can do comparisons over the years (“this year X works were added to the collection that were never in it before!”) and because I like numbers. However, depending on how exactly you plan to use the data, you may not even need to tally vote counts, and you could do one that’s more similar to my public version. Also, if you make an AO3 collection, you’re going to want some way to track which works you’ve invited, which have been added, etc., cause otherwise it’s just a nightmare to keep track of. (a little more on this later).

5. Decide how and where you’re going to share your data - as an AO3 collection? As a public spreadsheet? On social media? Maybe you want to make a side Tumblr just for it? Or a Discord server? etc. etc. Like, I’ve got a pillowfort group (though I hardly use it) and a channel in a Discord server (thanks again to the PB folks for making space for me!) with the AO3 collection being the main portal. You want to make sure that it’s advertised enough that people know it exists, and also be prepared that short term you’ll hear basically no feedback on whether people use it, and even long term it’ll be once in a blue moon and suddenly eight people will be like WAIT YOU’RE THE PERSON BEHIND THAT THING I LOVE THAT THING. In that respect it can feel a little thankless but I’ve definitely found that people do use it, it’s just that there’s no real way for people to let YOU know they’re using it (and, honestly...good? This isn’t really about us, after all, it’s about all these fic writers, the goal is to bring attention to them, not ourselves, we’re just a go-between for the writers and the readers.)

6. For making an AO3 collection, you’ll have to invite every single work individually. Some people have their accounts set to auto-accept invites, but otherwise whether the work actually gets added will depend on the authors. Some people will never accept the invite. Some people won’t know how to accept the invite. Some people will accept the invite and then subsequently remove their work. Some people have left these parts completely and will never even see the invite. That’s why it’s important to track who has added and who hasn’t, and periodically double check it (I double check every six months or so). For the people who don’t accept the invites for whatever reason, you can bookmark the item to the collection. HOWEVER, if you do this with your personal account, every single one of those bookmarks will be listed under your personal AO3, which is why I ultimately made the Faves survey its own account - it’s entirely to facilitate bookmarking. You can also use the “Bookmark External Work” feature to link to works that aren’t on AO3, and to tag them to whatever extent you want to. Here’s some examples of how I chose to bookmark external works.

7. Things will inevitably get complicated. Authors will change their names. People who do the survey will use shorthand you’ve never heard of for some fic you don’t know. People will misspell things and you’ll either recognize it even with the typo...or you won’t. People will vote for things that list eight different ships and you’ll have no idea which one is endgame. People will vote for things that have been deleted, or they’ll tell you it’s definitely on AO3 when it’s not, it’s on some other platform. The list of random things I’ve had to deal with is stupidly long and I’ve probably forgotten even more. Just...roll with it. Do your best. Ask for help (“Someone nominated a fic abbreviated as ABC to the collection and didn’t give the author and I have no idea what it is, help me Tumblr!”). And in the end, if you’ve done everything you can think of and you still don’t know...let it go. It’s just not that worth worrying about. And sometimes if you step away and look again in a few days you’ll figure out another way to search and it’ll pop up. But honestly I’ve got a handful of works I still haven’t been able to track down, and that one work that someone submitted that’s only available in Finnish and is explicit and behind a log-in wall on a small independent Finnish-only fic archive...well, I spoke to the author and confirmed the work exists, but otherwise...whelp, it’s not linked, and I did my best. That’s all you can do.

8. No matter what you do, someone somewhere will probably get upset about it. The first time I did the survey, when it got the most traction, I actually got a little hate, and I got some anons who were like “oooooo did you know that ~x~ is cheating” and I had a little “HOW DARE YOU NOT PLAY FAVORITES WHAT ABOUT MY PERSONAL FAVE?” and just...decide how you’re approaching the survey, and stick to your guns, and if anyone is a douche, hit the block button. And, related...

9. Transparency is most important imo. Not transparency for vote counts obviously, but transparency for what you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and what you hope to accomplish. Make sure your goals are clear from the start (mine weren’t that first time, hence some of the problems I encountered) - if it’s to highlight as wide a range of works as possible, say that. If it IS to pick a favorite, say that too. Just be clear, and honest, and above board, and it should work out okay.

10. Side note...one of the saddest things about all this is that if you do it over an extended period you’ll see authors deleting their works. As such, I personally chose to download every work that gets a vote, that way it’s at least preserved. I then expanded that into a much larger archive that I’m still adding to all the time, trying to save as much Destiel as possible. But then, I’m an archivist at heart, whether you want to branch out in that kind of direction is up to you.

...okay, that’s everything I can think of. Hopefully I didn’t scare you too bad. I don’t know what fandom/ship you’re looking at but for perspective...first time I did the survey I got about 400 replies, and then the next two times it got about 200, and this most recent time it got about 300. I chose to do mine annually, on the assumption that gives some time for people to come and go for fandom and a lot of new works to get created, and I deliberately timed it for about a month after the biggest fandom event (the DCBB) that generates fics, to give people time to read those fics and consider them in their voting. For me, that means I happen to run the survey starting on January 1st, and I keep it limited to 15 days, since usually it tapers off anyway. But you could try experimenting with different schedules, or leaving it open all the time, etc., it just depends how much time you want to devote to monitoring and updating it. For me, I mostly want to do a big burst of work and then not have to think about it most of the rest of the time, lol.

So...questions? comments? thoughts? wanna tell me I’m dead wrong? I’m all ears, lemme know how I can help!

#destiel favs survey #unforth replies #sorry if this is a mess I've GOT to do some writing so I don't want to take the time to edit it #treatlouwithkindness

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script-a-world · 4 years

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Do you have any existing examples of world building a future that's actually accurate and predictive of the future? Say, ones that have depicted the last 5 years with some accuracy but created over 15 years ago. Or perhaps some future ones that aren't extreme sci fi writing genetically modified humans with superpowers or time travel in the next 50 years.

Tex: The Simpsons sure did give things a go (Metro, Business Insider).

That said, I could throw out some arguments in the line of “100% predictions are plausibly from time-travellers and would skew the time-line, likely creating catastrophic effects on spacetime as we know it” or something, but that would very quickly derail your question.

More realistically, Star Trek did a damn good job on the technological front (The Portalist, Quartz), and their cultural impact has been so significant that there’s a wiki on it. In this instance, I would argue rather more that the genre of sci-fi in particular has inspired our current technological advances - when we have an idea posited to us, it no longer becomes “impossible”, merely “improbable”.

Humans have historically liked a good challenge (or on the flip-side, really dislike being told no), so I would say that eventually most sci-fi things are created by sheer stubbornness. A warp drive, for example, has been talked about since at least the 1960s, but we’re slowly getting there in terms of real-world development (ScienceAlert, Universe Today).

We might not have the superpowers thing down yet (though that might take some paradigm changes, re: quantum entanglement in the brain and related topics - let’s scale our expectations of a “superpower” gradually), but we do already have genetically modified humans. Germ-line therapies (also known as somatic gene therapy, ScienceDirect) have existed for a while, and have many ethical issues arising from it (SingularityHub, National Academy of Sciences).

I do my best to keep up with as many STEM fields as I can, but in the past decade we’ve had a boom in development - I think if you asked someone in 2000 what sort of scientific and technological developments would exist by 2020, a good half of them might be wrong due to the simple fact that many fields just didn’t exist.

Given how long it took us to posit the theory of cellphones (in 1917 by Finnish inventor Eric Tigerstedt), to how long the first commercially available mobile phone was sold (by Motorola in 1973) - never mind flip phones (first posited in 1964 by Star Trek: The Original Series, first seen in real life via the Motorola StarTAC in 1996) - I would challenge anyone to bring a concept from drawing board to production line within ten years and have it be a commercial success!

There’s approximately 46 listed fields of engineering in this wiki, the Bureau of Labor Statistics cites that seven out of ten of the largest STEM fields were computer related in 2017 - the first concept of the modern computer was by Alan Turing in 1937 (Wikipedia), the first realization of this concept was with the Ferranti Mark 1 in 1951 (Wikipedia), and the first mobile computer was the IBM 5100 in 1975 (Wikipedia) - between Alan Turing in 1937 and the job statistics of 2017, a full 80 years had passed. I won’t delve more into the details of things like the history of social media, the Dot-com bubble, or literally anything about the 2000s, but suffice to say:

Description: Exponential Growth in STEM? Articles Published Worldwide, 1900?2011. Source: SPHERE project database of SCIE publications (Thomson Reuters' Web of Science).

STEM is likely increasing at an exponential pace (ResearchGate). I don’t know whether this means we’ll see things like the Enterprise, a TARDIS, or even Spiderman within our lifetime, but I distinctly would not preclude their possibilities just because our literature and scientific experiments didn’t have a palatable success rate. We got cell phones and 3D printing! I’m sure humans might be able to see things like superpowered humans or time-travel eventually, if not in our lifetime.

Delta: I’d also recommend The Martian by Andy Weir if you haven’t read it. It’s not super advanced sci-fi, so I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you’re looking for, but it’s an extremely realistic look at near-future space travel and Mars missions (realistic in every way, that is, except for the privatization of the American space industry; Weir wrote publicly funded space travel, which is looking less and less likely to be the case).

Station Eleven, by Emily St. John Mandel, is less sci-fi and more apocalypse/dystopia fiction, but takes a realistic, hard look at how humanity would actually react to an apocalypse, and is disturbingly familiar in 2020 (the main plot is a pandemic, so read with caution). Similarly, Octavia Butler wrote a great deal of similar future dystopia fiction; I’m particularly thinking of Parable of the Sower (warnings for rape, violence, riots, looting, etc.).

Mary Doria Russel’s The Sparrow is another good one. The timeline is a bit outdated, things didn’t happen as quickly as she thought, but her ideas about everything from space travel in asteroids to continuing violence in the middle east are more or less shaping up the way she predicted. She also takes a realistic look at what “first contact” would actually be like, as well as the actual ramifications of relative time caused by space travel. (While Russel is herself Jewish, Roman Catholic Christianity plays a very important role both thematically and in the plot, so this won’t be everyone’s cup of proverbial tea).

(On a related note, the movie Arrival by director Dennis Villeneuve is another sci-fi story that’s a very realistic (if somewhat trippy) look at “first contact,” but is set in the present day, rather than the future, so it’s not necessarily what you’re looking for, but I think very highly of it because of its realism and creative restraint, so it felt worth a mention.)

#pylons #future #predictions #Anonymous

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damnprecious · 4 years

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1, 6, 13, 14, 29, 37, 38, 44, 50 - sorry about the number of questions, there were too many interesting questions to choose from x)

Thank ya!! There were many very good questions in the list ^^ This ended up pretty long so gonna hide it under a read-more

1: What book did you last finish? When was that? Return of the Kings as an audio book a couple of weeks ago, and so many fics since then, all the fics. Pretty sure the traditional book I most recently read was a reread of the Heroes of Olympus series by Rick Riordan some couple of months ago. Except for Lost Hero, I wasn’t feeling that one I needed some good ol’ Percy in my life

6: Which book was the last one you really, really loved? I answered this here but I’m going to give another answer that is the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, although I’m a few books behind at the moment. I love the concept of a library agent traveling between parallel worlds to get a rare, parallel version of a book that has a slightly different plot. And it has fey AND dragons. It does have some like relationship’y things I don’t really care for but the world is worth it so far.

13: Name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaption The Hobbit. It didn’t need to be three films!!! The first one was still Good!!! The last two just slid down a slippery slope and crashed and burned. And just when I thought they couldn’t get any worse the extended cut of the last one still somehow managed to make it worse.

14: Name a book where the movie/tv adaption actually was better than the original I’m not going to go as far as claim it is Better, because it isn’t, but it’s Very Good and might just be the favorite movie adaptation of any book that I’ve seen, and that goes for the Lord of the Rings. The choices of what’s been included in the movie and the changes make sense by the most part and ugh I just love it so much it’s so good. Like I do have some beef with how certain plot lines were done but as a whole the movies are very good.

29: How do you sort your shelves? (i.e. by color, author, title etc.) By author, and the books I have both in Finnish and English I also sort by language so that the Finnish set is together and English together. And there’s also some form of a thematic sorting going on so that like fantasy books are in one end and then the dystopian ones and whatever kinda go around the same topic fit together. At the moment my space is really limited so the thematic arrangement has been put aside by ‘oh god these need to go somewhere’ a bit but once I have more room I’ll return to that style, it’s much easier to find shit that way.

37: How many books are actually in your bookshelf/shelves right now? If my math was correct, 199 books and 66 mangas, which I believe count. I might have two more tucked away in my dresser but it’d be too much effort to dig through it to make sure, I can’t remember if I’ve gotten rid of them or kept them. One of the books is also my brother’s copy of the Lord of the Rings that I borrowed once upon a time that hasn’t been returned yet so it’s technically on my shelf but it’s not actually mine.

38: What language do you (most often) read in? That’d be english

44: Do you like to listen to music when you read? Depends on the book and also the style of music. I generally like to listen to instrumental music while reading because it’s less distracting but gotta fill that silence. So like random ambiance music type things are often my go-to reading music. If I do end up listening to non-instrumental stuff I usually try to stick to a language in which I’m not reading in and songs I’m really familiar with and don’t really pay that much attention to anymore, so it’s most often English book with Yö or Juha Tapio playing in the background, but with Finnish books it’d likely be music in English.

50: Why do you love to read? I just love the stories and the characters and the worlds and also books as objects. It’s exciting to go on the adventures with the characters and sometimes notice a bit of foreshadowing and look at them being dumbdumbs with their supportive friends. Nowadays I read more fanfiction than published fiction which I believe is because I already know the characters and seeing what people do with them is just. so good and comforting because they’re your boys and they’re being supportive and loving and ugh reading is just so good. Also, doing it for that Found Family trope.

*Gollum voice* Ask us

#*gollum voice* ask us #asks #when-shes-gone #long post #a simple short answer who I don't know her #I was going to say either percy jacksons or eragon for the horrible movie edition #but then I realized that those didn't let me down as badly as the last two hobbits did #especially the last one just. murdered my will to live #it's so sad that the same people who made my absolute fave adaptation managed to ruin another book #i

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dustedmagazine · 6 years

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Year End 2018: Derek Taylor

Another year above ground. Another year salvaged in no small part through the solace of music. That may register as a Limbo-worthy low bar for measuring life satisfaction, not mention one hopelessly awash in hyperbole, but there’s a reason. The sobering sense of normalcy that’s come to characterize the daily insanity of the world writ large and small makes the railing and grousing about it through a laptop keyboard feel at once futile and arrogant. Many of us still have it pretty good, if not better. Able to move and think freely. Fortunate to readily find the time to spend sequestered with art, whatever the senses and thoughts it stimulates. Plenty of others can’t consistently say the same. That ever-widening disparity weighs on my mind with a regularity that makes the compiling and commentary of lists such as this seem both a luxury and a necessity. We’re all in it together and revitalizing music is as meaningful a reminder as any of that steadfast reality. If only the orange orangutan still soiling the Oval Office and the psyches of millions (if not billions) would swap the MAGA-emblazoned nonsense that’s his usual headgear for the Burnside brim pictured above and mean it!

No real ranking to the entries below other than the general order to which they visited me through contemplation and return engagement.

Eric Dolphy – Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Sessions (Resonance)

Released in haphazard, infrequent and incomplete editions, Eric Dolphy’s interstitial work (landing between his formative tenure at Prestige and his solitary masterpiece for Blue Note, Out to Lunch) under the aegis of producer Alan Douglas has never really received a fair shake from curators and critics alike. That long-standing slight was rectified this year with the Record Store Day release of Musical Prophet: The Expanded 1963 New York Sessions on the Resonance label. Rescued, enhanced and appended with 85-minutes of previously unreleased music and a lavish 100-page book stocked with scholarly essays by the likes of flautists James Newton and Nicole Mitchell, Sonnys Rollins and Simmons, Han Bennink, Henry Threadgill, Oliver Lake and others it’s an unprecedented boon on all fronts. The CD version of the set is slated for a 1/25 street date.

Barre Phillips

Octogenarian expatriate bassist Barre Phillips has sustained a relatively steady output in the 21st century, but End To End, a solo set (his purported last) for ECM, and a Oh My, Those Boys!, a timely reissue of his extended duets with Japanese confrere Motoharu Yoshizawa on the Lithuanian No Business label are aural confirmation of his consistency across decades. Alone and self-limited to the length of a LP he sculpts a somber soliloquy of intimate communion with his instrument. In the fast company of Yoshizawa, who fields a custom-made electric upright, the mood is much more frenetic in playful. Both settings are aurally transfixing.

Mingus – Jazz in Detroit/Strata Concert Gallery/46 Selden

Weighing in at a mighty five-discs, Jazz in Detroit/Strata Concert Gallery46 Selden dispenses with Christian name specifics and allows surname to suffice in announcing its bigger-than-life subject. Mingus’ instrumental faculties weren’t quite as consistent as the virtuosic powers that propelled him in youth (he had just over six years to live in the winter of 1974 when this material was captured), but any effects of advancing age fall away when he calls a tune, soloing with strength and at length and according his auspicious sidemen including drummer Roy Brooks who is ostensibly responsible for the recording’s survival. Retooled staples like “Pithecanthropus Erectus” and “Peggy’s Blue Skylight” join newer improvisational springboards like “The Man Who Never Sleeps” and “Noddin’ Ya Head Blues” to form a veritable smorgasbord of vibrant small group, stage-born jazz.

Peter Brötzmann

The venerable German road dog always has a place on this list. Now somewhat miraculously pushing eighty he’s still at it, crisscrossing the globe and breaking hearty musical bread with friends old and new. Three releases stood out to these ears: two recent duos and a welcome reissue of Hot Lotta, one of his early free jazz missives recorded almost five decades earlier with faithful countryman Kowald and the Finnish duo of Juhani Aaltonen and Edward Vesala. In the must-hear duo column reside, Ouroboros, a 2011 German club date with Chicago cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm on Astral Spirits, and Sparrow Nights on Trost, a wrenchingly intimate studio encounter with pedal steel phantasmagorist Heather Leigh, who ranks easily among Brötzmann’s most intriguing recent coconspirators.

Corbett vs. Dempsey

Keeping the Corbett vs. Dempsey count to just three for the year is a tough task as their usual prolificacy combined with a commensurate excellence. The reissue of Steve Lacy’s seminal Stamps, originally released in 1979 as his debut for the Swiss Hat Hut imprint narrowly edges out the equally edifying appearance of Milford Graves long-lost Bäbi if only because my spouse allows me to spin the cacophonously calorific latter platter only in her conspicuous absence. A decade was a long time to wait for Joe McPhee and Hamid Drake’s duo follow-up, Keep Going, this time trading stage for studio. But from the music to the mantra-ready title it’s a welcome inoculation against the forces of idiocy and ire globally arrayed against those with humanist allegiances.

Guy Lafitte

Last year it was Lucky Thompson. This year French tenorist Guy Lafitte got the Fresh Sound archival treatment with four full discs of material from his heyday as one of his country’s most popular indigenous purveyors of jazz. Each set delves into a different side of his folio from tight ensembles to modestly-sized orchestras, sometimes in the company of visiting guests, but more often plying his sound amongst a core crew of fellow believers. One of former, Michel de Villers, also earned a survey with The Complete Small Group Sessions 1949-1956 that shows him living up to the sobriquet of “Low Reed” at length on deftly deployed baritone saxophone.

Steeplechase

The Danish Steeplechase label always seems to slot in my yearly look back, mainly because of the consistency of both their roster and long-standing aesthetic. Sea changing surprises instigated by their records are exceedingly rare, but the odds of a stimulating listen are conversely high with virtually every release. Guitarist Pierre Dørge’s Soundscapes convenes a quintet with tenorist Stephen Riley and cornetist Kirk Knuffke in the service of the leader’s customarily open-ended compositions. Riley’s Hold ‘Em Joe is at once a canted tribute to Sonny Rollins and a welcome return to the piano-less trio format he first cut his teeth on for the label a decade ago. Baritonist Gary Smulyan’s Alternative Contrafacts yields winsome results with the instrumentation as well in a creative nod to the sort of extrapolations that were the fertile province of the Tristano School in the last century.

No Business/Chap Chap

A partnership between the No Business label and the Korean Chap Chap imprint continues to yield impressive reissues. All in circulation to date are worthy of consideration, but two bent my ears with pleasing consistency. Kang Tae Hwan’s Live at Café Amores offers an extended concert for solo saxophone that is equal measures Zen meditation and extended techniques master-class. Choi Sun Bae Quartet’s Arirang Fantasy teams a trio of Korean improvisers with visiting Japanese bassist Motoharu Yoshizawa for another café set that is ripe with cross-cultural creativity. Lastly, a reissue of sorely unsung vibraphonist Bobby Naughton’s 1976 masterstroke The Haunt with Leo Smith and the recently-deceased Perry Robinson (R.I.P.) in a setting of creative chamber jazz perfection.

Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland 50th Anniversary (Sony)

Repackaging of milestone rock albums is still the rage even as the compact disc as a physical musical format continues to wane with advance of other intangible digital formats. Hendrix has had his fair share of legacy parceled and promoted along these lines and it’s hard to fault the family for seeking to both cash-in and do right by his memory. Electric Ladyland 50th Anniversary does better than most past projects in this regard by hewing to a logical presentation and proffering some genuine value across three compact discs, a Blu-ray and a lavish LP-sized container replete hardcover tome covering all the minutiae of the original double-album phenomenon. And let’s face it, Hendrix fooling around with songs in their protean forms is more fun than sitting down with most rock musicians’ finished product.

Jack Sels – Minor Works (SDBAN)

Parts of Belgian Jack Sels biography read like Hollywood-ready bohemian melodrama with riches, rags, tragedy and triumph all sewn into the story of a saxophonist who spent much of his life trying to capture the magic of his American idols while remaining fiercely true to his European roots. That latter decision explains his relative anonymity today, but the expertly-curated if humbly-titled Minor Works is practically bursting with recovered music and anecdotal context that frames a vivid portrait of a player well-deserving of posthumous consideration.

Jon Irabagon

Irabagon’s a dues-payer, tireless and admirably selfless in his dedication to a revolving door of projects and regular gigs. A recent interview with clarinetist & podcaster Jeremiah Cymerman reveals just how cool and unflappable a customer the Filipino-American saxophonist can be as he relates exercising the patience of Job in the face of dunderheaded racism by erstwhile peers. On the aural front two specific contexts stuck with me as evidence of his indefatigability. Dr. Quixotic’s Traveling Exotics on his own Irabbagast imprint teams his quartet with veteran trumpeter Tim Hagans in a program that feels like a natural and more focused extension of earlier work in Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Dave Douglas’ Brazen Heart: Live at the Jazz Standard released on the trumpeter’s Greenleaf label explores one of Irabagon’s recurring sideman posts and at length over eight discs covering a four-night stand at the titular NYC club in 2015.

Roscoe Mitchell

Recent and nascent masterworks with nearly a half-century of revelatory activity between them, Ride the Wind (Nessa) and Sound (Delmark) represent two essential signposts in Roscoe Michell’s reliably iconoclastic career. Both center on the blurring the subjective boundaries between improvisation and composition. Whether adapting improvised solos to orchestral charts or atomizing ensemble interplay into a freeing malleable framework that can take participating musicians in a multiplicity of expressive directions, Mitchell’s courageous adherence to personal designs and investigations has always been the bedrock of his work.

Intakt

The Swiss Intakt imprint bridges the best aspects of a classic label construct (reliable stable, dependable production values, deep catalog, etc.) with a refreshing willingness to tweak the formula through a voracious ear for new talent. German altoist Angelica Niescer’s triumphant Berlin Concert and a pair of from Cuban pianist Auran Oritz, Live in Zurich with his working trio and Random Dances and (A)tonalities in the unexpected company of clarinetist Don Byron fit that latter bill. Globe Unity 50 Years celebrating the half-century longevity of Europe’s most influential improvising orchestra and Music for David Mossman by the equally indelible trio of Evan Parker, Barry Guy and Paul Lytton argue conclusively that the former end of Intakt’s endeavors is equally secure.

Clean Feed

Staunch loyalists to the tradition of improvisational album in physical form, Lisbon-based Clean Feed doesn’t just soldier on, it leads away with a release docket that reliably weds frequency with dependability. The sixteen discs that hit circulation in the span since January all have elements to recommend them, but two stuck to my ears and cranium more tenaciously than the others for both their audacity and intimacy. Vocalist Serpa’s Close Up is exactly that, a sans-net song forum with the stark support of Ingrid Laubrock’s saxophones and Erik Friedlander’s cello as the sum of sounding board. Similarly, trumpeter Susana Santos Silva’s All the Rivers situates her solitary horn in the unforgiving acoustics of the Panteão Nacional, a vast marble cathedral, for a recital rife with reverberating complexity.

Satoko Fuji – 12 for 60 Project

Year-long artist celebrations through output aren’t exactly common, but there’s certainly precedence (bassist Reuben Radding’s 12 in 2007 springs to mind). Already admirably prolific Japanese pianist Satoko Fuji decided to commemorate her 60th birthday on the planet by releasing a dozen albums on the Libra label over the course of the annum. As with her back catalog, many of them featured her kindred spirit Natsuki Tamura on trumpet as well as ensembles both familiar and freshly-minted. I’m still digesting the series in sum, but the standout so far is Aspiration, the core duo’s conclave with Wadada Leo Smith and electronicst Ikue Mori. Fuji has an admitted tendency to crowd the market and numb the senses with her productivity, but the focus and unity guiding these releases sets them apart.

Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris

In common with the intimation of its name, Dust to Digital is a label that takes its time in the laudable work of producing archival music collections that stand instantly apart in terms of quality, scope and expertly-examined context. Voices of Mississippi: Artists and Musicians Documented by William Ferris is a work of art from the packaging to the sounds (and sights) contained within. Incisively indexed into three categories (Blues, Gospel & Folk), the field recordings are immersive and often carry the mesmerizing magic of incantations. A fourth disc containing a DVD collection of Ferris’ hand-shot films evokes time, place and person even more vividly. Temporary antidotes to slowly normalizing nightmare we find ourselves in as a world abound on this list, but this the one I have probably returned to most since my first encounter. It’s that transportive.

V/A – Technicolor Paradise: Rhum Rhapsodies & Other Delights

Exotica was originally indicative a certain slice of commercial music expression, one inextricably entangled in associative issues of appropriation, exploitation and in many cases mollification of indigenous cultural capital. Sometimes it was a complete recontextualization entirely as Numero Group’s Technicolor Paradise explores over three discs and an associative booklet brimming with commentary. This sort of deep crate project is nothing new for the label, but it is gratifying to see them go at it with such gusto after an earlier and unexpected embrace by the label honchos of streaming as a means of revenue. Some selections tip irrevocably into bromidic kitsch, but the first disc especially, which focuses on guitar bands keeps a more even keel of interest.

Charlie McCoy – Real McCoy/Charlie McCoy/Good Time Charlie/Fastest Harp in the South

Jerry Reed – Jerry Reed Explores Guitar Country/Cookin’/Georgia Sunshine/Me & Jerry (w/ Chet Atkins)

Time was when a two-fer reissue was a common currency in the compact disc market place. BGO’s done that erstwhile staple two better maintaining a fearsome foursome reissue program. Sets by country mouth harp maestro Charlie McCoy and good old boy-turned-ace guitar picker-turned-movie star Jerry Reed. Both are dipped liberally in countrypolitan production values that only occasionally slide over into schmaltz and McCoy wisely avoids vocals in favor of instrumentals that often sound like they could serve as soundtrack snippets to The Rockford Files (not a bad thing). Reed by contrast had a decent set up pipes to complement his strings-slinging skills and the chutzpah to try his hand at dry humor like the hilariously off-the-cuff ode to inconsolable nicotine addiction, “Another Puff.”

V/A – The Beginning of the End: The Existential Psychodrama in Country Music 1956 to 1972 (Omni) V/A – Hillbillies in Hell: Country Music’s Tormented Testament (1952-1974) – The Resurrection (Omni) V/A – Hillbillies in Hell: Country Music’s Tormented Testament (1952-1974) – The Rapture (Omni)

After an unexplained although far from unnoticed hiatus several years ago, the Omni Recording Corporation out of Australia roared back to life with renewed reissue campaign. The schedule of new projects eschewed full album(s) + plus bonus tracks for keenly curated collections focusing on the wilder and more tortured sides of the vintage country and country/pop spectrum. The Beginning of the End details descents into madness committed to song while two volumes more of the ongoing Hillbillies in Hell series doubled the entries to date describing that region of idiom(s) devoted to Beelzebub and his myriad earthly incarnations. All three are archly edifying as they are fun.

Sun Ra

Sun Ra reissues are once again a semi-regularity now thanks to reissue operators like Modern Harmonic and Cosmic Myth, both of which have conscripted longtime Ra repository Michael D. Anderson in their noble endeavors. Cymbals/Symbol Sessions: New York 1973 covers ground previously mapped by an earlier set on the Evidence label pairing worthy material including the (16:33) John Gilmore tenor <I<tour de force “Thoughts Under a Dark Blue Light.” God is More Than Love Can Ever Be has singular status as the solitary piano, bass and drums trio album in the entirely of Ra’s omniversal oeuvre and largely lives up to the stated promise of that proposition.

25 more in no fixed order...

Tyshawn Sorey – Pillars (Pi)

Henry Threadgill – Dirt… And More Dirt (Pi)

Peter Kuhn Trio – Intention (FMR)

Dave Holland – Uncharted Territories (Dare2)

Devin Gray – Dirigo Rataplan II (Rataplan)

John Coltrane - Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album (Impulse!)

JD Allen – Love Stone (Savant)

Fay Victor’s SoundNoiseFunk – Wet Robots (ESP-Disk)

A Pride of Lions – The Bridge Sessions 8

Michael Adkins – Flaneur (hatOLOGY)

Houston Person & Ron Carter – Remember Love (HighNote)

Spontaneous Music Ensemble – Karyobin (Emanem)

Cecil Taylor – Poschiavo (Black Sun)

Paul Rutherford – In Backwards Times (Emanem)

Mike Westbrook Concert Band – The Last Night at the Old Place (Cadillac)

Ustad Zia Mohiuddin Dagar – Raga Yaman & Ragas Abhogi & Vardhani (Ideologic Organ)

Kitsos Harisiadis – Lament in a Deep Style: 1929 to 1931 (Third Man)

Asnakech Worku – Asnakech (Awesome Tapes from Africa)

V/A – African Scream Contest 2 (Analog Africa)

Mulatu – Afro-Latin Soul (Worthy/Strut)

V/A – Listen All Around: The Golden Age of Central & East African Music (Dust to Digital)

V/A – Ocora – Le Monde Des Musiques Traditionelles (Ocora)

V/A – Music City Blues & Rhythm (Ace)

Professor Harold Boggs – Lord Give Me Strength: Early Recordings 1952-1964 (Nashboro/Gospel Friend)

Yuri Morozov – Strange Angels: Experimental & Electronic Music (Buried Treasure)

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santonali · 7 years

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i was tagged by @be-my-jude and @ninetyminutesofsuffering (my polish tumblr suffering fc squad), thank you both!

Rules: Answer these 85 statements and tag 20 people

THE LAST 1. drink: novelle! the mango one, it's a finnish soda it's so good seriously 2. phone call: mum 3. text message: i wanna be cool and say something cool but really it was my father 4. song you listened to: Leaving Earth 5. time you cried: oh a whiiiiiile back idk two weeks ago? 6. dated someone twice: no 7. kissed someone and regretted it: no 8. been cheated on: no 9. lost someone special: definitely yes 10. been depressed: yes but no 11. gotten drunk and thrown up: no

3 FAVOURITE COLOURS 12. black 13. red 14. peach

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU

15. made new friends: no i don't think so actually 16. fallen out of love: no 17. laughed until you cried: yes, of course 18. found out someone was talking about you: nope it's been a pretty chill year 19. met someone who changed you: no 20. found out who your friends are: yes 21. kissed someone on your Facebook list: no

GENERAL: 22. how many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: about 80% of them 23. do you have any pets: no 24. do you want to change your name: i honestly don't know whether i would wanna change my birth name, part of me does, part doesn't but that's fine hahahah 25. what did you do for your last birthday: i was just watching football and eating brownies it wasn't half bad 26. what time did you wake up: today? once at 10am, went back to sleep, woke up just before 2pm 27. what were you doing at midnight last night: i was just on spotify and youtube with viktor 28. name something you can’t wait for: honestly i miss my little brother i wanna see him again 29. when was the last time you saw your mom: in real life it was a week ago but we talked on skype today! 31. what are you listening to right now: Leszek Żukowski 32. have you ever talked to a person named tom: i don't think so but i'm not entirely sure, a tomasz (tom in polish) - yes 33. something that is getting on your nerves: people wanting to buy naby keita for that ridiculous price and people wanting coutinho gone to barca 34. most visited website: youtube definitely but tumblr is a strong number 2 35. hair colour: it's dark brown mixed with black from all that dyeing 36. long or short hair: couldn't care less 37. do you have a crush on someone: nope 38. what do you like about yourself: i like my humour! 39. piercings: none whatsoever 40. blood type: B but idk the Rh type 41. nickname: nah everyone just calls me kellin (although charmaine says she’s gonna call me real nimrod but i’m still waiting) 42. relationship status: single as fuck 43. zodiac: aquarius 44. pronouns: i like they/them the most but honestly at this point in my life it's just whatever 45. favourite tv show: i watch none tbh... i used to watch na sygnale on tvp2 lmao big up 46. tattoos: none and none planned but who knows 47. right or left handed: right handed 48. surgery: i can't think of any 50. sport: nope i'd love to play football but just cba 51. vacation: i've been to the baltic sea and the mountains in poland and at the moment i'm in helsinki, finland 52. pair of trainers: i have those shitty black and white sneakers i wear everyday and extra two pairs somewhere but they're pretty bad too

MORE GENERAL 53. eating: right now nothing but i had an almond magnum about two hours ago 54. drinking: i love love love mint tea, right now nothing 55. I’m about to: see if there's anything on youtube i can watch because i've caught up with all simon's gta videos from today up to a month back (be proud of me charmaine) 56. waiting for: legia to fucking finish fc astana on the second leg because honestly......dude... if they don't.............. 57. want: i wanted to go to the hertha berlin liverpool friendly but couldn't because i'm in finland so kindly don't rub it in my face 58. get married: sure 59. career: no! idea! whatsoever!

WHICH IS BETTER: 60. hugs or kisses: whatever 61. lips or eyes: depends on my mood? generally eyes 62. shorter or taller: doesn't matter 63. older or younger: i tend to cling to people older than me 64. nice arms or nice stomach: arms? 65. hookup or relationship: relationship 66. troublemaker or hesitant: i'm a mix lmao but hesitant is better i guess

HAVE YOU EVER: 67. kissed a stranger: no 68. drank hard liquor: no 69. lost glasses/contact lenses: no 70. turned someone down: sorta 71. sex on the first date: no 73. had your heart broken: in a way yeah, at the time i thought so 74. been arrested: no 75. cried when someone died: yeah 76. fallen for a friend: not really

DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 77. yourself: mostly yes! 78. miracles: sometimes 79. love at first sight: idk 80. santa claus: no 81. kiss on the first date: whatever flows your boat but it's a no for me 82. angels: no

OTHER: 84. eye colour: see they're brown mostly but also green idk 85. favourite movie: the lord of the rings return of the king

this was fun but jeeesus it took me so long to do it!

i’m tagging @larsstindl since i already mentioned you twice hahaahsh, @shaneschlong because she’s awesome and @loriskariius21 because her blog is 10/10. feel free to ignore but i’m looking forward to seeing your versions of the tag

#kellin speaks #not football #this was tiring lmao

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imaginemycroftholmes · 8 years

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Mycroft Submission Form, the new one

Mycroft Submission Form

Name: Raija

Nationality: Finnish

Age (note that if you below 21 your scores may be lower until age of legality): 31

Personality Type: Cheeky fucker, trying to tone it down, but it’s there. I am an outgoing introvert, social hermit. I like people and being social, but I need silence and time with myself.

Level of Education: Bachelor’s degree

Best Subject: History

Worst Subject: Math and Chemistry were pretty much tied in the worst subject category.

Favorite Subject: History and English (also tied)

5 Hobbies (if applicable): Books, Internet (yes, it is a hobby), Writing.

Favorite Genre of Music/Movies/Books: Music, Gothic rock in almost all of it’s forms. In movies I like all kinds, as long as they manage to entertain me. Books, all kinds, but latwly I have been drawn to vampires and werewolves.

Last song you listened to on repeat: Vaya Con Dios – Neh Nah Nah Nah

Last phrase you said to another living person: I don’t quite remember, I chatted with the shopkeeper.

How many blankets do you sleep with: One, Two or three if I am sick or it gets cold (over -25 degrees of Celsius)

7 note worthy skills: I can laugh at myself when I screw up, I can make people smile, I can keep secrets, I brew a kick ass cup of coffee. You know I don’t think I have 7 note worthy skills, which is kind of disturbing.

7 noticeable sins: I am lazy, well we can pretty much put all the seven deadly sins in here and call it a day, because I am guilty of all. Not all the time, but enough.

Allergies/impairments/illnesses: I am allergic to mushrooms, which is a tragedy since I love them. I am also obese.

Level of Intelligence on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being dumb, 2 being below average, 3 being average, 4 being above average and 5 being genius): I am no more and no less than a 3.

Level of Fitness on a scale of 1 to 5( 1 being obese, 2 being overweight, 3 being average, 4 being fit and 5 being skinny): 1, but I try to get better, mostly because I don’t want to die before I am 50.

Level of Attractiveness on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being Anderson, 2 being below average, 3 being average, 4 being above average and 5 being Mycroft): Depends on a day, on a good one I’d say 3 or 4, on a bad day 2.

Feline, canine or both: Both is good. I have a cat, but I love dogs as well.

Confidence Level on a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being nonexistent, 2 low, 3 average, 4 above average and 5 Sherlock): definitely 3.

Position in the Family (oldest, youngest, middle): Now this is where it get complicated. If you want simple, then I am the middle one. The complicated version is that I am mum’s youngest and dad’s oldest biological child. But since he pretty much adopted my older brother, then I’s day middle there as well.

Eye Color: hazel brown

Hair Color and Length: The colour varies, but I have been a brunette for a while. And I like my hair long.

Height: 1.68-1.69 m

Combat level on a scale 1 to 5 (1 being useless, 2 being somewhat capable, 3 being average, 4 being more than capable and 5 being expert): 1, but I guess I could hit something or someone with a frying pan.

Your normal dress: Black jeans, black shirt and high heeled boots.

How well you take rejection on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being temper tantrum, 2 being vindictive, 3 being average, 4 being can take it like a man, and 5 being like water off of a duck’s back): 3, of course it would sting and I would feel awkward and I would escape the place or rejection as soon as I could and avoid the person until I could act normal again. But I would not make a scene. I really wanted to say 4, but in all honesty that is not true.

Languages known: Finnish and fluent in english. I also know some Swedish, Russian, Spanish and French. I also studied Latin for a while.

Cleanliness of your bathroom on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being a crime scene, 2 being messy, 3 being average, 4 being pretty clean and 5 being perfectly spotless): I’d say 3

How big is your circle of friends on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being nonexistent, 2 being very small, 3 being average, 4 being large, and 5 being a massive social network): 3, only a handful of true friends (the kind that would help me hide a body and give me an alibi)

How would you rate your mental health on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being very poor, 2 being poor, 3 being average, 4 being good, and 5 being prefect): These days 4, been a 2 as well and got the help I needed.

Opinions on the current Holmes family members ( Siger Holmes, Violet Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and Eurus Holmes): Siger, cute older gent, perhaps a bit submisseve to his wife. Violet, very domineering and since the last time I saw her, I really am not very impressed with her. I actually would love to have some words with her. Sherlock, annoying and hilarious, loveable asshole. Eurus, slippery as an eel, don’t really know her.

Please bold the following below that applies toward your submission:

Friendship I would love to be his friend, because as much as I want to be the SO, I don’t think we are that compatible.

Mentorship

Relationship

Partnership

The Question portion:

Please note that you do not have to submit the pictures within your submission (save the puzzle) but you must answer them honestly and do so without cheating.

1) Angle C is the sum of Angles A and B at least according to my fancy ruler.

2) And apparently the Sudoku is a bitch and didn’t copy. Sorry.

I like sudokus, but this has me baffled. I don’t even know where I can find the beginning. So after 15 minutes I gave up and risk you thinking that I am moron.

3) This really made me want to start chain smoking. But I am guessing that it is the May 15 option.

4) Black should shoot White. Honestly I have absolutely now idea.

5) I had to google it, because I just didn’t get it and now I feel like an idiot.

6) The man wants to enjoy the good weather alone and get some cardio in as well.

7) left one On, others off. That’s the way I would make it and I hope that’s the way it is.

8) To me this task is impossible and makes me want to curl into a corner andcry and eat my hair. Happy now?

9) John should just send it in a package and lock it and Mary after receiving the said package should either pick the lock or buy a bolt cutter.

10) the car is parked in the spot #87

11) Percy Jackson the son of Poseidon. I don’t know. Logic isn’t my strong point and I am getting tired.

12) Go as fas east as he can manage and wait for death to claim him.

13) C

14) 52

15) 100

16) I didn’t nderstand this is school which is probably the reason I almost failed maths, so no. And yes, I will risk sounding like a 12 year old Sherlock, but I am tired and this list of questions is ridiculously long.

17) I’d say Sally, just a hunch

18) Scotland?

19) copper I think and something else, but I can’t remember what it was.

20) One of the Ninja Turtles I am sure.

21) No, I cannot. That is the truth, I could spend hours thinking and I would still be lost, so no.

22) guessing 11, well actually just pulling random numbers from my head and hping I am correct.

23) had to google it so sorry

24) blue and black

25) There might be some unusual about the paragraph, but I find myself lacking the brain capacity to work it out.

Mycroft’s answer:

I see that at least this form garnered your interest Raija and I am pleased. It shows that you were willing to put forth effort into catching my attention. I don't expect very many people to be on par with me intellectual level but I do recognize people that try despite their handicaps or limits that strive to complete what could be for them Herculean tasks. Now while most of your answers are incorrect they do show practicality and expresses how the masses commonly address such problems. This is fine.Throughout the test your personality came out when you tried to tackle these logic based problems which is also a sign of interests and humility. Traits, that make a very humble colleague and a worthwhile friendship. You are more than welcome to stop by the house for tea or a walk around the property (god knows that I need it) and they do say that life is more enjoyable with friends around does it not?

Friends: 8.1/10

#Mycroft form 2.0 #mycroft #submission

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thrashermaxey · 6 years

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21 Fantasy Hockey Rambles

Every Sunday, we'll share 21 Fantasy Rambles – formerly 20 Fantasy Thoughts – from our writers at DobberHockey. These thoughts are curated from the past week's ‘Daily Ramblings’.

Writers: Michael Clifford, Ian Gooding, Cam Robinson, and Dobber

1. Sasha Barkov is on another planet right now. The 22-year-old is absolutely feeling it these days. He has 17 points over his current seven-game streak. He’s set career-highs for goals (34), assists (53) and points (87). And there’s still seven games left to be played.

He’s one of the most underrated players in the game today. Barkov has just six total penalty minutes while averaging 22:27 per contest. That mark trails only Connor McDavid (23:03) and Leon Draisaitl (22:33) as the Oilers ride their only horses right into the dirt.

The best is yet to come for the Finnish pivot. (mar20)

2. Ducks’ Rickard Rakell is looking at a huge dropoff this season from 69 points last season to possibly finishing with around 40-45 points. His low goal total (14) can be explained by a low 8.0 shooting percentage, about half of what his career average is. Look for Rakell to be a possible rebound candidate next season that you could probably draft as a value pick. Over his last 12 games, he has turned it up a bit with 11 points over that span. (mar23)

3. Coming off a 64-point season, there was a lot of optimism for Yanni Gourde. He had been a diamond in the rough for many in the fantasy hockey community (I do believe Dobber was high on him a few years ago) and that faith finally paid off.

Things haven’t been as rosy this year, even if he’s been solid with 20 goals and 44 points. So, what’s the deal here? Quite honestly, it’s nothing more than a high on-ice shooting percentage coming back down to a more normal level.

Last year, the Bolts shot 11.5 percent with him on the ice at five-on-five. That was second among all forwards in the NHL with at least 1000 minutes at five-on-five last year. Not much else has changed; Gourde’s shot rate has gone up slightly, his IPP went down but it’s not unsustainably low, and though his PP time has been cut down by about 20 seconds, he’ll only fall short of last year’s PP point total by three or four. It’s not nearly enough to explain his 20-point drop. That explanation, my friends, belongs to an unsustainably high on-ice shooting percentage in 2017-18 dropping in 2018-19. (mar21)

4. Avs' Philipp Grubauer might be the best waiver-wire pickup in net over the fantasy hockey playoffs. Grubauer stopped 29 of 31 shots he faced in a 4-2 win over the Blackhawks on Saturday. He has now earned four consecutive wins, allowing just four goals over that span.

It’s been a tale of two seasons for Grubauer, who had a disastrous 3.47 GAA and .890 SV% in early February. Since then, he’s been a different goalie with a 6-2-0 record with a 1.05 GAA and .965 SV% over his last 10 games. More importantly for Grubauer keeper owners, he’s improving his cause to be the Avs’ starting goalie next season. (mar24)

5. Habs’ Brendan Gallagher now has a career-high 33 goals and has reached the 30-goal mark in back-to-back seasons. He’s also taken a minimum of 270 shots in each of the past two seasons.

Over the past two seasons, he’s now a top-20 goal scorer and a top-10 shot taker. The low assist totals deflate his overall value in points leagues, but you can easily find assists from other players in multicategory leagues. (mar24)

6. Only Kris Russell has more blocked shots over the past five seasons than Andy Greene. The Devils’ captain offers little else in fantasy, including relatively low penalty minute and hit totals. He has, however, hit 30 points twice in his career and could come close to that total this season (23 points) on a team that is playing out the string. (mar23)

7. Josh Bailey is normally a reliable option for assists and overall point totals. As expected, his point total slid as a result of John Tavares departing, but he has still been good for at least 35 assists and 50 points for the third consecutive season. Bailey has never scored 20 goals in a season, which means it shouldn’t be a big surprise that he has just three goals over his last 18 games and that includes a pair on Saturday. (mar23)

8. I know 14 goals and 31 points for Jordan Eberle is a letdown fantasy-wise, but let’s be clear about the Islanders here: they’re one of the worst scoring environments in the NHL. Entering weekend action, they were 21st in goals/60 minutes at all strengths in the NHL, worse than the Oilers and just ahead of the Devils.

It should be mentioned at this point that Eberle has only played about one-quarter of his five-on-five time with Mathew Barzal this year. After Barzal’s line, there isn’t much fantasy-wise on this team, even if Brock Nelson is having a decent year. (mar22)

9. Coming off a year with 33 goals and 64 points, there were high hopes for Minnesota’s Jason Zucker heading into 2018-18. With 21 goals and 39 points to this point this season, he hasn’t quite lived up to those expectations.

The biggest problem is that he was shooting 7.2 percent at five-on-five entering Saturday action, a career-low. Over the previous three seasons, he shot 10.4 percent on aggregate. With 166 shots on goal at 5v5 so far this year, that dip in shooting percentage means five fewer goals compared to what we’d expect if he was shooting his three-year average. If he were to shoot roughly his average from the last two years alone (12 percent), he’d have an extra eight goals and would be one shy of another 30-goal season. It’s easy to see why there’s been such a dip in goal production.

Zucker is still just 27 years old and though the Wild are kind of re-tooling, they should still have a strong core for next season with rising young players. If I had to make a bet today, I would wager that Zucker will be an easy buy when fantasy drafts roll around in six months. (mar22)

10. As a Canucks’ fan just hoping for better things next season, I would seriously shake my head if coach Travis Green gave the nod to Jacob Markstrom on consecutive nights.

If the focus is on development to some degree and not entirely on clinging to playoff hope, then Green will do the right thing and start Thatcher Demko. The Canucks’ goalie prospect was impressive in his last start, stopping 29 of 31 shots in earning a win against Chicago on Monday. (mar24)

Reminder: The 2019 Dobber Hockey Playoff Draft List is available now for pre-order in the Dobber Shop! It will be released on April 5th which gives fantasy owners plenty of time to get ready for their playoff pools.

11. It’s been an excellent fantasy season for Kyle Palmieri with 27 goals, 50 points, over 200 shots, 42 penalty minutes, and a good chance at reaching both 20 power-play points and 100 hits. That’s with missing Taylor Hall for over half the season and the team running half an AHL lineup for the last few weeks. (mar22)

12. I know the Ducks have been injured and bad for most of this year, and Cam Fowler’s production has suffered as a result with 21 points in 54 games as he battled his own injuries, but does anyone realize Fowler doesn’t have a 40-point season since 2010-11?

Among 171 defensemen with 2000-plus minutes over the last three seasons, he was tied for 125th in individual shot rate with Jamie Oleksiak entering Friday action. Fowler doesn’t put up strong peripherals in hits or blocked shots, either. He’ll probably be cheap in drafts next year but man oh man, there isn’t much to like here fantasy-wise and there’s no guarantee the Ducks will be much better in 2019-20. (mar21)

13. We all know scoring is up. But just how high is remarkable. What’s the difference?

Well, teams are shooting a bit more. Goaltending equipment has shrunk. But what’s really driving things can only be explained by an increase in performance. The young talent that enters the game on a yearly basis has made life very difficult on oppositions coaches and goaltenders. Let’s push to embrace this style, and push for more power-plays in the future. One day, I’d like to draft a player who has a legit chance at posting 150-plus points.

Dare to dream, people. Dare to dream. (mar20)

14. Tuukka Rask recorded what might have been the easiest shutout of his career early this past week. The Finnish netminder turned aside just 13 shots as the Bruins blanked the Islanders 5-0 on Tuesday evening. The big news in this one was the return of David Pastrnak. After missing nearly six weeks with an injured thumb, the 22-year-old was back to his old spot on the top line next to Brad Marchand and Patrice Bergeron.

The Penguins also received a massive boon this week when Kris Letang returned to the lineup after missing nearly a month. The team’s top blueliner didn’t miss a beat as he scored a goal, recorded four shots, 12 penalty minutes and skated a team-high 26:45 in his first game back on Tuesday. (mar20)

15. Remember when Freddie Andersen was one of the best fantasy netminders? The Danish puck-stopper has been flipping the bird to his owners during the fantasy playoffs for the better part of two weeks. He has stabilized in his last two starts, but heading into last Tuesday night’s matchup with the Preds, he had allowed 14 goals in three games. (mar20)

16. Brent Burns reached 75 points on the year this past week, reaching that mark for the third time in the last four seasons. Though some of his peripherals like shots per game and blocks per game have fallen off, he’s been as productive as ever, and that’s why he’s the top defenceman in fantasy. (mar19)

17. Rangers forward Pavel Buchnevich was a guy I thought could do very well moving up the lineup post-trade deadline. In 33 games in calendar 2019, Buchnevich has 11 goals and 19 points in 33 games, which pro-rates to 27 goals and 47 points over 82 games. He’s done this while playing less than 14:30 per night in that span.

I will continue to bang this drum until it happens: Buchnevich is on the cusp of being fantasy relevant in all formats, he just needs a coach to give him the consistent minutes. (mar19)

18. It’s that time of year where it’s hard to pay attention to the dregs of the league, but it’s worth noting that after his current recent hot streak, Jakob Silfverberg is up to 23 goals on the year, which equals his career-high set in 2016-17. I will say that while this is pretty cool for Silfverberg, this is kind of disheartening for fantasy owners.

I don’t think I’m the only one who was waiting for the 28-year old Swede to have *that* magical season, where he posts a high shooting percentage and explodes offensively. Because he does currently have the highest shooting percentage of his career (14.9 percent) by a wide margin (previous high of 10.1 percent in his 23-goal season).

Unfortunately, he’s missed some games due to injury and the team was terrible and injured basically up until a month ago, and that has kept his assists to a minimum. (mar19)

19. I’m disappointed in Anthony Beauvillier given his golden opportunity alongside Mathew Barzal for most of this year (until recently), but I’m guessing it came about one year too soon.

I’ll be still interested in landing him as a depth guy for next season and see what happens, but man, he’s had every chance this year – from linemates, to ice time, to prime zone starts, to pretty good secondary PP time. All for maybe 30 points in the end?

20. Some signings straight out of college:

– Last week the Leafs signed undrafted free agent defenseman Joseph Duszak. He had a massive junior year in the NCAA with 47 points in 37 games, plus 42 PIM. He’s 21, a little on the small side (5-10) but can move the puck. His next two season will likely see him in the AHL but I think he has potential if developed properly. You can check out our PNHLe graph on Duszak here.

– Detroit signed LW Taro Hirose, a shifty winger for Michigan State, as a free agent. Hirose had 50 points in 36 games in his junior year. I included Hirose as a player to watch in the NCAA free agent section of my Midseason Guide. The Wings also signed another player I had in the MSG as a free agent to watch – Ryan Kuffner. He was Max Veronneau’s linemate and ended up outscoring the more highly-touted Veronneau 44 points to 37 (in 31 games).

– Veronneau, as you know, signed with Ottawa and promptly picked up an assist in his second NHL game, and his first goal in his third. He picked the right team to sign with, even if he wasn’t already from Ottawa. This team is going to be young next year and he has a reasonable shot of making it.

– The Canucks signed another guy I listed in the MSG (so I had four out of the five big names last week in the Midseason Guide) – defenseman Josh Teves. The NHL squad isn’t exactly flush with prime puck-moving defensemen, so I’ll be interested in seeing his impact. It’s a shame he’s not a right shooter, or I’d like him even more.

21. Devils’ Travis Zajac had been having himself a great season, not only becoming one of the best defensive forwards in the game but also managing to put up decent points while doing so. A month ago, his points-per-game average was higher than it’s been since 2010., but with all the injuries to the Devils, Zajac no longer has a supporting cast and everything is falling apart in terms of fantasy numbers. His Hits are up and his PP time is up, but in the last 15 games he’s a minus-15 with just five points.

Have a good week, folks!!

from All About Sports https://dobberhockey.com/hockey-home/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles/21-fantasy-hockey-rambles-10/

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alivingroomatthebottomofalake · 6 years

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TOP 50 ALBUMS OF 2018

This year I took a different approach to last year. Instead of seeking out as much music as I could and trying to absorb it all so I could make a comprehensive list of highlights, this year I just let myself gravitate towards the things I knew interested me, and let the things that really grabbed me stay on rotation for as long as I needed them to. Some albums became easy favourites, and while there's some albums on here that I admittedly spent a lot less time with than others, I honestly think that all of these releases have been influential for me in someway, and represent some of the most exciting and interesting listening experiences released this year. The order is super loose. I don't have a score/rating system and I don't care. They go more or less in order of things that I listened to most often, or things I got recently that blew my head off. I am limiting my descriptions to a short 50 words or so. I'll avoid talking about genre as much as possible, and hopefully you'll be compelled to seek out some of these releases yourself.

1. Tropical Fuck Storm - A Laughing Death in Meatspace

If you want huge fucking noisy guitar sounds and ear scraping riffs, witty and memorable lyrics, arrangements that will continue to surprise, and a raw uncompromising attitude, this is it. This album feels unabashedly Melbourne, and maybe that’s what I connect with, but it's so brutally cynical and honestly so, without any conceited hipster bullshit. It sounds so fresh. Nothing is held back, it’s full throttle creativity, and that's how punk rock should be.

Favourite tracks: Antimatter Animals, Soft Power, You Let my Tires Down.

2. John Zorn - The Urmuz Epigrams

Playing most of the instruments himself, Zorn has constructed some challenging, weird and thoroughly beautiful collages of sound, transmuting it into a music that will entice and entrance. The pieces are assembled from instrumental improvisations and field recordings, scattered with little miniatures of melody, and some sweet percussion from Ches Smith. It feels like he's really exploring sound in a new way here, it's the most fresh thing he's released in a long time, and for a guy with such a history, that may be saying something. He has brought his compositional mastery to the studio and taken a divergent step towards something exciting. It's a really dense and rewarding listen, and yet I can't wait for more of this.

Favourite tracks: This Piano Lid Serves as a Wall. Then Again, Who Amongst Us Can Complain.

3. Death Grips - Year of the Snitch

Death Grips deliver yet another shocker of filthy bombast. It's a very noisy, intense, and a very weird album by their usual standards. I feel like the group have completely transcended any/all attempts to categorise them. The "experimental hiphop" and "punk rap" type assessments are completely inadequate for a band of this calibre. They have put so much more into their music, and come through as a unique and unstoppable beast. This album effortlessly mixes up the noisy rockier side of their personality with the beatsy electronic stuff, and the vocals/lyrics are intense and obscure as ever, making it an exhilarating album of surprises. It's a totally wild ride from start to finish. This band just can't do anything wrong for me.

Favourite tracks: Flies, Black Paint, Streaky.

4. Senyawa - Sujud

Wow. Just wow. When this came out a couple months ago, I was floored. It's all the kinds of perfect you can imagine music being. It's mysterious as fuck, it's deeply moving, and it oscillates masterfully between warm and kind, to dense and ugly and intense. I have been lucky enough to experience the Indonesian duo Senyawa live in the past, and it was a fucking mind blower to say the least. This album follows on from that experience with amazing new ideas. The vocals are incredible. Rully Shabara can go so deep, it's an imposing sound, authoritative yet calming. His highs are otherworldly and beautiful. How well the voice moves around in the space of each composition is truly the charm of Shabara's skill. The versatility of instrumentalist Wukir Suryadi is also on display in this album, performing on a number of instruments, and crafting some unique moods in which to submerge your psyche. I'm a big fan of their smooth, warm, kind and meditative tracks, but I love it for the grit, the extremes they reach make this album phenomenal.

Favourite tracks: Penjuru Menyatu (Unified Counters), Tanggalkan Di Dunia (Undo The World), Sujud (Prostration).

5. Johanna Sulkunen Sonority - Koan

Finnish vocalist and sound artist Johanna Sulkunen created this gorgeous album, recorded in various Zen Buddhist temples around Japan. The music is all electronically processed arrangements of these temple recordings, with a big emphasis on the artist's voice, and the manipulation of the voice in space. Each track seems to focus on a single simple idea, and explore it beyond any sense of musical logic or tradition/formal process. So each piece in turn becomes a kind of sound koan, a question asked not to find an answer, but to understand that in the act of doing the question fades away and the truth emerges, often not the kind you were looking for. So it is with listening to this album, listening translates to an embodied understanding of the music, where the music emerges in ways you aren't prepared for. When it does, that moment is clear and joyous. It's a kind of avant-garde meditation really.

Favourite tracks: Shosen, Perfection, The Wind Moves.

6. Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith - Abstractions

Abstractions is a single long (22 minutes) piece of modular synthesizer music, that ebbs and flows and blips and pops it's way from surprising sound and riff to more bizarre surprising sounds and blips, fading between a series of beautiful and strange ideas that constantly feel like all manner of sanity is unraveling, yet still masterfully held together. Each gesture evokes shape and colour, the interplay of contrasting of sounds raises questions that otherwise might be overlooked. The balance of repetitive arpeggios and melodic material with the squelchy, almost cartoon like sound fx punctuating and dancing around the sound field, see-saws to and fro, never at rest, always at play. It's a really fun and playful music with lots of intrigue.

7. Thembi Soddel - Love Songs

Don't freak out, yep this is the album you put on, don't let the title fool you. Is there nothing more obnoxious and self indulgent than another fucking love song? How often I put on the radio only to here the most childish, and often misogynistic, cliches recycled in the name of "love". This album says fuck that. Soddel has created an epic record that explores the tensions and drama of love and relationships, using suspense and bursts of noise to articulate trauma and manipulation, all the bullshit that hides behind the closed doors of the seemingly pure intentions espoused in love songs. Sonically, it's a tour de force. Opening from silence, the sound takes ages to emerge, but the wild ride and aural and physical brutality that ensues is incredible. It's also (from a formal/compositional point of view) fucking beautiful music.

Favourite track: Who's To Blame?

8. Efrim Manuel Menuck - Pissing Stars

It's really beautiful to hear an artist trying new things like this. Coming from a guitar/post rock back ground, but on this album trying his hand at modular synth (and conveniently listing all the modules in the credits for the nerds playing at home), Menuck has sculpted some incredible songs from the ether of voltages. His vocal style, which I've loved him for in previous projects (SMZ stuff in particular) is on point as usual, and the balance of personal and political lyrical content is also on point. I'm a big fan of the way the songs evolve and grow with the the drones and soundscapes, and don't get trapped or watered down by trying to be songs. Everything feels loose enough and free enough, but in control. It's dynamic and strange and dense, and yet melodic and soulful, and full of nuance and subtleties.

Favourite tracks: Black Flags Ov Thee Holy Sonne, The State And Its Love And Genoicide, Kills v. Lies, The Beauty Of Children And The War Against The Poor.

9. Hekla - Á

I was so fortunate to see Hekla perform live recently in Iceland. It was a beautiful concert, and her voice and theremin playing were both captivating. Hekla performs more or less all the sounds on the album with only a theremin and some fx processing - namely loops, pitch shift/ harmoniser, and delays. The compositions are built around quite simple phrases, that allow space for her voice to be really emotive, and allowing room for more complex layers of theremin melody to take the limelight in the interludes between verses. The album is beautifully produced, and totally does the memory of the concert justice. Most of the songs are quite slow, and mellow, with a kind of melancholy to them. It feels very Icelandic in that sense.

Favourite tracks: Muddle, Hatur, Í Felum.

10. Jon Hassell - Listening To Pictures (Pentimento Volume One)

The idea of painting with sound, while not so new, is also not quite as often explored so literally. Hassell paints, and paints over ideas, layering up moods and genres, showing us one thing, and blurring it into something else. As a trumpet player, and at 81 years old, Hassell is still sounding hip as all fuck, but as a composer of electronic music, this album is quite new and special. Somehow, all the combinations - the jazz, the ambient, the electronic and Afrocentric percussion/beat driven ideas, the more abstract and textural synth stuff - it still all blends into something completely original, which continues on from Hassell's own unique "4th world" style of music. I'm really impressed, and as it's "volume 1", i'm really looking forward to more from him.

Favourite tracks: Picnic, Pastorale Vassant, Ndeya

11. Badskin - Where Was I?

Badskin is Melbourne based guitarist/sound artist Carla Oliver. Her new album is a gorgeous balance of subdued, floating melodies, drifting through impeccably crafted atmospheres. Utilising a broad range of sound sources, including the tinkling of bells and washing and swelling of cymbals, other more striking percussion, running water and whispering voices, gurgling synthesizers, and lots of gorgeously processed unrecognisable sounds that shift and move harmoniously to give the album its more musical qualities. The whole record kind of melts over you, like an evening mist, everything is obscured and dreamlike, and the effect is beautiful.

Favourite tracks: 3, 4.

12. YoshimiO, Susie Ibarra, Robert Aiki Aubrey Lowe – Flower of Sulphur

This year a lot of artists who I adore got together for collaborative albums, and none of which did I anticipate more greatly than this trio. And not because I expected anything more amazing than usual, but because it seemed like such an odd combo, and knowing each performer's work so well, hearing them in this kind of context, I had no idea how it would work. The album is 4 tracks, live, and all improvised. Thus it comes with all the ecstasy and trepidation of a first meeting improv, with things being explored, players really listening and feeling out the space. There never seems to be full blown apprehension, but the players are deeply sensitive improvisors, and as such, the music is continually made fresh and becomes joyous to indulge in. Also, it being an album of drums, voice, and modular synth all coming together makes this the ideal record for someone like me. I'm glad to know that they've continued to perform since this first record and I hope they release something down the line to document how far they may have come.

Favourite tracks: Bbb, Ccc.

13. John Zorn - The Book Beri'ah

Zorn has brought the Masada project to a close with this final release of 11 albums (which I am reviewing as the box set because reasons). In a similar vein to the Book of Angels series, Zorn has selected 11 different ensembles to arrange the compositions. This means obviously some albums are going to be very different to others, and personally I've enjoyed most of it, but some less so. Disc 1 by Sofia Rei and JC Maillard is definitely a favourite. With beautiful words set to Zorn's melodies, the whole thing feels like a global music fiesta, bridging the Jewish influence with a South American folk style that feels so right it's almost unbelievable. Disc 2 by Cleric is a complete departure, with some of the most brutal jazz infused metal, it's perfectly wrong, and probably my favourite in the set. The Secret Chiefs 3 disc is very much what you would expect from Trey Spruance and co, and it's also a highlight, although I feel it's different to (and maybe not as awesome as) their Book of Angels release, it's still as varied and exciting. These three discs alone would all make this set worth the purchase even if the rest were terrible (they're not). But I won't go into all of them. The Spike Orchestra album is pretty cool, and I'm a big fan of the Banquet of Spirits album. There's enough music going on here to last a year, so if you plan to go down this rabbit hole, take your time because you'll need it.

Favourite tracks: To be honest, I'm still working my way through most of these albums, and I can't pick a favourite track yet.

14. Keiji Haino & Sumac - American Dollar Bill - Keep Facing Sideways, You're Too Hideous To Look At Face On

Heavy, noisy, ecstatic, and phenomenal. Sumac are a tight and brutal band, and the additional chaos injected by Haino makes this album as joyous and intense and just downright awesome as the title(s). The album flits between slow hard doom like riffs, through to long droney and experimental passages of feedback and Haino's signature vocal explorations. With song titles that go into great detail, it's an album that evokes a lot of strange thoughts and feelings. Mostly it's just a lot of surprises and exciting musical shifts, as the band keep changing it up, swelling and diving and destroying music at every possible turn. I feel like this is one of those "not for everyone" types of heavy albums, maybe due to the improvised feel of much of the music, but fuck that, this is the shit that everyone should be across.

Favourite tracks: What have I Done? (I Was Reeling In Something White and I Became Able to do Anything I Made a Hole Imprisoned Time Within it Created Friction Stopped Listening to Warnings Ceased Fixing my Errors Made the Impossible Possible? Turned Sadness Into Joy) Pt. 1, I'm Over 137% A Love Junkie And Still It's Not Enough Pt. 2

15. William Basinski + Lawrence English - Selva Oscura

A collaboration between two of the masters of the ambient minimal soundscape, Basinski and English have created a lush, evolving world of sound that teases us with stasis but perpetually drifts and sheds layers, constantly swelling and changing just enough. It's peaceful, but it's not empty. The first track is liquid, and mostly calm, the few moments of turbulence are there to remind you to keep your ears attuned. Track 2 has more recognisable pulses and movement in the air, almost as if the music itself were made by the wind. This piece has a lot of shifting frequency and movement. It's a constantly intriguing listening experience that asks very little of the listener, and once you give it your attention it's immersive and delightful.

Favourite track: There are only 2 so listen to them both!

16. I Hold The Lion's Paw - Abstract Playgrounds.

A treasure-trove of slinky grooves and expansive, exploratory free jazz stylings, executed with a level of mastery that is to be expected with these players. Side A is a big live improvised jam, and side B is more composition focused, but also built from restructured moments from side A, not merely remixes or a refined and practiced formula, the group have gone deep into the ideas and made something much more surprising. Some of the tracks resemble something much more electronic and abstract than would be expected in a free jazz context, and yet, it always seems to fit. In fact I think the second side is more interesting and as a frame for the more straight up 70s free jazz stuff, it makes for a richer, deeper experience.

Favourite tracks: Snake Charmers' Convention, (intakes from the) Snake Charmers, Deluzian Lawn Bowls, Afro 1.

17. Alessandro Cortini + Lawrence English - Immediate Horizon

A Live recording of two of my favourite artists collaborating at Berlin Atonal. Immediate Horizon is a slow build, but it becomes engulfing and mesmerising before you're ready for it. The compositions are simple enough, often built on layering slowly evolving parts and increasing the density and pushing the extremities of tone. The elements are also quite simple and sparse, with pulsing bass synth tones underlying simple looping melodies that layer up, fill the space and blur reality with epic reverb. There are moments of complete bliss and there are moments of complete overwhelming intensity, with a massive guitar sound that feels like it's being played inside your ears as it tears through the drones. overall it's an epic sound journey, and one that deserves some volume when listened to, as I'm sure it would have been a loud concert. The sounds are amazing and it has a great impact.

Favourite tracks: Immediate Horizon 2 +3.

18. Iki - Oracle

Iki are a 5 piece vocal group from various parts of Scandinavia, using experimental/extended vocal techniques and electronic sound manipulations to create some really interesting and beautiful music. Each track takes a seemingly simple idea or theme, and teases its way through, building the curiosity, smearing the organic sound across the air and ears, playing with space. The vocals are immaculate, they are all great singers, and they are doing some very fun and cool things with electronics that make this an exciting listen. The additional bass synths that support the voices is a nice touch, really filling up the frequency spectrum, and providing a good foundation for the shifting harmonies and textures.

Favourite tracks: Reflex, Archaea.

19. Tim Hecker - Konoyo

This is some of the best music I've ever heard. Hecker created this album in Japan with the Tokyo Gagaku ensemble, and it's co-engineered by Ben Frost. The music has such a sublime, organic, and dare I say lazy quality to it. The melodic contours and slowly evolving forms verge towards ambient music, but the intensity is too high, the dynamics are too engaging. The synths in the mix are gorgeous and full. The relationship of the electronics and traditional Japanese instrumentation is intricately woven, bridging the past and future, articulating a wholeness, and simultaneously letting the idea of meaning kind of drop away. It's fucking gorgeous and I want to know more about it, but at the time of writing this I've avoided finding out too much about the process because I'm trying to simply enjoy the sounds. Which is easy enough.

Favourite tracks: Keyed out, In mother earth phase.

20. Caterina Barbieri - Born Again in the Voltage

Barbieri is an artist who is new to me, but I am quickly a fan of any composer who can make musical sense of a Buchla 200 system. The 4 pieces here show a mastery of the system, opening with a minimal repetitive phrase piece that plays around with clocks and sequencing, really playing with time, using the tempo divisions and shifting LFO rates as tools for sculpting form. The second piece, which is performed by cellist Antonello Manzo, is a beautiful layered drone piece, that shifts around tones and harmonics, peaceful yet complex and dynamic. The cello and synth come together on track 3, the acoustic and electronic sound are integrated so well, one could almost forget it's a duet. The melodic phrase sequencing that closes the track and the subsequent atmospherics are beautiful examples of the possibilities of modular synth music. The album closer is more up tempo, and more of a a straight up synth sequence track, sounding a bit computer/scifi music, with some vocals in the background. It's a strong finish to a complex and delightful record that explores and expresses the human/machine relationship.

Favourite track: Human Developers.

21. Angelo Badalamenti & David Lynch - Thought Gang

Although recorded in the early '90s, Thought Gang doesn't sound dated, or like an after thought, it sounds so good. I am a little surprised that a lot of this material didn't make it out into the world sooner, but I'm glad it has now. As a fan of Lynch, and Badalamenti in general, I think this album fits the overall canon of the artists' work. It follows the sound of the late Twin Peaks world, mixing jazz with moody dark ambient flavours, and with the surreal spoken work passages it sounds like it could be a continuation of themes and ideas and lore that we've experienced on screen. It sounds very "today" for a project that took over 2 decades to get out. I'd love more of this in my life.

Favourite tracks: Logic and Common Sense, Woodcutters from Fiery Ships, Multi-Tempo Wind Boogie.

22. Ben Salisbury & Geoff Barrow - Annihilation (Music From the Motion Picture)

As a massive fan of the book series this film is based on, I had very high expectations for this film adaptation. I enjoyed it, and although it leaves out many of the things I felt were the best elements of the book, it stands up as a really great version of the story. Part of what works so good for the film (the visual style is the other part) is the music. Salisbury and Barrow (who were also responsible for director Alex Garland's Ex Machina score) really got into the DNA of the Area X when constructing the themes and sounds for this film. The way the sonic themes mutate and cross pollinate with each other, altering and adopting sounds and patterns as the film progresses is much clearer in the listening experience. Particularly how the guitar and vocal/choral stuff evolves, and how the wider instrumentation adopts and evolves with those themes. It's a different experience listening to a film score to listening to an "album", but either way, I think it works well enough. This is amazing music, and should be enjoyed as such.

Favourite tracks: The Alien, Lighthouse Chamber, Sheppard, Plant People.

23. The Body - I Have Fought Against It, But I Can’t Any Longer.

The Body work that I know is brutal, and abrasive. I think of them as a noise band, but this album is so much more. In fact, the first 2 tracks, whilst a bit dark, are also really melodic and gentle and beautiful. It takes a while before the heaviness kicks into gear, but it does and it does so brilliantly. This album is very diverse, and just when you think you've got it pegged it will throw a new idea at you. Whether it's a guest vocal or sample, a certain beat flavour or drum machine, or just switching it up from atmospheric to brutal density, The Body are constantly branching out into new territory. The Drums on this albums are a highlight. As is the use of feedback, and the vocals, all of them, are wicked. Also, the story at the end of the album is fucking creepy weird. Very cool.

Favourite tracks: Nothing Stirs, Off Script, An Urn, Sickly Heart of Sand.

24. Ryuichi Sakamoto – Async: Remodels

Firstly, I will admit I didn't love the album that these remixes were drawn from. I remember listening and moving on quickly (maybe I should revisit). I loved Sakamoto's Plankton release, and generally I'd say I'm a fan. However... This remix album features a who's who list of some of the best, some of my most favourite artists reworking and owning Sakamoto's music, doing some beautiful things with the themes, and sounds. Opening with a beautiful and luscious and triumphant Oneohtrix Point Never reworking of the track Andata, moving into the only really beat focused mix of the same track by Electric Youth. Alva Noto is on here, Arca is on here, Fennesz is on here, and they all contribute amazing remixes. The great late Johan Johannsson reworked a track, and my old hero Cornelius drops a remix on here too. So many good tracks. There are some other artists that are new to me on here too, all of who made great contributions. The whole thing is a great listen. It keeps the original spirit of Sakamoto's music intact, but stretches the sounds out through such varied worlds and hearts and perspectives, and it's joyous, relaxing, and super interesting.

Favourite tracks: disintegration (Alva Noto Remodel), solari (Fennesz Remodel), solari (Jóhann Jóhannsson Rework), andata (Oneohtrix Point Never Rework).

25. Merzbow + Hexa - Achromatic

A collaboration between 3 of my favourite artists, Achromatic is an incredible statement of sound practice and composition beyond the norms of music, it makes the idea of musical notes feel forever inadequate. Hexa (Jamie Stewart and Lawrence English) make music exploring the physicality of sound, and pushing it to the extreme, so pairing up with the legendary Merzbow, one could understand they're about to be taken on a wild ride into the sonosphere. It's not without its subtleties. There's some incredible mixing going on, the frequency bands and the sonic power are all so well composed and controlled. The arrangements for each side of the album seem to be variants of each other, with different mixes and forms of the same or related material. It's hard to get better than this kind of exhilarating sound. Turn it up.

Favourite tracks: Merzhex part 2, part 4, Hexamer.

26. Nadja & Vampilla - Artificial Acts of God

Berlin based, drone experimentalists Nadja, join forces with the eclectic and dramatic Japanese metal band Vampilla for what is one of the best things I've heard from either act in a while. It might be only 3 tracks, but it's packed to the rafters. The first 7 and a half minutes is an epic building noise piece, beautifully dense, immersive and engulfing, and eventually, as it subsides, the doom begins. The heaviest bass sound I've heard all year. Things get terrifying as the track continues, and the tempo accelerates. It doesn't let up, and shit just gets louder and thicker. It's so fucking brutal. Things continue with some chorale vocals, and some more delicate/atmospheric passages, and the overall form continues to oscillate between strange/suspenseful and intense/brutal. It's awesome.

Favourite track: That Day

27. Eartheater – IRISIRI

I have difficulty putting into words exactly what it is that makes Eartheater so interesting to me. New York based Alexandra Drewchin's work is quite a mix of ideas, and the balance of those ideas isn't exactly comfortable. I guess boiled down this is an album of songs, I want to say pop songs, but abstracted beyond anything the mainstream would handle. The songs have vocals, and many have beats, it's got all the elements of accessible music, but the forms are mutated and the ride is different - the destination is still unknown. There's some interesting blends of electronic and acoustic instruments, such as the analogue synth pulses up against luscious harp glissandos in Curtains and Peripheral, or the cinematic string loops against the stumbling beat and mumbled vocals on Inclined. Some of it feels dark and twisted, and some of it feels incredibly joyful, but the work all has an uncompromisingly personal honesty to it. For me this is the album's strength. It's not forced, but fresh. The processes are matured and self aware/assured. If this was the future of pop music, I'd be happy to turn on the radio more often.

Favourite tracks: Curtains, Tresspasses, C.L.I.T.

28. serpentwithfeet – Soil

Following up an awesome EP from a couple of years ago, serpentwithfeet comes at us with new sounds, exploring new ideas in a rich variety of new songs of tragedy and love. His voice is intoxicating. Seriously. I really enjoy that the music isn't overblown or overproduced. There's a subtly at play in the arrangements that let the voice extend out, be as flamboyant and expressive as it wants, and play around. They're trying a lot of stuff in the production, and the songs are weird, but the voice is always there to nurture and comfort and take the lead. It's the mix of avant garde production and arranging, with the melodramatic intensity of the vocal that makes it so interesting for me.

Favourite tracks: Messy, Fragrant, Invoice.

29. Sarah Davachi – Let Night Come On Bells End The Day

Words like drone, minimal, and ambient don't do justice to the work that Sarah Davachi makes. Her work is perhaps simultaneously all those things on the surface, yet, the depths of the frameworks she works with are infinitely more complex. Her sonic processes dissect time while articulating its form. If that sounds like a weird or wanky thing to say, one only needs to sit with any of her albums for a few minutes to understand it. Let Night Come On Bells End The Day feels like a kind of temporal displacement, a sonic kind of time machine. Each instrument and subsequent manipulation of the sound slows life down, reveals hidden depths to the timbres, and the arrangements meanwhile seep into the mind, mingle with memory, until you're lost in the mix.

Favourite tracks: Buhrstone, Mordents, Hours in the Evening.

30. CECILIA – Adoration

An incredible debut album of abstract electronica from Montreal artist Cecilia. I first heard of her from her contributions to last years Rabit album, a collaboration that couldn't have been more perfect when one hears her solo music. A wonderland of abstract forms, with hints of rhythm and a sprinkling of beats, teasing, hinting at a club background, but never succumbing to mere quantisation and repetition. The voice is the central focus - spoken, sung, whispered, processed - and everything else is there to support it, but not with a pop song instrumental hierarchy, the soundscapes and voice co-mingle and become one, and often are one and the same. There's also so much space on the album, it's immersive and completely amazing.

Favourite tracks: Gros Animal, Récital (Where Your Money Ends), Teen Poise.

31. SUMAC - Love In Shadow

An album of four epic tracks, crunchy, pounding, and exploratory. Each track could almost be broken up into three or four tunes, but I really like how the group have chosen to frame these sections under the one title, which makes listening a different experience. It's all out brutal at the opening moment, and Aaron Turner sounds as perfect as ever vocally (one of my favourite low growls of all time, but also pushing his range out there a bit in the later tracks). The record moves from fast, to thundering breakdowns, to impending doom, but also allows some space, with some warmth and introspective nuances. It's just great to hear a band like this come out with so much solid material in a year. Sick riffs and epic volume!

Favourite tracks: Arcing Silver, The Task.

32. Idels - Joy As An Act Of Resistance

Idles debut album blew my mind. Such a powerful band, with great lyrics, a real return to meaningful anti-establishment, working class punk rock. I was shocked that they followed it up so quickly, and yet, so glad. On the whole, where Brutalism felt really live and full of enthusiasm, Joy feels more stripped back and reflective. The opener, Colossus is so different to anything I would have expected from them, yet it's such a perfect track and it's a great revelation great how deep the groups music can go. June is a real tearjerker, a tragic song about being an expecting parent, it breaks up the angry tunes and grounds it in a personal reality that is so starkly honest it hurts. There's so much rocking good music on here. Idles are one of the smartest bands around right now, and they are going to change shit.

Favourite tracks: Colossus, June, Samaritans.

33. Paul de Jong - You Fucken Sucker

I was a big fan of The Books back in day, and in the years since, although enjoying Nick Zammuto's new direction, I often wondered about Paul de Jong and what he might be up to/working on but just never realised he had started releasing new music. Alas, this year he released this amazing collection, very much still aligned with his found sound/collage experiments from the Books days, still mashing up genre and playing with elements in a seemingly intuitive and playful way, but this album seems to be a bit spiteful, and kind of rebellious and raging in a kind of Dada way. It's angry but with a sense of humour. Lots of sounds to explore here. I recommend you do.

Favourite tracks: Doings, Dimples, You Fucken Sucker.

34. Uboa - The Sky May Be.

A contender for the title of most downright intense performer in Australian music right now, Xandra Metcalfe, aka Uboa has produced a thrilling, confronting, disturbing, and otherwise exhilarating new record. Uboa's mix of harsh noise and melodic ambient warmth makes for an album that constantly surprises and brutalises, drawing the listener in with gorgeous passages of abstracted yet recognisably sublime musicality, and moving into complete onslaught mode, delivering the ol' 1, 2 combo with an avalanche of sonic detritus and more than a lung full of blood curdling screams. The arrangements are immaculate as is the production, and the overall album structure is quite the epic journey.

Favourite tracks: I Can't Love Anymore, The Sky May Be (Dementia), Salivate on Cue.

35. Thom Yorke - Suspiria

This remake of a cult classic film worked for me on so many levels. The team really delved into the world that Argento created to make a phenomenal reworking, and they ran with so many creative liberties that it was a powerfully artistic work that stands on its own. And then there's Thom Yorke's score, which I really enjoy as a soundtrack album, but I feel was the main thing that weakened the film. The music here, Yorke's first full feature score, is mostly awesome, and the inclusion of songs among the horror tropes is cool. I'm also really glad that Yorke avoided trying to do a Goblin ripoff, although he probably could have made that work (National Anthem/Pulled Apart by Horses both come to mind as bass riffs that show he knows how to get shit rocking). Overall, I enjoy the material on here, and it show's Thom has an interesting future in cinema ahead of him, but in the film, there were some parts that didn't quite land, and that's a shame. Still, there's enough here to enjoy without the film attached.

Favourite tracks: Olga's Destruction (Volk tape), Volk, Has Ended.

36. Klein - CC

Klein essentially takes the worlds and tropes of "urban" and "beats" and destroys them. It's the ultimate abstraction of mainstream music processes. You can hear all the elements - the beats and the raps, the samples etc - but they don't fit together how you are used to. Their earlier release Tommy was a wild ride and a mesmerising introduction to the artists work (check that out too), and to follow that up, CC develops the process of abstraction and genre deconstruction even further. I'm not sure if it's more listenable or more interesting or if I'm just acclimatising, but I like it.

Favourite tracks: Collect, Born, Apologise.

37. Erik Griswold - Yokohama Flowers

I've loved Griswold's previous albums of prepared piano music, and this is no different. The music is gorgeous, simple, moving. But something about the preparations also makes it feel exciting and foreign, and maybe a little eccentric and broken down which is a quality I really like. Each composition is a little slice of perfection, and the album is a really enjoyable treat to sit with, or to have playing in the background.

Favourite tracks: Fallingwater, Ball-peen Hammer, Color Wheel.

38. Cucina Povera – Hilja

The debut album from Finnish born, Glasgow based artist Maria Rossi aka Cucina Povera is a box of curiosities, like the sort of songs you would remember from a dream, but be unable to articulate as you started focusing your memory. Features sublime minimal synths and atmospheric field recordings, and a verstile vocal style, that overlaps and loops and interplays with itself. Like something from a Lynch film, Hilja is mystereous and beautiful, and quality music.

Favourite tracks: Demetra, Avainsana, Totean

39. Colin Stetson – Hereditary

Thoughts on the movie aside (I liked it) Stetson comes at the film score with all his strengths and his experimental spirit to make an incredible piece of suspense and horror. The circular breathing saxophone riffs create a suffocating, traumatic feeling, that works brilliantly in the film, and as a general listening experience, the way the soundtrack album is structured, it works as a suspenseful journey too.

Favourite tracks: Funeral, Party, Crash

40. Oneida - Romance

Generally a diverse yet focused group, Oneida tend to oscillate between the extremes of minimalism and all out noise/experimental expansive maximalism. For example, my first experience of them was the brilliant repetition based album Absolute II, 4 very minimal tracks that are still favourites to this day. After that, their release A List of the Burning Mountains was an all out sound exploration, with very little repetition, and much more improvisation. Romance somehow brings the best of both these personalities of the group's musical character into a kind of balance. Excellent repetitive riffs and sounds underpin some more adventurous playing, and exploratory songwriting, and it makes for an exciting yet hypnotic album.

Favourite tracks: Bad Habit, Reputation.

41. Beak> - >>>

Although previous Beak> releases have been much darker, moodier, and more minimal, I feel like they have been cultivating and moving towards this unique, analogue progressive style all along with very precise steps. Although the band line up has changed since the last record, the same influences are still strongly at play, and the band have never been shy about where they've come from. However, this album feels a bit more celebratory, reveling in the process, and being more adventurous with the context, and it makes it feel fresh. I think Barrow's drumming is the best I've heard him, and the vocals are really strong on this album.

Favourite tracks: Birthday Suit, Harvester.

42. CUTS - A Gradual Decline

I first heard CUTS on the Ex Machina OST, and was anticipating more instantly. What we got here was not exactly what I anticipated, but is excellent none the less. One of the few beat/metric based electronic albums i've enjoyed this year, A Gradual Decline uses the degradation of sound as analogy for the decline of civilisation and environmental stability. It's beautiful but also represents something very bleak in a fragile way.

Favourite tracks: Pollen, Maboroshi, From Here to Nowhere.

43. Rabit - Life After Death

I was a massive fan of Rabit's last album and this album is very different. There's some similar types of abstraction and mutilated forms going on, but the sonic palette is different. I think it's cool when artists branch out and avoid repeating themselves, and Rabit has done that here. The sounds are often dark and mysterious, and I love the nightmarish, dreamscape type approach to form, and the disjointed relationship with genre, which is surrealistic verging on cinematic. Rabit is developing an important part of the new school electronic experimental scene for sure.

Favourite tracks: III, Blue Death.

44. Liars - Titles With the Word Fountain

As a follow up to last year's Theme From Cry Fountain, Angus Andrew's now solo version of the band Liars dropped a much more experimental companion album this year. The version I got is actually both albums together, and it makes for an interesting new take on what wasn't really that much of a favourite last year. The new material is abstract. Yet I feel like Liars is always going to be a an entity I will get confused by, whilst simultaneously excited about, especially now it seems that Andrew has gone through the existential anguish of being left at the proverbial alter. Musically, this album has a lot of sound experiments, and noisy sample based electronic beat stuff, with synths and the usual Liars attitude. It's not the most consistent album concept from Liars, but there's still good stuff going on.

Favourite tracks: Murdrum, Face in Ski Mask Bodies to the Wind, Extracts from Seated Sequence.

45. Sons of Kemet – Your Queen Is a Reptile

This album delivers an intense distillation of African music styles, all defiantly aimed like a weapon at colonialism, and celebrating women of colour in the process. The whole thing is led by saxophonist Shabaka Hutchings, who always brings a big concept together with finesse and soul, and this is no exception. The double drummer flavour really drives home the point with intensity, while the use of tuba as the bass instrument adds a hint of New Orleans to the arrangements at times. The stripped back instrumentation is also really interesting, with no harmony instrument, the melody and rhythmic energy carry it alone. I especially like the first and last track with the fierce spoken word sections.

Favourite track: My Queen Is Doreen Lawrence.

46. Oneohtrix Point Never – Age Of

OPN delivers a pretty mixed bag on this one, and not always successfully, but the high points are pretty outrageous. Despite the utter dud that is Babylon, for the most part the vocal fx on the album work well. Although I generally cringe at this much autotune, it's used to great effect on Black Snow, which is a stand out track. Warning and RayCats are also awesome tracks, with really great textural experiments and subtle melodic sensibilities, while Same is some kind of weird 80s pop nostalgia monster, coming completely out of nowhere. OPN is never restrained, and drops some brutal noise and metal in over the top of pretty passages in sudden sporadic bursts, keeping you questioning what album you're really listening to. The whole thing plays out like an acid tripped memory of a music festival.

Favourtie tracks: Black Snow, Warning, RayCats

47. Dustin Wong + Takako Minekawa + Good Willsmith – Exit Future Heart

A collaborative improvised excursion into the joyous unknown. Blending the playful and whimsical nature of Wong and Minekawa (who's album last year "Are Euphoria" was a top favourite) with some moodier abstractions from the Chicago trio Good Willsmith's end, striking an curious balance and keeping things interesting along the way. It's certainly a delightful and intimate listen, very giving and honest musical expression, and very cool sounds.

Favourite tracks: The Garden of Earthly Flanger, Plastic Skin, Gikanjoumonogatari.

48. Örvar Smárason – Light Is Liquid

Founding member of múm and instrumental maestro, Örvar Smárason has crafted a really great down-tempo pop record, that has all of the charm of his band's previous work, adding in some really psychedelic type electronic flavours to extend the curiosity and keep it interesting. There is some cool use of vocoders, and the guest vocals are real highlights - JFDR sounds great on Tiny Moon. Admittedly, on the surface this seemed a little generic at first, but I found myself needing it in my life more and more. It's going to be a great backyard chill out summer record.

Favourite tracks: The Duality Paradox, Tiny Moon.

49. Vanessa Tomlinson - The Space Inside

One of my favourite live performances of recent times was seeing Vanessa Tomlinson at Make it Up Club totally own the room with only a set of hi hats. On this album, Vanessa presents two pieces that each explore a single instrument, one is the concert bass drum, the other the tam tam. The music is powerful, and like that afoementioned night, the power of Vanessa's performance owns the space. The music transcends the expected ideas of rhythm and meter that might be anticipated of a percussion album, and becomes pure phenomenon.

Favourite track: There are only 2, and they need your full attention.

50. Gyda - Evolution

I saw Gyda Valtysdottir perform a few years back, and was absolutely captivated by her cello playing. On Evolution, the cello is only half of the hypnosis. Her voice, ranging from the fragile and delicate sensitivity that the vocals from her old band múm were known for, to much more confident and playful expressions of musical experimentation, is the real feature. It’s such a beautiful release, elegant music, that stops just short of potential tweeness to open towards new possibilities.

Favourite Tracks: Nothing More, Kind Human, Unborn.

Honorable Mentions:

These albums came into my life right at the end of the year, and I think I would have written this list differently if I had heard them earlier. I chose to add them this way because I had already selected the list and begun writing/posting it. That all said, I've been loving these records in the last few weeks. I won't go into it in depth, because I'm still soaking them up, but rest assured they are great.

Daughters - You Won't Get What You Want. It's heavy and abstract, i love the lazy vocal style and the urgency of the drumming. Fucking great.

Low - Double Negative Absolutely sweet vocal styles on this one, with excellent and surprising use of fx. I also love the crunchy production. Really gets under your skin.

The Caretaker - Stages 4 and 5. One of the deepest and most ambitious ambient (for lack of a better term...) projects continues, and it's an epic listening journey. Definitely not for relaxation.

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hermanwatts · 4 years

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Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen

New Release (Amazon): By Crom! At long last the definitive history of Conan the Barbarian paperbacks that fans have clamoured for. 107 pages with detailed chapters devoted to each of the mighty Cimmerian’s publishers. Heavily illustrated with many rare images. Plus complete cover galleries of every US and UK Conan title ever issued. In full colour. An indispensable aid to Conan collectors and completists everywhere. Featuring a specially written foreword by Conan comics legend Roy Thomas!

Star Trek (Huffington Post): The LA Times recently ran a story about the Child Exploitation Section of the Toronto Sex Crimes Unit, which contained a mind-boggling statistic: of the more than 100 offenders the unit has arrested over the last four years, “all but one” has been “a hard-core Trekkie.” Blogger Ernest Miller thought this claim was improbable. “I could go to a science fiction convention,” he explained “and be less likely to find that 99+ percent of the attendees were hard-core Trekkies.” While there may be quibbling about the exact numbers, the Toronto detectives claim that the connection is undeniable.

Review (Brain Leakage): That said, if you are looking for a great post-apocalyptic read, I want to draw your attention to the work of Jon Mollison. I read his A Moon Full of Stars recently, with the intent of dedicating a full-length ‘Pocky-clypse Now review to it soon. I do still plan on doing that. But I’m probably going to wait until after our daily news cycle looks a little less like the opening credits to the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake.

Awards (Kairos): … And enjoy a hearty laugh at the incestuous wasteland the once-prestigious Hugo Awards have become.

Predictions that the Hugo field would degenerate into a circle jerk of olpdub purse puppies beloved by editors in New York–and pretty much no one else–have been realized ahead of schedule.

Here’s a partial list of this year’s finalists.

D&D (DMR Books): The Complete Book of Necromancers by Steve Kurtz was released in the spring of 1995, and came and went fairly quickly. Luckily a friend of mine snagged one shortly after it came out. Ostensibly the book was intended for the eyes of Dungeon Masters only, but of course we were hungry to add the new spells and powers to our player characters’ repertoires. Clark Ashton Smith is mentioned by name in the majority of the chapters of Necromancers. While Smith’s absence from Appendix N is conspicuous, Kurtz more than made up for the oversight.

Fiction (Digital Bibliophilia): Any book that opens Page One with a man being skewered by the broken mast of a sailing ship in the middle of a storm has to be good right? Well, I’m happy to say Oath of Blood by Arthur Frazier lives up to its gory opening scene and delivers a fantastic little novel about the clash of the Saxons, Normans and Vikings during the 11th century (1066 to be precise). Arthur Frazier was one of many pen names used by the prolific Kenneth Bulmer.

Gaming (Jeffro’s Space Gaming Blog): Charisma. It’s not just a dump stat, they say. But look, if you don’t have a lot of it, you’re going to be stuck in a career as an assassin. Which is kind of funny, actually. Of course if you were going to actually use that stat in an AD&D game, you’re going to have to flip to the middle of the combat section to find the reaction table. Why is it there right in the middle of sections detailing initiative and missile discharge? Evidently this something pretty important to consider when the players have initiative in a random encounter, right?

Fiction (Dark Worlds Quarterly): Another writer who has left a huge legacy with little recognition is Gardner Francis Cooper Fox (1911-1986). Fox began his career writing for Batman as early as 1939. (It was Fox who gave Bruce Wayne his “utility belt”.) During his decades long career with DC, he would work on such characters as The Flash, Hawkman and The Justice Society of America. He was there when Julius Schwartz revamped DC comics to meet the new “Comics Code”. He was there when DC invented its Multiverse. Outside of DC, he would pen the first Sword & Sorcery comic called “Crom the Barbarian”.

Fiction (DMR Books): The book being advertised was Kinsmen of the Dragon by Stanley Mullen. I was completely unfamiliar with both the title and the author. A bit of research revealed that this book had never been reprinted since its publication in 1951, which explains why it’s so little-known today. In spite of (or perhaps because of) its obscurity, good condition copies are pricey, usually going for over $50, and signed copies are much more.

Fiction/Gaming Tie-in (Karavansara): Two nights in Arkham: Lovecraft purists often frown at Lovecraft-inspired fiction. The main charge raised by these people is, other writers are either too much like Lovecraft or not at all like him, often at the same time. The second most common accusation is that certain stories are too action-centered and adventure-oriented, filled with guns blazing and chanting cultists. They usually blame Lovecraft’s popularity with the gaming crowd as the main reason for these degenerate pastiches, in which Indiana Jones or Doc Savage seem to exert an influence stronger than Nyarlathotep’s.

Fiction (Mostly Old Books): he Fargo series tell the tales of early 20th Century adventurer and solider of fortune Neal Fargo. They aren’t Westerns as the covers suggest. In this installment Fargo is hired by a rich old blowhard to rescue some Mayan treasures and the excavation team, which includes his son, from the jungles of Central America.

Cinema (The Silver Key): 1917 had been in my “to watch” queue for a long time (aka, floating around in the back of my mind), and last night I watched it with my older daughter, a self-described “film buff” who wanted to see what the hype was all about. Two word review: Excellent film. It’s an intensely personal/soldier’s journey type of story, and also manages to convey the larger tragedy of the Great War.

Fiction (Sacnoth’s Scriptorium): The Inklings and the Mythos (Dale Nelson). So, I’ve now recovered the missing issue of MALLORN* containing Dale Nelson’s wide-ranging inquiry into possible connections between the Inklings and Lovecraft’s circle, “The Lovecraft Circle and the Inklings: The ‘Mythopoeic Gift’ of H. P. Lovecraft” (MALLORN 59, Winter 2018, pages 18-32). It’s a substantial piece, and in it Nelson raises such topics as the following: Did the two groups read or were they influenced by each other?

Fiction (Scott Oden): In the past few weeks, my sophomore novel, MEMNON (Medallion Press, 2006; Crossroad Press, 2018), has received a raft of four-and-five star ratings on Goodreads and a pair of excellent reviews — which, for a fourteen-year old novel is no mean feat. Author Matt Larkin, in his review at Amazon, writes: “Evocative prose paints a living picture of the Classical world while the sudden, brutal violence serves to remind us never to look at history through rose-colored glasses.” While Scott Marlowe of Out of this World Reviews praises many things, including the battles: “I can only describe [them] as spectacular and right up there with some of the best battles I’ve had the pleasure to read in historical fiction (think Bernard Cornwell, surely one of the best of them all). Memnon gives Alexander such grief I imagine Alexander remembered their contests right up until his dying days.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): Lovecraft’s famous survey of supernatural literature was published in The Recluse in August 1927. Later in the same year Eino Railo published the history of the literary gothic in The Haunted Castle: A Study of the Elements of English Romanticism. A December 1927 review in the New York Evening Post suggests Railo’s book was published in time for the Christmas market and the January book-token crowd, and thus it appeared several months after Lovecraft’s circle had finished digesting his Supernatural Literature. Lovecraft refers to The Haunted Castle, a translation from the Finnish, in admiring terms in a later letter to Barlow and terms it a study of “the weird”.

History (Men of the West): Suddenly the war became fun. It became exciting, carnivalesque, tremendous. It became victorious and even safe. We awoke on the morning of Sunday, the 30th of July, with the feeling that the war was won — in spirit, if not in fact. Patton and the Third Army were away. At the 8th Corps, which held the western sector of the Normandy front, the G2 colonel said: “We’ve lost contact with the enemy.”

Fiction (Tentaculii): The second half of a forthcoming book, No Ghosts Need Apply: Gothic influences in criminal science, the detective and Doyle’s Holmesian Canon (October 2020), attempts to make the case that there are gothic traces in what are often assumed to be the ‘rationalist’ Sherlock Holmes stories. Sifting the extensive blurb for the book, one can eventually determine that the author suggests the following specific points… * intrigue and secret societies. . .

Fiction (M Porcius Blog): Let’s check out four stories by Mickey Spillane’s all-time favorite author, Fredric Brown, that first appeared in beautiful pulp magazines in 1942 and 1943, magazines that you can read at the universally beloved internet archive for free. “Etaoin Shrdlu” made its debut in Unknown Worlds in 1942. The cover of Unknown may be boring, but the interior illustrations are quite fine, those by Frank Kramer for L. Sprague de Camp’s “The Undesired Princess” in particular.

Sensor Sweep: Conan Companion, Star Trek, Necromancers, Stanley Mullen published first on https://sixchexus.weebly.com/

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