#also the animal noises are the actual mc animal sound effects which i will say directly inspired how i edited the first chap of my pod fic

[fluxydrawings]

never got around ta posting this, some doodles i did while listenin ta The Island by Max Brooks, said audiobook being narrated by Jack Black. certainly onea the books of all time i’ll say that

[thatnerdwolfnell]

@madllamamomma mentioned something about

The Main 6 Getting Their Wisdom Teeth Out

So here it is

Asra:

SUPER cuddly and affectionate.

Thinks he's a poet.

He will tell you how your hair looks like spring and your nose is a flower.

It doesn't make sense but he seems to think it does.

Also he does NOT hold back what he thinks and it's hilarious

he says the dentist looks like a bald chicken and he's right.

"Fauuuutttttthhhhhht faaaautht. Fautht you have a thuch funny name.You awe the betht in the whowe wowld I wove you tho much. I onwy love you and MC and thometime Muwel. Everyone elthe thucks. can we vithit Muwel?!"

Takes the gauze out way too soon and starts bleeding and just does that knife cat grin (except it's super creepy when his mouth is bleeding)

So full of energy but basically passes out as soon as you're home.

Nadia:

She doesn't say much because she knows she sounds stupid and she DOES NOT like being in this position.

People look her on the way back and she'll try to hold her head up but her balance isn't great and she's blushing a lot from embarrassment

even though she STILL somehow looks sophisticated.

"I have to portray thtrength, MC"

You support her and she slips an arm around your waist (maybe a little closer to your butt than she needs to but you're not complaining)

She doesn't want to go home and rest because she just remembered she has to approve some zoning changes and also there's a shop with some shoes you'd look magnificent in that's on the way to the palace and you deserve to wear them.

You assure her Portia's taking care of everything and that you promise you'll let her take you shopping tomorrow.

It takes a long time to get her to rest but when she does you're cuddling in her gigantic bed.

She holds your face in her hands and just stares at you intently for a minute. Kinda squishing your face a bit.

"You'we tho fucking cute...." She mutters before drifting off to sleep.

As you pry her hands off your face you realize that's the first time you've ever heard her say fuck.

Julian:

Honestly he's surprisingly normal.

Maybe it's because he drinks so much that you've just gotten used to it.

The difference between drunk Julian and this Julian is that drunk Julian is horny while this Julian is more like a very nerdy kid in a candy store.

He excitedly tries to explain some of the medical stuff but he's talking so fast with his mouth full of cotton that you have NO IDEA what he's talking about.

Not that he seems to notice.

Occasionally you can tell he's making a very suggestive joke because his face does that smirk and he kinda freezes and watching for your reaction.

You just laugh and he immediately goes back to his rambling.

He starts talking about Portia and Mazelinka and their adventures growing up swinging his arms in dramatic gestures making you duck to dodge his long ass arms.

But honestly you've never seen him so relaxed and happy.

You feel like you're getting a glimpse of a Julian without the weight of the world on his shoulders. Excited, curious, and loving freely without feeling guilty for it.

You're about to put him to bed when he stops you

"Can you do a magic thing?"

You smile and pull up some colourful swirls of light from your hands

He wraps his arms around you staring in awestruck wonder at the lights with the dopiest swollen grin on his face.

He nods. "Thath good. I love that"

And then he turns around and goes to sleep.

Muriel:

He is so scared. People touching him. Looking at him. Hospital gowns. Not his scene. He feels trapped in the sterile windowless room.

He wakes up and watches you the whole time the dentist is talking and his eyes just scream "help"

They give him juice and he just kinda...holds it.

He's a bit touchier than normal. He kind of hangs on behind you as you help him get home and burrows his face into your shoulder.

He wraps himself up in his giant cloak somehow making himself look small and basically only communicates in grunts, hmms and hand squeezes until you're out of Vesuvia.

Once you're in the woods though, he relaxes completely. He keeps stopping to pick flowers wordlessly handing them to you to hold.

Starts pointing out birds and other animals and talks about their migration patterns and their effect on the ecosystem how they were actually originally native to prakra before they spread here and bred with the local species.

He has such a soft low voice and you're not sure if you've ever heard him say this much at once.

You're a little surprised by how much he knows. It can be easy to forget when he says so little.

You know he's smart of course, he'll catch on to things nobody else does and even Nadia has learned to ask for his opinions. But you've never seen him go full infodump before.

About halfway up the mountain he starts giggling (if you can call it that. It's more like shaking with noise.) He pulls out your tarot deck, shop keys, coin purse, and a fistful of flowers from his cloak.

"How did you DO that?"

He just shrugs "I should make you a charm to protect from pickpocketh".

When you get back he sits against the outside of the hut and hugs Inanna.

Chickens slowly start coming to sit on top of them. And his eyes just sparkle.

"Do you want to come inside" "Nope" "You need to rest" "I am"

You decide it's better not to argue so you sit by a nearby tree and pull a chicken into your lap.

Portia:

She's horny.

And she wants everyone to know that you're dating.

"Doctor did you know.... that MC hath the cutetht butt? *Giggles* BUT NOT FOW YOUUUU they'we mine. Both buttcheekth."

You suspect she's taking advantage of the plausible deniability to embarrass you as much as possible.

She's suddenly an oversharer. All the secrets she kept just come flooding out

"My brotherth a doctor but he'th not allowed becauthe hith medical lithenthe got revoked becauthe of the murder and he'th legally dead but he thill doeth doctor thtuff and- MC ITH ILYA UNENPWOYED???"

You just keep apologizing and try to get her home as soon as you can.

She cries when she sees Pepi because "he'th tho cute and thmall MC look how thmall he ith"

She will also try to lift you multiple times just to show off

Luckily Mazelinka is there with soup and that pretty much knocks her out.

Lucio:

Okay man he already has 0 impulse control and says every single fucking thought that goes through his head no matter how stupid.

Like if anything he's EASIER to deal with.

He's infinitely less hyper but he still claims that he will fight anyone who passes.

"Pleathe. I could take him. I'll jutht thwing my thord and he'll RUN AWAY. lemme try."

He's also way more sensitive than usual (which is saying something)

You pass a dog and he goes apeshit.

"MC why doethn't athra like me.... I jutht *hic* want to be hith friendth *sobs*"

He wants to be babied so bad.

Mercedes and Melichor are INSTANTLY protective because the smell reminds them of the dungeon and they want to be ON HIM AT ALL TIMES.

You manage to tuck him in and bring him some water, and just for kicks you read him a bedtime story that he keeps interrupting to give you kisses.

You think he's fallen asleep when he whispers "it'th okay to thwollow gauze right?"

[obeiii-mee]

Hi! Im new to your page and i love your writing 💕 i have a request for demon brothers headcanons on how they treat MC after realizing they get anxiety from things like yelling/loud abrupt noises/ things like that? For example, they flinch, get quiet, or start fidgeting? Thank you!!!

Aww, thank you so much. That means a lot to me and I’m really glad you like my writing considering I have such a chaotic style lmao. Also, welcome to this mess of a blog. We give off ‘cult’ vibes but at least we have hot, fictional demons to make up for that.This was super sweet because I know for a fact every single one of them would be very understanding of MC’s anxiety of anything.

Enjoy!

———————————————————————

The Brothers with an MC that gets anxiety from loud/abrupt noises:

Lucifer:

-He may not get anxiety from it, but Lucifer definitely prefers a quiet atmosphere/environment where he can focus on his work

-Which makes living with his brothers a living nightmare because they don’t have the capability to shut the fuck up

-That being said, he catches on rather quickly that you do not feel comfortable around loud noises in general

-There’s a limit to what he can do but every time you feel like you need a bit of peace and quiet, know that you are more than welcomed into his office at any time of the day. Even if he isn’t there

-He definitely prioritises your mental as well as your physical well being seeing as living with demons can have a massive effect on your sanity

-He’s not judgemental about it either because, while he doesn’t understand why loud noises may cause you to be so anxious, he understands that humans are built differently to demons

-Lucifer has no chill at times and will tell all of his brothers off every time they make a big scene, whether in public or private

-He can be a tad overprotective at times but he means really well, especially if he sees you’ve gotten oddly silent for the past few minutes or has caught wind of you fidgeting during dinner

-I don’t know how much I stressed so far about the observation skills this man has but I will keep doing, he can spot you flinching at loud noises from a mile away

Mammon:

-I believe that he can read people really well and can recognise when a person is feeling a certain way

-But he’s still a complete dumbass so he might still miss a few clues hidden in your mannerisms

-Like, he realises you’re uncomfortable but he doesn’t understand the degree of it or why it exists

-You’ll have to be blunt about it and tell him about your deal with loud noises because otherwise he will be stressing about it for weeks on end

-Dating him as a result of your anxiety over loud noises can prove to be...difficult

-He’s a very boisterous and obnoxious being, everytime a particular emotion of his flares up, he gets significantly noisier

-Whenever he enters the room you happen to be in, you’re forced to cover your ears and flinch because he has a way of announcing his presence

-But he tries so incredibly hard to act calmer around you and he so hates it when he fails to do so because he knows how uncomfortable you get as a result of him screaming like an idiot

-His brothers usually blame him when you start fidgeting because they assume he’s the cause of your rising anxiety and he started to believe it as well

-He sees that look on your face and he is just gutted

-He is ready to get on his knees and start apologising profusely until you forgive him for being such a noisy bastard

-The times other things/people are the cause of you going weirdly quiet, he will use his threatening tactics

-“Listen ‘ere, you’re makin’ my human uncomfortable so if you don’t shut the fuck up, I won’t let you see the light of day again. Do ya hear me?!?!”

-He says to the godfather clock when the sound of it striking midnight startled you

Levi:

-He 100% understands

-He hates loud noises as well and they usually make him scamper back to his room lol a rat in hiding

-Levi is slightly more immune to them however seeing as his brothers do have a habit of raising their voices all the time

-But do not worry, human, for he will protect his Henry from the annoying sounds people in general make at the cost of his life

-Take shelter in his room, please

-He loves having you in there and usually you only have the noise of video games in the background

-If you’re there and an anime he’s watching is getting too loud, he will turn it down for you ahead of time

-Sometimes, he can be as noisy as his brothers, especially when he rages at one of his games

-Bu he’s so quick to shut up once he realises you’re there

-And then, like Mammon, would start apologising for being not only an ugly otaku but an obnoxious one at that

-So y’all end up comforting and cuddling each other because.....uh....mutual hatred for loud things?

-Also, he would decapitate his brothers for you if they crossed a line (like he’s not really a Yandere but he’s a demon with demonic instincts to protect I guess)

Satan:

-Much like his father eldest brother, Satan also prefers silence in general

-After all, it’s a lot easier to read when his brothers aren’t there to muck about the place and make too much noise

-Humans are very different to demons, especially psychologically speaking and he understand that

-That’s why he doesn’t question it when you follow him into the library to seek refugee from his siblings

-If anything, he’s rather happy he gets to spend some time with you so the two of you sit in silence, each of you doing your own separate thing

-He knows if something is bothering you again, he can probably notice you suddenly start fidgeting in public

-He’s very cautious with you when you are in this state as he deems you are at your most vulnerable

-One time, a teacher at RAD raised his voice too high while scolding you for not paying attention and that earned an involuntary flinch from you

-That guy was officially on Satan’s shit list from then on, just so ya know

-Overall, he’s very sweet and patient with you and absolutely does not mind spending an entire day with you indoors away from loud noises

Asmo:

-He has no problem with loud noises whatsoever

-If anything, he loves being in crowded public places like The Fall, since partying and socialising is one of his many talents

-Not to mention, he’s so used to own family being so loud it just doesn’t affect him that much

-However, when you first arrived and he noticed just how badly you reacted to loud noises, he started avoiding things like clubbing as if it were the plague every time he hanged out with you

-Asmo needs social contact but he is more than willing to spend time indoors with you if it makes you feel better

-Or going out shopping in a relatively quiet shopping centre

-I mean, getting his nails done with you by his side sounds absolutely amazing to him

-So as much as he loves making noises and spending time in rowdy places, he’s always going to make an exception with you

-Always

Beel:

-Beel is unbothered by noise

-Sure, he does like it better when his brothers aren’t fighting and things are peaceful around the house

-But, he’s not fazed by yelling, loud music, heavy things falling and thudding against the ground etc.

-He picks up on your anxiety riddled gestures the first time Lucifer has a go at his brothers in front of you

-Because you started fidgeting like crazy and in that moment he was the only one that saw it

-So Beel grabbed your hand and led you outside of the room and Lucifer was so caught up in the moment he didn’t even realise it

-Probably, maybe he just let it go

-Basically, Beel decides that he shall protect you, the tiny human in comparison with him, from any loud noises that might startle you

-He will do it, do not test him

-One time, Mammon was screaming because he was chased by the witches and it made you flinch enough for Beel to see

-A couple hours later, Mammon disappears completely and shows up at your door, looking absolutely traumatised but genuinely apologetic and says sorry

-Sometimes people forget Beel is a demon

Belphie:

-I’m gonna make a wild assumption and presume that if you are vulnerable to loud noises, you are very likely a light sleeper

-If that is the case, (apologies if you’re not) then Belphie would be very quick to notice because a lot of shit goes down at night time and most of the time, it’s loud

-Belphie doesn’t have a problem with it, he can sleep through anything, even his brothers and especially Lucifer

-But he definitely notices if you aren’t cuddled up to him any more, even if he was asleep, because you sat up in bed suddenly at a random noise at 3am

-Note: That was Asmo sneaking back into the house trying to be as quite as possible but tripping and breaking a window

-“You’ll have to get used to that. My brothers are idiots, they don’t know when to be silent.”

-He prefers quiet places like the attic so he can actually sleep, but again, could do so either way so it doesn’t matter to him

-But he is going to be...let’s say ...upset.... if you were to wake up from a nap session because of someone something

-“Make one more sound and I’ll rip your tongue out.”

-Even when you aren’t napping, he gets very angry when people get unnecessarily loud, especially with you reaction

-But that just gives him an opportunity to bring you to the attic or something so the two of you can actually chill by yourselves for a chance

-Beel is invited obviously, but Belphie is just as happy to be left by himself with you

-Ironic how much his feelings for you have changed, huh?

————————————

So I really finished this by the end of the week. Hope this is actually some good because I spent all of my brain cells on an another giant request I’m working and the rest were used to write this. Thank you for sending me requests though guys! Now every time I get bored I can just answer your asks. Have a nice Monday!

Al~

[un-nmd]

Recent listening—

John Zorn, Naked City (1989) Reserve judgement till after you’ve heard the likes of “A Shot In The Dark” or “You Will Be Shot” (detect a theme?) for in these Lynchian juxtapositions of the mundane and the visceral, Zorn and co-conspirators laugh in all the faces of the jazz purists, art music graduates, avant-garde cultists—compartmentalisers or cataloguers or labellers, basically. The madness was always there. Zorn was only woke enough to listen to the wind and precipitate what she betrayed of her lover’s broken heart, or hearts: New York, L.A., Chicago, either/or, doesn’t matter, once past a critical mass all tend to the same limit, the wind’s seen ‘em all and they’re all the same. Naked City’s a portrait of order gone to anarchy. Whatever identity the “Latin Quarter” once had is here presented as a frenetic collage of whims; predatory, music liable to combust at any given moment. Likewise “Siagon Pickup” for an oriental equivalent. But sometimes the omens are bad enough that you can anticipate the storm, and even enjoy it, revel in it when it comes. Like on “Reanimator” where Zorn’s freakout heralds some insane climax that’s euphoric for the awakened. And please don’t miss that it’s all awfully hilarious to them as they feel and know that these stoic truths are lost on those yet to accept that all’s gone to shit, yes, even in your ivory towers, your vaults and penthouses and corporation headquarters; there its only letting itself take a bit longer to be known, but chaos’ll come, so you might as well wise up and enjoy it.

Death Grips, The Money Store (2012) Rather a lot to take in upon first hearing. Immediately plainly a refinement of the aesthetic put forth on Exmilitary but now with an entire studio to run around in these kids have wrought havoc on Mr. and Mrs. White’s 8-track ideal—couldn’t come up with a more fitting antithesis to De Stijl (and Mondrian’s, too) if you let the industry wallow another decade. So why’s this defunct Detroit duo in the mind?—cos where are the guitars, man? Every beat’s packed to near bursting with all manner of production craftsmanships (or gimmickries if you see it that way), MC Ride’s tripping bars overlaid—too much matter, really, to be dealt with on the first wave. But you appreciate the covenant this sonic assault bespeaks—this hip-hop New Complexity has room only to deepen from here. So steep in it, and by about round 3 or 4 (depending on how acute your lobes are) you’ll have undergone some sort of desensitisation to this violence in noise—and now you’re in a place to prophesy. Despite Ride’s barely discernible delivery (except on the eponymous hooks to nearly all 13) the ‘point’ of it all somehow gets itself across—it is, unlike the music itself, not very complex, and mainly involves embarrassing amounts of non-specifically directed anger. Dare I say it, there’s no filler on this, it’s a wild enjoyable ride and a happy side-effect to the maximalist production is there’ll always be something to tickle the ear. And when the hooks do come its a righteous clarifying of the chaos that would eventually get old if it stood alone. Plus, theorists can invoke an unholy marriage by ascribing some mutant Bartókian arch form: “Get Got” and “Hacker” as symmetrical sandwiching allegros, “Double Helix” as Nachtmusik? 

Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) If you’re hearing these albums in the same order I did you’ll get the same shock upon flicking on what you expect to be Coleman’s near-incomprehensible emancipated bebop and instead hearing a tune that’s actually perfectly singable, and moreover, one that you actually know—how’s that? Must be covering some standard which has somehow osmosed itself into your consciousness but—look it up, in fact its a Coleman original! And so where have you heard it before? Ah: Zorn. It seems then that those slurring drunkard articulations on the head to “Lonely Woman” embodied one of the few Coleman melodies (if not the only) that stuck itself to the underbelly of the hard bop canon—shape of jazz to come, indeed. But it wasn’t so much the heads that would (or were, at least, intended to) mould future generations—rather what lay in between: the emancipation of melody, yes, forget keys, forget harmonic structure, and while you’re at it throw your modal jazz out the window. I’ve always felt ‘harmolodics’ to be a poor term because really it ought to be just melody, that element of music which Coleman raised to the highest pedestal; melody alone, melody a priori. But as a pseudo-theoretic buzzword it does just fine.

John Coltrane, Offering: Live at Temple University (1966) First thing you notice is Coltrane’s uncomfortably, blatantly in the fore. There’s a need to turn it up so you can make out the other activity and by the time you’ve done so Trane’s tenor’ll be blaring out so loud it’s like he’s right by you. But the mixing seems to get more favourable as the numbers progress—or maybe you just adjust. Yes, revisiting, he’s up in your grill but not to intimidate. He’s there to send a very personal message. This was, after all, his penultimate live recording before he quit the grid in July of ‘67. He was getting close to something, and to tell it, he’s gotta get close to you. In the old quartet he might’ve had trouble getting so spiritual. You get the feeling that the mystic tendencies were more at home in this more familial second ensemble. There’s a communion of sorts. And technically they’re equally fine: Alice takes up right where McCoy Tyner left off and actually on her solos she’s more in line with her husband’s ‘sheets’ than her predecessor, part of the reason why the closer on this has replaced what used to be my favourite “My Favorite Things”: Belgium ‘65, check it here. And this is no mean feat as Tyner’s comping/the extended solo on that one’s where quartal harmony came of age, or at least in my experience. The opening to the Offering take’s also a real rarity: double bass goes at taut catgut like anything but cool. We’ve heard with what’s now alarming regularity the rhythm section’s other two rip loose free-form and its high time the other essential’s had a stake in the fun. But now let’s discuss what assures Live at Temple a place in legend. Drop in somewhere about halfway through “Leo”. Trane’s just finished up screaming outta his tenor. Rashied Ali’s going at it now, wild thing on the kit like a hurricane, whirling, whirling, an Almighty gnashing of teeth on calf hide for six or so minutes when all a sudden Trane comes—or is it Pharaoh?—some fella a-moanin’ like a lunatic at the rapture; Obeah Man, elder. Some sole black voice monophonic, like plainchant only infinitely more ancient. What, or whom, are they invoking? Seems they’re their own demons—that, or they’re oracles, come to preach the word in sonic semiotic, purveyors of the sound and the fury.

Food For Animals, Belly (2008) These D.C. fellas put out a remarkably consistent aesthetic and with more personality than you might expect from hip-hop in the industrial vein. That is, what you might expect is: An incoherent, arbitrary mish-mash of overvolted sawtooths, saturated found noise, and other cheap effects; at heart no more than a glorified dubstep. That’s where Christgau was coming from with Death Grips as “Skrillex-as-Unabomber or Skrillex-sans-fun”. But this, like Hill’s trio, is undeserving of such scoffing critique. Any incoherence (and sure, there’s plenty) is but part of a higher level narrative that itself is coherent. Hear it like timbre composition—argument between textures drives the musical conflict. Timbre variation dictates form. And sure, the jargon’s a little dry so let’s talk application: lyrically “Belly Kids” retells the ubiquitous suburbian nostalgia that we also found on the Arcade Fire’s Grammy laureate. As words cast mind’s eye far back, music evokes some sort of youth decay in reverse; the same motion but in sonic terms. The opening’s the hardest the beats ever get on this. Only one direction to go from there. So we ease up and ease up, harshness tempering at each fresh verse, vector very clear, then arrival at the final lines, delivered nude, final lines and the final element: the word. And you know them because they’re self-same to those that were spoken in the apocalyptic beginning. Brahms would be proud. A similar clarification but more on the scale of the Tristan resolution occurs between “Maryland Slang” and “Tween Fantasy” in which the former’s verse is resurrected (Mahler would be proud) before the latter’s velvet shimmering manifold, a thousand tiny chimes in a gentle breeze. And there are many more gems to be found in this urban gizzard (hints: “Shhhy” sample, preprise/main event) but I’ve written enough already.

[thejacketpocket]

Rain inside when it’s sunny out

As our species continues into not-so-slow march to extinction, here are some albums that set the mood and passed the time the best for me this past year.  Bandcamp links where applicable.

15. YG- Still Brazy

This was easily the most fun album of the year and it more or less opened with a biographical song about being shot. It’s also the album that has the Fuck Donald Trump song (highly skippable after the first listen), so there’s that. I was more taken with the way his hooks and chants run wide, gleeful circles around each other and how the elastic G-funk bass made summer driving a delight.

14. Kemper Norton- Toll

Based on the 1967 crash of an oil tanker off the coast of Cornwall—the biggest oil spill in UK history—this album sounds like something dark slowly washing ashore in wave after wave. It’s put together from bits of found sounds and ambient textures that are simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive, which occasionally piece themselves together into surprisingly affecting folk music. The net effect is incredibly lonely, and at times like a Belle and Sebastian album without all of the wonderful characters; just one person in an industrial world that’s slowly turning to rust.

Bandcamp link

13. David Bowie- Blackstar

I always expect this album to be a little more unbuttoned when I hear it—and I wish that it was the case—but it’s still more layered and complex than anyone could have hoped for (and has actually made me appreciate The Next Day significantly more). It’s an affecting, first-person narration of a man taking one last look around before abandoning modern life and material possessions and slowly disappearing back into the darkness of the forest. 

12. Eluvium- False Readings On

In what is surely the most fully realized work of composer Matthew Cooper, minimalist passages of strings, woodwinds, and piano are washed over by tape hiss and white noise, and angelic, operatic human voices advance and retreat, part Greek chorus and part gasp for air. Ostensibly an album inspired by themes of cognitive dissonance in modern society, it also serves as an elegy for civilization, sounding like a boat gently sailing toward the horizon, before finally falling off the edge of the world.

Bandcamp link

11. King- We Are KING

Three women reproduce the lush aesthetic of Al B. Sure!’s “Nite and Day” and slather it across an hour’s worth of brilliant songs (if something as fully realized as “Red Eye” or “Supernatural” had been on the Frank Ocean album it would have been ubiquitous), apply it to a no-budget “get in the van” career approach that’s somewhat rare in the R&B world, and fatten the album up with a down comforter’s worth of warmth and texture.

Bandcamp link

10. The Field- The Follower

The front half of this is probably the catchiest stuff Alex Willner has ever made; it’s repetition as pop, as earworms slip in and out, bobbing and sinking in the mix, and the overall compositions become so ingrained in your listening experience that you start subconsciously shifting the sounds around yourself. This is a fairly commonplace quality of such music, lifted here by the infectious nature of the two-and-three-note melodies and the spirited use of whispery vocal samples to effectively generate a ghost in the machine.

Bandcamp link

9. Conor Oberst- Ruminations

Who knows if this guy writes biographical songs or he’s just taking the piss, but this album sounds like the work of somebody who has had his ass kissed for a decade only to have everyone turn on him—which would not be far off from what actually happened to him. It’s a delightfully bitter, nihilistic, and thoroughly lonely album that also happens to contain his loosest and most immediately engaging songs in a decade. Note the fact that the kid who was once called a “next Dylan” has now made his most-Dylan sounding record yet in terms of presentation—all sparse guitar-and-harmonica kiss-offs—as a vehicle to chuckle sardonicly at the long-ago hype.

8. Miranda Lambert- The Weight of These Wings

Maybe her best album, maybe not, but certainly the best vehicle for her singing, with production stripped back just enough to make her voice sound glorious. The album maintains a consistent tone and general wit-and-wisdom vibe across a range of influences, as she tries on Nancy Sinatra's boots ("Pink Sunglasses"), Daniel Lanois' atmospherics ("Runnin' Just in Case"), or Patsy Cline's country soul ("To Learn Her"). Like most double albums, it could be condensed into a one-disc classic (leaning far heavier on material from “The Nerve” side), but it’s not like there’s any truly duff songs on it, either.

7. A Tribe Called Quest- We Got It From Here...Thank You 4 Your Service

I've just really missed the group hip-hop album, wherein a handful of MCs pass the mic back and forth—mid-song, mid-verse, mid-line, whatever—over the course of a full album, sounding like lifelong friends rather than brief business partners. There’s something idealistic about it, even if the album's MVP is not any of the MCs but the snare drum.

6. Not Waving- Animals

This is likely my most-listened album of the year, or certainly the one that fit my mindstate and routine in 2016 the best. With its highly catchy two-note melodies and impressionistic spattering of drums, it uses an industrial/punk ethos to sound broken yet alive in a particularly bracing fashion. In a broader sense, delving into Diagonal Records was probably my favorite musical anything this year as they had a lot of releases that I really dug (Powell, Nordic Mediterranean Organization, NHK yx Koyxen, Container).

Bandcamp link

5. Brandy Clark- Big Day in a Small Town

After a debut that didn’t quite do Brandy Clark’s songwriting justice, an extra sheen of production polish brings out the highlights in her compositions, confirming her as one of the best writers working—assuming this was not already confirmed—and a top-rate singer as well. Each song is a Russian nesting doll of melodies that uncork in ways that feel both surprising and inevitable, and her lyrics are flip, casually conversational, and a joy to memorize, say, and sing.

4. Julianna Barwick- Will

This fall, there was an Agnes Martin retrospective at the Guggenheim Museum, which I found to be a profoundly moving exhibition. Many of Martin’s works in the show involve small, barely perceptible linework that assembles into patterns on white, cream, or oatmeal colored palettes. If you stand close to the work, you can see the artist’s hand, and get lost in her abstract forests of minimalist design. As you step back, these intricate patterns slowly fade to white, and the entire canvas become a single icy hue. This feeling of erasing yourself as a viewer is invigorating, and for me a much-needed sensation. That’s how I feel when I listen to this album, Barwick’s best since 2010’s masterful The Magic Place.

Bandcamp link

3. Cass McCombs- Mangy Love

This is an invertebrate album that squiggles into new shapes and colors every time you return it, wrapping itself in lush, Van Morrison-like arrangements or squirming away with Grateful Dead-like noodling. Perhaps the best lyricist working today, Cass’ oblique wordplay seemingly rearranges itself into new sentences with each listen, oscillating between storytelling and stream-of-consciousness, surreal and plainspoken, metaphorical and mundane. There’s an angry political heart if you want to hold up a stethoscope to the album, but you can also just settle into the instrumentation, the myriad details, and bits of wry, offbeat humor.

Bandcamp link

2. Solange- A Seat at the Table

I’m not the one to be adding more to what’s already been said about this album, but it’s the rare album to feel bigger than the sum of its parts, giving the impression of something other than an album: a totem of sorts. Discounting country music, “Mad” is probably the song I listened to the most. The second Lil Wayne verse is a heartbreaker every time, and the composition as a whole is therapeutic—a massage that bores deeper and deeper until it hits the spot that releases all of your tensions. The whole album is like that, really.

1. Danny Brown- Atrocity Exhibition

Danny Brown’s pitch-black worldview and performative anxiety felt more J.G. Ballard than Joy Division, but both fit the bill. No album sounded more like 2016 to me: manic, hyperventilating, lips curled into an inverted smile, arms flailing, running downhill toward the smoke and flames. It also cheered me up every time I listened to it.

[lorrainecparker]

REVIEW – BCC 11 for Media Composer

There are some certainties in the industry we work on, and one of them as become the yearly (or so) updates to our favorite applications and/or effects packages, and a lot has happened for a certain company, namely Boris FX, in the last few years.  In this article, we’re going to be taking a look at the new release of Continuum from Boris FX, version 11 for AVX, and see what this year’s offering has for editors out there.

I wanted to get the introduction out of the way to talk a little bit about the journey that editors (especially Media Composer editors) have been on with Boris FX in the last few years.  Effects, and the effects pipeline for us was a little disjointed.  We had Boris FX on one side, offering use effects, but more importantly important workflow tools (Chroma Key, Flicker Fixer, Magic Sharp) that we need for any situation we run into.  But, there was a gap.  I pretty big gap when it came to things like Motion Tracking and Roto work which, to be honest, was a huge pain in MC, as the motion tracking tool was terrible, and you can only get so far with Animatte.  Well, one of the biggest shockers in post production in longer than I can remember happened a couple of years ago, when Boris FX decided to purchase Imagineer Systems, makers of Mocha, and not only integrate Mocha tracking into almost every effect in the package, but they took things a huge leap ahead of that, and released a stand alone effect version of Mocha Pro for Media Composer editors to use directly in their timelines.  This brought an unprecedented new workflow for Media Composer editors who, from time to time, can be very stubborn, and not want to leave their MC timelines.  Now you can do all the tracking and roto work you need to do, without having to export a single frame from your timeline.  So, that does beg the question, along with Mocha Tracking, what was added in BCC 10?  Well, here’s a quick breakdown:

Beauty Studio – A state-of-the-art skin retouching/digital makeup tool to make your talent look perfect.

Title Studio – The next generation of 2D/3D titling and motion graphics tool for designing and animating at any resolution. Includes support for MAXON CINEMA 4D models.

BCC Remover fills in missing pixels & removes objects with clone and auto-fill options.

BCC Dropout Fixer restores tape based damaged footage with field dropouts.

BCC Reframe reformats and stylizes “vertical cell phone footage” into 16 x 9 for broadcast.

BCC Light Leaks adds organic & naturalistic “in-camera” light and exposure effects.

BCC Video Glitch recreates the distressed look of compression artifacts, signal loss & corrupt digital video.

BCC Cross Glitch mimics abrupt digital signal transitions.

BCC Cross Melt conveys a new organic look and feel.

BCC Lights Leak Dissolve creates a light exposure-based transition.

BCC Cross Zoom combines zoom, glow, and dissolve into one simple transition.

Okay, let’s be honest.  That’s a lot.  You had the Imagineer Team working with the BCC team to get that integration working, and you had the BCC team developing these new effects.  This release was a home run.  So the big question is, how do you follow it up?  Well, it’s simple.  You take a look at an effect or effects you might not be completely happy with, and you improve on them, and that’s the main focus of the BCC 11 update.  Let’s take a look at what’s new in BCC 11.

BCC PRIMATTE STUDIO

When I first heard that this was going to be the main focus of the BCC 11 release, the light bulb clicked on in my head.  It makes perfect sense.  As I always say, there are two things that editors hate doing more than anything.  Tracking/Roto, and Chroma keying.  Well, we got half that solved in BCC 10 with the Mocha integration/Mocha Pro plug-in, and now in version 11, we’re going to focus on keying.  Awesome, but I wasn’t really ready to have to re-teach myself Chroma keying, but it was definitely worth it.  Here’s what you need to know about Primatte Studio (PS).

It’s all about the details in PS.  The details and the tools at your disposal.  With PS, about 65% of your keying work can be done automatically by pressing the “Auto Analyze” button in the new HUD of the effects window.

Once that’s done, you normally assume that you’re going to head over to the “Final Matte” view, where you’ll get a look at what your matte looks like.  Well, not in here.  We’re going to head over and check the “status” of our matte in the “Matte Status” view, and you get something that looks a little like this:

To be honest, this just looks almost like digital noise, but what it actually is, is PS telling you what is opaque (white) semi-opaque/transparent (grey), and completely transparent (black).  What’s very interesting about this slightly different workflow is that if you switch over to your “Final Matte”, you won’t notice about 90% of the problems going on here, but if you switch back to your “Final Composite”, chances are you’ll notice issues right away with all they grey “semi-transparency” going on with you key.  Now you can go in and start to clean things up, and you can go with the rectangle tool for this.  Dealing with the background first, make sure you tell PS you want to “Clean BG”, and then simply lasso over the grey in the background, and it will mostly disappear with a few strokes of the mouse.  Now you can do the same with the foreground by choosing “Clean FG”, and doing the same technique.  In many cases, this might be all the work your matte needs, and once you’ve done this, you’re good to go, but let’s be honest, if you do any type of keying work, on even a semi-regular basis, you know that garbage matting is the easiest way to eliminate most of unneeded key area, so you can focus in on just the green directly around your talent.  Well, you guessed it, Mocha is integrated directly into PS, and you can create not only outside masks (a garbage matte around your talent to eliminate as much green screen as possible, to get the best looking key possible), but you can also do inside masks as well (mask drawn around the inside of your talent to eliminate areas that are unnecessary to the keying process, and you want to force PS to make them completely opaque), and they can be either keyframed inside of Mocha BCC, or you can obviously do a completely motion track of the area as well, and save yourself a ton of time in the process as well.

With all this being said, you can create pretty good keys, but one thing that just about every editor does their best to avoid, and that is hair.  Especially strands of hair that will probably get completely lost in the keying process.  Well, believe it or not, not only do you have the ability to bring back those lost hairs by using the “Restore Detail” parameter, but you also have the ability to “Make FG Transparent”, which is the PS way of letting you remove green coloring in small areas like hair, or around other small think details, even on the most compressed footage, to give you a key like you’ve never seen before.  Now, I did mention the rectangle tool, and that tool is perfect for larger tasks like cleaning up the FG and BG, but for more specific and detailed tasks, like restoring detail, or working make the FG transparent, and removing all the green from any key attempt, you can use the point tool which, much like it sounds, is simply a pointer that you can draw on the screen with, to give yourself pinpoint accuracy, to make sure only the details you need altered are.  I’ll be honest with you here.  If you had asked me before working with PS if I was a good keyer, I would have told you yes, but with everything that I’ve learned from working with PS, I’d say that my keys are now easily ten times better than they were before.

There are a few more things I want to talk about in PS  before we move on, and the first is the “Adjust Light On” parameter.  Many people would overlook this parameter, as it’s not really clear about what it does.  Something about turning a light on.  Well does it ever do that.  In many cases, when you do an auto analyze of a green screen, it might look something like this:

What the Matte Status window is showing you is how uneven your background green screen is lit.  Wouldn’t it be nice if you could adjust the light on that green screen to even it out a little?  See where I’m going here.  Yes, that’s right.  You can even use PS to even out poorly shot green screens, to make your keying job that much easier,. Here’s the same shot with the “Adjust LIght On” parameter selected.

An absolutely staggering difference.  Now, there are other parameters here you can adjust like Color Correction (basic CC, but CC none the less), Light Wrap and some Matte Refinement tools as well, but the last feature I want to talk about is the Edge Color Correction, and how it works, and how you can make it work for you.  My biggest problem with a parameter like this, is that i never really know how much of an edge I’m adjusting, even though I can go in and adjust the edge width first thing.  It still doesn’t tell me exactly how wide the edge is, which would be a big help.  Well, a great trick and workaround is before you worry about adjusting your edge size, crank the brightness all the way up, and as soon as you do, you’ll get a white halo around your talent, showing you the actual edge that’s being adjusted.  Now you can adjust your edge width to the exact size you want it to be, bring that brightness back down to zero, and you can now start making adjustments to the other parameters like Tint Edge, Temperature Edge, ect.  All of these parameters, plus the ability to make Geometric changes (Scale, Rotation, Position, etc) and even adding Drop Shadows, makes Primatte Studio the new gold standard for keying inside of Media Composer.  Alright, let’s move on and talk about another new effect in BCC 11, and that is the new Broadcast Safe filter.

BCC BROADCAST SAFE

It’s funny that this effect has taken as long as it has to get into BCC, but again, it’s a welcome one.  Editors are accustomed to working with footage that is outside of legal video ranges, and they fix this problem the way most people do, by color correcting their footage to bring either the white levels down, or the black levels up, to keep everything inside of a legal range.  Well, what happens when you’re at the eleventh hour and a show that you stepped into a the last minute has been rejected, because video levels in it were too hot?  Well, you don’t have time to go back through the whole show to fix them, so you go with the standard “Color Effect Clip”, which is when you apply the Color Effect effect, it clips all your video at one hundred and zero, so everything in the show is now legal, sacrificing quality, as any detail that was in those over exposed areas has now been clipped out.  Well, that’s where BCC Broadcast Safe comes into play.  Not only do you have the ability to clip from within the effect if you want to (which you don’t), but what this effect is designed to do is to give you the ability to use a preset to confirm all your footage to by actually lowering (or raising) the luminance values, as opposed to clipping.  A uniform raising/lowering of those levels will keep the details in your footage, and let’s you do the job in about five seconds, as opposed to having to go through the entire timeline looking for problematic shots.  Simply apply the effect to the top most layer in your timeline, make any adjustments that you need to, and the effect will trickle down to the layers below it.  Genius!

BCC VR

With many editors coming across VR workflows in their current projects, the Continuum team has developed five effects to help you deal with common VR issues you’ll run into, and all of these are available in your Media Composer timeline.  The effects include:

VR Reorient

VR Insert

VR Blur

VR Sharpen

VR Flicker Fixer

What’s also very cool is that if VR is your thing, and you’ve already purchased Mocha VR, you get the VR unit free.

  There have also been some updates to the Title Studio effect including adding 3D render options including depth-of-field and many more presets & templates.

Alright, let’s get specific now, and talk about a workflow update that is almost worth the price of the upgrade itself.  With GenArts now completely part of the Boris FX family, editors will be wanting to incorporate Sapphire effects into their current BCC effects pipeline.  So how does this new pipeline work?  Well, in the past, users of BCC AVX have been accustomed to having to work with a “Multi-Filtered” workflow.  What that basically means is that you would apply an effect, and turn on the “Multi-Filter Start”, to get things rolling.  For every effect you add, you need to keep the “Multi-Filter” going by selecting “Multi-Filter Mid”, until the last effect you apply, which would be the “Multi-Filter End”.  Now, the big issue with this workflow is that it’s completely limited to BCC effects, and nothing else. Now keep in mind that this workflow is the same whether you’re applying the effects to footage or to titles.

So, what’s the big update you ask?  Well, editors in Media Composer are accustomed to adding multiple effects to footage/titles by alt dragging different effects onto a clip to create a stacking order.  The concept now works the same with BCC with one major difference.  With every effect you apply, the “Background” will be set to “None”.

Now you can stack any effect you want, from either BCC or Sapphire, to create the exact look you want, with each effect’s background set to none.  When you get to the last effect, simply switch the “Background” to be “Layer Below”, and you’ll now see the BCC/Sapphire effect stack in your timeline.  Editors in other NLE’s might not think this is a big deal, but for Media Composer editors this is huge, and opens up a big door for us to be able to do more in our edits, without having to go to After Effects.

PRICE

A new BCC AVX licence will run you $1695 US which, for me, is pretty steep, but what’s great to know is that Boris FX has a few different licensing options to keep the price as low as possible.  That $1695 will get you version 11 with all the updates that come for it, but once version 12 rolls around, you’ll have to pay an upgrade cost of $595 US.  This upgrade cost is the same if you’re currently running BCC 9 or 10.  If you’re running BCC 8 or earlier, you’re looking at an upgrade price of $695.  Now, here’s where you can start to save some money.  You can subscribe to BCC, with an annual subscription cost of $695 which, assuming you keep your subscription going on a yearly basis, will get you upgrades for BCC past version 11.  Now keep in mind, we’ve been specifically talking about the BCC AVX license, but if you’re like me, and are using After Effects, Resolve, etc, you really want one license to encompass everything, and Boris FX has an option for that.  If you want to go the subscription way, I’d suggest an AVX, Adobe and OFX license that is the same price ($695 US) as the AVX only subscription license, but you obviously get the effects for all the host applications (Avid, Premiere, After Effects, Resolve/Fusion) for the one price.

  So that does ask the question, should you spend your hard earned money to upgrade or subscribe to BCC 11 if you’re a Media Composer editor?  Well, the first question to ask yourself is, do you wish you could add effects to your timeline titles?  If the answer is yes, then you should subscribe.  The second question to ask yourself is, do you do any type of flashy titling work that would look even better in 3D?  If the answer is yes, then you should subscribe.  Do you want to take your keying work to the next level level in Media Composer, and not have to export all your footage to After Effects to do it?  If the answer is yes, then you should subscribe.  I’m sure that you can see where I’m going with this.  With the staggering amount of tools, effects, “studio’s” (Beauty, Primate, Title, etc), Mocha Integration and workflow enhancements, if you don’t have BCC, you’re absolutely doing your clients a disservice.  If you even plan on doing one keying job this year, Primatte Studio is worth the upgrade to version 11.  One thing that’s important that I mention, before I wrap things up is that if you are working with Media Composer | First, and you want to work with Boris Continuum Complete (current or otherwise), Sapphire or Mocha Pro, you will need to purchase it through the Avid Marketplace, as if you don’t, the effects won’t appear inside your application.  If you want to go this route, once you’ve made your purchase through the Avid Marketplace, check in your account where your MC|F license is, and you should see the license for BCC.  Once you do, you should be able to launch, and you’re off to the races.  For everyone else you can head over to the Boris FX website, and make your purchase there.  You can get more information, and download a free two week demo of BCC 11 for Media Composer at www.borisfx.com .

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