#colorful corner ep. 26

[kawaiichibiart]

Here is the roadmap for April:

And here's a closer look at the events:

[hexonthepeach]

a gentle tongue breaketh the bone | 27: wild

pairing: fem hybrid fox omega!reader/hybrid Alpha!nct 127

tags: reverse harem, non-traditional omegaverse hybrid! cyberpunk au, pack dynamics, polyamory, slowburn/slowbuild, angst & hurt/comfort, heavy content warnings inc. torture, graphic violence, suicidal ideation, explicit sexual content

summary: the year is 2127. decades of eugenics and warfare have led to the rise of designated populations: the ruler Alphas and their rare, prized omegas sequestered from the Beta population. in the aftermath of the War of the Two Tigers, New Goryeo ushers in an Imperial dynasty determined not by birthright but by the alliance of the Syndicate’s clancorps to choose the best pack of your generation. you are destined to take your place within the Imperial harem as a queen, and–perhaps–Imperatrix herself

but you have a secret, written into your skin and bones–one that could easily kill you, depending on who finds it out

ten years ago you chose your Alpha and their pack in a fateful meeting

now, you must make them choose you

[masterlist & glossary] [read on AO3] [26: fallen]

wc: 7.3k

warnings: action violence, mild omega slander

recommended listening: box - nct dream (truly enjoying this ep)

Your face is buried in a strange texture, the scent even more unimaginable. Dirt–real and rich as a forest floor, scattered with dead leaves and flakes of bark. Rot and green and something carbonized as well, a scent map that transports you back a decade and a half, hundreds of clicks due north on the 127th meridian. 

Home. 

It can’t be. This dream is too real–trees rising on either side, the chittering of insects and birds echoing from their tops, the moon centered above beyond a green haze of aurora–

No, you think. That shifting light is too distinct in its pattern, too geometrical to be a natural phenomenon. Your head throbs as you slowly register the familiar bright rectangles of color visible through the leafy canopy, the sound-dampened rumble of voices. 

“Welcome back to the main event. As our guests return to their seats from the intermission let’s set the scene. Tonight we have a very special stage, a little corner of the Wild carefully transplanted for your entertainment.” 

The announcement through a speaker sounds underwater, but Key’s voice is unmistakeable.

You’re back in the arena. But that’s also impossible–there’s no way the breadth of this space could fit even in that huge room. This is something different. A botanical garden? A zoo? Enclosed, you think, much warmer and damper than the Neo Seoul night you’d shivered against earlier on the rooftop.

“For the safety of our esteemed guests we have transported our participants in tonight’s death match to a confidential location, to demonstrate the resources granted to us by our newest corporate sponsor, Zhirafa Technical Manufacturing.” 

Zhirafa? The name has no meaning to you.

“This display of our Park clan ally’s newest offerings for private and public security celebrate their new investiture to our NSMP response teams. Let’s hear a few words from our sponsors.”

You pick yourself up, tripping on the ridiculous train of your gown, shaking a small storm of leaf litter free. Your slippers are gone, feet deadened by cold and inactivity, coming back to life with your pacing around the opening in the forest. 

“Help!” you shout.

You hear your voice echo in the vast structure beneath the music of some distant advertisement, muffled by the dense trees. Based on the autocar-thickness of the trunks and their building-tall height this isn't new growth–this must have been here for years. That the treetops haven’t broken through whatever is containing them overhead is a testament to how well-architected it is against it. 

“The classic Savannah line has been modernized for Neo Seoul’s most prescient threat: the cyber-fitted feral alpha. Tonight’s demonstration is proof that in the war of organic and robotic, the apex predator will always be the one that can’t be killed.”

The music swells above you, scored to a video you can’t see. 

This is where real fear finds you, remembering anthems played in the distance over speakers. The constant chatter of gunfire, the arc of rockets overhead. You taste metal and gunpowder just the same. Kicking at the ground with your bare feet displaces weathered shell casings and bits of exploded plastic beneath the leaves. 

There’s no way you’ve been transported North. It would take days, not minutes. They don’t even know you’re gone if this stupid game was proceeding with you at its heart. 

No, it dawns on you. This must be an NSMR training ground. 

You knew them best from the melos, places where new recruits from Seoul had trained to fight against Neo-Manchukoan guerilla forces, acting out their deaths before inevitably meeting them in the Wild. 

You have to alert the audience somehow–get out before the event begins. Even if you don’t have a mic and tracker there’s the familiar low-register buzz of drones overhead, you just have to get the attention of one.

“Is anyone out there?” Your voice echoes a little less, the artificiality of the soundscape revealed in how the birdsong and insects continue unphased. 

There is something–though–the rustle of leaves nearby that makes you twist around. Your ears swivel towards the noise, hunching low out of instinct and searching for something to use as a weapon.

“No more surprises, please,” you speak without saying, backing away from the unnatural gleam of blue-white in the thicket. 

[Present identification, citizen.] 

The voice is electronic and uncanny, different from your kidnapper’s in being devoid of any humanity at all. 

“I’m not a citizen,” you say, calmly, “I’m Lee ____, born–”

There’s a metal-on-metal sound, pneumatics hissing as the thing breaks free of the bushes, four-legged and bristling with attachments of dull chrome.

The robotic construct is built like and yet unlike any large cat you’ve ever witnessed–larger than Johnny in his original form. It’s surprisingly smooth in its movements despite its clunky profile, its metal claws and chain-like tail just as ridiculous additions as the grenade launcher fixed to its back. 

[Scanning] the drone says, giving you the grace of a few moments to keep searching for a weapon as a white net of light is projected from the thin rectangle of its eyeline. 

You think for a moment you might have made it before the scanner pulses from white to red, metal jaw opening wide, fangs sharp past the light.

[Level 3 security protocol in effect. Unknown intruder detected. Countdown T-10 to detainment. Do not attempt to flee.]

Terror rushes through you, animal brain screaming to bolt while your rational self tells you to hold, to not give the drone a reason to chase you. It’s absurd, treating an artificial creature as having an instinct but a step to the side is answered by a mirror-like movement.

“Is there anyone there?” you plead. “I was abducted here. Get me out.”

[6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . .] the impartial countdown continues.

“Nine hells,” you mutter, ripping off your outer robe and approximating the stance of a matador with an angry bull as you begin to back away.

You don’t have experience with these kinds of machines but you understand programmed intelligence–the limitations are cartoonishly absurd no matter how many years of advancement have tried to make them as reactive as a human mind.

[ 3 . . . 2 . . . Engaging protocol.]

You wait until the drone lunges at you, wait longer to watch it break to slam its stun-paneled flank sparking from conduced energy, before throwing the swatch of weighted fabric towards it. 

You have seconds of its head and body being covered to turn and bolt, path of retreat already erratic before you glimpse a red-shaded observation camera in front of you, the blink of another–

It’s visible for an instant ahead of colliding with cold metal and 50,000 volts pulsing through you in a heartbeat. 

You can’t even scream. 

Your body seizes and rolls across the ground–stunned. Heavy thuds hit the earth around you as the drones close in, mechanisms grinding and whirring. One of those wicked three-pronged paws bears down on your chest before you can curl away, pinning you to the earth.

[Cease resisting, citizen.] the drone’s pre-programmed voice is oddly calm. [Further resistance will be met with deadly force, comply until additional units can be engaged.]

“Fuck . . . you . . .” you wheeze with the remaining air from your lungs, screaming once you’re able to pull in air. “Get OFF OF ME!” 

Something–someone–rumbles overhead, guttural and loud. 

The drones attention on you breaks, met with a flash of chrome as the unoccupied Savannah Panther darts up the side of the nearest tree. It’s absurd watching that stupid thing claw the wood uselessly, unable to fight the pull of gravity on its dense chassis.

The shadow above takes advantage of its struggle, attacking as the drone is sliding down, before its hind paws can hit earth again.

The impact shakes the ground, metal screeching as black furred arms tear the drone’s jaw from its skull with barely any give, a fluid movement stabbing the jagged metal deep into its visor. Sparks fly from the downed Panther, unable to see but further assaulted by that shard pulled out and dug into its neck. 

Your own Panther makes the choice between continuing to hold you down and dealing with the more obvious threat–suddenly you’re free. You twist in the soil against the awful pain in your chest, struggling to get up and finding the exposed back of the predator creeping towards your savior. 

Without thinking you pounce, climbing on the back of that wretched thing.

You have to hold on for dear life as the drone drops and rolls you both, limbs and head rotating to try and dislodge you. You grasp the cannon-like protuberance from its back, claws digging into the exposed pneumatics at its base to disable its hindquarters before several hundred kilos of angry robot can buck you off. 

“Why don’t you just self-destruct–” you hiss, tearing your hands raw hooking into the gaps of its plating for its more-fragile innards. A rotor dies, the cat stumbling as you feel the launcher under your chest whir into life. 

[PleaaAAAse comp comp comp–]

The electronic voice jitters into intelligible speech as you rip another cable or hose–some snakelike thing spewing gas in your hand, the entire forest floor blinking red from the malfunctioning unit as the launcher fires. 

You brace yourself against an explosion–realizing that the cannon lacks compression and ignition when there’s a pop and the grenade rolls to the ground, barely out of range. The sight of that palm-sized canister makes your entire body go cold, fear breaking your fight into flashes of horror.  

Faded green writing on a metal can, leaves in a circle. Biotechnica.

“It’s a bomb, eomma?” you ask.

“Spring,” your mother corrects. “Bom, not bomb. But yes, a bomb.” 

She pulls the seedling blooming from the torn canister, showing you the remaining markings in English.

“Nothing is burning. Where did everyone go?”

You’d looked around you at the new growth, strange for it being in the middle of what had once been a bustling refugee market. No people remain–wrecked stalls enveloped in fresh herbs and blooms out of season, bamboo and fruit trees bursting through the cracked pavement of the train station.  

“A long time ago someone predicted the planet would go silent, if we kept destroying and polluting it.” Your mother says. “Men made this to try and stop it.”

You accidentally kick something at your feet–a dense twisting of vines and mushrooms that appears to be vaguely human-shaped, like someone curled onto their side. Spores rise up into the cold winter light, like specks of gold. 

“When you see this, don’t touch it, don’t even move towards it, ____, just . . .”

“RUN!” you scream your order, looking up to see that dark-furred hybrid bash its opponent drone a final time into the shuddering, splintered remains of a tree trunk. 

You can make it, you can get out of here, both of you–

Crunch.

The sound is more horrible than the pain with the adrenaline rushing through you, metal jaws closed on the back of your thigh gripping you in place and pulling you facedown into the dirt.

You fight against the stuttering hold, feeling cloth and muscle shred between twin fangs, crawling towards the protector who’d taken your instruction literally, but towards you, not away–kicking something just past your head– 

The explosion compresses the air inward before blowing it out, the force of its blast throwing you free and against the nearest tree. 

You know it’s not an incendiary grenade. There’s no red flash or the heat of fire–no sound except the ringing in your ears from the sonic boom. 

Your vision streaks with green-yellow, a swirl of dust washing over you and that familiar smell . . . something like the rain after a drought. It's burning so deep with each lungful you can only cough as the scent fills your lungs and nostrils, trying to get it out. 

Through misty eyes you see the thing beside you, booting back to life, cat-like jaw working beneath its blinded visual sensor. The battered Panther drone picks itself up from newly-formed moss and plant-life, red lights blinking on its chassis casting the newly grown meadow in shades of horror. You claw weakly at the grass, cringing away from the metal claws. 

And then, a roar–

–not from the drone, but him. 

He’s so real and loud it breaks past the damaged muffle of the explosion to resonate within you, that black belly and the ghost of its weight over you so familiar it hurts more than the oozing, aching awfulness in your leg or the internal damage from your pathetic fight. 

You’re back in that abandoned building, terrified and dying as Taeil and Yuta try to keep you amongst the living, your unlikely savior a thing with no resemblance of the man buried within. 

It’s not an easy fight for him, at least, not with the Panther drone recognizing the threat of 1500 PSI of bite force in the jaw closing around its armored neck. The cats rise in a two-legged, clawing grapple, the earth drumming beneath you with each stomp of claws beside your face, metal and organic, dirt and contagion blinding you as you shrink away. 

Not a thing, no. Your mate. 

“Youngho,” you whisper, realizing too late it's the wrong time–the jaguar pausing for a moment in its battle to twist around towards you, yowling when metal claws rake across his thick black hide. 

“Left side,” you gasp. “Wires, left side.” 

The jaguar hears you, at least in the backwards turn of those gold-dusted ears. He uses the unbalanced weight of the construct against it, climbing atop it the way you had, but much more elegantly, rolled with less visible damage. 

Sparks fly as he tests each weakness with yellow-white teeth embedding in the metal and synth plating, ripping chunks free until the repeating electronic scream of that thing dies, the grenade launcher in its back unable to fire with the critical point of information cut clean. 

It drops to the shifting ground, just so much scrap. Leaves twine around it, growing slowly at least, shoots erupting through a metal carcass.  

The flesh-and-blood cat roars over its frame, triumphant, clawing and kicking roots over its destroyed corpse. He’s unaware of the danger, only visible to you as the self-destruct cycle begins, numbers streaking across the lit visor screen where its eyes should be.  

“Run,” you say, having already given up, cheek pressed into the familiar scent of home. 

Jaws close on your back, snagged in the fabric, picking you up as he drags you away like just another kill. You make it as far as the brush, leaves ripping at your face, before the world explodes again. 

This time in fire. 

Everything about this entire ceremony-turned-circus has been sucking him down into the last point of control but this is the final straw on the camel’s back. Mark is incensed, claws out without any conscious control to hide them. 

He’s starting to understand what Johnny had said about it hurting every time, that after a while the pain of them piercing the skin barely registers. The constant burn in his ears and his spine is more worrisome.

“We need to speak to the Crown Prince,” he says, shoving Haechan back when he slithers up beside him. The younger Canid is on a warpath, having already chucked the last Kim attache’s tablet into his face so hard it knocked him unconscious. 

“Against the rules.” The servant seems to be enjoying the experience of saying no to their ragtag Nyctos contingent–all four of them with Renjun limping beside him, supported by Taeil. Yangyang had already been transported to one of the medical centers, unable to be roused from the stun that had crashed his system while Yuta went to security to investigate the feeds.

The man’s eyes keep flicking up between a personal roster of wagers and the modified stage behind them with its ghostly phantoms of trees and lights in the 360 degree model of the next arena.

The fight should have already started a long time ago, but Key has stopped announcing anything besides advertisements, agitated murmurs in the crowd revealing that something is deeply wrong beyond the obvious absence. 

This ends now, Mark thinks. If they want their bets and bloodsport it can wait. 

“Tell him the Princess Consort has been kidnapped,” he finds himself saying, earning the immediate attention of the men–no, the buzzards–flocking around his cousin and pack leader. They look down on them from the vantage of their booth, Choi Siwon laughing. 

“Impossible,” Elder Bang says, leaning over the edge as he pokes slowly at his agent. “This building is secure.”

“We were attacked by an unknown assailant, a solo,” Renjun reports, tail whipping behind him. “Check the security footage in the west side service corridors.”

“Did you see her taken?” That gray-haired old doctor makes his way down, AR glasses scrolling with information. Mark’s nose wrinkles at the lavender-like scent of the tobacco on him, something oily and metallic underneath.

“No,” Renjun says. “They knocked me out before I could go after her–”

“Contusions, skull fracture–” he assesses the fox, signaling to Duke Kim to call for additional medical support and security. 

“We’ll send a team to the site and investigate,” he says to the Duke. “Quietly. We don’t want anyone panicking.”

“We can’t track her without an agent or a biochip,” Mark says. “We’ll need to check all exits–”

“First and foremost, keep quiet, we don’t need to raise an alarm,” Duke Kim says. “Is the Tenth Prince secure?”

Mark gestures towards the illuminated royal box, frustrated already with the lack of response. “Does it look like he’s missing?”

“Check yourself, Lee.” His uncle-by-law threatens, fixating on Renjun with a measured look of disgust. “You’ll watch your tongue or we'll let this fall on your heads.”

Mark immediately feels the surge of anger that’s been so quick to strike aflame these past few days–the recognition that another is attempting to dominate his Alpha. 

“This is on your security, not mine,” he warns, eyes flashing up past the crowded entrance to the booth. “I will speak with our pack lead–”

“He’s occupied,” Elder Park joins them on the stairwell, looking entirely unsurprised by the news. “You’ll report to me.”

Mark takes one look at his smug, modded face and makes the decision to breach the fifteen-foot gap between the outer arena floor and the heavily-decorated exterior of the Syndicate booth, fuck formality. 

He’s been itching to use his new claws–wishes he had a tail to make scaling the wall less awkward.

The Syndicate’s security response is immediate in the barrels of several guns aimed at him by the time he peers over the ledge, teeth gritted against the ache deep in his shoulder as his boots skid on carved wood. 

“What in nine hells,” Taeyong stands along with a number of Syndicate guests, disrupting an entire table of drinks, credit chips scattering. 

Mark is grateful when he reaches out to take his arm, sheathing the claws digging into Taeyong’s red military jacket as he pulls him over. “What are you doing?”

“____ is missing,” Mark hisses, heart pounding in his chest, turning between the multiple barrels pointed at them both, moving to guard his cousin despite knowing they’re treating him as the threat. “They almost killed Liu, too.” 

“Stand down.” The Crown Prince is–mostly–himself, though he’s slurring heavily and reeking of liquor. He looks down at Duke Kim, brows lowered, until the elder gestures dismissively for security to lower their weapons.

“We’ve already deployed a team to search for her–”

“And I’ve got our NSMP representative on it. The whole building should be put on lockdown–” Mark begins. 

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Choi asks, moving to Taeyong’s side. “We don’t need Ten–the Imperial contingent finding out.”

“Relax,” Elder Bang adds. “That one is still safe in his box with his guards.” 

“Right,” Park agrees. “She’s probably still in the building. Best to continue with the event and track her down before that freak can find out she’s given him the slip. We’d never hear the end of it.”

Duke Kim sidles over to their meeting, tablet in hand. “Entrance scans are negative. She’s still in the building. Reinholdt will find her.” 

“See?” Taeyong pats Mark on the shoulder, handing him a drink that hasn’t been overturned. “Our Princess will be fine. We were just celebrating the good news, you should join us.”

There’s a familiar drumbeat on his shoulder as his cousin and pack leader embraces him one-armed, as the Syndicate heads and their entourage of cronies and Lottery escorts raise their glasses in a toast Mark refuses to participate in. 

Mark doesn’t even realize he’s being signaled, distracted by the sheer number of recognizable enemies in this booth–-cold eyes fixated on him. Faces his mother had made him memorize, when they’d first been taken hostage.

“Such a smart boy,” she’d said, inspecting his homework, the artificial breeze of the Dome ruffling the pages in her manicured hands. “You still have so much trouble with your English spelling. Your father did, too.”

It had struck him that it was a lie, even then at twelve years old, with the books he’d grown up with in multiple languages in his father’s study–the ones his mother never seemed to want to read for herself or him besides Scripture. None of them, here, now in the Palace.

“You don’t have to learn any of that nonsense, precious child. Just learn the codes. Learn how to speak the language of the enemy,” she’d said.

O-K-A-S, is what Taeyong is saying in code. Okay, wait. Over and over again. 

"Our clan finally has a 4th gen representative," Taeyong says aloud, proudly. "Reinholdt will do a determination of the hereditary profile once we've wrapped."

Mark pulls away from that repeated tap on his shoulder, letting his real anger out.

“Is that all you care about? Would it kill you to show some concern for her?” 

He ignores the familiar bark of Haechan arguing with a guard below to maintain eye contact, watching Taeyong’s ruddy eyes blink at him, a lazy smile sliding across his mouth. 

“C’mon Mark. Don’t be like that,” the Vulpine says, leaning in to whisper loudly in his ear. “Even if you didn't get a chance the kit's still your family–”

Mark grabs him by his jacket front, surprised by how easy it is to handle his cousin, realizing too late how drunk he is. Doyoung’s absence is worse than he’d ever imagined.

“She was raped,” he spits out. 

Taeyong laughs in his face, quickly joined by the rest of the booth. Choi moves to intervene, waved off by the Crown Prince.

“That’s just omegas, right?” Taeyong drawls. “Always asking for it.” 

More laughter. He knows his cousin isn’t like this–doesn’t believe any of the lies about his own designation–but it still makes him sick to acknowledge the words coming out of his mouth. For the first time in his entire life, the brother he’s chosen, the one he’d risked his life and limb for, is unrecognizably ugly.

“Did you take advantage of her, too?” Mark asks, tone deadly. 

“She begged me for it.” Taeyong says with a shrug, earning more of a response from the corpos and their escorts. Mark lets him go, disgusted.

Taeyong turns to their audience, lifting his glass. “You’ll forgive my cousin, he’s never had the pleasure–”

“Fuck you,” Mark says, waiting only as long as it takes for Taeyong to turn back to wink at him before punching him across the jaw. 

Fresh shoots spring from the ground, stringy tendrils catching at your skin and blossoming into flowers crushed under your weight as you’re dragged away.

Buried deep–a part of you kicks and screams and fights to return to it, to be enveloped within the decomposition of the environment and recreated as something new. Only your fox would remain, flesh melted down to the bones, the human side of you disappearing into the new forest.

But, no. You have to fight back. Those despicable bastards had brought the Wild to Neo Seoul. 

Not just the aesthetic sensibility of it but the bioterrorist weapons used in the war, the bombs that melted human flesh into raw organic material, feeding new life. You’d been exposed before–thankfully never close enough to alter you fully. 

It wouldn’t kill you–no, but contamination would pull you back to the animal you are. You might not be able to shift, not with your therapy, but you'd be in jimseung.

Even now your fox twists and lashes out with her claws, rending flesh, feeling it in your chest—your neck–as you’re dropped to the earth. 

The rage makes you incandescent, fur rippling ruddy and black across your arms as you sneeze and paw at your face, half-expecting to find the fox’s snout where your nose remains as human as ever.

You’re far enough away from the strike zone, you hope. You might be able to fight the influence of the contaminant but an Alpha without anti-shift doesn’t stand a chance. 

Indeed, Johnny has reverted past the point of communication, the jaguar’s movements purely animal. You try to drag yourself away as he circles you, chin pulled in with a display of dominance. His mouth is open wide, giant teeth exposed as he tastes your scent.

You bare your own canines and growl a warning. Back off. 

The jaguar vocalizes in answer, a chuff almost like a laugh. Then he’s rolling you with his massive head and paws as he greets you with unadulterated excitement. When you mewl out in pain he freezes, tongue mid-swipe over your face, dropping down to sniff at your chest and the bloody wound on your thigh. 

You yelp when he rips at the torn skirt with his teeth, having a moment of panic at the thought of him deciding you taste good enough to eat and pushing back on the cat’s heavy brow. His orange eyes flick up at you, gently cleaning away the drying blood and dirt as he blinks slowly at you.  

At least he doesn’t seem to think you’re food. You’re being treated like a kit, pushed down by a paw when you try to get back up, all so he can continue grooming you. You roll on your back in submission, breath sucking in at the pain in your chest. 

“You still in there?” you ask, weakly. 

If the Syndicate is watching it would be dangerous to order him again but you know if you don’t he’s going to lick the top layers of your dermis off trying to treat the bone-deep wound.

He rumbles like an engine in answer. 

“Come out,” you whisper your order. 

You feel him change back, heat and moisture roiling over you from the release of mass and energy. He lifts up from your legs in a daze, eyes still bright with his cat. 

“You’re safe,” he says, lisping a bit with the lingering changes to his teeth.

“Neither of us are safe here, you fool,” you scold him, coughing at the dryness in your throat. “You most of all. You were supposed to run away, not into it.”

You roll to your side to spit out pollen-yellow saliva, trying to ignore the bloom of fungal spores and ground cover from the thick wad. 

“Don’t even get a ‘thanks’,” Johnny retches a little, coughing up his own lungful of goo. “What in the hell is this stuff–?” 

“Spring gas. Jimseung poison,” you say. Of course he’d never encountered these bombs, as far as you knew he’d never made it that far North. “They must have wanted you to fight feral.” 

“How are we–”

“We were lucky,” you say, tiredly, testing your leg and crumpling back to the ground. Somehow he’s managed to catch you by the ankle, the both of you wheezing as you succumb to the effects, unable to fight against him as he pulls himself over you. 

“It’s old ammo–probably degraded,” you explain to distract yourself from the press of his body. “High enough heat can burn it off–”

“You’re here.” The way he whispers the words tugs on your heart, all dreamy and wistful. 

You don’t acknowledge it. “Yes, I’m here. I can keep you out of jimseung, I think. We’d have to stay together–” 

“You’re here,” he repeats, forehead pressing yours as he rubs his nose against yours. “My precious little kit.”

You push on his shoulder where the echo of his rosettes are burnt black into his golden skin, muddying his re-emerging tattoos.

“Don’t you get it, you idiot? You’re in danger, they want to kill you–” 

“So I should be thanking you,” he says, drowsily, looking down at you with unfiltered affection. “For saving me.”

Johnny is mostly human–eyes dilated so wide only a thin ring of honey-colored iris remains. His ears and hands have remained changed, tail swatting at the air beyond the clean lines of his naked body, fur still visible where his hair grows naturally. 

You know he’s struggling against his cat, a feeling like fire racing over his skin as he finds the only therapy available. You’re lifted up bodily with a cry, going limp as his face buries in your neck and rapid breaths douse your shoulder. Claws prick and unprick through your clothing where he’s wrapped completely around you, nuzzling against your racing pulse.  

“God, I missed you,” he says. “I’m so glad you’re safe.”

He folds down with you still at his mercy, heartbeat slowing marginally as your pheromones bring him to a calmer state. 

“Stop making that godawful noise,” you protest, wriggling in his grasp.

“You don’t like it?” That only spurs him on more, licking at your neck as you cry out, fists uselessly pressed to his bare chest. Johnny rumbles in contentment as he rubs his cheek over and over again against you protectively. As much as you try to wrest free he holds on to you tighter, unable to get enough. He's warm and tender–all things unwelcome in this place. 

“Get off of me, you pig!” you bark. You can’t order him here, can’t reveal anything that might compromise you both, but you can still try to extricate yourself from what feels like a more dangerous situation than the one you’ve just fled. This isn’t the time or place for an intimate moment.  

Johnny lets you go. You only make it a few inches, pushed down face-first into the soft leaf litter and further assailed by searching hands over your leg. His touch sparks a new flame through the ache, your fox desperate for him to continue comforting you physically.

“Are you hurt anywhere else?”

“Feel like I was hit by a truck,” you groan, inhaling sharp when his tongue traces your oozing wounds again. “Stop, please.”

“You do taste different,” he murmurs, idiot’s grin in his voice. “Sweeter, like candy.”

“If you don’t stop this nonsense I’ll make it so you can’t speak, again,” you say over your shoulder. You can’t let this continue, not with your body’s reaction to this much-longed-for care.

The unspoken threat carries through–he eases off of you, still straddling you. He leans down to nudge the side of your face with his nose. The intimacy has you more dizzy than the contamination, body surging up unwillingly as your tail swats between you. 

“Even with everything I’m so glad you’re here,” he says, lips trailing over the side of your face. Your heart is racing, the world blurring beyond as you avoid kissing him back, eyes clenched shut against his attention.

“My beautiful little kit,” he murmurs. “When we get out of here I'll take care of you so good. Make you a nest just right for you to–”

“How much blood did you lose?” you ask, too aware of the hot drip of it from his side. 

“‘M fine,” he says, licking at your ear. “Felt like dying not knowing you were alright.”

You are most certainly not alright. You struggle to turn over beneath him, meeting him with your mouth against his jawline. 

“Johnny,” you say. “We’re being watched.”

“They know who you belong to.” He’s high as a kite, you realize–probably more on pheromones than the gas. It’s so incredibly stupid considering the circumstances but then so is everything about this trial. He seems to realize it as well as something passes over him, a moment of consciousness. 

“Was this part of your plan?” 

“No! What plan?!” you put a hand to his mouth as he smirks down at you. 

“Someone dumped me here to complicate this knowing you'd be dosed,” you whisper as quietly as you can, shoving at the blanket of his wide shoulders. “But it's good. If I wasn’t . . .”

You both know he wouldn’t be here at all–just the jaguar. You think the smallest push would send him reeling back into his true form, without even a sliver of the humanity he’d spent years learning how to keep surfaced while in full shift. 

“That doesn’t matter,” he says, shaking his head. “We'll get you to safety, we can’t risk any harm to–”

“We can’t risk them seeing you feral, or fully shifted,” you deflect. “We just need to find Jae–”

Johnny hisses, not as comical as it should be with the rage you can see twisting his expression. You instinctively snarl back, scratching at his shoulder. It snaps him out of it, retreating in an instant, looking as hurt as if you’d yanked his tail. 

“Control yourself,” you say, scuttling back, testing your injured leg. “He’s not your enemy. Who knows how many more of those things are out there. We need to work together.”

“He’s not taking you. Over my dead body,” Johnny says. It’s really a wasted effort to try to speak to him with the Alpha in charge, his body movements whiplike as he listens for a threat, nose twitching against the thick smoke from the embers of the explosion drifting in your direction. 

“You’re mine, I told him you were mine–”

You try a different tactic, placing your palm in his wild hair to calm him. It works like a charm, his shoulders rounding as he leans into the touch and butts his head against your chest. 

“Of course I’m yours,” you soothe. 

He looks up at you warily, tail stilling. At least he’s smart enough to know your words don't match your intent. 

You push your luck a little more, bringing his head against your breast and massaging his scalp behind his velvety ears. The Alpha quivers with excitement, making a sound deep in his chest as he rubs his human face into your belly instead. 

Though you cringe at the gesture there’s a trace inside of pure peace, especially when he reaches around you to hold you again like his life depends on it. That motor-like attempt at purr is back, loud and vibrating you in a way that makes your resolve melt.

Whatever compulsion he’s feeling, the only thing motivating him is ensuring his mate is safe. It makes him brainless but it’s also endearing–and your fox is no wiser. She’s never been more satisfied with herself–you’d be rolling in the dirt in pleasure if you weren’t fighting to stay alert. 

“If you want to protect us you’ll do what I say, won’t you, Youngho?” you ask, feeling him nod as a whine-like noise comes out instead of words. 

“I can only trust you if you stay in control. You need to stay in control.”

Only enough to be believable, you think. You can’t forget your audience, after all, as sweet as this might appear to an outside observer, his tendency to submit to you can only be considered a weakness. No, there has to be a limit.

“We’re going to find Yuno,” you begin, carefully enunciating the other’s birth name while pulling away. “He can help us get out of here–”

He manages at least two seconds before he stiffens and breaks, rising up over you. Your fox is submitting immediately, unabashedly aroused by this display of dominance. 

“Not. Him.” he says between clenched teeth, fangs pushing into his swollen lips. “You can't trust him in jimseung. He doesn’t care about you the same way I–”

“Snap out of it,” you say, struggling away from him. “None of us are making it out of here if we don't work together.”

“You want him more than me?” He looks just as baleful as before, panting. “You want to make me kill him?”

“I want you to protect us,” you yell. “He’s your pack–”

“No one can take you,” he repeats, nostrils flaring as he crouches over you. “You’re mine.”

You can hear something stalking towards you from the darkness–unnoticed by Johnny in his cresting anger.

“Fine. Prove yourself and kill those things. Kill all of them,” you order, reaching mentally inward and snapping the thin thread of control you can feel keeping you from becoming your animal. His eyes blaze yellow, startled as the change begins.  

It's just in time for the Panther drone to attack. 

Johnny whips around, instantly more beast than himself, claws raking metal as the scent of fresh blood overtakes the perfumed air. You take the chance to run, hunted down by another of the drones bursting from the brush. 

Climb, you think, stumbling towards the nearest tree. It’s only pure instinct and adrenaline that gets you up the first branch, hearing the snap of a metal jaw inches from your ankle. You cling to the limb above you with all your hybrid’s strength, unable to pull yourself higher–

Your perch dips down. For a moment you’re afraid that you’re being pulled by the awful thing snapping at your heels before you recognize the tension is in your clothing, snatched up by the back of your underdress. 

It’s just in time as something explodes beneath you, heat searing your skin and nearly shaking you both out of the tree you’re being bodily swung up into. 

Out of the frying pan, into the fire, you lament–seized around the middle and dragged upward by clawed hands. 

This time, at least, the Alpha who has captured you is still human. 

Boom.

The projection in the middle of the arena is scattershot with fireworks, sparks flying and shrieking beneath the opaque grid as the returning audience rushes in to see what’s going on. Mark’s blood goes cold seeing the shadows of trees lit bright by another grenade burst, some deep fear response unlocked by the sound of bombs. 

Across the box, Taeyong ducks instinctively, ears pulled back as he fights out of the circle of the other Alphas keeping him separated, his drawn face scanning the room for threats.

“They haven’t announced the match start yet, I haven’t finished my calls–” Bang stands up, only one of many whose attention is turned to the screens above the open interior of the stadium as they flash to black from displaying the usual wash of corporate advertisements.

A series of bright green digits and flashes preface the hacked signal, cohesing into one principal symbol: a circle with an unbroken horizontal line beneath it.  

He knows it well–too well. The unbroken omega.

[Respected members of the Syndicate,] a modulated voice invades the speakers, stilling the room. [Your attempts to set the terms of this tribunal have revealed your greed, stupidity, and most of all–your hand.]

Footage plays of a fight he never expected to see. You and what looks to be Johnny struggling against a pair of Savannah Panthers, no weapons or resources except your claws and teeth. He’s most surprised by the sight of you rushing head-first into the fray, as if you could do anything against those nightmare creations. 

Somehow, you both gain the upper hand–at least until the grenades are fired. The fight ends with a flash of green, dead and broken Zhirafa drones swallowed up by a nightmare explosion of plant-life bursting forth from the radius of the strike point. 

“What the fuck is that?” Choi barks. “We didn’t clear using–”

“Kill the feed,” Duke Kim hisses, order ignored as the attache beside him struggles with his agent. 

“We don’t have a way–production says they lost communication with the control crew entirely–”

[Let’s make a wager without the house having advantage. Your greatest prize is contained within the field before you, trapped with your entire illegal stockpile of biological weaponry and the Alphas you’ve consigned to die by it.]

Bang’s tablet slips from his fingers, clattering against bottles of imported liquor. Shrieks and shouts follow, as those witnessing the show realize this isn’t just entertainment. 

[You have one, simple step to fulfill, to regain your investment. Proceed with the trials and execution of the son and heir of Lee Taeri, one Lee Taeyong, for his father's crimes against our kind and for the millions of innocent souls whose blood stains your Council's hands.] 

[Then, and only then, will we release your so-called prize.]

Mark looks up at Taeyong, seeing genuine shock on his elder’s bruised face. The Vulpine turns to him, instinctively, shaking his head with his lips parted.

He didn’t know. It makes Mark even more angry at being left in the dark on whatever Taeyong had planned, all of it blown open with their blindness to this unanticipated weak point. 

[Open the field and die with them. Alter the rules of the game and you will be subjected to the same carnage inflicted upon you as handed down in your judgment. May your punishment match the crime.]

The feed goes dark, projection still flashing with burning trees and the reports of gunfire before the hologram disappears. The arena floor is blank but for a simple reminder of the message: a taegeuk rotating on the field, under the watchful eyes of that monstrous xiezhi statue over the royal box. 

A royal box, he sees, is now completely vacated. 

In the strangled silence that follows the end of the message, chaos erupts. Half of the audience is fleeing, turned back at the door by security guards waiting for an order. Mark forgets himself to move towards his cousin, crowded back by the hulking guards that had been assigned to keep him seated as the clan Elders dealt with the ongoing crisis. 

“The entire control suite is offline,” Kim stutters. “No in or out, we’re working on retaking the signal but–”

“Sokolov wants the demonstration canceled or they pull sponsorship,” Park says. “We need to make sure nothing happens to the . . .”

He drifts off as he realizes what’s happening beside him, Taeyong moving across the crowded space to close on Mark with the same aggression they’d been separated from earlier.

“Did you know they’d take her?” he accuses, tail bristling behind him. 

“What, no?!” Mark yells. 

“It was your recruits who last had her. And this–”

One small gesture at the screen burnt with a symbol of a movement his father hadn’t started but had been responsible for in the end–the very same reason Fourth Prince had faced execution when the Exodus forces were brought to heel. 

North and south, all over again, he realizes, far too late. This time he’s tight in the clutches of the enemy, no ally in sight with Haechan and Taeil taking care of the wounded and Yuta investigating the crime.

“This is a set-up,” he argues. “We have to find them first, make sure they can get out without being kill–”

“We finish this,” Taeyong says, rounding on the other members of the Syndicate Council. “Tell Key we can expedite the final match.”

He doesn’t understand this game Taeyong is playing, and doesn't even think he’s in control of it with how shaken the Vulpine looks before he turns his back on him. 

“Where did you take our enforcers?” Mark’s words are for Duke Kim, who’s leaving the box as if he doesn’t want to see the outcome, scurrying away from his responsibilities as always. “We need to get down there before they try to get out–”

“No. You come with us,” Choi says, raising a flashy chrome pistol at Mark’s face. Park and the others don’t move to stop him, Taeyong regarding him over his shoulder with a dismissive look.

“We proceed with the trials, cousin,” Taeyong says, expression grim, and resigned. “We’ll let the heavens decide which of us deserves to walk out of here alive.”

[previous] [next] [check the masterlist before you proceed]

[igazikutya]

Zajok a nappaliból - 2023 TOP12 LP és EP/Single megjelenései

Top 12 LP – 2023

1. NVST - Filled with Oil [2023, Les Disques Magnétiques][LP] 2. Beau Wanzer - A Dead Person's Monologue [2023, iDEAL][LP] 3. The Orb & David Gilmour - Metallic Spheres In Colour [2023, Sony][LP]

4. Flesh & The Dream - Choose Mortality [2023, Everything Forever][LP] 5. VC-118A - Waves Of Change[2023, Delsin][EP] 6. Judgitzu - Sator Arepo [2023, Nyege Nyege Tapes][LP]

7. Years Of Denial - Suicide Disco Vol. 2 [2023, VEYL][LP] 8. PANGAR - Position [2023, Pangar][LP] 9. Benedikt Frey - Fastlane [2023, ESP Institute][LP]

10. Anatolian Weapons - Earth [2023, Subject To Restrictions Discs][LP] 11. Deadbeat - Kubler-Ross Soliloquies [2023, BLKRTZ][LP] 12. Ultramarine - Send And Return [2023, Blackford Hill][LP]

13. Artefakt - Floodplain [2023, Semantica][EP] 14. Totek – ttk. 1 [2023, Darker Than Wax][LP] 15. Paul St. Hilaire - Tikiman Vol.1 [2023, Kynant][LP] 16. Cosmo Vitelli - Medhead Remixes [2023, Im a Cliche][Rmx-LP] 17. Scotch Rolex & Shackleton - Death by Tickling [2023, Silver Triplet][LP] 18. African Head Charge - A Trip To Bolgatanga [2023, On-U Sound][LP] 19. Harmonious Thelonious - Cheapo Sounds [2023, Bureau B][LP] 20. Legowelt - The MidiVerb Chalice [2023, Axumisia][EP] 21. Labelle - Noir Anima [2023, InFiné Éditions & Eumolpe][LP] 22. Pris - Phantom [2023, Resin][LP] 23. Saint Abdullah & Eomac - Chasing Stateless [2023, Planet Mu][LP] 24. Andrea - Due In Color [2023, Illian Tapes][LP]

25. Maps and Diagrams - A Study Of Ends Or Purpose[2023, Handstitched][LP] 26. The Black Dog - My Brutal Life [2023, Dust Science][LP] 27. Tolouse Low Trax - Leave Me Alone [2023, Bureau B][LP] 28. Actress - LXXXVIII [2023, Ninja Tune][LP] 29. Marmo - Epistolae [2023, Utter][LP] 30. VHS Head - Phocus [2023, Skam][LP] 31. Froid Dub - Deep Blue Bass [2023, Delodio][LP] 32. Fire & Adrian Sherwood - Fire [2023, Salgari][LP] 33. Mioclono - Cluster I [2023, Hivern Discs][LP] 34. Cristian Vogel - Fase Montuno [2023, Edition Mille Plateaux][LP] 35. Vanishing Twin - Afternoon X [2023, Fire][LP] 36. Suzanne Ciani & Jonathan Fitoussi - Golden Apples of the Sun [2023, Transversales Disques][LP]

Top 12 EP/Single – 2023

1. Orphx - Revenant [2023, Self-Released][EP] 2. Univac - MagnetFunk [2023, 30D ExoPlanets][EP] 3. Toribio - Tongue In Cheeks [2023, BDA][EP]

4. Djedjotronic - Smog on the Dancefloor [2023, Italo Moderni][EP] 5. Khidja - Transmissions Part 1 [2023, Malka Tuti][EP] 6. Laksa - Body Score [2023, RE_LAX][EP]

7. Al Wootton - Vitus [2023, Optimo Music][S] 8. Talaboman - Bosca Bosca - Bosco Bosco [2023, Night Land][S] 9. Coco Bryce - Canaan [2023, MYOR][S]

10. Humanoid - Sweet Acid Sound [2023, De_tuned][EP] 11. Viels - Distorted Reality [2023, Dynamic Reflection][EP] 12. Na Nich - Black Soil [2023, Delsin][EP]

13. Ancient Methods - The Third Siren [2023, Persephonic Sirens][EP] 14. Civilistjävel! - Fyra Platser [2023, FELT][EP] 15. Jerome Hill - Crude Appraisal [2023, Super Rhythm Trax][EP] 16. Pugilist - Negative Space [2023, Of Paradise][EP] 17. Jeff Mills - X-Ray Zulu [2023, Axis][EP] 18. Rhys Fulber - Brutal Nature Redux [2023, FR][EP] 19. Priori & Al Wootton - Flaw [2023, Trule][EP] 20. Orphx - The Way Through All Things [2023, Sonic Groove][EP] 21. Lew E - Touched / Teardrop [2023, Basic Spirit][S] 22. Yaleesa Hall - Newman [2023, Will & Ink][S] 23. DYL - Fjord [2023, Nous'klaer Audio][EP] 24. Ayaz - Unpinned [2023, phase group][EP]

25. nueen - Link [2023, 3XL][EP] 26. Blawan - Dismantled Into Juice [2023, XL][EP] 27. Sepehr - Diaspora Cocktail [2023, Planet Euphorique][EP] 28. interferenc - pH4R [2023, Self-Released][EP] 29. Khidja - Transmissions Part 2 [2023, Malka Tuti][EP] 30. Soreab - Maschera [2023, Baroque Sunburst][EP] 31. Sabatoj - I.C.U. [2023, Katharsis][EP] 32. Terrain - Corners [2023, Varmal][EP] 33. Luke Slater & Dubfire - The Dissent [2023, Mote-Evolver][EP] 34. Dino Sabatini - Opera Quattro [2023, Outis Music][EP] 35. Domenico Crisci & Retina.it - Diorama [2023, Semantica][EP] 36. Benedikt Frey - Recall [2023, Malka Tuti][EP]

[beansonbread2]

BEANSONBREAD AWARDS 2020 - BEST ALBUM

AWARD NO.2 - BEST ALBUM OF 2020

PAST WINNERS

2019 > Self Esteem - ‘Compliments Please’ (see full list HERE)

2018 > Kero Kero Bonito - ‘Time ‘n’ Place’ (see full list HERE)

2017 > Richard Dawson - ‘Peasant’ (see full list HERE)

2016 > Blood Orange - ‘Freetown Sound’ (see full list HERE)

2015 > Holly Herndon - ‘Platform’ (see full list HERE)

2014 > FKA Twigs - ‘LP1′ (see full list HERE)

2013 > These New Puritans - ‘Field Of Reeds’ (see full list HERE)

2012 > Django Django - ‘Django Django’ (see full list HERE)

2011 > Shabazz Palaces - ‘Black Up’ (see full list HERE)

2010 > These New Puritans - ‘Hidden’ (see full list HERE)

2009 > Animal Collective - ‘Merriweather Post Pavilion’ (see full list HERE)

2008 > Wild Beasts - ‘Limbo, Panto’ (see full list HERE)

2007 > Animal Collective - ‘Strawberry Jam’ (see full list HERE)

2006 > Safetyword - ‘Man’s Name Is Legion’ (see full list HERE)

2005 > Animal Collective - ‘Feels’ (see full list HERE)

2004 > Devendra Banhart - ‘Rejoicing In The Hands’ / ‘Nino Rojo’

2003 > Dizzee Rascal - ‘Boy In Da Corner’

2002 > The Streets - ‘Original Pirate Material’

2001 > The Beta Band - ‘Hot Shots II’

2000 > Outkast - ‘Stankonia’

1999 > The Beta Band - ‘The Beta Band’

1998 > The Beta Band - ‘The Three EPs’

1997 > Radiohead - ‘OK Computer’

1996 > Beck - ‘Odelay’

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THE RULES - No Re-issues, Live Albums, Compilations, or EPs.

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SPECIAL MENTIONS for these collections

Bulbils (Richard Dawson & Sally Pilkington) - 50 lockdown albums

Dean Blunt ‘Roaches 2012-2019’

These New Puritans ‘The Cut (2016-2019)’  

Hudson Mohawke ‘B.B.H.E.’ & ‘Poom Gems’

Various Artists ‘Paul Institute - Summer 2020’

Various Artists ‘Return To Y’Hup - The World Of Ivor Cutler’

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***SPOTIFY PLAYLIST FEATURES TRACKS FROM TOP 80 ALBUMS (coming later) ***

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WORTH A MENTION (in no order) - A bunch of albums i enjoyed but didn’t quite make the final lists and others i just didn’t hear enough to be considered properly.  A list for future me to revisit.

Still House Plants / Fire-Toolz / Lomelda / Jerskin Fendrix / Zebra Katz / The Bug / Lorenzo Senni / Diamond Soul / Wilma Archer / Black Dresses / The Fantasy Orchestra / William Carkeet / Bonny Light Horseman / KA / Yung Lean / BlackPink / Rural Internet / Okay Kaya / Future / Belan / Tame Impala / Banoffee / JARV IS / Grimes / Whitmer Thomas / Jeff Parker / The Massacre Cave / Porridge Radio / Selena Gomez / Teyana Taylor / Sparkle Division / Cecile Believe / Lyra Pramuk / Waxahatchee / Happyness / Khruangbin / Bananagun / OHMME / Drakeo The Ruler / Missterspoon / Juice WRLD / Lonnie Holley / Jiafeng / October Drift / Roisin Murphy / KeiyaA / Dizzee Rascal / Salem / Tiña / The Weeknd / Aaron Cartier / Dana Gavanski / A.R. Pinewood / The Cool Greenhouse / Royce Da 5’9’’ / Rachel Aggs / Karl Band / Four Tet / Georgia / Sonic Boom / Kali Uchis / Luis Pestana / Salac / David A Jaycock / Klein / Temple After Faith / Roman Noseband / Dylan Henner / G.S. Sultan / Hinds / Jess Williamson / Coby Sey / Randolph’s Leap / Matthew D. Gantt / Stephen Kerrison / Katie Gately / Snails / Juniore / Good Dog / Lil B / Kamaiyah / Ryuichi Sakamoto / The Big Moon / Zoe Mc Pherson / Holy Fuck / Ovrkast / Reol / Andy Shauf / Ethan Gruska / Poliça / D Smoke / Sign Libra / Chara & YUKI / Wiley / Bad Bunny / Shirley Collins / Jordana / Gaika / DJ Python / North Americans / Michael / Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith / Lido Pimienta / Everything Is Recorded / Lwesberg / Sufjan Stevens & Lowell Brams / Rhodri Davies / LA Priest / Ian William Craig / Flohio / Irreversible Entanglements / Islet / Westside Gunn / Empress Of / NNamdi / Warm Digits / Baxter Dury / Kehiani / Eels / Emmy The Great / Owen Pallett / Elysia Crampton / The Beths / Julianna Barwick / Liv.E / Jimothy Lacoste / Ben Frost / J Hus / Sylvan Esso / Haiku Hands / Ariana Grande / Jean Dawson / Food House / Nuala Honan / Helena Deland / Boldly James / Headie One / Oliver Coates / Lowkey-E / Bree Runway / Warren Ellis / Boldy James & The Alchemist / Young Knives /  Little Dragon / The Garden / Melt Yourself Down / Quakers / Kamasi Washington / Mogwai / Gil Scott-Heron & Makaya McCraven / Eyeliner / ‘The Whalebone Box’ OST / Special Interest / Teyana Taylor / Nadine Shah / Tricky / Moor Mother / Nick Storring

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2020 RUNNERS UP (in no order)

William Basinski ‘Lamentations’

Hook ‘Crashed My Car’

Vic Berger IV ‘Late Enough To See The Moon’

Nines ‘Crabs In A Bucket’

My Morning Jacket ‘The Waterfall II’

Firestations ‘Dream Home’

Moses Boyd ‘Dark Matter’

Dick Dent ‘Life’s Hard’

Nicholas Stevenson ‘Dead Arm, Vol.2’

Otto ‘Clam Day’

Pa Salieu ‘Send Them To Coventry’

Undermedvetenheten ‘Undermedvetenheten’

Martha Ffion ‘Nights To Forget’

Adrianne Lenker ‘Songs’

Happy Spendy ‘You’re Doing Okay’

Mark Korven ‘The Lighthouse’ OST

21 Savage and Metro Boomin ‘Savage Mode II’

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan ‘Navarasa’

Three Queens In The Mourning & Bonnie Prince Billy ‘Hello Sorrow / Hello Joy’

Shopping ‘All Or Nothing’

Megan Thee Stallion ‘Good News’

Obongjayer ‘Which Way Is Forward?’

Mush ‘3D Routine’

Geoff Barrow, Ben Salisbury & The Insects ‘Devs’ OST

Luke Abbott ‘Translate’

Spinning Coin ‘Hyacinth’

Princess Nokia ‘Everything Sucks’

Fleet Foxes ‘Shore’

Julia Holter ‘Never Rarely Sometimes Always’ OST

Sufjan Stevens ‘The Ascension’

Nicolas Jaar ‘Cenizas’

Pottery ‘Welcome To Bobby’s Motel’

Jessie Ware ‘What’s Your Pleasure?’

Jung Jae II ‘Parasite’ OST

Freddie Gibbs & The Alchemist ‘Alfredo’

Doves ‘The Universal Want’

Brigid Mae Power ‘Head Above The Water’

Bab L’ Bluz ‘Nayda!’

James Yorkston ‘That Summer, We Flew’

Oklou ‘Galore’

Angel Olsen ‘Whole New Mess’

The Lemon Twigs ‘Songs For The General Public’

Marie Davidson & L’Œil Nu ‘Renegade Breakdown’

Gupi ‘None’

Alexia Avina ‘Unearth’

John Bence ‘Love’

Colin Stetson ‘Color Out Of Space’ OST

King Krule ‘Man Alive!’

Against All Logic ‘2017-2019’

Willie J Healey ‘Twin Heavy’

Jam City ‘Pillowland’

MXLX ‘Maximum Amounts Of Extremely Fucking Yes (Vol.1)’

---

THE TOP 80 ALBUMS OF 2020

80. Poppy ‘I Disagree’ 79. ThisisDA ‘Mud Hype’ 78. Fenne Lily ‘BREACH’ 77. Gorillaz ‘Song Machine’ 76. Soccer Mommy ‘Color Theory’ 75. 1995 Epilepsy ‘1995 Epilepsy’ 74. Jabu ‘Sweet Company’ 73. Actress ‘Karma & Desire’ + ‘88’ 72. Chloe x Halle ‘Ungodly Hour’ 71. Dirty Projectors ‘5EPs’

70. Beatrice Dillon ‘Walkaround’ 69. Matmos ‘The Consuming Flame: Open Exercises In Group Form’ 68. Blanck Mass ‘Calm With Horses’ OST 67. Eartheater ‘Phoenix: flames Are Dew Upon My Skin’ 66. Sega Bodega ‘Salvador’  65. Savage Mansion ‘Weird Country’ 64. Kelly Lee Owens ‘Inner Song’ 63. Daniel Blumberg ‘On&On’  62. Clementine March ‘Le Continent’ 61. HAIM ‘Women In Music Pt.III’

60. Dua Lipa ‘Future Nostalgia’ 59. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs ‘Viscerals’ 58. Darkstar ‘Civic Jams’ 57. Lil Uzi Vert ‘Eternal Atake’ 56. This Is The Kit ‘Off Off On’ 55. Shabazz Palaces ‘The Don Of Diamond Dreams’ 54. Princess Nokia ‘Everything Is Beautiful’ 53. The Orielles ‘Disco Volador’ 52. Oro Swimming Hour ‘Pteradactyl’ 51. MXLX ‘Serpent’

50. Dan Deacon ‘Mystic Familiar’

49. Jay Electronica ‘A Written Testimony’

48. Fiona Apple ‘Fetch The Bolt Cutters’

47. Galen Tipton ‘Ungoliant’

46. Knife Liibrary ‘MARKS: Songs For Those I Have Killed’

45. Deerhoof ‘Future Teenage Cave Artists’

44. Caribou ‘Suddenly’

43. Working Men’s Club ‘Working Men’s Club’

42. Seamus Fogarty ‘A Bag Of Eyes’

41. Field Music ‘Making A New World’

40. Cornershop ‘England Is A Garden’

39. Lambchop ‘Trip’

38. Katy J Pearson ‘Return’

37. Amaarae ‘The Angel You Don’t Know’

36. James Ferraro ‘Neurogeist’

35. Hen Ogledd ‘Free Humans’

34. Spectres ‘It’s Never Going To Happen And This Is Why’

33. Laura Marling ‘Song For Our Daughter’

32. Bill Callahan ‘Gold Record’

31. Bob Dylan ‘Rough And Rowdy Ways’

30. A.G. Cook ‘7G’

29. Good Sad Happy Bad ‘Shades’

28. SAULT ‘Untitled (Black Is)’

27. Run The Jewels ‘RTJ4’

26. Clipping ‘Visions Of Bodies Being Burned’

25. Thundercat ‘It Is What It Is’

24. Pictish Trail ‘Thumb World’

23. Jessy Lanza ‘All The Time’

22. Yves Tumor ‘Heaven To A Tortured Mind’

21. Sorry ‘925’

20. Yaeji ‘What We Drew’

19. A.G. Cook ‘Apple’

18. Wesley Gonzalez ‘Appalling Human’

17. Pet Shimmers ‘Face Down In Meta’ & ‘Trash Earthers’

16. Arca ‘KiCK i’

15. 100 Gecs ‘1000 Gecs And The Tree Of Clues’

14. Tara Clerkin Trio ‘Tara Clerkin Trio’

13. Richard Dawson ‘Republic Of Geordieland’

12. Phoebe Bridgers ‘Punisher’

11. Perfume Genius ‘Set My Heart On Fire Immediately’

10. Charli XCX ‘How I’m Feeling Now’

9. Rina Sawayama ‘SAWAYAMA’

8. Dorian Electra ‘My Agenda’

7. Alabaster DePlume ‘To Cy & Lee: Instrumentals Vol.1’

6. SAULT ‘Untitled (Rise)’

5. Tim Heidecker ‘Fear Of Death’

4. Moses Sumney ‘græ’

3. Oneohtrix Point Never ‘Magic Oneohtrix Point Never’

2. Crack Cloud ‘Pain Olympics’

1. The Flaming Lips ‘American Head’

[todaysbiggesthits]

Odds, Ends

JD’s 16-31

16. Fontaines D.C. - A Hero’s Death 17. Naeem - Startisha 18. The Avalanches - We Will Always Love You 19. Yves Tumor - Heaven To a Tortured Mind 20. Draag - Clara Luz EP 21. Caribou - Suddenly 22. Peel Dream Magazine - Agitprop Alterna 23. Animal Collective - Bridge To Quiet EP 24. The Clientele - It’s Art Dad 25. King Krule - Man Alive! 26. Kate NV - Room for the Moon 27. Real Estate - The Main Thing 28. Wire - 10:20 29. Osees - Protean Threat 30. Sonic Boom - All Things Being Equal 31. (tie) Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters, Sufjan Stevens - The Ascension, The Microphones - The Microphones in 2020

New to Code in 2020

All Hail the Silence - ‡ The Reds, Pinks and Purples - Anxiety Art Steve Moore - Brainstorm Lydia Loveless - Boy Crazy and Single(s)

Arden’s Top Hits of 2020

From the Desk of Bronco

What can you say about this year that hasn't already been said.  What a shit year.  I feel like I've mentally time travelled to this point from March 13th.  Every day is basically the same.  I look forward to the weekend when I can get some things done, and then I don't do them because of the other lame shit that needs to get done gets in the way.  Laundry, cleaning the home/office/school, doing something meaningful with my family, Minecraft with the kids.  Then coffee-o'clock immediately becomes beer-o'clock and wash, rinse, fuck all repeat.  That's how music has felt this year too.  I think since my commute has been removed, there's no real time for just listening.  I listen to it while I work, then worry I'm not getting enough done.  I use it to drown out the "school" shit that's happening in my living room in our tiny house.  It's been a tool instead of a source of enjoyment.  As a result, I mostly enjoyed ambient noise and/or instrumental records this year.  I found a 3-hour youtube video of Tibetan monks chanting the same thing over and over to help me find some focus (it kinda works sometimes).  I played the NIN albums over and over, back to back.  I found a few other droning noise albums from other years that I put on to help me get some shit done.  It's amazing how simple yet complex some of those albums can be.  One of them is two songs, each about 15 minutes long.  There's maybe four layers to it, but it's just sustained droning noise.  Works wonders for when I need to drown out the family and get down to business.  Otherwise, I felt like there were slim pickings this year.  A few bands I like put some stuff out.  None of it revolutionary.  And the rest of the metal scene was brutal death metal or blackened death metal or deathened black metal.  Not the stuff I'm particularly down for, and especially not in line with my brains need for ambient instrumental.  I think, too, the lack of live music removed an integral part of my brain's musical experience.  I think the draw of live music makes the in between personal listening times more meaningful to me, like a promise of "this is what you could see happen in real life when they come to town."  I just hope that when we get through this hulk-sized-fist-fuck of a year, I can rip myself out of this cycle of stationaryism, find some shows to get to, and inject some long missing color back in to my life.  Hopefully we can all get a piece of that back.  Fuck you 2020.

Jim Kryder Certified Attendance Report

That is all.

Silver Screen Video Staff Picks

Nasty’s Video of the Year

Bronco’s Bitchin’ Video of 2020

Larson’s Palme d’Oren Music Video Mega Mix

Interloper’s Corner

Fergwad’s Top 10 of 2020

1. Tame Impala - The Slow Rush 2. The Strokes - The New Abnormal 3. Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud 4. Muzz - Muzz 5. Adrianne Lenker - songs 6. Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately 7. Car Seat Headrest - Making a Door Less Open 8. Fiona Apple - Fetch the Bolt Cutters 9. Kelly Lee Owens - Inner Song 10. Bob Dylan - Rough and Rowdy Ways

Tammy Rooney’s 10 o’ 20

1. Fleet Foxes – Shore 2. Waxahatchee – Saint Cloud 3. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – Reunions 4. Rose City Band - Summerlong   5. The Killers – Imploding the Mirage 6. The Strokes – The New Abnormal 7. Phoebe Bridgers – Punisher 8. My Morning Jacket – The Waterfall Pt II 9. Laura Marling - Song for our Daughter 10. (Live Music Slot) The War on Drugs - LIVE DRUGS; Hiss Golden Messenger - Forward Children; Holy Holy - My Own Pool of Light, lots of early 70s Dead shows, and Hendrix's Band of Gypsys at Fillmore East when the mood strikes.

Heaps’ Top Tin

1. Perfume Genius - Set My Heart on Fire Immediately 2. Waxahatchee - Saint Cloud 3. Yves Tumor - Heaven to a Tortured Mind 4. Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher 5. Lomelda - Hannah 6. Fontaines DC - A Hero's Death 7. Soccer Mommy - Color Theory 8. Run the Jewels - RTJ4 9. Destroyer - Have We Met 10. Adrianne Lenker -  Songs

An Observation from JD

Doesn’t Phoebe Bridgers look like Marnocha?

[https-qing]

26 May

Yay really happy today!

1. Finally got Pru to work. Omg... I worked through 2-3 nights for this. I was initially confident I could handle it but then finalised UI ended up being pushed back etc then QA tell me sibei lag and then I got so worried that this is a proj I will fail at but fingers crossed tmr it works well for most of my colleagues!

2. Finished watching the victims game! Er the first and last ep damn boring. And I got lost at the last victim's death. But the first few eps were interesting~

3. I. Caught. A. Cockroach. On. My. Own!! The lights were v dim then from the corner of my eyes I saw something move on the cupboard (which was also dark colored...) then I froze because I was like shit, I think is a cockroach, but who can I call to help me kill at 1am 😭😭😭 so I had to try myself lor... Freaking scared yknow. I whack w the cloth then miss. Then it dropped and disappeared in my bed area wth then I just anyhow spray some insecticide and slowly clear my pillows one by one to see if it'll come out. I cleared everything alr and move my mattress also got nothing. Omg I gave up and wanted to sleep in the parents room le then suddenly I realised the cockroach was at the door and it was groggy from the insecticide 😂 I faster smack with the cloth and it fell on its back. I thought faint liao lol then I just go and look for something to cover it. But then suddenly the cockroach started wiggling??!!! I smack some more then it faint for a while again... Aiya I didn't know cockroach won't die so easily lol so I had many heart attacks that it'll escape again. But anyways i was desperate so I just anyhow use a random empty box to cover it and yeah, it's under control now! Whew. But the cockroach moving against the box sound damn gross. And I had to drag it from one place to another and I was damn scared I will accidentally knock it over and release it. Ew ew ew ew ew. I washed my hands several times because I felt so grossed out and dirty 😂

4. I finally bought the Vit C cream that I kept thinking about and obsessively researching on lolz it was only $11 but I think so much 💵😂

5. I also changed to a new phone after nearly 2.5 years? The battery was going crazy, the data w circles life WAS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ML (vvvv impt!!!) so yeah, JUST BUY 🤣 this made my expenditure in May really high tho

[recommendedlisten]

There were hardly any blockbuster albums in 2018, but there definitely was no shortage of great albums either. For that reason, the year in music was better off for it. Similar to how this year's 30 Best Songs came from an open field where newer artists breaking through the underground could take a seat at the same table as innovative veterans and modern pop royalty alike, the 30 Best Albums of 2018 tells a similar story of a past not showing any signs of being beyond its prime, and a very promising future as to what its rookie artists might create one day when they're no longer the buzzworthy genre outsiders, punks, dance makers, and indie rockers the scene's radar. And speaking of the latter, it looks like many of this decade's earliest risers have proven themselves as worthy of the hype through greater substance and hitting their own strides. Less obvious, however, was that 2018 was a banister year for a new wave of hardcore band that continue to challenge the status quo beyond every circle of sound imaginable. If you've been waiting for the real thing, this year's top honors delivered it to you. 2019 has a lot to live up, because if it's half as interesting as the 30 Best Albums of 2018, we'll still be very lucky as listeners.

30. Hovvdy - Cranberry [Double Double Whammy]

With their graduation to Double Double Whammy for its sophomore effort Cranberry, Hovvdy have removed much of the digital tape deck hiss from their debut to make memories even more vivid when being stored inside their songs. And yet, Cranberry is still as soft a listen in a lovely way as its predecessor was despite its sharper clarity, which leads one to believe that the duo of Will Taylor and Charlie Martin are more focused on the way the listening experience captures a feeling rather than seeks out a way to recreate it. The songs’ tempos oft slowly trot through crisp strums and repetitive drum steps, occasionally fluttered in the warm hum of Casiotones (courtesy of fellow Austin DIY scene peer Hannah Read of Lomelda), but in defining their shapes in bolder lines with proper pop construction, Taylor’s plainspoken singing have a bigger space on the canvas to paint broad-stroked stories onto and allow the details – as muted as they are – to sink in full.

29. House of Feelings - New Lows [Joyful Noise Recordings]

What started as a radio show and dance night spinning some of the most esoteric sounds in dance and electronic vibes is now a living, breathing music collective of creatives from all corners of the underground built on an unbreakable foundation known as House of Feelings. On the NYC troupe’s debut full-length New Lows, multi-faceted songwriter Matty Fasano, YVETTE drummer and producer Dale Eisinger, songwriter Joe Fassler, and a cast of HoF collaborators familiar and new including Perfect Pussy’s Meredith Graves, Shamir, Denitia, and EULA’s Alyse Lamb, the group steps back into the darkest time line of our present reality after tripping out in an ambient post-apocalyptic freak out with last year’s club banger Last Chance EP. The pathways through which they travel are still treacherous as ever, but with blood-soaked shoes, sweaty bass lines, brass spirits, and synthetic doppelgangers for human emotion, they’re able to create a chic antidote for corrupt modern connections.

28. Oneohtrix Point Never - Age Of [Warp Records]

Oneohtrix Point Never breaks free of self-imposed insularity through collaboration and his own version of mass pop deconstruction to create  “nightmare ballads” on Age Of. It is – along with the performance art installation that accompanies it – simultaneously Daniel Lopatin’s most ambitiously detailed, yet cohesively-defined auditory experiences since breaking through in 2010 with the melodic MIDI warping of Returnal, as it reconvenes into a pattern of brain teasing pleasure that had until now, been marked for deletion in his virtual garden. Dismantling pop cliches into a morbid art form has always been Oneohtrix Point Never’s M.O., but never has Lopatin challenged them so heavily as he has on Age Of by putting what’s obvious in front of listeners, then ripping off its outer layers of gloss to reveal what makes them work. Whenever these songs feel as though they are encroaching upon a natural climax, OPNs pulls the hook away from our ears, as if to tantalize our reward ever so softly while testing the natural habits of our cerebral mechanics no doubt shaped by larger machines in the process. Now, that’s a scary thought...

27. Ava Luna - Moon 2 [Western Vinyl]

Moon 2 is the perfect title for where Ava Luna are today as artists. It’s their new phase – One in which the NYC art pop band shed the skin of the term “collective,“ and instead join tentacles to become a fully collaborative species as varied as their backgrounds are. That LP 5 is their most streamlined effort to date may come as an even bigger surprise given the latter detail, as each member of the five-piece has spent the interim since 2015′s Infinite House expressing themselves mostly on their own. It could be, however, that in learning to stand on their own feet and flexing these creative muscles that Ava Luna has become stronger as a unit, as stylistic cohesion is threaded through the album from the moment it creaks into infinite space. Gravity-free vocals and ambient waves glide through Felicia Douglass’ hushed breaths and silk-covered runs, Becca Kaufmann bumps energy into the alien disco, while guitarist Carlos Hernandez’ and the band’s rhythm of Julian Fader and Ethan Bassford maintain its physically kinetic geometry. In this phase, there’s no one who can do it all with the fashion and finesse like they do.

26. Gouge Away - Burnt Sugar [Deathwish Inc.]

Maybe more exciting than the arrival of their breakout Burnt Sugar is that Gouge Away are really only getting started. At its core level is vocalist Christina Michelle who lives and breathes her every word, be it gnarling in daily anxiety and frustrations with hope, or controlling the chaos with a sung seance. Since their debut ,Dies, she and her bandmates have evolved into a more intentional force with in their use of emotional intensity as Mick Ford’s guitars remain razor-sharp when need be, but conceal themselves in a softer casing that rolls down your spine before tearing into your skin. Burnt Sugar also gets some of its charred flavoring by pillaging the grime and grunge of ‘90s post-hardcore and noise influence, as Tyler Forsythe’s bass lines dent and wobbly through tension without resistance as Tommy Cantwell’s drums find a gnarled groove between the dark crevices they leave in their quake. Its brimming with so much possibility as to where they can go tomorrow, but for now, leaves a lasting bittersweet taste in your mouth.

25. Hop Along - Bark Your Head Off, Dog [Saddle Creek]

Bark Your Head Off, Dog finds Hop Along mastering the art of embellishing rock with finer detail. While it may require additional lengths to let it sink in, it’s definitively the Philly band’s most ambitious effort to succeed on all fronts.Their latest sonic evolution continues to bristle with rawness, yet hooks are deeply entwined in intricate chord progressions while Frances Quinlan’s storytelling has become a thing on the scale of an American classic in literature as she continues to observe the mundane of everyday living with deep existential analysis. The quartet’s overall sound reflects that need to uphold that imagery with compositions just as tangled in the ornate, and demanding greater patience on the part of the listener to hear exactly where knotted guitars untie themselves and fray into choruses, or where elastic, funky footwork begins to effortless flow with ease into melody. Bark Your Head Off, Dog is not just something to behold because of its creative maturation, but a fun practice in dissecting and digesting music (and subsequently, the world around us) that rewards the experience with resonating tunefulness hidden in between.

24. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love [ANTI-]

Deafheaven’s fourth studio effort Ordinary Corrupt Human Love shares many of the same organs and bone structures as its ancestors, but it’s a different animal altogether. It’s Deafheaven putting every one of the eccentricities they have nourished in their sound out there from the start into the wilderness, free to roam and form an album that embodies the humanity within their metal machine. Piano interludes, dreamy soundscapes indebted to slocore and indie rock traditionalism alongside guest vocal apparitions both weave even further layers to an an already ornate tapestry of scorched earth black metal and post rock, if maybe adding a touch of fragility to Clarke’s core existentialism. He ruminates plaintive thoughts on nature, aging, and empathy with a poetic grandeur that makes no apologies for being transparently earnest. That earnestness in all facets is what differentiates Ordinary Corrupt Human Love from any other Deafheaven album, or any other album that seers together a heavy heart and inner peace for that matter.

23. Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer [Epic Music / Sony Records / Wonderland Arts Society]

Dirty Computer bares the familiar signatures of Janelle Monáe’s past work – a rollout full bonkers visuals overlaying forward-thinking production that sets synthetic futurisms on an asteroid collision with the funky torchbearing of the Purple One’s legacy – yet it doubles down on radio-equipped hooks and choruses grounded like no other effort she’s set forth. There’s a full reveal of the political being personal in that aspect, as the album celebrates Monáe’s “PYNK”-themed coming out party as a pansexual woman of color, redefining the “Crazy, Classic, Life” of the modern American dream in the process. Her freedom roar, be it sung with sex and smoothness as she exudes in album bangers ”Make Me Feel” and “Screwed” or rapped with sharpened poise on ”Django Jane” is limitless is strength. Monáe’s star power dwarfs even the legends of tomorrow accompanying her journey back to Earth, be it Brian Wilson’s cosmic harmonies on its title track, or the electric empower-ade made with Pharrell Williams on “I Got the Juice”. Now that she’s graced us within arm’s length, it’s time we start recognizing a world where everything revolves around Janelle Monáe’s universal message to be just as you are.

22. The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships [Dirty Hit / Interscope Records]

On their third LP A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships, it’s here where  millennial melody makers the 1975 come into their own with their most actualized commentary on modern connection and pop music. Frontperson Matty Healy’s guides the dialogue through astute observations as a voyeur as well as his own ugly overshares for public consumption The album especially glorifies the latter in its arrangement. Like the dopamine rushes and exhaustion of life’s sudden highs and unexpected lows, A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships is pieced together in an unpredictable path of emotions in mind as it plays out. The listen combs through a post-Burial static plane, Auto-tuned trap pop, power ballad bombast, and even pulling off some oddity moments of loungey jazz. There’s a lot to not like about how our world is revolving, with the only optimism echoed here is the acknowledgement that we’re suffering through the darkest timeline together. For a generation whose attention’s spans are at peak deficit, hashtaggable plugs and genre-hopping get that message across through production-perfect content baiting reach.

21. Kamasi Washington - Heaven and Earth [Young Turks]

The year’s biggest adventure through the sonic cosmos comes by way of Kamasi Washington who takes you further out than you expected with Heaven and Earth, his latest grandeur display of avant jazz adventures composed with the special powers of the video game superheroes he invokes when aligning big brass purists and less discriminatory crossover crowd on the same universal plane. The double LP featuring 16 tracks average in 10 minutes in length each may as well be a quadruple one by today’s standards, though it also finds the Los Angeles saxophonist and his band in top form with cohesively connecting the dots in his experimentally sound genre reconstructions that encompasses free wheeling eruptions and percussive winks into the realms of rock, soul, and R&B. Heaven and Earth mediates his world of the weird and technically proficient with out current pop climate changes, and there’s more than enough sonic sight seeing in this journey to keep your senses in awe.

20. Iceage - Beyondless [Matador Records]

What began as an exorcise in violence, nihilism, and anxiety personified in the least suspecting of scenes within Denmark’s desolate DIY basements has evolved into a meticulous exercise in punk polyglot experimentation on Beyondless. Here, Iceage weaponize gothic purveyance to subdue their louder abrasions, but not necessarily their ability to confront the dark with any softer hesitation for a grander stage. The Danish quartet’s fourth studio effort is a new peak culmination in their insatiable desire to further themselves well beyond the limits previously drawn in their musical sculpture. The way they brandish danger and bleak existentialism in tandem with their bootsy grit is sexed up for pomp and glam through its incorporation of strong brass winds and cantankerous jazzy fits. Elias Rønnenfelt has written himself a charismatic stage persona to match – Consumed by the theatrics of a  rock god and the Devil himself at once. Their unholy ritual has been completed and satisfies all heathens.

19. Tomberlin - At Weddings [Saddle Creek]

Sarah Beth Tomberlin was born to a strict Baptist household where her father was a minister, and she honed her craft as a songwriter through praise hymnals sung at Sunday sermons. She wasn’t allowed to discover a musical world outside of that sphere until she began secretly sneaking Bright Eyes CDs into her possession during her formative years. At Weddings, her debut full-length, is her way of forging her own path in a post-theist world that gives her – as she puts it on its opener “Any Other Way” – a sudden feeling that she doesn’t “have a place.” There’s more to her story than just existential queries hollowed out in a negative space where her voice, rendered in a delicate, yet devastatingly beautiful coat of reverb, echoes out as vast as the Midwestern fields she was raised. While At Weddings doesn’t conclude with her finding that place in the world she can finally rest comfort in, the ellipses it leaves listeners with is awe-striking in the way it makes you wonder right alongside Tomberlin where her path will lead her in the end.

18. Speedy Ortiz - Twerp Verse [Carpark Records]

Ever since they arrived on the scene as fresh-faced college grads of the school of indie rock with their 2013 debut full-length Major Arcana, the combination of singer Sadie Dupuis’ particular prose and she and her Speedy Ortiz bandmates’ higher level learning of idiosyncratic songwriting has been the thing that has made them stand out in a pack in the scene’s new wave of artists heavily influenced by the thinking person’s underground. With 2015′s Foil Deer, they proved that they had not only studied up on every book inside the indie rock laureates' libraries, and knew how to put that knowledge to proper use in writing their own chapters within it for today’s impressionable minds, but their latest effort Twerp Verse is a selfless endeavor devoid of needing to prove anything to anyone. Instead, it’s the quartet’s most outspoken commentary on modern day righteousness made all the more digestible with some new tricks from Dupuis’ second degree in spooky pop experimentation gained during a semester abroad under her sad13 guise. Speedy cram a lot to chew on here about common decency, but rest assured, these are choruses that will stick to your brain as much as the corrective lessons for a better society do, too.

17. Daughters - You Won’t Get What You Want [Ipecac Recordings]

Before going on indefinite hiatus in 2010, Daughters helped carve out a particular sound that stylized post- and grindcore scenes in the mid-2000s. Elastic guitars, intense drumming fits, and a frontperson in Alexis S.F. Marshall who sounded like an unhinged cog thrown in the machine whose job was to cause malfunctions at every turn was their modus operandi. Through sealed rifts, Daughters have since reunited with its most recent incarnation of Marshall, founding drummer Jon Syverson, rhythm guitarist Nicholas Andrew Sadler and Samuel M. Walker on bass, yet they're not the same band we heard on their return effort You Won’t Get What You Want. The Providence quartet’s fourth studio effort makes a concentrated effort in reshaping the outlines of their hardened history in an industrial fusion of  human parts and robot arms melding into one alongside sea-sawing droning, smoldering blues, and gothic epics. Just as Daughters’ past indefinite hiatus status made no promises, You Won’t Get What You Want feels like they’ve entering a new phase where the unease in uncertainty fuels the thrill ride to defy any expectation/

16. Wild Pink - Yolk In the Fur [Tiny Engines]

Despite having cut their teeth in the Brooklyn indie scene these last several years, Wild Pink don’t sound so much like your standard guitar-chugging city dwellers on their breakout sophomore effort Yolk In the Fur. The trio of John Ross, TC Brownell and Dan Keegan have grown beyond the concrete jungle and ventured into an equally captivating impression here of ‘80s synth-bleeding, Americana-influenced rock that has made storytelling sentiment glimmer like a borealis in the way it has for the album’s kindred spirit  Tom Petty and more recently, the modern day journeys of the War On Drugs. Yolk In the Fur has its own handwriting to share, however, with Ross emoting existential philosophies while gazing through the monotony of the every day and millennial melancholia. It’s there where Wild Pink transcend beyond subways and human-saturated streets and into the vast fields, rivers and star-lit skies -- Their own version of escapism becoming contagious.

15. Camp Cope - How to Socialise & Make Friends [Run for Cover Records]

Speaking to Camp Cope’s How to Socialise & Make Friends is a daunting task, especially from this end seeing that any cisgender straight male isn’t the most qualified to do the kind of heavy lifting these Melbourne indie rockers’ do here on their sophomore effort. The listen protests and shouts just as much as it lets out heavy sighs as singer Georgia Maq airs her grievances, be it via acid tongue or a higher road empathy. Her targets include gendered double-standards and an exhaustion with cultured misogyny in every facet of her daily life. She sings from both the unjust experiences as the frontperson of an all-women band within a male-dominated punk scene and as a humanist, with dudes behaving badly toward both in and out of those circles. The sound Camp Cope wage war with words with burns with an anti-authoritarian DIY spirit and emotive frustration equivocally, as Maq’s unfurling guitars over Kelly-Dawn Hellmrich and Sarah Thompson’s steady rhythm clear a path for her to break the patriarchy, if even by throwing just a single stone into every glass ceiling at a time.

14. Snail Mail - Lush [Matador Records]

Lindsey Jordan knows the roller coaster emotions of being young better than most indie rock songwriters out there right now, perhaps because she’s still figuring out a way to deal with them. With her debut album Lush, the 19-year-old’s creative outlet Snail Mail invites the entire world into the thick of her Tiny Little Corner of Anywhere where the doldrums of suburban living collide with teenage romance and its ensuing anguish in a manner where even a minor happening in heartache is enough substance to soundtrack a turning point in the coming-of-age experience. How she does so is through a stronghold in sharp earnestness wise beyond her years with lyrical specificity wrapped up in slowburning melancholic hooks that might otherwise suggest what ‘90s indie rock might have sounded like had it been put to her eloquent pen in the present. Yet, Lush is through and through about living in the moment, growing pains and all, and Snail Mail is in no hurry to shake the ride.

13. Vince Staples - FM! [Def Jam]

FM! -- an 11 track, 23-minute-long project from Vince Staples -- extends the Long Beach M.C.’s streak of success through an endless summer party meant for momentary escapism. The listen is no different than tuning into the long-running Los Angeles hip-hop station 92.3 and its show, Big Boy’s Neighborhood, that serves to bind together Staples’ latest duality of disenfranchised disparity against fame and prosperity over a series of intros, skits, interludes and, to greater effect, a group of Cali-minded guest features that would fit in effortlessly next to the radio fodder Staples’ cult rap skills usually sit on the outside of. It’s a current snapshot of the Vince Staples of today without forgetting where he came from, and he gets a few hits in that way by dropping ugly realities into an otherwise mostly white Coachella crowd-pleasing playlist where tough-as-nails honesty and ear-softening commercial pleasure find a middle ground. FM!’s fun from the outside looking in, yet a complex commentary when you stick your head in closer, and nothing less than we’ve come to expect from rap’s best thinkers.

12. Vein - errorzone [Closed Casket Activities)

The Greater Boston legacy of heavy has long been a place where hardcore and metal collide with an awesome vigor, and that lineage continues to expand beyond the Baystate today with Vein, a group of Merrimack Valley thrashers who are amplifying the intensity of the scene’s groundbreakers in the likes of Cave In, Converge and American Nightmare, and bare down the void with their own young nihilistic bulldozing. Their debut full-length errorzone uses the framework laid before them and fuses its pieces into a sound of apocalyptic proportions where human adrenaline and natural forces smolder into the quintet’s firestorm to form a death-wielding vehicle. The end result tears shit apart in every which way. Lead screamer Anthony DiDio is a wrecking ball on his own two feet, but backed by Vein’s seismic riffs and stone pummeling rhythmic core, errorzone is unapologetically harsh in seeing that everything burns to the ground. Taking into account the current state of the world, that might just be what this place needs.

11. Beach House - 7 [Sub Pop]

With 7, Beach House’s singular sound has settled on a narrative that has no concrete objective in sight, but rather, an unharnessed exploration into the unknown of what possibilities may manifest. That it’s their most curiously daring listen in a career that’s already been defined by surprises is a fete most veteran indie rock acts these days should be envious to achieve themselves, and for that, Victoria Legrand and Alex Scally can thank their lucky intuition for guiding their spirit in a directionless path. 7′s specific magical power is their ability to transform that darkness into an unsuspecting beauty, as the album oft confronts such instances fit for these tumultuous times by embracing the ability for empathy and love to grow out of that trauma, capturing the free-fall from resistance into giving in with a lightness. Explorations with psychedelic hues and cosmic lights in their smoldering, vapory dream-pop soothe even the bleakest questions that float through the timeline of an otherwise frightening reality. Beach House, in their present formless existence, endure in its brave embrace of it.

10. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs [Tan Cressida / Columbia Records]

Aside from being a grade A wordsmith, Earl Sweatshirt stands out among other rappers from the younger era thanks to his ability to connect with audiences by talking to real life context in ways that never look like fashion statements or image crafting. It’s neither a Drake-ism or an emo rap algorithm ploy -- It’s honest, ugly reality checks that have gone toe to toe with anxiety, depression and death talk without glamorizing any of them as a welcome lifestyle. Last we’d heard from him were the incisive cuts levied through weed clouds and paranoia on 2015′s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside, yet, like many of his Odd Future alumni, Earl has grown out of his tumultuous teens, and with Some Rap Songs, the 24-year-old cult hero is beginning to piece together life’s puzzles clearly -- at least through prose. Throughout the listen, his rap style transcends any comparison to what his peers are creating as he delves into an abstract collage of background noise made of layered beats, samples of voices from the outside, and a control over his own as a hookless wonder. With the smoke clearing from the room, it turns out that the avant direction fits Earl Sweatshirt perfectly. 

9. Robyn - Honey [Konichiwa Records]

In the 8 year absence releasing her ultimate legacy-cementing effort Body Talk, Robyn’s footprint on the pop universe has become permanently entangled in the DNA of its modern current. Now that she’s made her return on her sixth full-length effort Honey, however, we’re not just given everything we could hope for in a Robyn album – But something from a different creative pop genius than the one we last danced our worries away with. Experiences with grief and loss have changed the shape of the way she breaks our hearts and teaches us how to put them back together this time around, as Honey brings different facets of light into her singular sound to separate itself from similar flavors. Bright, shimmering whirls of synths and soft caresses sweep up a familiar warmth as any other Robyn endorphin rush, but glamorous house parties, funked up bass lines and breezy lite R&B turn the corner toward a different perspective in the healing process. Though we never truly know what pains life may bring our way, Robyn reminds us that there’s always a way back to the sweet stuff with Honey.

8. Pusha-T - DAYTONA [Def Jam / G.O.O.D. Music]

Stretches of ominous silence in between releases have worked to Pusha-T’s advantage in massaging his work into a hard craft. Ever since his 2013 debut My Name Is My Name and 2015′s followup King Push – Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude, the pursuit of perfection has equated to him needing to waste less time to get people talking about what he’s saying. His X-acto knife precision consistently coupled with an ultra modern beat design never ceases to cut right where it needs to, and with his latest album DAYTONA, we get 7 tracks in just a little over 20 minutes where the Delaware son savors his words for deep impact. What’s left in its wake is a proper torching of the entire hip-hop landscape with his long shadow and knife-like flow that gave 2018 one of the year’s most talked about rap beefs. Darker moments surrounding loss of friends and the double-edged sword of fame swallow the soul whole into itself as well, and in aligning himself with Kanye West’s post-Pablo production (basically, the only good thing ‘Ye gave music this year...), the reign of King Push remains unrivaled.

7. Soccer Mommy - Clean [Fat Possum Records]

The opening moments from Soccer Mommy breakout Clean don’t idealize romantic expectations, so don’t get your hopes up that the rest of the album is going to find its way to some kind of happy ending either. Clean is the result of an ongoing bedroom-born lullaby inward that had been slowly forming the outlines of Sophie Allison’s persona over the years, with her debut full-length transforming early broad brush strokes into more detailed ones through a rickety walk of structurally-sound acoustic strums, hints of twinklecore in her alternative slow burn, and a healthy measure of studio trickery that puts a stamp with Allison’s name all over her confessionals. There’s an intense relatability to her storytelling as well as her underdog status of being on the losing end of relationships that makes her work resonate deep within the every-person, and they’re all necessary, too. Unlike all of the girls who she isn’t we meet here on Clean, owning up to her differences is what makes Allison sound realer than the rest.

6. Cardi B - Invasion of Privacy [Atlantic Records]

Social media-assisted personal brands may seemingly grow overnight these days, but one thing that won’t ever change is how they’re only a piece of the puzzle – if at all – in guaranteeing a successful rap career. If you were expecting Cardi B’s debut album Invasion of Privacy to change any rules of the game, it doesn’t over-promise in that regard, but it’s still an assured first step that includes Cardi delivering on her end of the it with a solid performance of real life character work backed by a roundtable of reliable modern production crafted by the likes of Boi-1da, Murda Beatz and Benny Blanco. It’s an early indication that proves she knows herself better than most others have in this position when it came to making money moves with natural instinct, and it’s perhaps the biggest reason why Cardi B managed to parlay her hustle from behind a smart phone into a #1 dream come true while her detractors keep bloating streaming algorithms in hopes of guaranteeing themselves a cheap hit.

5. Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour [Mercury Nashville]

With Golden Hour, Kacey Musgraves continues to be just as brave enough to color outside the lines of country with her honesty as she does in the palette she paints with as well. Disco-inflicted pop crossovers, cosmic countrypolitan, psychedelic steel pedaling, a refracted spectrum of ‘70s style classic rock piano balladry worthy of Elton’s rhinestoned co-sign, and in between everything, Golden Hour shining with that simple purity of fully lucid designs Musgraves has always brought to the table in dripping honey-combed acoustics into melancholia and pop that bring even a basic approach to songwriting into widescreen view. The album amounts to something akin to an actual rainbow for that matter – All colors vivid and unique in their own way, but when they collect together, they suggest something much more, be it in its wonders of life, love, and enjoying every second of it in the present with your senses filled with them.

4. American Pleasure Club - A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This [Run for Cover Records]

At the end of 2017, Sam Ray ditched the Teen Suicide moniker in favor of something more empathetic and conscious by redubbing his punk band American Pleasure Club. After years of making music inspired by depressive fits, substance abuse, and an aggressively nihilistic world view, he’s realigned his sound as well thanks to sobriety and finding domestic bliss with fellow musician Kitty Ray. With that, the band’s third proper album A Whole Fucking Lifetime of This is where Sam Ray has adulted beyond the bitter teenage malaise of his past while giving his loyalty of listeners every reason to continue working toward defining happiness in their own messy lives. That’s mirrored in a juxtaposition of vibes throughout the listen, varied in mood and style as vast as bedroom pop melancholia, pop-punk jitters, wallowing alternative waves, and hazy R&B that circle back to a big picture of coherency. Its a soundscape Ray has tinkered with tirelessly since the project’s inception, and has now found a fulfilling sweet spot in American Pleasure Club’s sound thanks to acknowledgement the reality of a love in a world that will never truly be a personal heaven nor hell.

3. Mitski - Be the Cowboy [Dead Oceans]

Mitski’s fifth album Be the Cowboy is brimming with ideas in brevity, yet it never falls short of articulating them with considered judgement that proves Mitski Miyawaki is in full control of her directive wheel. To give of herself even the slightest glimpse into the 27-year-old songwriter’s psyche through song is her gift to the Earth, with her pen blurring a universal connection between the personal and creation by mining its many striations of disconnect. Her other half on the surface level is often framed like a lover, though she’s hinted that sometimes the relationships that break her heart the most are those not reciprocated in her commitment to her work. Be the Cowboy finds her acting out every role in the story inseparably through the bombast of indie rockisms,an incorporation of songwriting worlds both traditional and modern that render new benchmarks of perfection for her timeless prose and even disco-pop, making it all the more difficult to decipher, yet that’s the point: They’re all designed as self-reflections given equal moments to be honored in her dark and light.

2. Low - Double Negative [Sub Pop]

Slowcore innovators Low have evolved far beyond the patient wonder of their music in several different styles over their storied 25-year career as a band, but nothing in their catalog is anything like their latest studio effort, Double Negative. The listen answers the question of what may exist of the Duluth trio if you were to destroy in their sound all the natural beauty that has endured gracefully these last three decades, and attempts to reconstruct it by fragment, particle by particle. That’s done intentionally, as the band holds a shattered mirror up to the world and reflects it onto themselves, as LP 12 embraces their most abrasive traits fearlessly through deconstructed and corruptly digitized instrumentation sucked into the vacuous production of. B.J. Burton, go-to producer at Bon Iver’s April Base home studio. The uncertainty in Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker vocals, while remaining tender all the way through, surface anxieties felt by many humans amid the disarray. We don’t know what tomorrow brings, though Double Negative captures the present in all its brokenness flawlessly.

1. Turnstile - Time & Space [Roadrunner Records]

Pull the 25-minute-long sprint that is Turnstile’s major label debut Time & Space apart by its guts, and you’ll hear that it’s so many other things than just a record that is guaranteed to insight a lot of free-falling bodies flying off stages wherever they take this record live. Even as a screamer, Brendan Yates is rather Svengali in his anti-et. al resistance, feeding his existential crisis into grungy despair and plunging down that rabbit hole lined in hybridized metal. Guitarists Brady Ebert and Pat McCrory alongside bassist Franz Lyon and drummer Daniel Fang are integral to controlling the listen between a slam dance and a hardcore meditation, meeting every signature call to the pit with a far out reverberation such as “Moon”, a lush, hazy pop-punker of a track. If there’s a single takeaway from Turnstile’s proper introduction beyond the DIY spaces they came through, it’s that the Baltimore quintet are prepared to take risks to reshape hardcore as something more than just punk’s harder edge of sound. It’s one continuous nonstop feeling, and one that’s bringing the whole scene into an entirely different level of being.

[misfit-among-the-angels]

Do ALL the questions!!!! 😇

1. describe yourself.I hate to doing this because every time I have job interview they ask me pretty much the same :/ So yea, I’m not gonna do that sorry :c

2. if you could go anywhere for a week all expenses paid where would it be?Bavarian Alpes 

3. do you have siblings?Yep, 7 years older sister

4. what is your favorite constellation, why?I don’t think I have one

5. favorite color.Black, red, green, purple

6. what kind of music do you listen to?Metal, classic rock, industrial, neo-folk, 80s pop, darkwave 

7. favorite flower. (you can name as many as you want cause flowers are awesome)Tulip, forget-me-not

8. if you could do magic, what is the first spell you would learn?Hmmm, first spell, probably the spell that would help me to learn all languages that I wanna learn

9. favorite childhood memory.Countless trips all around my hometown with my grandma

10. have you ever been cheated on?Yep

11. if you could describe your perfect room, what would it be?Lots of posters on the walls, guitar in a corner, comfy bed, lots of CDs on the table. Idk, this sucks sorry

12. favorite animal.Wolves, big cats, horses

13. what was the last photo you took of?

14. do you believe in soul mates?Yep

15. do you hang toilet paper over or under?Over

16. your go to place to eat & your favorite thing to get there.Express pizza. Always ordering the spiciest pizza they have

17. do you believe everything happens for a reason?Kinda. Some things indeed happen for reason

18. guilty pressures?Idk if I even have them

19. favorite mythical creature, why?Dragons, because they are so damn awesome and powerful

20. something most people don’t know about you.People on tumblr probably know everything about me at this point lol. Idk, I guess some people don’t really know that 8 years ago I became a metalhead, but I discovered my first metal band 11 years ago

21. where did you grow up, what was it like?I grew up in the second biggest city in Lithuania - Kaunas. Idk, I barely remember things from my childhood 

22. do you believe aliens exist?Ayye

23. what was your last google search? “phantom of the opera“

24. what did your last relationship teach you?Perfect relationships exist. Also long distance relationships suck ass

25. would you relocate for love?It would depend, but I guess yea 

26. do you hold grudges or forgive easy?It depends what that person has done to me

27. favorite book.LoTR trilogy and tbh every J.R.R. book, It by S. King, The name of the Rose byU. Eco and many more

28. do you consider yourself an extrovert or introvert?Extrovert with some introvert traits

29. have you ever kept a journal, do you now?I have kept it when I was a teen, now I only have travel journal

30. top 5 favorite movies.LoTR/The Hobbit trilogyAtomic BlondeKill BillAs above so belowInterstellar

31. do you believe that everything happens for a reason?same question and same answer

32. what is your greatest fear?Spiders

33. favorite alcoholic beverage.Wine, beer, mead, whiskey 

34. most embarrassing thing you’ve done.Wrote all those really creepy thirst tweets about Rammstein back when i had obsession over them

35. do you believe in ghosts?Yep

36. what is the best and worst part of your personality?Best - I’m out-going and I’m always ready to helpWorst - I can be really stubborn 

37. should you split the dinner bill?Idk, should you?

38. are you a good liar?I guess yea

39. what keeps you up at night?My mind and my love for night

40. would you rather go without your phone or music?Phone

41. do you believe in god?I believe in gods

42. how do you relax when frustrated?Well, it depends on how I’m frustrated, but I usually listen to music or watch some vids on youtube

43. what’s something that offends you?Sexism  

44. favorite foodPasta!

45. if you were on a 10 hour flight and could sit and talk to any person the entire time, who would it be?I wanted to write a very specific person, but let’s leave that person for another time. I think it would be Tuomas Holopainen from Nightwish

46. when do you feel the most confident?When I’m with my favorite outfit, or when my makeup is cool, or when my mind let’s me feel confident, or when I’m wearing something sexy

47. what do you do on your free time?Listen to music, watching films/tv series, tumblr, sleeping, fangirling, going to concerts/fllm festivals, traveling, photography, being with friends, being in nauture

48. is there anyone who has completely lost your respectYep

49. have you ever broken someone’s heart?Yep, unfortunately 

50. did/do you play sports in school?I used to play sports in elementary school

51. when are you happiest?When I’m traveling or in a concert, or being with friends, or doing something creative, or being in nature

52. coffee or tea?Tea

53. what is one possession you own you wouldn’t want to live without?My camera (and my copy of Moonglow artbook)

54. what is the first thing you notice about a person?Their eyes, sometimes their hands

55. what is your favorite season, why?Autumn and winter. It’s just perfect weather and it makes me feel alive

56. what makes you laugh?Idk how to even answer this lol Good jokes, stupid/adorable things

57. are you a clean or messy person?Messy

58. what is important for a successful relationship?Trust, loyalty, being open and honest

59. what was your upcoming like?I don’t really understand the question tbh

60. favorite holiday?Christmas probably 

61. what is the first thing you’d do if you won the lottery?Buy all the stuff I need 

62. what’s the best pizza topping combination?Anything, as long as it is spicy 

63. favorite outdoor activity.Going around the city or being in nature

64. how are you? honestly.I dunno, kinda good but kinda bad

65. would you rather go camping in the woods or stay at a beach resort?Camping in the woods of course

66. what is the most beautiful thing in nature?EVERYTHING! 

67. favorite type of candy?Chocolate lol

68. if your life was a book, what would be the title?“I need to read what the shit is this” - or smth stupid I said once lol

69. what movie quotes do you use of a regular bases?I barely use them tbh, tho I do use “precious” a lot

70. what was cool when you were young but not cool now?Being emo

71. what’s the craziest conversation you have ever eves dropped on?I honestly can’t remember 

72. what’s the most interesting documentary you’ve ever watched?Metal evolution 

73. what’s the worst hairstyle you’ve had?I suck at describing things but nooo, i’m not gonna post a picture even tho I think I have few, but let’s say it was pretty bad

74. what do you like to cook?Pasta or basically anything that I can or want at that moment

75. what’s the coolest animal you’ve seen in the wild?Moose

76. what’s the funniest tv show you’ve ever seen?The Simpsons I guess

77. do you usually follow your heart or your head?Heart

78. what is your favorite quote? “Most books on witchcraft will tell you that witches work naked. This is because most books on witchcraft are written by men.” - Good omens

79. what’s the weirdest crush you have ever had?Idk, I don’t think I had any really weird crushes

80. what’s your love language?I actually went and did a test about this and so my love language is physical touch. I actually agree on this

81. do you ever feel alone?Almost always

82. ever been bullied?Yep

83. are you usually early or late?Sometimes bit early sometimes late

84. what kind of art do you enjoy most?Books, films, music, photography

85. what do you wish you knew more about?I wish I’d know more about filmmaking, photography

Thank you!!!! And sorry that my answers suck ass..

[paullrud]

It’s your favorite Answer All Anon again!!!!! Answer all the Unusual Asks PLZZZ?

hey AAA :) glad to see you back on my page. hope you like these answers. sorry it’s late, yet again. ✦ nova

1. spotify, soundcloud, or pandora? soundcloud. every. single. time.

2. is your room messy or clean? a little bit of both. one corner of my room is just a mountain of clothing, but my bed and closet are super neat.

3. what color are your eyes? brown, like chocolate.

4. do you like your name? why? no. and i ellect to not have my name on here, that’s why i have an alias of “nova”

5. what is your relationship status? single. i cried in the car on my way home from work for that exact reason last night. i kept thinking, “will i ever be good enough for someone to love me?”

6. describe your personality in 3 words or less. humorous, depressed, intro/extrovert

7. what color hair do you have? it used to be all sorts of colors, different every month. but, i went corporate and dyed it back to my original color.

8. what kind of car do you drive? color? black 2017 toyota corolla. used to have a matte black 4-door jeep wrangler, but my mother took it away from me for the terms of “responsibility” and “immature nature”

9. where do you shop? anthropologie and urban outfitters, mostly, because i work at urban. sometimes lf (only when their 70% off sale is going on), dover street market, kith and off-white.

10. how would you describe your style? total hypebae. i love streetwear, my influences are virgil abloh and heron preston when it comes to style and what clothing i wear.

11. favorite social media account that’s a hard one because i’m really not sure what you mean? if it’s a person, i don’t have one. if it’s an app, twitter, most definitely.

12. what size bed do you have? full size!

13. any siblings? one sister. hate her.

14. if you can live anywhere in the world where would it be? why? like i said before in the other ask ^.^ france. nantes for the spring and summer, paris for the winter and fall. i fell in love with paris when i went for the first time with my friend (who i like, by the way) when he invited me.

15. favorite snapchat filter? do not have a snapchat, so i can’t say.

16. favorite makeup brand(s) i don’t wear makeup a lot, but anatasia for the brows. most definitely. my favorite perfume though is viktor and rolf, flowerbomb.

17. how many times a week do you shower? winter and fall is 4 to 5 times a week. spring and summer is 5 to 8 times a week.

18. favorite tv show? if it’s not “the office”…… i send it back!

19. shoe size? 8 to 9, depending on the company.

20. how tall are you? 5 feet, 1 inch ^.^

21. sandals or sneakers? i hate feet, so sneakers

22. do you go to the gym? god, no.

23. describe your dream date running errands then cooking a meal together. sounds lame, but to me that really is the most domesticated thing you can do with someone you love.

24. how much money do you have in your wallet at the moment? i’m all cashless, baby.

25. what color socks are you wearing? navy blue with little red hearts on them.

26. how many pillows do you sleep with? 2, but they suck so i’m going to get 2 new ones, when i get my paycheck.

27. do you have a job? what do you do? yes, i have 2 actually. i work in retail for both (cole haan and urban outfitters)

28. how many friends do you have? i have a lot of accquaintences, but only 4 to 5 people i call my true friends. my ride or dies, if you will.

29. what’s the worst thing you have ever done? probably steal. i was a huge kleptomaniac back in my early teens.

30. what’s your favorite candle scent? vanilla or the green one from febreeze (i forgot what the scent is named)

31. 3 favorite boy names everett, cole, aspen (+bonus scott)

32. 3 favorite girl names alex, denise, elle

33. favorite actor? tom holland or sebastian stan. don’t make me choose!

34. favorite actress? zoe saldana by a landslide.

35. who is your celebrity crush? i really don’t have one! i admire celebrities for their acting and charity work.

36. favorite movie? a tie between captain america: the winter soldier and scott pilgrim vs the world.

37. do you read a lot? what’s your favorite book? i don’t read a lot, but when i do they are mostly about real life events and autobiographies.

38. money or brains? why not money and brains

39. do you have a nickname? what is it? my real name, yes. but for now, let’s keep with nova.

40. how many times have you been to the hospital? too many times to count, if i’m being honest. always for my depression or suicide attempts.

41. top 10 favorite songs in NO particular order, btw! – lover is a day by cuco – it’s strange by louis the child – in your head (rl grime edit) by g jones – ucla (heimanu remix) by rl grime – flicker by porter robinson – pursuit (jawns remix) by gesaffelstein – the wave (louis the child remix) by elohim – hi this is flume (whole ep) by flume – you’re on by madeon – luv by whipped cream

42. do you take medications daily? yes.

43. what is your skin type? dry… smh.

44. what is your biggest fear? being kidnapped and sold on the black market.

45. how many kids do you want? zero.

46. what’s your go to hair style? space buns!

47. what type of house do you live in? (big, small, etc) medium-ish

48. who is your role model? my friends. they’re older than me (by a couple years) and they’re doing exceedingly well for their age.

49. what was the last compliment you recieved? “i like your dress!”

50. what was the last text you sent? “thankssssss.”

51. how old were you when you found out santa wasn’t real? sadly, 10 or 11. smh, my mother really let me believe in a lie for 10 years.

52. what is your dream car? maserati SUV.

53. opinion on smoking? don’t like it. but, i’m a hypocrite because i juul.

54. do you go to college? yes!

55. what is your dream job? definitely NOT what i’m doing right now. probably working at the refinery 29 office in los angeles, doing something with the fashion department.

56. would you rather live in rural areas or the suburbs? i love the city but when it comes down to it, my ideal place would be rural… me and my husband secluded on a goat farm in nantes, france? amazing.

57. do you take shampoo and conditioner bottles from hotels? yes. if you don’t, then what’s the point of going to a hotel?

58. do you have freckles? no :( i wish.

59. do you smile for pictures? yes, but a tightlipped smile.

60. how many pictures do you have on your phone? 24,680

61. have you ever peed in the woods? yes, on a camping trip.

62. do you still watch cartoons? yes, futurama, archer and bob’s burgers!

63. do you prefer chicken nuggets from wendy’s or mcdonalds? never had wendy’s! never had mcdonald’s!

64. favorite dipping sauce? the honey mustard from wings over… *watering mouth pursues*

65. what do you wear to bed? al-natural, baby.

66. have you ever won a spelling bee? no. sadly.

67. what are your hobbies? i have my own clothing line and i really love photography, drawing and painting. also i make music ^.^

68. can you draw? cc: 67th question.

69. do you play an instrument? piano.

70. what was the last concert you saw? louis the child at governor’s ball ^.^

71. tea or coffee? coffee.

72. starbucks or dunkin donuts? that vanilla bean creme frappucino ^.^

73. do you want to get married? yes. of course.

74. what is your crush’s first and last intial? s.p.

75. are you going to change your last name when you get married?maybe… we’ll see.

76. what color looks best on you? black.

77. do you miss anyone right now? s.p.

78. do you sleep with your door open or closed? closed.

79. do you believe in ghosts? yes.

80. what is your biggest pet peeve? stupidity.

81. last person you called s.p.

82. favorite ice cream flavor? ben and jerry’s milk and cookies :)

83. regular oreos or golden oreos? regular, always and forever.

84. chocolate or rainbow sprinkles? rainbow! it’s happiness in sprinkles

85. what shirt are you wearing? a red one :)

86. what is your phone background? porter robinson ^.^

87. are you outgoing or shy? little bit of coloumn a… little bit of coloumn b…

88. do you like it when people play with your hair? yes, only if i’m comfortable with you.

89. do you like your neighbors? the right one yes, the left one no.

90. do you wash your face? at night? in the morning? no, only in the shower :)

91. have you ever been high? yes, not a pleasant experience.

92. have you ever been drunk? yes… also not a pleasant experience.

93. last thing you ate? homemade macaroni and cheese

94. favorite lyrics right now any lyric from “lover is a day” by cuco

95. summer or winter? winter !

96. day or night? night !

97. dark, milk or white chocolate? i do not like chocolate ! yuck !

98. favorite month? april :)

99. what is your zodiac sign virgo 

100. who was the last person you cried in front of? my coworker :(

[nutriyumaddict]

Rules: Complete the survey and say who tagged you in the beginning. When you are finished tag 5 people to do this survey. Have fun and enjoy!!!

I was tagged by @benjis-cool-times - she is a wondrous and playful sea otter. :D

1. Are you named after someone?

I was named after a song. That Beatles one.

2. When is the last time you cried?

Hmmmmm...I do not cry very often but I think it was during my super sad period last fall?

3. Do you like your handwriting?

Sometimes. It's kind of sloppy if my hand is tired but if I take the time, then yes, I like it.

4. What is your favorite lunch meat.

Hmmmm...weird. I guess turkey? But I'd honestly prefer a sandwich w/ BLT or tuna salad or just straight-up veggies & hummus.

5. Do you have kids?

Nope. Just a cat. She is a demanding feline but we don’t have to send her to college.

6. If you were another person, would you be friends with you?

Probably. I hope so.

7. Do you use sarcasm?

No. Neverrrrrrrr.

8. Do you still have your tonsils?

Oh god, I read this as "toenails" first and I was like - wtf? Hahaha, yes, tonsils intact (toenails too).

9. Would you bungee jump?

Probably not. I have a fear of heights thing.

10. What is your favorite kind of cereal?

Um...so I generally don't like cereal because I don't like cold, wet, soggy things BUT...I do make a fairly killer granola w/ oats, nuts, cherries, flaxseed meal, brown sugar, and maple syrup.

11. Do you untie your shoes when you take them off?

Most of my shoes don't have laces but I guess I just usually slip off my running shoes. So, no.

12. Do you think you’re a strong person?

Hmmmmm....maybe? Depends on the context.

13. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

All the Spumoni, please! Second favorite - malted chocolate.

14. What is the first thing you notice about people?

I think hair. Is that weird?

15. Red or pink?

Red.

16. What is the least favorite physical thing you like about yourself?

That I do not have the power to be invisible when that would be a helpful super power to have.

17. What color pants and shoes are you wearing now?

I am wearing multi-colored flannel pajama pants and multi-colored slippers.

18. What is the last thing you ate?

Maple-glazed salmon, roasted sweet potatos, and green beans (yay! I felt okay enough to actually make a healthy dinner!)

19. What are you listening to right now?

My husband play guitar in the bedroom.

20. If you were a crayon, what color would you be?

Green.

21. Favorite smell?

Coffee.

22. Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone?

My mom.

23. Favorite sport to watch?

Um, not really.

24. Hair color?

Red.

25. Eye color?

Hazel.

26. Do you wear contacts?

Yep.

27. Favorite food to eat?

Tacos. But then also everything else. (Except bananas, blue cheese, and beets.)

28. Scary movies or comedy?

Probably comedy.

29. Last movie you watched?

Rogue One. I've really wanted to go see Hidden Figures but first husband and then I got a dumb cold.

30. What color shirt are you wearing?

I am wearing a brown t-shirt that has Jack Skellington discovering the TARDIS in the forest.

31. Summer or winter?

Winter. Although, tbh, I am kind of getting sick of this winter.

32. Hugs or kisses?

Hugs. But both are delightful.

33. What book are you currently reading?

I just finished The Invisible Library last night. I have not started a new one yet.

34. Who do you miss right now?

My friend Dana. She lives far away and we kind of lost touch after we both moved to different corners of the US.

35. What is on your mouse pad?

An illustration of three macarons.

36. What is the last TV program you watched?

I just watched the latest ep of This is Us.

37. What is the best sound?

Silence when I'm stressed out or music when I'm happy.

38. Rolling Stones or The Beatles?

The Beatles.

39. What is the furthest you have traveled?

France.

40. Do you have a special talent?

I don't know. Cooking? Arty stuff?

41. Where were you born?

Elmhurst, Il. (suburb of Chicago)

Tagging: @bookwormm03, @merger-she-wrote, @sakurablossomstorm-blog, @benwyattforcongress and whoever else wants to do this! I am bad at tagging!

[kawaiichibiart]

We're celebrating Minori's and Ena's birthdays in April!!

Ranked Match Spring will start in April:

We have some campaigns to look forward to:

"Wait, Ia, there's no date for the Miku Expo campaign, when do we get the rewards?" Well!! This is a special campaign. Why? Well, make sure to checkout the dates for Miku Expo, because for (currently) 21 days, if you log in on Miku Expo days, you will get these rewards!! >:D Be sure to check to PRSK socials because they will notify us about the log in dates!

We will also be getting the World Championship Campaign and costumes, we just didn't a graphic for CC.

The Yearning for Spring, A Moment in the Night Gacha is returning in April:

The Happiness Package gacha will be up for purchase again:

Here are the songs coming in April:

And here's our mystery song for March (it'll be available later tonight):

We will be getting an update to the game, you can learn more by checking in game announcements:

[mysticdragon3md3]

MD3 watches Carole & Tuesday season 1 part 2

I didn't write any reaction notes while watching eps13-14 because I wasn't at my laptop at the time.  And I didn't write any during ep15, because I was trying to not be so distracted.  By by ep16, I couldn't not write reactions anymore.  ^^;;;;

Also, I watched this half of the season mostly in English dub.  I thought if I did, I wouldn't get so distracted. And it did help me be able to watch while I ate.  Yet I ended up marathoning the rest of the series all day.  ^^;;;;;  

2:26 PM 12/27/2019

Carole and Tuesday ep16

"Where can we find a band that will play for free?"  *Turns corner and finds a band playing for free*  LOL  I love this show!  LOL  ^o^  No, but seriously, I love how virtually conflict-free it is.  Whatever obstacles there are, get resolved quickly or by the end of an episode or 2.  ^o^  I used to be the type who was all about the "demon hunter" subgenre and Shonen anime.  But yesterday, I had to admit that maybe I'm not that anymore.  Yesterday, I had been trying to get myself to catch up on Dr. Stone and Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba, but instead I watched more Ascendance of a Bookworm and Carole & Tuesday.  ~.~;  For a few years now, I've found myself unable to watch anything outside of the iyashikei genre: moe shows, slice of life, "feel good" series, etc.  Hell, Natsume Yuujinchou is one of my top 3 favorite anime.  And now I can't stop watching Carole & Tuesday...but I can't get myself to watch more of a good show like Demon Slayer Kimetsu no Yaiba.  x~x;  I guess this means my anxiety has gotten really bad if I have to exclusively watch soothing series with no traumatic drama.  I recently heard a movie reviewer (reviewing Uncut Gems and) describing the Drama genre as supposed to make you tense and uncomfortable, and I was like, "Nope.  Not for me.  No wonder I can't watch dramas."  But I don't want people to mistake me as saying series like Carole & Tuesday and Natsume Yuujinchou are "shallow".  I cry at every episode of Natsume Yuujinchou.  Carole & Tuesday constantly move me inside.  It's just not the manufactued drama and glorification of meanspiritedness that seems to be on display in the Drama genre (for dramam series/movies outside of iyashikei category).  

"She was born poor.  Her parents both died when she was young."  What?  I saw this clip subtitled before Netflix US was able to premier it.  And the translator said that Flora's parents died because they couldn't afford their hospital bills.  And that really struck me.  It's a real thing going on in the US.  So I'm sad that Netflix didn't have the same translation in their subtitles.  

Oh, wow.  The dub translated it as "She lost both her parents at a young age, becuase they couldn't afford a hospital."

---------------------------------------------------

Carole & Tuesday ep17

Ertegun is so stupid.  LOL  He doesn't even realize that the one thing he has left is his name, and he could use that to make money.  

I was so sure Aaron was the black_knight.  Well, at least we can ID the stalker by his fingernails.  

LOL  They both thought they could get away with playing the same song.  LOL  

You tell her, Spencer.

Woah.  It just turned into Perfect Blue.  

6:51 PM 12/27/2019

Continuing the ep.

Well, you sure ARE going to die soon. I don't care if Ertegun has been mostly an antagonist during the first half of this series.  That Pinocchio needs to get pummeled.  lol  But don't kick him into the air!  Take him to jail!

-----------------------------------------------------

6:57 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep18

They're not going to try to interrogate Aaron?  Sounds like he has an idea who the stalker is.

They didn't ALREADY tell the police?!????

Hofner!  I like when Gus reconnects with his old friends.  Even if it is business. It's like a glimpse of these guys being rag-tag musicians back in the day, contrasted against them now, is kind of amusing.  

Why is she interviewing him?  I thought Tuesday wanted to ask him what he's been covering about her mom.

I should look up Kyle's voice actor.  He sounds familiar.  

Now that I think about it, Angela has been really preoccupied by this stalker stubplot.  Usually she's more of an antagonist towards Carole and Tuesday.  

Well, the phone is bugged.  ...Or is it the car?

"Anti-Mars" terrorists?  

Please don't tell me Jerry caused the exploison.

Well, I didn't expect Tao to get pulled into this political subplot.  

I kind of wish I hadn't seen this clip of "Threads" beforehand.  Then I wouldn't have been reading for when Tuesday was crushing on Kyle.  Still, even while watching it, if it wasn't for Tuesday's blushing, I probably wouldn't have gotten the hint that she was forming a crush on him, because I didn't really see why anyone would crush on him for the few interactions they've had.  I mean, Tuesday finally talked about her mom and even fears that she's afraid to burden Carole with.  So maybe she confused "friendship-like therapy sessions" with a deep connection?  

---------------------------------------------------------

7:33 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep19

I hope Alba City's infrasstructure is built for snow and whatever run-off water it might cause.  

They don't have money for a big stage show!  LOL

I wonder if Tao and BlackKnight know each other from past programming industry.  

Bilboard status!

Aw, don't call Ertigun a traitor...

I'm surprised Carole recognized Amer.  Boys' facial bone structures can change a lot as they grow.  

Whenever Angela and Carole&Tuesday have their little stand-offs, it reminds me of a "battle anime".  lol

"If you tell us, maybe I'll stop calling you a traitor."  Oh, poor Roddy!  LOL

I actually really like this idea of Tao's programming skills, how the analytical psychology programs apply to both music and politics, all this AI, and hacking.  If they made a whole series about that, I'd be very interested.  

Dun dun DUN!

Even though Ertigun is an idiot and can be a jerk, it still is sad to see someone sad.  

I wonder if the Black Knight set up this hoodie guy---and there we go.

Oh!  So that's why that lcip I saw of Carole & Tuesday's song from this ep seemed like most of their electronics were out of comission.  I'm surprised Tao's microwave emitter didn't blow out Ertigun's electronic equipment too.  ----Wait.  So all their equipment wasn't blown out?  They chose to go low fi?  Good.  It's like what that Chinese cinema movie critic said: It's better to contrast a superstar vs trying to copy cat Bruce Lee; that's why Jackie Chan was able to stand out.  But it's really sweet that Carole & Tuesday prefaced their performance with "this is how we play at home for each other".  ;u;  Even if it's quiet, it's cool to see the crowd so perfectly captivated.  

---------------------------------------------------------

7:58 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep20

Jeeze, this is getting serious.  As in uncomfortably plausable in real life.  Big companies being behind a political candidate, so they can manipulate laws to get away with whatever they want...  Yeek.  

"Popcorn Bomb"?  ^o^

Wait a second...  I switched to Japanese dub so I could check out his seiyuu...  Is that...Keiji Fujiwara?  No way...  Wikipedia says Subaru Kimura.  

I like that this series is discussing how rap is used as a protest tool.  I'm not that familiar with the genre, so I wasn't aware of how entrenched it is in politics until I saw some reports recently.  Apparently, there are even authoritarian governments trying to create their own rappers, in an attempt to drown out all the dissident popular rappers.  

I know "I don't have time to be sad" is framed as some kind of "admirable" resilience, but it seems kind of sad to me.  

It's funny how little characterization their band is given, other than their character design and a few short moments, but I guess this series doesn't have much time for that on top of everything else.  

Well, that's a target on Amer's back.

Angela's adopted?  

Maybe I haven't noted this yet, but it's really creative all the ways this series finds to save its budget. Like keeping Angela in essentially the same outfit as one of her previous standard costume designs, but just changing the color of her strapless top.  And they get away with it; it really does look very different, just by changing the color (and probably symolizes the darker turn her story is taking.)  It's impressive.  It's how studio Bones can afford all this rotoscoping and so much more animation that other series.  

--------------------------------------------------------------

8:25 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep21

"Nevermind the serious darma going on in Angela's B plot.  Let's get on with our A plot."  LOL

Y'know there's a lot of anime where a girls says, "Will you go somewhere with me?"  And she's framed really cute.  Then cut, and there's supposed to be some kind of scene of them hanging out that the characters say isn't a date, but the direction/framing and the male protagonist treat like a date.  Is that phrase "Wanna go somewhere with me?" like a common phrase in Japanese used to ask someone out on a date?  

HOw did Roddy make that promise without already knowing how much a natural Christmas tree costs?  lol

Wow. So many pills. This escalated quickly.

-------------------------------------------------------------

8:43 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep22

I"m so glad we have protagonists who can worry about their "rival".  

"You don't have time to be worrying about other people."  But that's why I like Carole & Tuesday!  ;o;!

Now that I think about it, isn't it weird that they're meeting and having this complicated discussions with Crystal in a hotel lobby instead of a conference room?  But hey, if it saves studio Bones money to reuse the same set designs, rather than design a whole new conference room and hall to a conference room, then it's an impressive budget cutting technique.  

They're so cute!  Jumping up and down and giggling.  ^o^

Look how flabergasted Carole looks while Tuesday sings "happy birthday" to her! ^o^ And Ziggy is so cute!  Cooing/singing along too.  ^o^

Professor Zeeman?  Who's that?

Whole scene stopped so Roddy can compliment their dresses...  Dawwwwww.... ^___^

Omg someone really studied US award ceremony monologues.  All the cheesey cringe and shout-outs to the audience and everything. O_o

OMG  The host is outsing Tuesday's relation to Valerie?!  Did peopel know that before???

-----------------------------------------------------------

9:04 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep23

Aw, Angela's #1 fan/manager is back.  

Dang.  Skip-tachi getting arrested for just walking down the street.  I know I started off watching this show because "nothing really bad happens", but as these last few episodes come up, it's sure escalating into "real world problems" territory.  o_o  I can't even look at the "MICE" on the cops' backs and this whole subplot about refugees and immigration being used as a political talking point for an election more than as anything else, without thinking of real world problems right now.  

Just a second ago, I thought it was really cool that Spencer was actually in Carole & Tuesday's apartment.  But now EVERYBODY'S there!  LOL

I like that they mentioned "scaring people into self-censorship" and not just banning freedom of speech.  

At first, this speech sounded like unrealistic slice of life fluff.  "Saving the world through a song"?  Isn't that what won the war in Macross?  That level of unrealism.  But when Tuesday said, "If we can all sing freely, none of us will be silenced," then it all made sense as a unified protest song.  Like, "I dare you to arrest the entire industry".  

"But a person who's not idealistic is nothing but a slave!" turned into "Although, if you don't defend what you believe in, then what's the use in living."  o.o

Well, I didn't expect Valerie to confront Jerry about the bombing.

Well, now we know why the first episodes introduced the Immigration Hall.

Wow.  there's a whole cyberpunk corporate espionage movie going on in the B plot.  lol

Oh..."Mother Earth"...I saw spoilers of that song before I actually watched this episode.  That was the one interpretation I didn't consider.  

I love when the cuts go to Ziggy with the sleepy eyes.

I'm really glad they brought back Angela's #1 fan/manager to be there to listen to Angela's emotional breakdown.  

I like that Tao and his AI exchanged some semblence of "human"/empathic concern in saying goodbye to each other.

Is Tao really going to disappear?

----------------------------------------------------------

9:34 PM 12/27/2019

Carole & Tuesday ep24

So Pr. Zeeman is a designer baby creator.  

Oh, wow.  Tao and Angela are like siblings.  

Don't people die by jumping off bridges?????? O~O!

LOL  Scream from the rooftops then "SHUT UP!"  LOL

The landlord finally spoke!  ^o^

Aw, their idol Crystal is fangirling over their other idol Flora.  And then Desmond appears to overshadow them all.  LOL

AW, they even brought back Carole's friend working security at the Immigration Hall.  ;u;

Finally watching this song in context.  ;U;

Well, if Shinichiro Watanabe wanted to make a series about the music industry and all its tropes, he did it.  It's got that "We Are the World" moment and everything.  

The lyrics of "Mother" really mean something different after realizing they're protesting for freedom of speech.  o.O

9:56 PM 12/27/2019

And now, done.  That was Carole and Tuesday.  ^___^

[sentrava]

What’s On in Stockholm: May 2019

The sun is staying out longer, and so are the people of Stockholm! Emerging from the winter hibernation is exciting, whether you are a morning person or a night owl. There are plenty of outdoor events in Stockholm throughout the month, including bird watching, a fun run, food festivals, and concerts.

Here’s what’s happening in Stockholm this May:

Wednesday 1st – Sunday 12th

Memo Color at Galleri Glas

Gunnel Sahlin’s glass exhibit opened in April, and ends early this month. You don’t want to miss the chance to see her exquisite work!

    Wednesday 1st May

International Worker’s Day

As with most of Europe, 1st May is a public holiday in Sweden. Enjoy a day off in solidarity with those who have fought for labor rights – and still do.

    Thursday 2nd – Saturday 4th May

Swedish House Mafia at Tele2 Arena

Back in 2012, this house music group went on a farewell tour, which only increased their fame. Now, years later, Axwell, Sebastian Ingrosso, and Steve Angello have reunited Swedish House Mafia. They will have three performances in their hometown of Stockholm, with tickets starting at 450 SEK.

    Thursday 2nd May

Wiz Khalifa at Gröna Lund

The Gröna Lund summer concerts are starting off big with the Pittsburgh star rapper, Wiz Khalifa. If you are interested in attending more of the Gröna Lund concerts this summer, be sure to look into buying the Green Card for 290 SEK. Otherwise, the ticket price is the park entrance price: 120 SEK if you enter early, and 290 SEK if you enter during the evening.

    Friday 3rd – Sunday 5th May

Stockholm Writers Festival at Finlandshuset Konferens

If you’re a writer or in the publishing business, this is the place to be. Agents, editors, and English-language authors will all gather to network, to learn, and to be inspired. The main festival pass costs 2600 SEK, and there is the option to add on other classes as well.

    Friday 3rd May

Trädgården Premiär

With warm weather in Stockholm comes a new season at Trädgården! Trädgården is an outdoor live music venue, with food, and an opportunity to embrace the midnight sun all summer long.

    Saturday 4th May

Bug Run Picnic at Gärdet

This event is for all VW enthusiasts. All Volkswagen models, their drivers and passengers are welcome. Come rev your engines with your fellow bug-lovers.

    Vernisage for “Dialog II” at Konsthantverkarna

Ceramicist Alexandra Nilasdotter and silversmith studio Murky Jewelry are showing their beautiful, minimalist pieces together at Konsthantverkarna on Södermalmstorg. They’re just one of the pairings in “Dialog II,” a group show that highlights artists and designers two at a time. Other mediums include textile, metal, and glass. Enjoy the opening event from 11 am – 4 pm.

    Sunday 5th May

Beasts of the Southern Wild at Sthlm Under Stjärnorna

During the summer time, Sthlm Under Stjärnorna hosts weekly film evenings for free. This week features the 2012 film Beasts of the Southern Wild, an extraordinary film following six-year old Hushpuppy as her father’s health declines and her bayou community is flooded by melting ice caps.

    Tuesday 7th May

Bird Watching at Nationalstadsparken

Start you morning spotting and observing birds, whether rare or familiar. Bring food, warm clothes, and binoculars. If you miss this Tuesday, don’t worry; you can enjoy the birds on the 14th, 19th, 21st, and 28th of this month.

    Wednesday 8th May

SHY Martin at Obaren

SHY Martin is a notable songwriter, having written Mike Perry’s “The Ocean,” as well as other hits. In 2017, she began to focus on creating her own album. She released her debut EP “Overthinking” in December. Entrance to this concert is free.

    Saturday 11th – Sunday 12th May

Tabletop Game Expo

Want to switch up your game nights from Scrabble and Monopoly? At the Tabletop Game Expo, you’ll experience a tradeshow, a flea market, and other activities. You’ll have the opportunity to play games, hear about the latest and best games, and even sell your own games if you’d like. A 1-day ticket is 150 SEK, and 2-day tickets are 250 SEK.

    Saturday 11th May

Superior Challenge 19 at Cirkus Arena

Both local heroes and international stars will fight in this MMA event. The fightcard’s main event is Diego Nunes vs. Simon Sköld. Tickets start at 744 SEK.

    Sunday 12th May

Lukas Graham at Cirkus Arena

Lukas Graham, the popular pop-music band from Denmark, is on tour with their third album, “The Purple Album.” Their newest album contains the hit “Love Someone.” Tickets start at 460 SEK.

    Wednesday 15th – Thursday 16th May

Notting Hill at Bio & Bistro Capitol

Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant will grace the screen at Bio & Bistro Capitol as we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the delightful romantic comedy Notting Hill (20 years! How old are we?!). The movie is in English and does not have subtitles. Tickets range from 160 to 210 SEK.

    Thursday 16th May

Art After Work at Mister French

Mister French has joined up with Campo Viejo, Absolut Art, and the artist duo Thomas OKOK Gunnarsson and Jacqueline. You’ll have the chance to enjoy a new selection of art from Absolut Art, and watch as Thomas OKOK Gunnarsson and Jacqueline simultaneously paint on the same canvas, creating a new painting right in front of your eyes.

    Saturday 18th May

Food Market at Täby Park

This event focuses on local, homemade, organic food, and a good time for all! There will be plenty to eat, lawns to hang out on, and fun activities for everyone.

    Tuesday 21st May

Anthropocene: The Human Epoch at ArkDes

In this documentary, directors Jennifer Baichwai and Nicholas de Pencier explore how humans have had an impact on the earth’s climate and ecosystems. An important and timely film. Entrance is free.

    Mumford & Sons at Ericsson Globe

This British band fuses bluegrass, folk, country, and rock for a sound that has captured the hearts of many since the band formed in 2007. Gang of Youths will support Mumford & Sons in this concert. Tickets start at 625 SEK.

    Friday 24th – Sunday 26th May

Stockholm Burger Fest at Smålandstorget

The burger festival is back for a fourth year! Stay tuned to the Facebook page for more information about the restaurants that will be participating this year.

    Friday 24th May

Gods of Rap at Skansen

Wu-Tang Clan, Public Enemy, and De La Soul, three extremely influential American hip hop groups, will perform at Skansen with DJ Premier. This is HUGE, so get tickets while you can! Tickets are 795 SEK.

    Saturday 25th May

Namaste Stockholm at Kungsträdgården

Start your day doing yoga, then watch dance performances and enjoy food from different corners of India. If you are curious about planning a trip to India, you will have a chance to learn about travel and culture in intimate seminars. Entrance is free.

    Sunday 26th May

The Recycling Party at Hornstull

The Conscious Consumption Association has organized the 15th recycling party in Hornstull! Residents of the area are welcome to set up a table and sell clothes, pastries, and more at this event. Come sell, browse, and buy.

    Wednesday 29th – Thursday 30th May

Swan Lake at Cirkus Arena

Ballerina Irina Kolesnikova, accompanied by the St. Petersburg Ballet Theater, will perform the love story of Prince Siegfried and the Swan Princess Odette. Tickets start at 480 SEK.

    Friday 31st May

ASICS Stockholm High Five

Join for this fun 5K run in Östermalm! The course will be mostly asphalt roads, with some gravel sections. This is a great starting race for those looking to get into long distance running. The price varies depending on when you sign up.

    Ongoing in May

Absolut Art Collection at Spirit Museum

For the summer, Spirit Museum will showcase about 50 photographs by art and fashion photographers. Go get inspired by these painterly shots. Entrance to the museum is 130 SEK.

    Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss at Moderna Museet

This collection includes drawings, collages, models, and ceramic objects made by the Palmstierna-Weiss, who has been politically active in many liberation struggles around the world. The admission to this exhibit is free.

    Ghosts, Generals and Goddesses at Dansmuseet

The works in this exhibit are from Japan, China, and Tibet. The pieces bring to life mythology, stories of historical heroes, and martial arts. Regular admission is 120 SEK, and is 80 SEK for students and seniors.

    Sound Check at Scenkonst Museet

This interactive installation comes alive with sound by the visitors – a truly unique and sensory experience. Wednesdays are free admission; otherwise, admission is free for youth, 70 SEK for 21 – 25, and 140 SEK for those 26 and older.

    Shadow Play at Carl Eldhs Ateljémuseum

Beginning Thursday 16th May, the Carl Eldh studio is celebrating its 100th year with an exhibit from the impressive Swedish architect, Rahel Belatchew. She strives for sustainability and adding to the public sphere. This firm’s architecture is recognized worldwide. Admission to the museum is 100 SEK for adults, 80 SEK for students and senior citizens.

  If you’re a business or organisation that would like us to add your event to next month’s calendar, please contact us at hello [@] scandinaviastandard [dot] com. Thank you!

  Stay Up to Date with our Newsletter

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  What’s On in Stockholm: May 2019 published first on https://medium.com/@OCEANDREAMCHARTERS

[sofunsd]

已經熱鬧了近一個月的萬聖節，這週本尊的活動終於要登場了！知道該上哪兒去要糖果嗎？該上哪兒去狂歡嗎？若還不知道的話，不妨參考一下Sofun 網站，找找、看看有沒有合適的活動喔！小編們很努力的幫你整理出，最適合小朋友的南瓜園、搗蛋活動、適合大人的恐怖的鬼屋及鬼故事喔！你不妨趁週末搭上最後一班車！

週末SOFUN帶您漫遊聖地牙哥

☚Top#3：艦隊週  ☛

艦隊週 Fleet Week’s Big Bay Bash (10/26~28)

Ship’s之旅對年輕人來說是一件非常令人興奮，並可激發他們的想像力的活動。美國海軍和美國海岸警衛隊的船隻，將在2018年艦隊週期間提供登船的活動。遊客必須年滿5歲才能參觀艦艇，在船上不允許使用嬰兒車、玻璃、大型背包及一般背包。艦隊週還有許多其他的活動，但登上艦艇的活動一直是最受小朋友歡迎的，10月28日是軍人家庭日。有兒童活動、抽獎、午餐和其他驚喜，重點是一家人可以共聚。

時間：10/26～28，10:00 am to 4:00 pm

地點：Broadway Pier, 1000 N Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92101

費用：免費

網址：https://fleetweeksandiego.or

☚Top#2：萬聖節派對 ☛

San Diego Moster Bash（10/27）

19年幾乎不停歇的聖地牙哥最狂野的萬聖節派對「Monster Bash」，這週末在市中心開趴。今年Monster Bash活動範圍依舊包括 Gaslamp Quarter 至 East Village 在内的的六個街區，搭建4個舞台，邀請了20多位DJ來帶動氣氛。這個一年一度的狂歡夜，超過上千位的民眾會穿著costume，擠爆整個市中心街道。有名的Monster Bash Costume Contest仍是活動的亮點，2,500美金的現金大獎等著你來拿哦～！

時間：10/27, 6pm~midnight

地點：East Village

票價 :  $55(早鳥優惠)，$60(當日購票)

網址：https://www.sandiegomonsterbash.com/

☚Top# 1：巴爾博雅萬聖節家庭日 ☛

Balboa Park Halloween Family Day (10/27)

巴爾博亞公園及參與的博物館歡迎 12 歲及以下的孩子們免費入場（與付費的成人），內容有免費的手工藝，化裝遊行，恐怖驚喜活動。最特別的是，南瓜會從聖地牙哥航空博物館的屋頂從天而降，超酷的呦！

時間：10/27, 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.

地點：Baiboa Park

票價：免費入園，博物館門票另計

網址：http://balboaparkconservancy.org/project/family-day/

▼▼▼ 其他活動 More ▼▼▼

奶酪烤通心粉節

San Diego Mac N’ Cheese Fest (10/27)

已舉辦了第四個年頭，人氣越���越旺盛的「The San Diego Mac n’ Cheese Fest」 又來了！ 今年的美食節將會擁有更重口味的起司。活動從當地餐廳找來最頂尖的烹飪高手，與當地精釀啤酒、葡萄酒和其他美味飲料的配對，做出美妙的結合。千萬不要錯過，乳酪通心粉高手競逐聖地牙哥最佳的乳酪通心粉稱號的機會，記得來投下你神聖的 一票。將選出兩個獎項： Best Gourmet Mac n’ Cheese in San Diego （專家評選）和 People’s Choice Best Mac n’ Cheese（民眾評選）

時間：10/27, 11 AM – 2 PM

地點：Waterfront Park – 1600 Pacific Highway, San Diego, CA 92101

價錢：$40元

網址：http://www.sandiegomacncheese.com/

墨西哥亡靈節

Dia de Los Muertos (10/27)

為了紀念已經過世的親人，墨西哥有傳統是慶祝死亡之日(Dia de Los Muertos)，人們花時間記住他們的祖先和朋友。有一系列適合家庭的活動，享受傳統的墨西哥美食，以及將來自美國各地的墨西哥主題手工工藝品供應商匯集在一起的工藝品市場。共應精選的墨西哥啤酒，龍舌蘭酒。

時間： 10/27

地點： North Park, San Diego

費用： 免費

Alina演唱會

Alina Baraz (10/24~25)

這位24歲的R＆B歌手正在巡迴演出，推出她最新的EP The Color of You。她在巡演中與酷玩、Khalid合作。你可以聽到她的甜蜜如天鵝絨般的聲音，感受、聆聽她詩意的歌詞，曲風受到Amy Winehouse和Adele的影響。

時間： 10/24~25

地點：The Observatory，North Park，2891 University Ave，San Diego，CA 92104

費用： $38起

網址：Anita Baraz

萬聖節大集錦

印度大街萬聖節

Trick-Or-Treat on India Street (10/26)

居住在聖地牙哥市中心區的家庭，可以享受位在小義大利區的印度街萬聖節糖果趴。每一年市中心區都會擠滿了許許多多穿著新奇怪異、爭奇鬥艷的民眾，尤其是越夜越美麗。小義大利區的萬聖節是市中心最盛大的活動是之一，也是合適小朋友且安全的活動，大人們不妨趁早帶小孩來糖果趴，順便欣賞大朋友們特殊造型。

時間：10/26, 5:30pm ~ 7:30pm

地點：Piazza Basilone, on the corner of India Street and West Fir Street.

網站：https://www.littleitalysd.com/events/trick-or-treat-on-india-street

海洋公園萬聖節趴

SeaWorld San Diego’s Halloween Spooktacular (9/22～10/28)

歡迎加入在海洋世界一年一度的「萬聖節 Spooktacular」 舞會，在園內的 Sea Lion and Otter Stadium 及 Mission Bay Theater 有 Clyde & Seamore’s Big Halloween Bash 及 Sesame Street’s Who Said Boo 兩場萬聖節特別表演節目，普通時間是看不見的喔！糖果區、 Dia de los Muertos 主題區也不容錯過。因參與保護海洋的政策，請自備環保袋或糖果桶。當然，園內與提供一個99美分的購物袋。

時間：9/22 – 10/28, 12 p.m. to 6 p.m.

地點：500 SeaWorld Drive, San Diego, CA 92109

網站：https://seaworld.com/san-diego/events/halloween-spooktacular/

樂高萬聖趴 

Legoland California – Brick or Treat (10/6、13、20、27)

樂高樂園每一年都有萬聖節派對，2018年將推出新現場音樂和娛樂節目。服裝比賽 、英雄和惡棍及樂高專屬人物都會有萬聖節的打扮，超過100萬顆糖果要送出去給小朋友喔！Heartlake City秋天節慶與LEGO Friends一起完成南瓜園的建設，還有工藝時間。AstroBash舞會、Brick-or-Treat Party Nights Pop Badge Challenge都是小朋友不可錯過的好活動。

時間：10/6、13、20、27

地點：1 Legoland Drive, Carlsbad, CA‎ ‎

費用 ：當晚活動 $54，單日$74

網址：https://www.legoland.com/california/legoland-california/entertainment/events/brick-or-treat/

Movie of the week 週末電影推薦！

凸搥特派員：三度出擊

Johnny English Strikes Again

《凸搥特派員:三度出擊》主角羅溫艾金森著名的「豆豆先生」三度回歸，飾演這名備受全球觀眾喜愛，卻老是出包搞烏龍的特務間諜。小編是他的粉絲，他主演的每一部電影，小編都看過好多次，每次都依舊捧腹大笑。他真的是一個獨一無二、風格獨特的喜劇泰斗，尤其是他的臉孔和身體都超有彈性，能夠做出一般人做不出來的表情和動作，演出這世上只有他能表演的喜劇方式，小編等不及要去看囉～

正在進行！SD秋天不間斷

SD十月兒童月

Kids Free in October @ SD attractions (10/1~10/30)

聖地牙哥是孩子們的玩樂天堂一點都不為過，因為每年都有一個專屬的小孩月！！除了在10月底有小孩界最重要的鬼節Halloween外，在10月聖地牙哥40多所博物館12歲以下的孩子們可以免費參觀，而聖地牙哥各大主題樂園、熱門景點也都有規劃Kids Free in October 的活動，連一些餐廳都提供free kids meal….跟著小編一起來看看2018年10月聖地牙哥小孩月有哪些優惠活動吧！（看看 Sofun 的介紹文吧）！

聖地牙哥海洋博物館

帶給生活以挑戰和發現 (15% off)

聖地牙哥海洋博物館被評為世界上最好的海洋博物館之一，千萬不要錯失參觀世界上最具歷史意義和最令人興奮的船舶的良機。聖地牙哥海事博物館成立於1948年，為美國收藏歷史船隻最多的博物館。博物館位於聖地牙哥灣，館內的主要收藏為1863年的鋼鐵船印度之星號(Star of India)。 另外1898年的渡輪柏克萊號(Berkeley)，船內為圖書館和研究資料館。 聖地牙哥海事博物館位於北港道(North Harbor Drive)西側，介於槐樹街(Ash Street)和葡萄街(Grape Street)之間，以及聖地牙哥國際機��南邊。

1492 North Harbor Drive San Diego, CA 92101

開放時間：每天 9am – 8pm

sofunsd.com/maritime

Flagship 豪華遊輪

賞鯨、刺激噴射船 (10%優惠)

別出心裁的遊輪之旅，讓情侶們奔向蔚藍海岸，啜飲著香檳，站在甲板上，想像自己是鐵達尼號的中的蘿絲與傑克，與心愛的人一同欣賞聖地牙哥灣美景。當然，情人節精心別出心裁的料理和輕柔浪漫的音樂，絕對讓情人們隨之悠悠起舞，摟肩繫情話！

(619) 234-4111

http://www.flagshipsd.com

990 North Harbor Drive, San Diego, CA 92101

10% 优惠号：sofun18

驚嘆連連的飛行體驗 (15%優惠)

搭飛機的經驗很多人都有，但是乘坐複翼飛機或是一次世界大戰的復古飛機，翱翔於天際的經驗，可能就很少有吧？到底會是什麼感覺呢？小編很想知道，但是小編膽子又很小，乘風破雲的感覺就只能想像囉～膽大又愛冒險的朋友，來試試吧！聽說這可是一生最值得嘗試的玩意之一喔！記得使用「SoFun2Fly」有15%折扣！

地點：3717 John J Montgomery Dr

電話：619-757-6419

網址：https://www.sandiegoskytours.com/

15%優惠: SoFun2Fly

Segway Tour San Diego

Segway這幾年其實越來越風行，小編之前看電影購物商店的巡警騎著這種車，小編覺得一定很有趣。在繁忙的工作之餘，試一試停下腳步看看周圍美麗的風景。

地點：1355 North Harbor Drive (next to the Wyndham Hotel), San Diego, CA  92101

網址：http://san-diego.segwaytoursbywheelfun.com/contact.aspx

預約方式：(805) 650-7770 or (619) 3427244, SDSegwayTours@wheelfunrentals.com

Legoland海洋生物水族館（全年）

「黑夜水族館」與「鯊魚任務」樂高樂園海洋生物水族館

想要在大海中潑水但是不會被水給濺濕？樂高樂園的海洋生物水族館就有這種可能性喔！有兩個最新的展覽「黑夜水族館」(Sea at Night)及「鯊魚任務」(Shark Mission)，在有趣的互動方式下接觸、瞭解海洋生物。「黑夜水族館」是民眾在模擬生物發光波，根據他們的腳步做出反應，或跳，或躍，或潑水都可以產生不同的反應，與在太平洋海灘感覺很相似喔！「鯊魚任務」讓孩子們見到六種不同種類的鯊魚及和魟魚。小朋友可以從互動活動和遊戲了解解剖學，環保等概念。你也可以觸摸鯊魚的牙齒、鯊魚皮和蛋，甚至體驗「鯊魚籠」的感覺。

時間：Mar 19, 2018 – Aug 31

地點：LEGOLAND SEA LIFE AQUARIUM, 1 Legoland Dr., Carlsbad, Ca

網址：https://www.legoland.com/california/

兒童大自然巡禮  (全年)

Children’s Nature Retreat

另一個很多朋友可能也不知道的好地方便是「Children’s Nature Retreat」，在這裡你可能可以遇到超過100種來自世界各地馴養的家畜並與牠們互動。還可在這片寧靜牧場風格的小山上，享受大自然。

時間：每天開放;網站查詢開放時間和預訂。

地點：5178 Japatul Spur, Alpine

價錢：$15～$25; under 2 free

網址：www.childrensnatureretreat.org

速度：科學運動  (全年)

Speed: Science in Motion， San Diego Air & Space Museum

從互動式展覽，你可以看到世界上最快的噴射機、飛機、火箭、汽車、摩托車、船和自行車的知識與背後的技術��聖地牙哥航空博物館每月都有不同的主題喔！

時間：Open daily, 10 am-4:30 pm.

地點：San Diego Air & Space Museum, Balboa Park

票價：$10.75-$19.75; ages 2 & under free

網址：. www.sandiegoairandspace.org

中途島航空母艦之旅（全年）

Tour the USS Midway Museum

中途島號航空母小邊就不用多做介紹囉～矗立在聖地牙哥港口，既龐大又醒目的船艦，很少人不知道，但是你是否走進去，瀏覽一番過呢？中途島號航空母艦博物館，有超過60個展示和29架飛機在航空母艦上，光是全部看完其實是要花上一天的時間！趁著春假小朋友有空檔，爸爸媽媽不妨抽個空全家一起來遊歷，絕對值得的。

時間：Open daily, 10 am～5 pm

地點： 910 N. Harbor Dr., downtown San Diego

價錢：$8-$21 (if purchased online); under 5 free

網址：www.midway.org

SD 週末農夫市場（全年）

san diego farmers market

想吃新鮮健康的食物麼？周末早起拉上小伙伴一起去聖地牙哥各大 Farmers Markets逛逛吧！「食當地、食當季」已經成為了如今的健康飲食趨勢，而美國的Farmers Market就如同菜市場一樣，每周固定時間當地農民會在這裡售賣自己種的蔬菜水果、蛋奶肉魚，  隨著客流量的增加，不少Farmers Markets也會有農民自製的蜂蜜果醬，手工飾品等等小玩意售賣。http://www.sofunsd

週末去哪FUN？帶您漫遊 San Diego (10/26~28) 已經熱鬧了近一個月的萬聖節，這週本尊的活動終於要登場了！知道該上哪兒去要糖果嗎？該上哪兒去狂歡嗎？若還不知道的話，不妨參考一下Sofun 網站，找找、看看有沒有合適的活動喔！小編們很努力的幫你整理出，最適合小朋友的南瓜園、搗蛋活動、適合大人的恐怖的鬼屋及鬼故事喔！你不妨趁週末搭上最後一班車！

[wearesequin]

WHAT WE’RE EXCITED ABOUT | ep 14 Week of Aug 16th

PIPELINE A mother’s hopes for her son clash with an educational system rigged against him in Pipeline by Dominique Morisseau directed by Lileana Blain-Cruz playing at the Mitzi-Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center. This show runs til August27, however an Asian American Theatre Community Night is this Saturday August 19th at 8pm. Organizers Ms. Morisseau and Nandita Shenoy are encouraging the Asian American community to come out and support this show. Check the link for the event page and links to discount tickets. DISCOUNT CODE: PLPC55 http://www.lct.org/shows/pipeline/

WOMEN IN COLOUR at The Rubber Factory | opening Aug 19th Amanda Means | Carrie Mae Weems | Cindy Sherman | Ellen Carey| Elinor Carucci | Jan Groover | Liz Nielsen | Laurie Simmons | PattyCarroll | Meghann Riepenhoff | Mariah Robertson | Marion Belanger| Moira McDonald | Penelope Umbrico | Susan Derges |   RUBBER FACTORY is pleased to present a group exhibition titled, Women in Colour, curated by Ellen Carey. The exhibition provides a scholarly context highlighting women and color photography. Colour, the British English spelling, references color photography’s origins in England. http://www.rubber-factory.info/women-in-colour

The Shelter presents THRESHHOLD - three new plays from their 2017 Threshold Fellowship playwrights. These thrilling works of theatre, each on the threshold of greatness, explore sexuality, the rise of fascism in Nazi Germany, and the American black experience through time. Playing August 17-26 th at the New Ohio Theatre. https://www.theshelternyc.org/production/threshold-2017/#1501118007549-ad7792a4-b91a

Symphonics Live: Shawn Randall Birthday Show

Symphonics Live is a multidisciplinary evening produced and hosted by Shawn Randall. This is an ongoing series that showcases the finest poets and singer/songwriters in NY. Along with elements of dance and improvisation, Symphonics Live promotes Generosity, Love, and Creativity through the continual exploration of humanity through performing and visual arts.

This months iteration is happening Sunday August 20th starting at 6pm at the Bowery Poetry Club. 

http://www.bowerypoetry.com/events/1180-i-love-shawn-randall-show

Flame Con is a two-day comics, arts, and entertainment expo showcasing creators and celebrities from all corners of LGBTQ geek fandom. It features thoughtful discussions, exclusive performances, screenings, costumes, and more! This event takes place this weekend August 19th and 20th at the New York Marriott at the Brooklyn Bridge. Tickets start at $20. https://www.flamecon.org/about/

Primer for a Failed Superpower Aug 22 + 23 at Roulette is an all-ages community concert featuring a multi-generational ensemble of teens, the TEAM, and Baby Boomers performing new arrangements of iconic protest songs–songs that have celebrated and questioned what it means to be an American throughout our country’s past and present. http://www.primerforafailedsuperpower.org/

[recommendedlisten]

If you had something to say, then 2017 was the year to say it. On a greater level, the year as a whole for humanity was rife with frustration and anxiety due to our sobering state of the world. Every day, it seems we live in fear of an all-out nuclear war starting because of what our so-called president tweets, or we wake up to a new scandal revealing how some famous person who contributed art that helped us get through our own valleys was nothing but a monster themselves. Add to that, we’ve all got our own mundane crosses to bear daily, and so, the song became an important way for musicians and listeners alike to decompress any of their emotions as a means to make it ‘til tomorrow. This year’s 30 Best Songs had an interesting way of placing politics in front of the conversation without necessarily having to spell out the words. They were filled with faces new and familiar preaching self-care, resistance, escapism, a reminder of love, and the faintest glimmer of light in these dark, hard times. We may not know what tomorrow holds, but at least they gave us every reason to hold onto hope.

30. Heat - “Sometimes” [Topshelf Records]

The solipsistic lovers of the world might say that all you need out of a relationship is someone you who can be lonely with. Call it intimacy for introverts – People who’d much rather stay in on the weekends, curled up on a couch under a blanket with another warm body rather than parading their relationship around town like it’s something that needs to be confirmed through others’ eyes. That turning inside while staring straight into the eyes of another isn’t quite what it seems, though, and is an unusual source of comfort on “Sometimes”, off Montreal dream-pop trio Heat’s sophomore effort Overnight. Credit half of that sentiment to frontman Susil Sharma’s tender growl held into the Psychedelic Furs’ soft fluorescent bulb, and the other in the way a celestial loop of guitars and cherry lipped sparkle of new wave refracts warm, vibrant hues within the room. Even in Heat’s perceived lonesomeness, those walls hold evidence of an intimacy that might actually be closer to the side of selfless than a selfish kind of love.

29. House of Feelings feat. Shamir - "Falling" [Infinite Best]

House of Feelings, the all-encompassing band / radio show / DJ night dance party spearheaded by Matty Fasano is a glue that keeps a close-knit family of mostly NYC-based artists from all walks together, as it also features YVETTE’s Dale Eisinger behind the boards, ambient electrician Joe Fassler on its wirework, and on their debut EP Last Chance, film critic Kristen Yoonsoo Kim on guest vocals alongside Perfect Pussy and MTV News correspondent Meredith Graves. “Falling” feels both like a homecoming and goodbye party for every member who crossed paths by way of Godmode Music however, as it reunites former labelmates with arguably their biggest success story, Shamir, for what he calls “one last disco song” – A reference to the sonic 180 of artistic authenticity he pulled this year when he self-released his sophomore effort Hope and joined Father / Daughter Records for his third, Revelations -- Both stark lo-fi indie rockers that sounds nothing like the new age house bangers of his debut Ratchet (sorry for the reminder, Shamir!) His alien falsetto side by side with Fasano’s handsome croon makes for carbonated future-pop that spins around a synthetic sun dial until the sky above them bursts open and rains down neon teardrops, because eventually, everything comes crashing down in the end. House of Feelings just chooses to dance itself through these changing motions regardless, and in a year where we could all stand to help each move forward, it’s the energy we need.

28. Spencer Radcliffe & Everyone Else - “Wrong Turn” [Run for Cover Records]

Prolific Chicago-based songwriter Spencer Radcliffe’s Run for Cover debut Looking In was a wonky, cantankerously unraveling, yet promising peer into Rafcliffe’s introverted spectrum of experimental guitar pop destined to lead somewhere astonishing down the road, and as it turns out, that would be “Wrong Turn”, the standout listen from this year’s Enjoy the Great Outdoors. Something is very obviously different about Radcliffe’s sonic adventures these days, however,, and visibly, the attachment of “& Everyone Else” on the album’s credits does a lot of the explaining for you. It’s not just Radcliffe at arms with himself inside his own head, as the inclusion of a full band who here, metaphorically embody the exhilaration of being swept into a moving vehicle and venturing into the open world with the windows down. It’s like a real time brain chemical reaction of a homebody realizing exactly what they’ve been missing. 

27. Alvvays - “In Undertow” [Polyvinyl Records]

Alvvays made a small splash in 2014 with their self-titled debut, released in good company with the fuzzy indie rock rumblings going around Polyvinyl Records. It was a reliable indie-pop gem that further blurred the corners separating lo-fi guitar pop and shoegaze at a close distance thanks, in part, to singer Molly Rankin’s soft-sung warmth, but respectfully showed potential for the quartet to grow into their own in time. On “In Undertow”, the spiraling opener to their sophomore outing Antisocialites, Alvvays add more vivid detail to their dreamy framework in the way it stretches their sound across bigger rooms with longer wavelengths of cascading guitars and the constant ripple of romance. It’s the perfect vessel for Rankin to wrap her head around a relationship as it gently spindles out of her grip. “You find a wave, and try to hold on for as long as you can / You made a mistake you’d like to erase and I understand,” she sings. “What’s left for you and me? / I ask that question rhetorically.” That answer is often easy to see, but often our heads are being tossed beneath the surface to see it clearly. Alvvays just make that drowning sensation feel like bliss.

26. Downtown Boys - “Lips That Bite” [Sup Pop]

Nothing stands in the way of Providence protest punks Downtown Boys trying to tear down the system from the roots up, and loudly raising their voices on the issues on their Sub Pop breakthrough Cost of Living. “Lips That Bite” compresses the politically-fueled tension built into their sound through a pop bubble, going from 0 to 100 in post-punk clanger, and then coupling it with new wave synths, shout-along refrains, and a sax blast that burns down the disco in a similar path blazed by Le Tigre and Love Is All. It’s one of the outfit’s most direct attempts at tearing through our own personal anxieties and struggles with their teeth, their words, and their bodies, and when it’s channeled with as much focus as this, there’s enough fuel behind their fire to soundtrack the battle without our muscles giving out on us.

25. Gouge Away - “Swallow” [Secret Voice]

A year ago, Gouge Away put out their debut full-length Dies, a promising first impression from the Fort Lauderdale hardcore band who create progressive aggression tailored to the pit. Vocaliist Christina Stijy is a welcome change of pace within a mostly-men-and-meathead-dominated scene whose super specific lyrics take on everything from animal rights to deep wound witnessed accounts happening in and out of the head, with the balance of the band tipping the emotional gravitas into her direction with a heavy melodic intensity. This year’s single “Swallow” is definitively a strong leap forward for the quartet since their last step in the way they amplify energy through a bigger projector, thanks in part by stepping into the studio with heavy music producing savant Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Frameworks.) What begins as a slow rumble is soon standing nose-to-nose with you in HD monochrome as Stijy screams “Hand me the shovel and repeat / “Dig it up, dig it up, dig it up!” The ferocity is commanding without apology, and at once, inviting, too.

24. Charli XCX - “Boys” [Atlantic Records]

It’s a necessary reminder that when it comes to pop perfectionism, Charli XCX is an A-lister who – when she’s catering to both playing fields of accessibility and art – has a finesse in mending the bridges between present and future-perfect production that enables her to sound ultra current, yet still leap years ahead of her peers ten times the size of her stature. She needn’t get all fancy either. In fact, refining her palette on “Boys” down to a minimal number of hues is what makes her latest fluorescent light show dazzle in all its longwave rhythms. The chiptune effects add a colorful touch in playing up the latest version of her plastic party girl persona, and when you place it over the female equivalent of an Internet fap off database of a music video, you can better understand how a pop star like Charli XCX -- whose next album is torturously being held up by major label red tape and calendar dates -- can take her sweet ass time arriving when she shows up looking impeccable once she finally does.

23. Japanese Breakfast - “The Body Is a Blade” [Dead Oceans]

Japanese Breakfast’s shape-shifting sophomore effort Soft Sounds from Another Planet spans a stylistic universe as diverse as synth-pop to orchestral balladry These are mostly new moves for project mastermind Michelle Zauner, who has in the past spent time leading the scrappy indie rock band Little Big League, and with last year’s debut Psychopomp, reinvented herself as something akin to a dream-pop next-gen. But then there’s a track like “The Body Is a Blade”,where at the exact moment it hits on the LP, it properly acknowledges all past, present and future lives, and more importantly that guitar rock is not dead, and in fact being safely restored in the hand’s of women. Its melancholic drift and wistfully webbed time signatures are immersive on the ear, worming their way directly into your head with an almost mantra-like pattern that flows with sage self-care wisdom of exorcising past traumas from your life. “Your body is a blade that cuts a path from day to day.” Slowly, but surely, she eases the pain away.

22. BROCKHAMPTON - “SWEET” [Empire / Question Everything, Inc.]

The Los Angeles-based, multi-cultural et. al. collective BROCKHAMPTON has assembled its members over the years using a Kanye forum as their connective tissue. On “SWEET” it’s a classic case of strength in numbers, with its 7 rhymers bringing a different voice to the fold, sort of like Wu Tang Clan did, but with the youthful wisecracking of Odd Future minus the lack of self-awareness, and star power equally distributed throughout. “SWEET” is both that and buttery in the way they lay out their blueprint to success, and it’s not so complicated: Staying authentic, owning up to their struggles, and taking Kendrick’s advice to stay humble to heart all figure into the equation as members Matt Champion, Dom McLennon, Merlyn Wood, Ameer Vann, and JOBA all cope with their changing lifestyles by telling us where they’ve each come from. As Kevin Abstract sings in a pop sugary hook not far removed from hip-hop’s radio-ruling era of the late ‘90s and early millennium, its got these boys twisted up like licorice in a stressful, yet exciting way, and we’re the lucky ones who get to watch them figure it all out.

21. Citizen - “In the Middle of It All” [Run for Cover Records]

Midwestern punks Citizen have come a long way since their early years of spitting teenage angst into hook-driven post-hardcore on their debut Youth and coming of age in proggier pastures on the other side of the light like those throughout 2015′s Everybody Is Going to Heaven. Growing up with the quintet has made their evolutionary steps more evident, and in exploring darker territory with their rural American dissection As You Please, they’ve recorded the year’s best mainstream alternative rock single with “In the Middle of It All.” For the third straight time, their moody aggression is complimented in the studio by rock perfectionist Will Yip who brings into focus a maturation in frontman Mat Kerekes’ vocal gravitas and songwriting, as well as a deeper side-winding of melancholia steeped within Citizen’s rock solid wall. The apparitions of feather-light harmonies floating around its dark passages are almost supernatural, however, like arms reaching out to save anyone stuck in the middle of drudging suburban monotony, and offering a real escape.

20. Frank Ocean - “Chanel” [Blonded]

Frank Ocean in album form is majestic, but when he flips the switch and goes into it in single form, he can make some of the best and effortless-sounding idiosyncratic pop music out there. In 2017, his Beats 1 “blonded RADIO” show became the vehicle of reminding the world of this, especially with one of his many standalones of the year, “Chanel”. It’s a bright, trot-paced run over a sunlit piano riff where either the iconic designer fashion label or mythology depending how you look at it doubles metaphorically in presenting Ocean’s uncanny perspective of seeing both sides in the world, be it his rags to riches career, continuing to erase culturally blurred lines in bisexual innuendo throughout music, the duality in styles showcased between last year’s simultaneous release of Endless and Blonde, or even more intriguingly, that this song may have helped to mark the start of a new phase in his sonic evolution – albeit, a more commercially palatable one at that, which would in turn prove Ocean’s entire point on his complete existence in the process: As long as you’re calling your own shots in the world, you can have it any way you want.

19. Julien Baker - “Even” [Matador Records]

Turn Out the Lights is a triumphant work of catharsism by Julien Baker, the emotive Memphis artist who has built a songbook on baring her soul -- even its uglier sides -- out on the stage. Armed with a bare bones of instruments, her music could be construed as maximal self-awareness with a minimalist construction that oft makes her prose raise bumps on the skin. “Even” is a different kind of monster that brings this entirely to a new level. The acoustic cut finds the 22-year-old singer-songwriter indulging her sinister side as she recounts a night filled with fireworks, black eyes and eventually putting her fist through the bathroom wall of a Motel 6. As with most of Baker’s songs, there’s a duality in the conversation as she expresses remorse to someone else while talking down her own demons. “It’s not that I think I’m good / I know that I’m evil / I guess I was trying to even it out,” she concludes in what’s easily 2017’s most public moment of painful honesty.

18. PRIESTS - “Nothing Feels Natural” [Sister Polygon]

We first witnessed the foundational brickwork PRIESTS would lay three years ago with their ambitiously promising debut EP Bodies and Control and Money and Power, and on this year’s formal full-length debut Nothing Feels Natural, we now hear how the quartet’s constructive artistic vision stands out defiantly like a pink White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. The offering dissects everything from mass branded consumerdom to norm culture among other existential decries, with its title track being of the more universally resounding examples of malaise set forth by leader Katie Alice Greer. “Perhaps I will change into something / Swing wildly the other way / If I go without for days will I finally hallucinate a real thing,” her cynical wishes go into a wash of rippled electrical surf and a rhythmic spin cycle. Our burdens may seem never ending. PRIESTS at least help us wade through them. 

17. Big Thief - “Shark Smile” [Sadlle Creek]

The little nightmares within Adrienne Lenker’s storytelling are what separate a Big Thief song from being more than just a melancholic refraction of the past. Even when Lenker fantasizes of the deathly harrows, she still manages to make every detail feel so much like a part of her real life. In this case, it’s with a sly grin of a “Shark’s Smile” and a car crash catastrophe that wraps a young woman and her lover around a guard rail before life and death separates the two. The mid-tempo roll and Lenker’s hush breathing, “Ooh, baby, take me” an one final gasp of oxygen gives “Last Kiss” a run for its money when it comes to romancing teenage tragedies. The tale told may be violent, but that dark fateful moment of impact is captured with an unexpected moment of soft ecstasy. 

16. Kelela - “Frontline” [Warp Records]

Ethereal new age R&B queen Kelela’s debut full-length Take Me Apart is defined by the broader pop ambitions beyond the shadows of the electronic underground she cultivated early on in her work. No better on the listen is this represented on “Frontline” where Kelela spins around a meticulous dream-weaving dance she often does around romance’s darker and messier corners, and in turn, is a reminder that her music is an experience to get your mind, body, and soul lost in, wholly. Produced by early collaborator Jam City, it really comes as no surprise that its production is absorbed by a black lit bass pulse that has been her sound’s most basic element. Its words, while sifting through the fragments of a broken relationship, acknowledge both a grieving process to an end, and a source of empowerment rejection can create. “Hold away, you fucking with my groove / Getting on this plane, making moves,” she defiantly pushes off. “Cry and talk about it, baby, but it ain’t no use / I ain’t gonna sit here with your blues.” In short, Kelela is done playing games, and this track is evidence that she’s got bigger things on her mind.

15. Girlpool - “It Gets More Blue” [ANTI-]

For Powerplant, Los Angeles-bred indie punks GIrlpool illed in their quiet, understated rumble in the studio by adding drummer Miles Wintner to the mix. “It Gets More Blue” realizes the full scope of their louder range when Harmony Tividad and Cleo Tucker channel electricity into the room as well. It turns out that this wall of hushed static could very well be the unofficial fourth member behind Girlpool, as it backs its faces’ cloudy harmonies up with a complimentary hook-driven heaviness that embosses their every word framed as a doleful love letter between a global warming inventor and the dreamy nihilist they intend to impress. The hues of blue may get deeper and darker as the budding romance get more luckless as the prose wears on, but Girlpool’s new sense of sound never stops radiating signals of to keep the distance within arm’s length.

14. Sorority Life - “No Halo” [Triple Crown Records]

To exorcise your personal depression demons with a healthy outlet is a godsend, and for Sorority Noise’s Cam Boucher, songwriting is it. On “No Halo”, Boucher deconstructs the death of a friend and processes ensuing feelings of guilt and grief in a way that’s screaming out for peace of mind. The quartet’s aggressive mope rock sophomore breakthrough Joy, Departed and last year’s sedated and muted It Kindly Stopped For Me EP touched on distinctly different styles of the singer’s creative coping mechanisms, but on You’re Not As _______ As You Think raging opener, he and the rest of the Connecticut four-piece are no longer concerned with holding back on either if they’re both necessary to survive. Boucher’s discomfort is restless in the way it’s perpetually growing slowly on the surface, but for every regret, he and his ‘mate’s wield guitars like bone saws as a cathartic means to cut them out from the future. It may takes several tries to silence those anxieties, but somewhere between the fight and flight, he’ll find his absolution.

13. Jay Som - “The Bus Song” [Polyvinyl Records]

Bay Area artist Melina Duterte, b.n.a. Jay Som, has been refining her craft of lo-fi pop from the coziness of the bedroom through a string of cassettes and BandCamp releases as far back as 2012, but for most of the music world at large, last year’s Turn Into – a collection of demos culled together over the years – broke through those small spaces’ walls and promised to fill the room with her own matter. With her proper debut Everybody Works , she takes that leap with “The Bus Song”. It’s a bustling listen that builds a corners in the claustrophobic space of indie rock to call her own. One would imagine through the track’s technicolor display of softly layered harmonies, mathematically articulate chord progressions, their build into a whirling eruption of fuzzy cacophony, and even an A-to-B conversation between two school kids on a bus that there’s more bodies in that room with Duterte, but no, it’s all her doing. This is Jay Som’s world, and we’re just lucky enough to be riding in the passenger seat.

12. LCD Soundsystem - “tonite” [Columbia / DFA Records]

“tonite” is a dance with death that you always imagined the LCD Soundsystem mastermind could put his signature sardonic spin on while making you forget that you’re shuffling your way into the void to the band’s beat. It being hypnotic makes that very easy to do. Where his sing-speaking ruminations on other artists’ contributions held against his own and his coming to terms with growing older while the scene gets younger paints a bleak picture on what we all have to look forward to inevitably are gratifyingly in excess, the background jam that builds its way to the exit is one made for a low lit club. Vintage synths, post-punk kicks, and disco glitter crescendos work their way up to the level of Murphy’s existential anxieties. Needn’t worry, though. None of it is worth beating yourself up over anyway. “You’re missing a party that you’ll never get over / You hate the idea that you’re wasting your youth / That you stood in the background oh until you got older / But that’s all lies,” he says before the mic drop. In hindsight, everything looks 20/20, but James Murphy is our constant reminder that living in the past sucks, especially when the grim reaper could be knocking on your door tomorrow.

11. Drake - “Passionfruit” [Cash Money Records / Young Money Entertainment / Republic Records]

With this year’s More Life playlist, Drake continued to discover the world beyond Toronto’s city limits by making a concentrated effort to saturate the global market with his huge footprint on every continent he can step on. It’s not atypical for the hip-hop fashionista to make the biggest impact by having his finger firmly on the pop pulse – in fact, his greatest successes over the years through hits in the mercurial R&B of “Just Hold On We’re Going Home” and the dancehall appropriating “Hotline Bling” are evidence of that. The More Life standout “Passionfruit” continues to showcase his ability to finesse trend into his own makings. When left to his devices as a vocalist, the featherweight properties of Drake’s voice can make any track melt, and that the track’s soft body neon beat allows it to flow through with ease is the definition of the kind of animal magnetism that continues to put him on the top of the pop food chain.

10. Carly Ray Jepsen - “Cut to the Feeling” [School Boy / Interscope Records]

Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION is the selfless gift unto all of us that just never stops giving even two years after its release. Aside from being 2015′s utmost perfect pop album, it also carries a reported dozens of songs left on the cutting board, and last year, a handful of them were collected for a listmaking B-sides collection that was no lesser than its full-length predecessor. “Cut to the Feeling” is another hidden gem from the E•MO•TION sessions that only this year found a home on the soundtrack for the French-Canadian animated film Leap!, and with as much of a roller coaster of euphoria as this packs between its butterfly trepidation and climax highs in its heartbeat, it’s eyebrow-raising trying to figure out how anyone could withhold such pure pop bliss like this from the world. Maybe the answer simply comes down to place and timing for Jepsen. After all, E•MO•TION is an entire album narrative that waves a wand of fluorescent synths around every chemical reaction that romance brings with it, and “Cut to the Feeling” is all of that, but in fast-forward.

9. The War On Drugs - “Thinking of a Place” [Atlantic Records]

The War On Drugs don’t compress their distinct sound into a bite-sized sampling picked for radio with their newly minted major label status, but rather something far more bigger than we could have imagined: An 11-minute sprawl etched from the vision of Adam Granduciel’s bleary-eyed Americana entitled “Thinking of a Place”. It’s a cinematic listen that doesn’t mark a departure from the distinctly amber sunset soundscape that the Philly outfit has strewn across indie rock universe, but rather a grander continuation of Granduciel’s journeyman tales reconfigured for a widescreen viewing where his stories of worn romance and ghosts are framed across various backdrops, beginning with Little Bend before moving with the waters of the Missouri, disappearing in and out of the darkness, and awakening to the summer sun. To create these lighting effects and the path guided by the river’s current, every instrument and effects – from its ambient synths, burning guitar halos over a one-speed drum beat, to the warm pull of harmonica – was marked as a passenger suited for each turn on the ride. It’s an endless chase of the one who got away, but always reemerging closely within the War on Drugs’ dream within a dream.

8. Cardi B - “Bodak Yellow” [Atlantic Records / KSR]

We usually don’t get many true Cinderella stories like this anymore. Cardi B, the Bronx-raised rhymer who got her foot in the door on the VH1 show Love & Hip Hop: New York, not only parlayed her notoriety into Internet success, but into actual chart-topping success with her breakout single “Bodak Yellow.” It’s a tough-as-nails introduction to the enigmatic artist chronicling her hard-earned come-up from her days as a stripper to one of the game’s best wordsmiths. Even though she admits its flow was jocked from controversial Miami rapper Kodak Black, B ensures there’s enough conversation going on to keep all eyes on her the entire time. “I’m a boss / You a worker, bitch / I make bloody moves,” hits the savage truth in its chorus. Those are the kind of bold statements that can transcend music altogether, and simply reign as one of 2017’s outstanding pop culture moments.

7. (Sandy) Alex G - “Bobby” [Domino Records]

Despite his talents being called upon for a studio obsessive like Frank Ocean, Alex Giannascoli’s DIY ethos still haven’t found it in their heart to enter a proper studio despite being on one of the largest indie labels going. On the Rocket standout “Bobby”, the artist otherwise known as (Sandy) Alex G at least stumbled upon a new purpose in inviting other hands into the room to play with him. Naked acoustic cuts aren’t anything new in the  catalog, but the plot twist in its fiddling bluegrass twang and faint harmonies provided by constant vocal collaborator Emily Yacina mature Giannascoli’s lo-fi dwelling into something akin to a spread of country-fried discomfort food smothered in the dueling’s ambiguously star-crossed prose. It shouldn’t really be much of a surprise that a story about love only gets more complicated when (Sandy) Alex G heads into the sticks with it.

6. Vince Staples - “BagBak” [ARTium / Blacksmith / Def Jam]

These last three years have proven that it’s impossible for Vince Staples to release a bad single, album or EP, and on the heels of a gaudy White House makeover, the Long Beach rapper came into 2017 war ready to continue slapping the living piss out of racial injustice and America’s Cheetos-tinted face of fear with “BagBak”. The track’s opening bars shout out his updated thesis of revolution while proudly waving Staples’ black flag in the process before go all out political in the verses that follow. “We need Tomikas and Shaniquas in that Oval Office / Obama ain’t enough for me, we only getting started / The next Bill Gates can be on Section 8 up in the projects / So today, l love my dark skin.” No I.D‘s warbling liquid beat also marks a hard sonic turn hinted at throughout the better half of last year’s Prima Donna EP, refueling the flame behind Staples’ firebreathing in the process. To the one percent, government, and lead buffoon cordially invited to suck his dick, Staples gets his presidential address delivered with maximum purpose.

5. Zola Jesus - “Exhumed” [Sacred Bones Records]

What made for adventurous experimentation on Zola Jesus’ attempt at a pop crossover with 2014′s Taiga makes for lessons well learned on her return to goth grandeur on “Exhume”. The listen combines the theatrical nature of her last effort’s widescreen aspirations, and throws them into a vacuum of sensory-inducing nihilism with its strobing trap procession, terrifying strings soldiering forward, and the rapture of lost souls that always seems to be drawn into the void of her dark craft. Nika Danilova’s forte as a classically-trainer opera singer is wielded like a defense mechanism in building up a tension resistance against a climbing wall of death’s imperial doom. “In the static you are reborn,” she stands tall as white wall of hiss eviscerates her body. It’s a beautifully destructive reentry into the universe’s force fields by way of crashing the space-time continuum between past lives and an uncertain, tolling future. Leave it to Zola Jesus to go above and beyond to deliver a grave reminder at this very moment of just how alive you really are.

4. Kendrick Lamar - “HUMBLE.” [Aftermath / Top Dawg Entertainment / Interscope]

Here lies the rap game. May it rest in pieces, as Kendrick Lamar takes a sec away from saving the world from itself to claim his spot on the throne with a big puffed out chest on the proud DAMN. anthem “HUMBLE.” This king isn’t the kind that seems interested in material riches or number ones to prove his self-worth. His is in the way he wields his words, and do they ever slay. “My left stroke just went viral / Right stroke put lil’ baby in a spiral / Soprano C, we like to keep it on a high note / It’s levels to it, you and I know, bitch, be humble,” he daggers down over the overhanging threat of Mike WiLL Made-It’s sweat-inducing terror piano production. After changing the game with the interwove narrative of 2015′s hip-hop opus To Pimp a Butterfly, the track stands high and mighty on its own in the grand scheme of the rest of DAMN., because if you’re going to humble the competition with your message, invoking your inner raging messiah in the rap temple is the only way to get that job done.

3. Lorde - “Green Light” [Lava / Republic Records]

“Green Light” begins the next chapter in Lorde’s coming-of-age story, an artist who is still quiet young, and yet, has since outgrown tired party scenes and on her sophomore effort Melodrama, is acting out the growing pains of a major breakup out in public. “I know about what you did and I wanna scream the truth / She thinks you love the beach, you’re such a damn liar!,” goes her damning ex criticism on its first chapter, “Green Light”. Tripping over pianos and a blinking hypnosis, it’s as if Lorde sought refuge in every word of Fiona Apple’s When the Pawn Hits... quite literally while escaping into the drunken dance floor ecstasy of Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” during her relationship’s downfall. “I’m waiting for it, that green light, I want it.” she grasps the air, clinging onto any sign to move forward before the past pulls her steps backwards.  For someone hitting rock bottom and submitting to the reckless nature of youth she once defied, Lorde is absolutely radiant in her moment of weakness.

2. Yaeji - “Drink I’m Sippin On” [Godmode Music]

This year, we were privileged to experience the sonic evolution of Yaeji in real time. The Seoul-and-NYC-based electronic artist has come a long way in a very short amount of time since she began vaporizing the dance floor with a series of singles and EPs, but most especially, it’s on “Drink I’m Sippin On” where her hard-earned drive to build a foundation in a crowded house scene finally becomes as close to a permanent residence for her sound. Once obscured in bleary effects and a beat hypnosis, it’s now borderline crystalline here. It’s also a place where Kathy Lee Yaeji’s voice has been made visible. She uses the discovered clarity to support her own distinctive hybrid of Korean-English psuedo rhyme-singing sees her evolve past the part of producer, and a triple threat as a vocalist and norm culture-colliding personality as well. Upon its release, she may have called the track “non-alcoholic”, but “Drink I’m Sippin On’ is very much under the heavy influence of seeing Yaeji find her own source of self-empowerment, and that’s how the switch has been flipped on her charisma and made her one of 2017′s most lit new artists.

1. Paramore - “Hard Times” [Fueled By Ramen]

Paramore underwent a matured reinvention with their listmaking 2013 self-titled effort that found their first outing as a three-piece embracing the pop arena without entirely leaving their mall-punk past in the dust, and it delivered with it some perfect singles. Four years later, a bit of shape-shifting back into their natural chemistry (former drummer Zach Farro has since reunited with the group) again pushes the moving unit forward on After Laughter’s opening party line “Hard Times”. The listen is a natural continuation of Paramore’s more explicitly cross-genre-nuancess in its neon ‘80s new wave and afrobeat inspiration given an edge with its tinkering dance-punk percussion, and producer Justin Meldal-Johnson’s brand of radio-friendly synth shellac again serves Hayley Williams and company’s world-conquering intentions to the fullest. For her part, Williams, still fully adulting and reeling following a private breakup, makes the leap from “Ain’t It Fun”’s reality check to keeping her head afloat with the daily struggle. It’s the most feather light sigh in response to having the weight of world on your shoulders. In a year when each and every one of us probably wishes there’d be a day where we’d wake up feeling fine, “Hard Times” is a pure pleasure reminder that it needs to get worse before it gets better.