#each album has its meaning its sound its purpose

[andrevasims]

Pretersolaria Institute: CC-Free Uni & Individual Lots

Eventually I want to share the entirety of Rhyolite Valley, but it's a bit hairy with the 47 sims & CC hood deco & the garbage data I let seep in while playing (so I'd have to remake all of that before sharing).

I thought I'd "practice" the process of remaking the hood by starting a little smaller: The uni subhood. Since I only made a handful of sims for it (which are not included... yet) and it works aesthetically without CC hood deco. Sounds simple, right? Weelllll it took about a week of near daily effort to actually do. Makes the prospect of doing the actual hood soooo much more exciting lol /s

Anyway, that's what this is: A new university subhood template that's CLEAN & EMPTY. As a bonus (or if you just don't like the subhood), I've also included individual lot packages for every lot in the subhood to use wherever you want.

The "gimmick" of this hood is that Rhyolite Valley, and by extension Pretersolaria Institute, is entirely self-sufficient & cobbled together by the local residents. Which means there's no indoor plumbing lol.

That also means simply sitting down at a computer to write a term paper isn't as easy as a regular uni. Students have to go to THE BOOKMOBILE to access computers. Same goes for the skill building required for each semester/major. You have to venture out to the relevant community lot to find the means for skill building.

I've included in the uni's photo album & the lot descriptions which skills are available to build on each lot. It'll say "+Cooking" or whatever skill(s) the lot can provide based on the objects it has.

— WHERE/HOW TO INSTALL: —————————

Place the "PRTR" folder in its entirety in the "Program Files > EA GAMES > The Sims 2 University > TSData > Res > NeighborhoodTemplate" directory. Or whatever equivalent location you have for a TS2 University folder in the Program Files section.

Mootilda's Subhood Selection Mod is required to see additional universities below the main 3 pre-made ones.

You can then select Pretersolaria Institute in the list of options when creating a new uni subhood in a neighborhood.

— UNI SUBHOOD LOT INFO: ——————————

• Dorms: 1 (Klaatu Mobile Park)

6br / 5ba | Value: §20,444 | Size: 30 x 20

• Residential: 3 (Fulquard, Mushnick, & Burson Shack)

1br / 1ba | Value: §3,816-§3,862 | Size: 10 x 10

• Greek House: 1 (Tobor Testing Bureau)

10br / 10ba | Value: §30,363 | Size: 30 x 20

• Community: 6 (Wiploc Amphitheatre, THE BOOKMOBILE, Ikron Confectioneries, Zarkov Training Center, Big Heart Dude, Krelboined Horticulture)

• Secret Society: 1 (Temple of Laganaphyllis)

Value: §56,035 | Size: 20 x 20 | Zone: Community (individual version)

— NOTES: ———————————————————

• On 2 lots (Big Heart Dude & Wiploc Amphitheatre), I used the Seasons Music career reward The Rock Hammer for speaker deco. I used MoveObjects to delete the guitar but keep the speakers.

It's possible that either A. The guitars will respawn when you move the lot in the hood, or B. Sims will attempt to play the guitar and complain about being blocked (because I purposely blocked them).

If the guitars respawn, open the lot in Buy/Build mode and with MoveObjects On use the sledgehammer tool to remove the guitar.

If sims are complaining about not being able to reach the guitar, well they're not supposed to be able to lol. If hearing them complain is annoying, you can either use this mod that makes them stop yelling when something blocks them and leaves only the thought bubble, or delete the whole object.

• The Wiploc Amphitheatre may also have some glitchy-looking ground that you can see in neighborhood view when the camera moves. This is because I shortened the lot with Lot Adjuster. I don't know how to make it stop doing that, because I've transferred the lot to other hoods, packaged the lot, Lot Cleaner'd it, Lot Compressor'd it, moved it to the Lots & Houses Bin, etc. and it has never stopped looking like that. So again if that annoys you, remove the lot I guess?

• Please let me know if there are any additional problems.

I've never done this before specifically with a uni subhood, so it's very likely I messed up somewhere.

Additional Interior/Detail Pictures

DOWNLOAD UNI SUBHOOD: SFS | MF

DOWNLOAD INDIVIDUAL LOTS: SFS | MF

[omegalomania]

the full apple music interview with zane lowe is out! we got snippets of it when love from the other side dropped, but they finally rolled out the full thing. here are some highlights that stood out to me :)

patrick describes pete's lyrics as what gets him out of bed in the morning. if pete doesn't send him lyrics, he doesn't write a song.

andy and pete used to draw fake snake tattoos on each other using magic markers as kids omg?

so evidently patrick was the one who got covid during hella mega tour. and he hated it and he was miserable and that's when he called neal avron about the new record lmao

patrick says that joe was hesitant at first and he was the one who said that for this record he wanted to make something that they could all savor and spend time on and patrick was immediately on board with that

pete says patrick's job is to interpret him because pete calls his mentality a "little bit off" but patrick is capable of understanding him and translating it

patrick describes his and pete's creative relationship as "twin speak." it's not linear and it's like living in his brain a little bit. he calls it the "weirdest thing i've ever seen" when pete can just Tell that some words that patrick adjusted weren't ones he wrote despite not remembering writing them. patrick says he's gotten better at connective tissue and knowing how pete would say things

pete: back in the day patrick was like, "what's the difference between cry and weep i will KILL YOU. THEY'RE THE SAME THING. I'M GONNA KILL YOU RIGHT NOW."

zane says patrick's vocals are next level for this album. pete agrees that he kills it on this album and said he never would've expected that voice coming from him when they first met. zane says patrick could sing a recipe and it would be good. he then passes patrick a recipe and patrick. sings it???

patrick: i'm not gonna belt it. (starts belting) NINE INCH PIE PLATE ROLLING PIN

patrick says that pete doesn't mean to have rhythm to his words but there's a rhythm to them all the same and patrick can find this syncopation in his words and thinks it's amazing

more talking about patrick and pete's Magical Mystical Transcendent Soul Bond. patrick says "if we were one guy, we'd be an INCREDIBLE DUDE"

patrick and pete say that interviews with all four of them are hard because it's chaos and everyone's talking at once but it all makes perfect sense to them and no one else. zane says that sounds like fun flkjdfd [i agree please do this more it's a joy]

pete says joe really stepped up and wrote a lot for this record!

patrick: "joe is kind of a conundrum because he's this really talented...he's a brilliant writer, a brilliant player, but pete and i became the "team" and it wasn't really a plan, but that's just kind of how it happened. [brief tangent about the hiatus] we come back from the thing and joe is this fully-formed writer with a very distinct - he has one of the most distinctive writing voices. when i hear his parts, when i hear his ideas, i could pick them out of a crowd. like i know the way joe writes, and it's VERY joe." part of the process with post-hiatus was integrating him into the writing process more.

discussing the hiatus and fame and pete says his life kind of "blew up" and took it pretty hard. apparently during production for folie paparazzi actually broke down the gate to neal avron's house

patrick goes on a big tangent about how bad things got during the height of pete's fame. "part of my role is to tell his story. i'm a composer. that's what i like to do. i work on movies, i work on shows, and i work on pete. pete has a story that needs music, and if he's removed from himself, if he's not even able to access himself because he's behind all of this stuff, i don't have a story! so not only did i not have my buddy, which was heartbreaking in its own way, but then i also don't have a purpose as an artist."

patrick says that andy is always ready to play but when you get him happy to play, it's another level

"and trohman, there were these moments where he...he got so excited."

patrick describes writing what a time to be alive as wanting to write the saddest, most desperate song you could hear at a wedding. pete bursts into laughter and calls it "so twisted"

talking about other endeavors outside the band - patrick talks about composing and said joe's been super busy with his book and writing for tv and because there are so many deadlines for stuff like that, it's what hammered home to him that fall out boy needs to not be that. "there's something special about this that can't be...this has to be passionate and art."

discussing how scared patrick was of his own voice while the band took off. patrick was really scared of the song saturday at first because there are some really exposed vocal moments. he describes saturday as a song where everyone in the band lets each other go for it.

zane calls fall out boy the "emo blueprint" and says they were unapologetic in being emotional. patrick immediately says, "that was pete. i don't think we could've done that without him." he and joe were basically kids and patrick was too anxious to talk on stage.

zane says, "i remember interviewing you in the early days and i felt like every time i asked you a question i was bullying you." pete IMMEDIATELY loses his shit.

"in another life where i didn't have a pete...cause saturday, i did write most of that by myself...so there's a world where that song exists without the band. there's no world where i sing it in front of people without pete."

pete says every night before they put out a new song he calls patrick up and gets really scared and wants to back out and patrick talks him down every time

they talk about how scary it was when arm's race released and performing it at the amas. patrick starts laughing rly hard as they get into how there were giant crickets on stage and the crowd was just stone-faced and utterly nonresponsive and their stage manager was utterly panicked

towards the end patrick really loosens up and starts swearing more dlkfjdfd

[sendmyresignation]

if you wanna indulge me, id love to hear your opinions on sing (all of mine are detractory which i know isnt the complete view of the song)

omg id love too!! sorry this took me a sec to formulate post-work haha. i know we don't agree about sing but honestly that's the beauty of music opinions- I feel like it becomes easier to define what I like about things when faced with legit measured criticism anyway

for me, i want to start with the structure and instrumental since it's usually not mentioned (most of the criticisms of sing are exclusively lyrical or intention-focused). it's so cool. and evocative. and full of tension!! my favorite use of synth on danger days, plus the keys and the drums (man i love the dd studio musician drums lmao), really emphasizes sing as a suspended moment both in the album (necessary bridge, tonally, between bulletproof and planetary imo) and in the track itself- its alllll building up to that bridge and final chorus. but there's all these little pieces- the backing vocals, there's so many hidden guitar parts that riff just under all the noise, that opening like, tambourine. sorry for not having a quote on hand but Ray's said he really loved writing sing and it's so totally obvious to me. especially live- part of the reason I was soooooo excited for sing swarm tour edition is that even during dd ray was like absolutely shredding for sing after the bridge. and everytime time it's so good. part of the reason the lyrics don't bother me is sing could stand alone instrumentally and I'd still want to listen to it. (sing also reminds me of Ray's solo music- the sentiment is more significant that the lyrics and the music is itself a vehicle for storytelling)

also though, i think there's a lot of intention with sing (it's up to the listener to determine if that paid off obv) but within the context of dd the record as a pirate radio station, sing has always read as a trojan horse song. making it a single too, like once a song takes on a life of its own outside the record there's new meaning and circumstance. so both within and outside the killjoy universe sing is a vehicle for not just the bridge but the overall sentiment of dd (how fucking excited was gerard when glenn beck took the glee bait) like, yes, i do agree they could've benefited from another pass over the lyrics (i will always defend keeping "sing it till your nuts" bc its sounds like sing it to your nuts though) but I don't personally get the criticism that sing isn't "specific enough" about what exactly it's against or is too optimistic about "sing it for the world"-- i think there are songs on the album (notably planetary right after it!) which do that job just fine. dd is gerard in arguably top lyrical form so theres a lot of meat in the rest of the record like. sing it for the world is a purposely simplistic art is the weapon. like those are the same sentiments rendered very differently!

also like. i do think there was a very directed target at the younger part of their fan base here (girl/boy) which is sweet. to me. like i did hear sing first when i was a young teen (one of the few dd songs i was familiar with) and it did feel huge and empowering at that moment. my chem are their best when they are navigating the dualities of their specific fame, which includes simultaneously making very serious, adult rock music which is concerned with violence death grief and sex, as well as being a role model for younger people and taking them seriously and neither of these are in rhetorical conflict with each other. so like whatever sing is a little juvenile. but it's still filled with passion! taken as a legitimate project with a creative instrumental and a narratively-driven music video. I like that aspect, it works for me. I'll never call it my favorite my chem song but its certainly not the worst when you add in the bridge (i wanted to prove my point without the bridge but like. damn!! it's a good bridge!!!). that's my spiel.

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 15/05/2024

Mallstep‼️

Season 8 No Album Release (Read More)

Ripped by BluLuigi7

Can I just say: I am SO happy to see that Jay Eazy posting is still going so strong past January 7th? Like, we pretty firmly established back with Hella Pummel that venula is the champion of Jay Eazy posting, but we've had tons of other talented rippers take their own crack at it - there's circunflexo back with You Are Book Smart, of course, but also the focus of today's rip - BluLuigi7. After making the first-ever Jay Eazy Raft Ride with She Gon Make Me Ride On Her Raft Like I'm Link‼️, he's finally ready for the main stage with perhaps one of my favorite Jay Eazy rips to date - or, if nothing else, one of the most creative ones.

See, a lot of people still only really know Jay Eazy as the funny Mega Man rapper, and fair enough - it is a very funny video, and a lot of his music sounds rather...homogeneous, for lack of a better word. But there is a silver lining to his songs sounding so similar, in that rips like Mallstep‼️ are able to leverage different ones at the same time without it clashing. Indeed, Mega Man is only one part of the rip, the part that introduces the rip with the iconic "Yo bro, why are you doing that??" - but after the most iconic bars of said song drop, it changes seamlessly to using Respect Your Elders without missing a beat. And honestly, that's absolutely the right call for a song like Pigstep, I think Respect Your Elder's flow fits the track far better - but I love that Mega Man still gets incorporated AT THE SAME TIME as the former song, with it being used as a backing layer to the whole thing.

It's just a very clever rip all around, tons of small touches you'd otherwise find unneeded but just make the rip funnier in the long run - small uses of sound effects call to mind rips like Locked In The Underground except here done explicitly for comedic purposes, playing a sudden Nutshack sample when Jay Eazy says "nuts" or a reverb fart SFX far in the distance when the lyrics mention "shittin' on 'em". It's primarily a mashup at first, but with tons of these small additions throughout, little edits to how Respect Your Elders flows through Pigstep's ebb-and-flow lead melody, all of course culminating in a fully pitch shifted section at the rip's melody. The Jamminest Of All is a recent example of it, but these kinds of surprise pitch-shifting rips are always a favorite - it can be overbearing at times if done for an entire rip, yet it adds just enough variety when used as spice to an already fantastic rip like it is here.

The point is - a rip like Mallstep‼️ is at once very funny through its concept alone, but elevated even more through how prominently BluLuigi7's own character shines through it. It feels like a flex in the best ways possible, a big grab-bag of additional notes onto an already super-solid rip. The star of the show, fittingly enough, is the short little nod to Starboy near the rips end, which was the joke in one of the first-ever Pigstep rips on the channel in I'm a motherh*cking Starpig, a rip that's evidently still remembered fondly even four years later. I received a comment a while back noting that nobody loves SiIvaGunner as much as the team itself, and it's the stuff like what Mallstep‼️ pulls that keeps reminding me of that: the rips made by people like BluLuigi7 who just love having fun with their ideas althewhile paying small tributes to past rips on the channel. Hugely popular rips like Stickerbrush Queen are far from the only ones to get references like this, and it always makes me so happy to see, to be reminded that each individual ripper has their internal web of rips that means more to them than I've ever considere that they could.

Back to the rip as a whole, though - it just kind of bangs in that very particular Jay Eazy way. For as stupid as his music may be to some, it's difficult not to love with everything that the meme of his music has wrought. So much passion from the side of the internet that just loves to have fun spawned purely from a guy promoting his music in a bizarre way on TikTok, and Mallstep‼️ is just one of many examples - a rip that has fun with its concept, fun with the very channel its on, but most crucially of all exudes the fun energy of its very ripper in spades. To say that I'm happy that Jay Eazy is a reoccurring gag on the channel would be a grave understatement: I'm looking forward to just how many fun ways his music will be reinterpreted with next with far too much excitement, and thus far SiIvaGunner has not yet failed to deliver in regards to fresh ways to go about it.

[belphegor1982]

HEY WAITAMINUTE IS "underture" a reference to the music term "overture"? Mayhaps a Scanlan WIP?!?!

srryok bai now

Yup, kind of! It's the first CR I got an idea for - in March last year, for TLOVM, as I hadn't even watched most of the first campaign yet - and, incidentally, the only one out of five fics (/comics, if you count Scar Tissue) and 2 WIPs that doesn't begin with the letter S :P (not even on purpose, it just happened!)

Okay, so this fic exists because of three reasons:

• "Underture" is a title on the Who's concept album Tommy (and yes, a play on "overture"!) because the titular lad is Going Through It (and being made to taste drugs iirc). I discovered that album around 2002 and love the word.

• One of my favourite fics overall (like, all fandoms) is @plothooksinc's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2003) "Underdark", which has Leo and Mikey fall under the city in complete darkness and try to make their way back to their brothers (and the surface), with Mikey as the 1st person narrator. It is hilarious and super tense and glorious and one of the great classics in the entire franchise's fandom, imo (or should be). Since I read it in the mid-to-late 2000s I had no idea that "Underdark" was actually a D&D term and was gobsmacked when I learned! The more you know :D

• And the main reason this WIP exists is because I essentially went "wait, what if "Underdark", but make it Vax and Scanlan". Of course, now it took a life of its own and there's going to be a Structure to it (start in media res, and then alternate "how we got there" chapters and "so what's happening in the creepy dark in the present" chapters). With a healthy dose of getting to know each other and going from essentially work colleagues to friends 💜

Here's a little excerpt from page 2, so literally the start of the fic (for context, Vax got washed down a mine and wakes up alone in a tunnel):

And, somewhere in the distance, a familiar voice.

“…help?”

Vax scrambled up, finding purchase on the slippery rock wall nearby, chasing sound rather than sight. The world in front of him was little more than blobs in varying shades of black. His ears were more reliable than his eyes right now.

“Where are you?” he called. “Are you okay?”

“Define ‘okay’?”

Vax bit back a tart comment. Damn Scanlan and his utter and complete inability to be serious.

“Like, not hurt? Can you move? What’s your position?”

“Not… great.”

“What do you mean?” Vax asked sharply, still half-feeling his way along the wall. Scanlan’s voice was getting clearer, or at least closer; it also sounded breathless, strained, small in a way it rarely did. Vax could only hope most of that could be chalked up to the sore throat he’d been complaining about for the last couple of days.

There was a scrabble and a gasp. When Scanlan spoke again his pitch had climbed a few notes.

“I mean I’m kinda hanging off a cliff? Or some kind of ledge, anyway. And uh, my fingers are getting real tired, if you know what I mean.” A short, nervous laugh. “I really really don’t want to lose fingernails. It hurts like a mother and it makes playing the lute really difficult.”

“Hang on and keep talking,” said Vax, straining his ears and trying to ignore his pounding heart. “I’m on my way.”

“Okay. Usually, not really a problem, but uh… Aw, crap.” There was a strangled sound, like he’d choked up on a cough, and some more scratching. “You know me, I talk – I talk real good. B—big fan of talking. I’m a great talker, too. Talker, singer, player – give me any instrument and it is on, baby. I mean I’ve never tried the double bass, you know, those big-ass cellos. Got curious but the bow alone is almost bigger than me, so that sucks. Plus they’re really expensive. Vax?”

“Yes?”

“Hurry?”

Vax practically ran around a corner and stared into the dark as hard as he could. The tunnel in front of him kept going in a downward slope, the ceiling gradually getting lower; there was a pathway of sorts along the wall, but most of the rocky ground seemed to disappear, as though erased from existence, into the starkest black Vax had ever seen. Rivulets of water trickled into it from the walls and the ground, slithering between protruding rocks, the only movement he could discern.

Wait… Not quite the only movement.

Vax bolted towards the fingers he could see grasping at a small rocky ridge a foot or so below the edge.

“Shitshitshitshit,” he could hear Scanlan chanting, his breathing now frantic and his voice gone beyond squeaky. “Vax…!”

Three things happened almost instantaneously:

Vax reached down and grabbed one of Scanlan’s arms just as his fingers lost their grip on the ledge.

In a last-ditch attempt to find a hold of something, Scanlan’s other hand shot up and closed around the clasp of Vax’s cloak.

Vax belatedly realised he’d miscalculated as Scanlan’s weight and his own momentum carried him past the edge and into the black.

(welp, they're dead :P no they're not but they certainly think so for a hot second)

[happymetalgirl]

Ghost - Impera

I should have done this months ago. I mean this album is over a year old now, but better late than never. I don't really feel a need to get too deep into the details on this album; it's been out for 15 months and has been discussed extensively. It feels weird to be writing about an album this late in the game. This isn't meant to relitigate old discourse about it that's basically finished at this point, I basically just want to add my two cents about why I feel the way I do about it and why I still want to talk about it. But anyway...

It was no accident that Impera, came at the end of the longest gap between full-length releases for the Ghost, specifically well after the COVID-19 pandemic took its stranglehold off live music. The band was on a holistically upward trajectory for the past decade, bigger sales, bigger sound, and, critically, bigger crowds. 2015's grand Meliora was already such a practically unrecognizable size-up from the spooky retro rock of their debut just 5 years earlier, and the band made their aspirations clear with each release LP and EP afterwards. Popestar introduced for the first time in the band's self-aware campy lore a new frontman not tethered to the mic stand by the excessive garments of the satanic pope, but rather youthful, limber, and lively, more mobile and able to herd and rally the band's increasingly larger crowds. And the subsequent full-length, Prequelle, committed to this new turn fully. If you thought Opus Eponymous was too silly and over-the-top, then you weren't prepared for the full-on arena rock parade that was Prequelle. Prequelle was and still is the campiest album Ghost has ever released. The band was fully aware, and it was on purpose. Soaring group choruses, lighter-waving power ballads, swinging dance numbers, sax solos. Ghost were making a B-line for the arenas, with the big songs to handle the crowds of those magnitudes. And it worked; it worked because Ghost's songwriting masterminds put in the work.

Pop songwriting is both easy and hard. The tried and true format is and simpler is usually better. It's not rocket science. The challenge, however, is not just writing a pop song, it's writing a great pop song. And Ghost applied a perfectionist approach to chiseling out killer hooks and sing-along melodies from the brilliantly simple fun arena rock anthems of Prequelle, and the results spoke for themselves. And then 2 years later it all stopped.

It stopped for everyone. And going off their consistent release schedule up to that point, Ghost probably would have had the follow-up to Prequelle out a year earlier, but there was no way they were going to put out an album in the height of the pandemic because Impera was absolutely made for the stadiums. When the touring industry rebooted and Impera dropped a year later though, it was clear that Ghost had made the most of their indoor time.

A natural continuation from and combination of the previous two albums, Impera harnessed the grandeur and bombast of Meliora and the infectious campy fun of Prequelle into the most arena-ready batch of songs the band has ever put forward. I got the sense that this album completely achieved Ghost's artistic goal that they've been building toward for the past 10+ years, and by the end of the year, with my numerous replays of it, I couldn't help but concede that Ghost had outdone themselves. Impera is their best work. Ironic that the band reaching a new summit would be with an album about the precarious rise and fall of empires.

Hard to say now if that theme foreshadows a fall from grace for Ghost, obviously I hope not. For as much as they play into their gimmicky image, Ghost are not in danger of losing their throne due to fans tiring of their goofy novelty. No, the image is the icing on top of the solid compositional foundation and not the other way around. It will take actual creative fatigue, a major misstep, or series of missteps to derail the Ghost train. Not to say a band nosediving from their peak isn't a tale at least as old as Metallica, but maybe that's why Ghost picked the theme for their magnum opus, to remind themselves to not go the way of the Roman empire, or Coldplay. And hey, it's not like anyone would say no to the job security of a career like Metallica's or Coldplay's either, however undeserved it may be. But more likely is that the lyrical content was inspired by the present moment. I don't think anyone would argue against the current times being historic to say the least.

I won't get into it too deeply because it's really not that complicated, but also I could spend a gratuitous amount of time going into every detail of why each song is so great. Impera really is the sum of a great many little details that show how much time and care was put into making every song complete on its own and within the context of the rest of the album. The whole album is a cohesive, fun, glorious exhibition of everything Ghost, and they made that clear from the soaring high note that Tobias Forge opens "Kaisarion" with. And like Prequelle, Impera runs the gamut of chugging metallic heaviness like on "Watcher in the Sky" to the soulful ballads and power ballads of "Darkness at the Heart of My Love" and "Respite on the Spitalfields", following a similar flow to the previous album that works as well here. Also, Prequelle may be the campiest album Ghost has ever released, but "Twenties" is definitely the most over-the-top cheesiest campiest theatrical-ist song the band has ever made, too cheesy for some fans even. Personally, I'm here for it, and I can't imagine being surprised by it either; I mean it's Ghost, a cartoonish horn section over chugging heavy metal grooves and comic book villain vocals isn't that giant of a step up from the corniness of "Kiss the Go-Goat", "Ghuleh / Zombie Queen", "Rats", or "Dance Macabre". The other singles, the marching "Hunter's Moon" and the snare-driven rhythmic "Call Me Little Sunshine", are also textbook arena rockers, and I personally love the throwback to the more retro staccato keyboard motifs of Opus Eponymous on "Griftwood".

I played the shit out of Impera all of last summer and I'll probably play it again this summer, it's that fun. Like I said, Ghost have topped themselves, and every band that reaches what feels like their likely peak has that existential crisis of where to go from there if the only way to go is down. A lot of bands, either due to the pressure of future expectations or not knowing what to do next, make a big leap of faith into the unknown. Or they try in vain to replicate the lightning in the bottle that propelled them to the top over the course of the rest of their comparatively stale career. Ghost may not have anywhere higher to climb on the mountain they've chosen to ascend, but I think they can maintain a longevity at this elite level if they maintain the focus on meticulous song-writing while ensuring not to fall into the trap of formulaicness. Like I said, Ghost is not built on the satanic pope outfits or the Papa Emeritus lore or on the anonymity they started with that the lawsuit from former members eliminated. Ghost is built on the song-craft, and that doesn't wear out. The question now is, will Ghost wear out or get lazy, or do they have the stamina to keep up this level of attention-to-detail and dominate another decade? I certainly hope they can muster the latter. Here's to another decade of Ghost, in the twenties!!!

Also yes, this was my favorite album of the year last year.

-

It kind of sucks to say that another band's bad album is partially what lit the fire under my ass to write this because it kind of implicitly takes away from the excellent work Ghost does, but a big part of why I'm writing this now is indeed because of the band that all the big online magazines that shill for major labels are hailing as the next Ghost this year: Sleep Token.

I already made my gripes with that band's latest album known in detail in a previous post about that album, but in short, I really don't like the push I've been seeing from a lot publications for this groveling adoption of the most fleeting of pop trends into metal in what feels like desperation for broader cultural prominence. There's nothing "innovative" or "forward-thinking" or "more mature" about whoring out to the whim of trends calculated to appeal to the lowest common denominator in a bid for a shortcut to relevance. I don't mind when bands incorporate pop elements into their sound to spice it up or even writing a more straight-up pop song; like I said, pop songwriting is a challenging art, and that's part of what Ghost does so well, and what many bands who metalheads probably don't consider "pop" at all also do. What I do mind is when bands like Bad Omens or Bring Me the Horizon or Wage War try their hand at the kind of mind-numbing, middling bullshit that Maroon 5 and Charlie Puth feed to inattentive half-listeners in grocery stores. It's even more offensive when these bands know they can do better, and Sleep Token is the worst offender as of late in this department. Sleep Token is the lazy, unsustainable shortcut via the hollow gimmick of referential pop trend-hopping within metal presented as "genre-bending" to broader relevance that Ghost, by contrast, have earned through tireless improvement of pop songcraft over the past decade.

I speculated at the end of my post that this fawning over Sleep Token might come from an anxiety over metal as a genre not having anything left to offer broader culture. And I think the short-term focus inherent within capitalism that all these publications (which are basically marketing wings of labels) are beholden to is what makes the possibility of a drought so scary for them. The driving forces behind Loudwire and Metal Injection don't exactly permit the patience for what is likely just a natural lull in creativity, because to them that's a loss in productivity, and that's next to sacrilege. I also speculated on my own anxiety about metal as a genre running out of steam, but taking a step back and looking at the broader history of any genre existing longer than 10 years, there are waves, peaks and valleys, times of plenty and times of want, drop-offs and revivals. It's the circle of life, and we've seen it with metal already, and with subgenres within metal. And also, if the time is near for when metal bottoms out in a way it doesn't come back from and effectively "dies" (as much as any genre in the internet age can die), so what? If metal dies, it will not go into the ground with any unused potential, it will be because the very active and passionate community will have completed music, gotten all the achievements, and exhausted everything possible to with the genre except retread old ground. But I know that it won't be brought back or kept from the brink by bands writing songs for car insurance commercials.

This got a little tangential at the end here, but I think it's worth distinguishing (since so many people draw parallels between them lately) the genuine pop appeal of Ghost that Impera embodies so excellently and the cynical pop appeal of Sleep Token. Leaving aside the riveting discourse about whether Ghost qualify as a "metal band" or not, they unquestionably represent the genre to the unfamiliar, and I don't think metal needs the kind of submissive pop crossover appeal of Sleep Token when it has the emphatic pop crossover appeal of Ghost at their creative peak.

Anyway, Impera is a masterpiece, thank you Ghost!

9/10: AOTY 2022

[xchemoni]

Pitchfork’s Album Review on “Embrya” by Maxwell

“ The reissue of Maxwell’s second album from 1998 showcases the mercurial spirit that followed the R&B auteur down new, aqueous corridors.

In 2011, during the filming of his “VH1 Storytellers” episode, Maxwell attempted to describe his second album, 1998’s Embrya, and its uneasy position in his discography, the way it wriggles away from the more concrete and clarified R&B statements that surround it. “It’s one of those records where you’re like, ‘Should I have done that or should I have not done that record?’,” he said, seeming to pose the question to his own audience.

When Maxwell arrived on radio and MTV in 1996, he brought a sound back with him, the quietly storming soul music of the late-’70s and early-’80s, a genre that could hover politely in the air between neighbors at a cookout or totally collapse the air between two people in a bedroom. His debut, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, modeled itself after records like Marvin Gaye’s I Want You, linked sequences of seduction that either blossomed toward or shrank away from the possibility of love; it eventually sold two million copies and earned Maxwell a Grammy nod.

Now he wanted the sound he had pulled from the past to follow him and bend around whichever corner he turned. As he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2016, “What I did with [Embrya], on purpose, was that it was the anti-Afro ’70s funk-soul record.” He resisted the notion that his music could be pinned down and examined, and he seemed to want to write music that could circulate forever, that slipped away from any attempt to capture it, like a wave of water or an anxious thought. The songs he wrote for Embrya respond to this inner stubbornness, loosen themselves from their points, spread and pale like watercolors. It was as if had he had opened a window in his urban hang suite and the ocean poured in.

Made primarily as a reaction to his own debut album, Embrya has few previous models for its itself. It is the only R&B record I’ve ever heard that’s submerged as it is. (Even the Sade records that producer Stuart Matthewman worked on periodically come up for air.) At an hour long, it spills itself across four sides of vinyl on its new reissue, released on the occasion of the album’s 20th anniversary. It can be difficult to focus on its individual hooks; they rear up and break apart like waves in bottomless lakes of songs. Flamenco guitar solos ripple and die off like pulses on a radar screen. Strings stir and resettle like clouds of silt at the bottom of an aquarium.

There’s simply not enough water metaphors on this green earth to describe Embrya. This is by design; few R&B albums, let alone albums in general, embody the liquid rush of desire as completely as it does. Maxwell’s piercing tenor is double-tracked so often that even its edges seem watery, and his lyrics crumble from the direct romanticism of Urban Hang Suite into impressions and feelings that aren’t necessarily certain of what they are; he sings words like “plush” and “blush” almost interchangeably, and they melt away in pale petals of near-meaning.

As each song wades gradually from chord to chord, it grows harder to determine one’s position in them, whether at their middles or near their ends or slipping away into new, just-forming instrumentals, as when “Matrimony: Maybe You”—a pop-jazz track smooth and untroubled as the skin of a pebble—narrowly forks into a funk workout called “Arroz con Pollo.” Which isn’t to suggest the sound of the album is uniform; its songs are as various and vivid in their depth charges of color as Monet’s “Water Lilies,” which he painted as his vision was failing and the world itself was melting into streaks of color. There are indeed verses and choruses on Embrya; there’s a deep mysterious pull in the groove of “Luxury: Cococure” from which the chorus seems to bubble upward. “Drowndeep: Hula” is one of Maxwell’s tenderest yet murkiest ballads; if its drumbeat were a little slower and dilated it might’ve produced an early draft of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” instead. “Gravity: Pushing to Pull” finds Maxwell descending to a pressurized depth, his voice riven with low distortions. But as Embrya advances it can feel just as often like a lens is dwelling over different gatherings of sound—hands swimming up the keys of a synthesizer, basslines played so flexibly they’re invertebrate—briefly snapping them into focus before they sink back into the texture of the record.

In this way Embrya somewhat foreshadows D’Angelo’s 2000 masterpiece Voodoo, both artists searching for something even beyond the outer limits of their debut albums, both records achieving something close to perpetual motion in the slow circulation of their grooves. But where Voodoo stretches time out until it’s crisp and brittle, Embrya’s time feels thick and immeasurable and seems to pass in gradual stirrings, the liquid counterpoint to Voodoo’s spare, desiccated funk. It’s an album of traceless, amnesiac swellings, never seeming to quite know where it’s going or where it’s just been, flowing without ever seeming aware of its flowing, which is its truly remarkable achievement. According to Maxwell, Embrya is “a story that unfolds,” but it’s impossible to pick up a single thread of it and follow it to its original source; it’s all source, a concept album in which there is no concept, just feelings, impressions, intimacies and their absences, wave after wave after unending wave of them.”

Original review

[waking-hell]

I remember like it was yesterday. It was my last year at highschool, I was struggling with my mental health and music was my only escape back then. I was a fan of Bring Me The Horizon since I was 14, so I was aware of how talented they were. Still I couldn't put into words how much I loved this, still can't, still do. I remember how this album touched my soul, how every single song and lyrics spoke to me.

Sempiternal is a powerful exploration of mental health and the struggle to find meaning and purpose in life. The album’s themes of pain, isolation, and self-discovery resonated deeply with us, who found solace and comfort in the band’s emotive and heartfelt lyrics.

Looking back on the past decade, it’s clear that this album has left an indelible mark on the world of music. It remains a fan favorite and a touchstone for the band, who continue to push boundaries and experiment with their sound with each subsequent release.

The 10-year anniversary of Sempiternal is a cause for celebration for Bring Me The Horizon fans everywhere. The album’s impact and influence are as strong as ever, and its message of hope and resilience in the face of adversity is more important than ever in these difficult times. Here’s to another 10 years of Sempiternal, and to the continued success and creativity of Bring Me The Horizon.

Oliver Sykes, Lee Malia, Matt Kean, Matt Nicholls and Jordan Fish... Thank you, we love you all.

[faithfromanewperspective]

red desert arrangement brainstorm i guess

Heal and replace. Heal and replace. It doesn’t take too long to heal and replace; the demons we’re running from, they’re begging to stay. How do you capture that musically, when I’ve already got the parts all going on, the four-part harmony, the chords and the percussionbass rhythm going on underneath? What do I do when it sounds almost exactly like the first verse? The demons we’re running from, they’re begging to stay. I think I see the problem.

Pop music is notoriously repetitive; orchestral music is not. When you don’t have lyrics that change between lines and verses, when you have 40 or 50 people playing instruments who don’t want to play the exact same thing, on a 4-bar repeat that changes up a couple times depending on the section of the song, you’ve gotta get creative. And can I just say, of all the songs I’ve played covers for or even attempted, I chose this album because from a musical standpoint it’s not boring. It’s no cookie cutter I V vi IV or whatever chord combination with a simple drum beat and repeated melodies. The bridges, at least, of each song, are something else. They were clearly written to be fun to play, rather than easy. I wouldn’t recommend them to a beginner busker. Few people I know will cover 5 seconds of summer, for good reason too. It’s difficult. The chords are unpredictable, for example red desert, focusing on vocal harmonies and using simple melodies to bring them out, has a sneaky E major chord in a B minor piece, G sharps littered around the place that aren’t in the key signature, aren’t always there. It means you’ve gotta look twice before improvising, figure out what bar you’re in, what notes to play. E is the subdominant in a B minor piece, in making it major instead of minor, it’s harder to tell that the piece is in a minor key. It shakes things up a bit. It should make it easier to fill in with something interesting, a countermelody over the verse: should I give it to the flutes maybe, or should I switch some of the parts that people played in the first verse around? I can figure that out later.

In the meantime, note that the other commonly occurring chords in the song are B minor and A minor. This is clever: B melodic minor scale ascending adds a G sharp; and A minor has a G sharp in both its harmonic and ascending melodic versions. As a result, the song works smoothly and feels calming and resolved.

So imagine the creatures in the desert. You’ve got the hot wind blowing red sand over cacti and scraggly brown shrubs, the occasional bunch of desert trees, eucalyptus or acacia or mulga I’m not sure, I haven’t brushed up on my ecology quite that much. For the purpose of this exercise, it doesn’t matter. Imagine a bird flitting above the desert. A little spiky lizard or maybe a spinifex mouse flitting around. Can I write all of their parts, weaving in and out of the melody, so each instrument doesn’t get bored? Can I write the migratory birds that fly overhead in search of water, seeing the same landscape every year, never landing on it? how about the red kangaroo, and the western grey? Is there a brown snake sneaking around the bushes: ominous, how about a minor chord for it. I’ll fit it in the transition from A minor to E major, because the harmonic tone-and-a-half jump between F natural and G sharp, both accidentals in this piece (meaning F is meant to be a sharp and G a natural) gives just the sound I’m after. No one wants to be bitten by a brown snake when you’re miles away from the nearest road, let alone hospital. But the red desert is here to heal our blues. We’re safe. Snakes are scarier than they sound: they don’t actually want to bite you. Their venom is meant for the little prey they can actually swallow—they can’t eat a human. They’re not likely to bite unless they think you’re going to hurt them first.

In the recording, the bugle sounds I gave to the bassoons and brass in the first verse could be these animals peeking out. I can see a scorpion when I listen to it. They’re great for looking at from a middle distance, gorgeous, angry, spiky things. But the spiky grasses and desert leaves you can pluck and take apart for your liking. They’re not overgrazed: ecologically there is no problem with that. Some of them you can even eat, bush tucker, you should try it sometime. Connect with the land. Red, red desert, heal our blues.

These plants are the ‘ooh’s in the second verse in the recording. Lovely and ominous. Yet despite being first in the album, red desert is the last of eleven songs in my arrangement. It’s an album theme: every song has ‘ooh’s in the second verse. Well, at least three of them. I think they can be edited a little to wrap around our desert creatures. And our muse! Who is our muse? I’ll dive deeper for you. Who did we call to leave all their fears at the end of the world with us? Let’s make the little melodies dance around them, using the notes that we discussed. You’re the only one I do this for.

So now I have it. Ideas. Concepts, theories, imaginings, that I can build out of notes that somehow go with what I’ve already done. Do the same with the chorus. I don’t know when I’ll get to it all. But here is the framework. I hope we all learned something today. Had ideas. I know I did. I know this orchestral part is going to be better for it. One day. When I make the ideas a reality.

[theonlinebrat]

*G Note intensifies*

Dear reader,

If there's something I don't like music-wise, besides the entirety of the dupstep genre, it's what I consider generic-sounding songs.

Of course, as Chat GPT says, music taste is subjective, so what sounds generic to me might not be the same as what sounds generic to you, but there are certain production trends across all genres that don't sit well with me.

B-sides and most independent independent artists' songs are more prone to be a hit or miss for me exactly because they use those same production techniques I don't like.

But do you know what rock band has never sounded generic to me and has been able to impress me with each and every single one of their (own) spectacular songs?

Well, besides Rammstein and System of a Down, it's My Chemical Romance! My personal favorite from the Emo Trinity. Or quartet, if we also count 21 Pilots, another favorite of mine.

I somehow discovered MCR's 'Helena' back in 2015 as I was coming out of my Pop & Dance music phase to dive into the Rock world. I think I didn't like it at first, but it grew on me, and I've been in love with their entire discography (and existence) ever since.

As a big fan of them, I've been dying to have one of their albums or merch in my hands. So I almost fainted when I found out that this online store that was selling the CD version of The Black Parade a few months back was accepting special orders for Valentine's Day!

After pondering my options for a bit, I reached out to them and discovered that there was a special offer in which I could snag the CD version of Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge and The Black Parade bundled up at a lower price, and didn't think a third time before saying yes.

The CDs arrived just in time for my bestie Nin and I to go out on Valentine's Day to pick up the CDs and have a nice brunch together. It was like making two of my teenage dreams come true all at once, minus my job starting in the afternoon.

Now, here are a few pics I took that day as soon as I got home:

I regret nothing.

In terms of judging the book by its cover, the album art is beautiful and completely worth displaying somewhere. I particularly like the TCFSR cover, so much that I drew it once when I was a teen (and lost it :c), but I love that TBP has three times the drawings that TCFSR does:

C'est magnifique.

It's something a Rammstein album couldn't have outdone because, even though their music is amazing, their art leans more toward the grotesque.

In terms of music, all I know is they have a unique sound to them, and you most likely will enjoy it as long as you like any of these music genres from their Wikipedia page:

According to my ears, both albums' songs could easily be listened to on their own or on shuffle, as if they were singles, at the same time they can be listened to in sequence to follow their respective stories, which is quite a feat. 

You can tell that they belong to the same artist without going overboard like AC/DC, who are known for their production consistency and structural simplicity, which can make a lot of people choose about 2-3 songs to listen to and drop the rest. Well, as Angus Young himself said:

I'm tired of people saying we have ten albums that sound the same. We have eleven albums that sound the same.

That'd be me.

Ok, now, as I was saying, let's get to the juicy part: the lore.

Both records are what we can consider a "concept album", those "whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually", according to Wikipedia. And they have nothing to do with each other.

I feel like TBP is concepting more than TCFSR with how the music videos and songs are much more related to the core story.

Anyway.

In case you didn't already know about this, Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge is widely thought to be a continuation of their previous and very first album, I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.

I mean, based on this Reddit reply I just found, it looks like Gerard's ONLY weak point was giving these two concept albums a solid story progression, allowing us to theorize at will, but he did confirm what the real ending was in this 2005 interview.

So, the way I understood this, there's this pair of lovers who get in a gunfight, which is believed to be the same one from 'Demolition Lovers', right? Per 'Helena' and 'Cemetery Drive', it looks like the female lover dies, but the male lover doesn't, and misses her so much he goes on a downward spiral full of drugs and other ways of self-destruction. He makes a deal with the devil where he gets to see the female lover again in exchange for the souls of 1000 evil men, a long quest that begins with 'Give 'Em Hell, Kid'.

The male lover seems to realize he's far too gone by the time he has already unalived 999 evil men and, thus, became an evil man himself. So he unalives himself, completing his side of the deal, and either the woman goes back to life without him, or they do reunite... in Hell. 

Way knows - pun intended. Either way, it's fire.

Now, The Black Parade.

What an album.

As usual, no one knows for sure what's the actual linear full story, but the thing is there's this main character known as "The Patient":

He ✨ flatlines ✨ of cancer from the very beginning of the album (see 'The End.' - the irony). The remaining of the songs talk about his reflections on the life he lived, whatever 'Teenagers' represents in the plot, and his journey navigating the afterlife, represented by a "black parade" that resembles the marching band his father took him to see in the city when he was a young boy.

Because of 'Sleep' and 'Mama', I thought this patient guy was a war veteran. And I'll keep thinking that because they kinda make sense together, even if it's not official.

Like Mic The Snare said, TBP was indeed one of the most memorable events in Rock history with its level of theatricality and visual presentation almost comparable to Michael Jackson or Queen themselves.

As a side note, until very recently, I had no clue that Liza Minnelli, whose vocals are featured in 'Mama', was Judy Garland's mom!

Alright, now, to sum things up, I don't have a ton more to say that hasn't already been covered by other folks, because I haven't really watched or read that many My Chemical Romance interviews. I feel like I'm every fandom's ghost, you know?

But, these two albums are pretty special to me. They got me through tough times, kinda like how K-Pop did a few years down the road.

Hopefully soon I'll complete my collection by getting my hands on Danger Days, Bullets and, maybe, Conventional Weapons! I'd consider the live albums, too, but... haven't decided.

So, what about you? What were the first one or two music albums you owned physically?

Until next time!

- N

[mothpawbs]

here's the rough draft of the mcr vs lord huron compare/contrast essay i'm doing for a college class bc i can't be stopped

it's under the read more, also i'm tagging the people who said in the tags of my last post about this that they'd like to read it, thanks for encouraging my chaos. enjoy :)

               There are many bands and musicians in the world. Because of this, there is bound to be some overlap and similarities between artists eventually. But while this is usually confined to artists of similar genres, occasionally there will be two bands from completely different scenes who are remarkably similar. My Chemical Romance and Lord Huron are two such bands. Quite popular within their own circles, but scarcely heard of beyond pop culture references outside of their fanbases, both have somehow filled the same oddly specific musical and cultural niche while never once interacting.

               One similarity they share is their origins, specifically of their respective founders. My Chemical Romance was founded in 2001 by New Jersey native Gerard Way, and Lord Huron was founded nine years later in 2010 by the Michigan-born Ben Schneider. Both dabbled in music from a young age, and eventually moved on to be educated as visual artists, something both would use later in the creation of album art and supplemental media for their music. Eventually, both ended up following their dreams of creating bands, with Way creating My Chemical Romance in response to witnessing the 9/11 attacks and Schneider forming Lord Huron simply because it was something he felt he needed to do.

A major difference between the two is their genre of choice. My Chemical Romance is a star of the alternative rock scene, with their heavy instrumentals and dramatic vocals, and has a sound and aesthetic inspired by the works of bands such as Queen, Misfits, Black Flags, The Smiths, and Ramones (La Bella, 2008). Lord Huron brightly contrasts that, with their classic indie folk twang and layered acoustics influenced by the likes of Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, and Kate Bush (Orlando, 2022). The closest they ever come in music style is Lord Huron’s third studio album Vide Noir, a vivid departure from their previous folk sound for a heavier, distinctively eerie and distorted garage rock vibe.

Likely the most striking similarity for their fans, both bands are well-known for their extensively narrative-driven concept albums, something which by itself could warrant its own essay. Both bands use their music to tell stories, with each having a surface-level meaning along with a deeper purpose within the overarching plot of an album, as opaque and those plots can sometimes be. My Chemical Romance tells fairly explicit tales, with the doomed murderous duo in I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, the revenge-fueled mission to save a lost lover (likely the same from Bullets) in Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge, a cancer patient’s life, death, and subsequent trip to Hell in The Black Parade, and the Killjoys’ resistance against Better Living Industries in Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys. Lord Huron, while having equally rich narratives, are much more vague with their storytelling. Lonesome Dreams tells of a man wandering the world alone, Strange Trails starts with a fast-paced and jaunty gang tale before diving into supernatural themes bordering on cryptid horror, Vide Noir is a bleak and psychotic search for a lost love influenced by drugs and cosmic horrors, and Long Lost seems to be the songs of radio ghosts who maybe don’t quite realize they’re ghosts. Both artists also have companion material for at least one album each, with the story of Danger Days continued through Way’s comic series Killjoys, and Lord Huron recently revealing the full story of Vide Noir with a feature-length film by the same name. Fans of both artists revel in analyzing every video, lyric, and promo piece for details on these stories, and it is the double meanings in their songs that keep many fans coming back for more.

Speaking of these double meanings, another major similarity the bands show is the themes often used in their songs. While their approaches may differ, both bands have one overarching theme that permeates most of their songs: death. My Chemical Romance approaches death from several angles: as a terrifying thing to fight against, and as something to ultimately be embraced. The best example of this is the narrative of The Black Parade, with almost the entire album beingdedicated to the experience and processing of death by the main character, known as the Patient. This is most apparent in the songs The End, Dead!, Cancer, and Famous Last Words. Lord Huron approaches this topic in a similar fashion, with death, as well as one’s memory fading and disappearing, cast as a somber inevitability. This is something the POV of a song is either avoiding (The Man Who Lives Forever, The Yawning Grave, Ancient Names (Parts I and II), and Not Dead Yet) or actively accepting and/or anticipating (The Ghost On The Shore, The Birds Are Singing At Night, Until The Night Turns, Way Out There, Wait By The River, and What Do It Mean). Schneider also adds a third angle, the horror of dying and coming back. This is explored most in the albums Strange Trails and Vide Noir, with songs like The World Ender, Meet Me In The Woods, The Balancer’s Eye, and Back From The Edge detailing what might happen if one dies and returns, for reasons of revenge, rejection by the powers that be, or maybe no reason at all. Another facet of death that both bands explore is death or disappearance of a loved one, with songs like My Chemical Romance’s Helena, The Ghost Of You, and Welcome To The Black Parade, and Lord Huron’s In The Wind, The Night We Met, and Drops In The Lake. In total, both bands have the topic of death covered on almost all fronts possible.

Despite the differences in their genres, influences, presences, and even statuses (with Lord Huron currently still a band and My Chemical Romance only becoming active again recently after an almost ten-year breakup), these two groups share a truly remarkable number of similarities in both their origins and approaches to writing songs and albums. Both explore similar topics, albeit in different ways, and use their chosen medium to process similar themes and bring their stories to audiences that can resonate with them. There is a non-negligible overlap of people who would consider themselves fans of both bands, which, though surprising at first, becomes less shocking when these similarities are weighed against their differences.

@mynervoussystemdoes @smugglerofsass @thatmivy

[banghwa]

after reading your great analysis of FACE, I still can't really see a full-fledged queer narrative in it. Besides the basic separate elements, what I do see after reading the lyrics and analyzing how the album is structured and seeing what Jimin has shared about it, is a break-up album. To me, with the way the songs are ordered, it tells a story of a person coming out of a troublesome relationship and having to deal with all the leftover baggage of it [ external and inner], told in a very universally relatable way, not really seeing a very queer outlook on it. and I don't see anything bad with that hs. we all kinda agree that music/sound wise,, jimin is a bit boring lol, and to me in this instance also thematically, but not everything has to be LIE or Taemin's want, for his first solo endevor I get it. I also don't discourage any queer readings of it!! But I don't get why are you so against readings like this? it lowkey reminded me of chungking express or fallen angels

ok so. The point of my post wasn't necessarily to try to argue that the song unequivocally is about queerness. It was just a look at the narrative and thematics that reflect themes of queerness, such as the overlapping of loneliness and desire. I honestly don't really think expressing sexual identity was the main goal of it. It looks at Like Crazy as a discussion starter, or a refraction of this specific experience of alienation.

The reason I take issue with interpretations of it that are like “this is about a break-up!!!” is bcs like. It goes against what Jimin himself said. I think it's entirely possible a break-up could have inspired Like Crazy or other facets of the album. But the point is that each song is an internal monologue. In no song on the EP is there a clear recipient or witness. The song is about Jimin for Jimin. Each of them explore inner struggle through the use of point of view and seemingly deliberate language that gives the impression of a recipient. FACE blurs the lines between audience and self by turning the concepts of a fan song or love song or breakup song on its head to discuss internal despair, helplessness, loss, abjection, desire, etc. Jimin himself describes FACE as a way to “[...] introduce Jimin’s true feelings that I didn’t bring up anywhere else. I looked back on myself and honestly expressed my […] emptiness and loneliness.” The main thesis of the album is loneliness, and Like Crazy acts as a subversion of it through the avenue of what sounds like any other synthpop club love song. Everything from the music video to the choreo indicated something internal - there is no outer force or source of conflict to be seen. And I think that's a very deliberate choice for something that could very well be just a horny love song. I'm not trying to reach and pretend FACE is Want by Taemin. They don't even have the same purpose in the first place. Not everything has to be something else. It's just glaringly evident to me that, while lots of aspects can have many different means, the core of FACE is to discuss an inner dialogue of a man whose entire existence seen teenhood has been as a media object and uses media tropes and a listeners expectations as an avenue to discuss something so incredible intimate and vulnerable as loneliness and personhood. Which is a thesis that a "break-up album" narrative not only ignores but belittles.

TLDR bcs this ask feels patronizing so im sure you dont actually care abt what i have to say about it: Can FACE have been inspired by a break-up? Yes. Is that the point? No. Whether it is queerness or heartbreak, the perspective is inwards and persistently abjected. Why is the concept of self-affirmation so foreign to you that you can't conceive of an inner dialogue and an idea of alienation that is experienced as something outside of relations to an other?

[musicadoptedme]

Pitchfork’s Album Review on “Embrya” by Maxwell

“ The reissue of Maxwell’s second album from 1998 showcases the mercurial spirit that followed the R&B auteur down new, aqueous corridors.

In 2011, during the filming of his “VH1 Storytellers” episode, Maxwell attempted to describe his second album, 1998’s Embrya, and its uneasy position in his discography, the way it wriggles away from the more concrete and clarified R&B statements that surround it. “It’s one of those records where you’re like, ‘Should I have done that or should I have not done that record?’,” he said, seeming to pose the question to his own audience.

When Maxwell arrived on radio and MTV in 1996, he brought a sound back with him, the quietly storming soul music of the late-’70s and early-’80s, a genre that could hover politely in the air between neighbors at a cookout or totally collapse the air between two people in a bedroom. His debut, Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite, modeled itself after records like Marvin Gaye’s I Want You, linked sequences of seduction that either blossomed toward or shrank away from the possibility of love; it eventually sold two million copies and earned Maxwell a Grammy nod.

Now he wanted the sound he had pulled from the past to follow him and bend around whichever corner he turned. As he told the Sydney Morning Herald in 2016, “What I did with [Embrya], on purpose, was that it was the anti-Afro ’70s funk-soul record.” He resisted the notion that his music could be pinned down and examined, and he seemed to want to write music that could circulate forever, that slipped away from any attempt to capture it, like a wave of water or an anxious thought. The songs he wrote for Embrya respond to this inner stubbornness, loosen themselves from their points, spread and pale like watercolors. It was as if had he had opened a window in his urban hang suite and the ocean poured in.

Made primarily as a reaction to his own debut album, Embrya has few previous models for its itself. It is the only R&B record I’ve ever heard that’s submerged as it is. (Even the Sade records that producer Stuart Matthewman worked on periodically come up for air.) At an hour long, it spills itself across four sides of vinyl on its new reissue, released on the occasion of the album’s 20th anniversary. It can be difficult to focus on its individual hooks; they rear up and break apart like waves in bottomless lakes of songs. Flamenco guitar solos ripple and die off like pulses on a radar screen. Strings stir and resettle like clouds of silt at the bottom of an aquarium.

There’s simply not enough water metaphors on this green earth to describe Embrya. This is by design; few R&B albums, let alone albums in general, embody the liquid rush of desire as completely as it does. Maxwell’s piercing tenor is double-tracked so often that even its edges seem watery, and his lyrics crumble from the direct romanticism of Urban Hang Suite into impressions and feelings that aren’t necessarily certain of what they are; he sings words like “plush” and “blush” almost interchangeably, and they melt away in pale petals of near-meaning.

As each song wades gradually from chord to chord, it grows harder to determine one’s position in them, whether at their middles or near their ends or slipping away into new, just-forming instrumentals, as when “Matrimony: Maybe You”—a pop-jazz track smooth and untroubled as the skin of a pebble—narrowly forks into a funk workout called “Arroz con Pollo.” Which isn’t to suggest the sound of the album is uniform; its songs are as various and vivid in their depth charges of color as Monet’s “Water Lilies,” which he painted as his vision was failing and the world itself was melting into streaks of color. There are indeed verses and choruses on Embrya; there’s a deep mysterious pull in the groove of “Luxury: Cococure” from which the chorus seems to bubble upward. “Drowndeep: Hula” is one of Maxwell’s tenderest yet murkiest ballads; if its drumbeat were a little slower and dilated it might’ve produced an early draft of Massive Attack’s “Teardrop” instead. “Gravity: Pushing to Pull” finds Maxwell descending to a pressurized depth, his voice riven with low distortions. But as Embrya advances it can feel just as often like a lens is dwelling over different gatherings of sound—hands swimming up the keys of a synthesizer, basslines played so flexibly they’re invertebrate—briefly snapping them into focus before they sink back into the texture of the record.

In this way Embrya somewhat foreshadows D’Angelo’s 2000 masterpiece Voodoo, both artists searching for something even beyond the outer limits of their debut albums, both records achieving something close to perpetual motion in the slow circulation of their grooves. But where Voodoo stretches time out until it’s crisp and brittle, Embrya’s time feels thick and immeasurable and seems to pass in gradual stirrings, the liquid counterpoint to Voodoo’s spare, desiccated funk. It’s an album of traceless, amnesiac swellings, never seeming to quite know where it’s going or where it’s just been, flowing without ever seeming aware of its flowing, which is its truly remarkable achievement. According to Maxwell, Embrya is “a story that unfolds,” but it’s impossible to pick up a single thread of it and follow it to its original source; it’s all source, a concept album in which there is no concept, just feelings, impressions, intimacies and their absences, wave after wave after unending wave of them.”

Original review

[dustedmagazine]

John Surman — Words Unspoken (ECM)

To progress from being an adequate or good soloist toward the coveted realms of greatness involves increasing narrative subtlety. Telling a story is fine, but moving from phrase to phrase carrying forward those minute details in which worlds are distilled is quite another program. Then, there are the felicities of ensemble playing. While by no means mutually exclusive, a great soloist is often not a great ensemble player and vice versa. John Surman does both, wonderfully and in a unique voice; Words Unspoken, his new quartet album, is the proof that makes the pudding well worth sampling.

Surman’s bassless quartet includes guitarist Rob Luft, vibraphonist Rob Waring and drummer Thomas Stronen. Even on the most up-tempo tunes, the rhythm section provides that gorgeously airy sound for which ECM has become lauded and stereotyped. In this context, given the fact that each player transcends instrumental preconceptions through a continually morphing ensemble approach against which Surman is free to emote. It can be difficult to judge whether guitar or vibes, or both, buttress and swirl around Surman’s mellifluous baritone on the title track. Try the windy swells and crystalline curves at 2:05 to experience the full-blown ambiguity. By way of complete and utterly joyful contrast, sample “Onich Ceilidh,” where, at 4:49, Surman swaps out his soprano saxophone and provides a bassline via continuously shifting bass clarinet articulations as Waring and Luft skip along in rippling counterpoint with Stronen expressing foundational alacrity. Surman’s compositional lines support this integrated approach; “Belay That” slides along in sinewy seconds and more forceful open intervals, saxophone and guitar shimmering against each other in timbral accord as Stronen shows himself to be a wonderfully facile time drummer, his touch as light as it is precise.

Indeed, like time and temporal suspension, even constructing these solo and group boundaries borders on falsehood. As with the 1970-75 Miles Davis aggregates, this quartet’s concept of soloing is amoebic, the boundaries of accompaniment blurred at so many strategic points. If Waring’s repetitive riffs opening “Pebble Dance” do not constitute a solo, then neither does Stronen’s timbrally rich rhythmic “melodies” anticipating Luff’s simpatico stealth groove at 1:01. Even that vamp is both rhythmic and melodic, open harmonies in play as they so often are throughout this collection of Surman compositions.

Then, there is Surman’s soloing, a perfect foil to the accented rhythms, modal areas and scalar melodicism of his compositions. Dig the way he slides so gently but with such purpose up to the two notes at 2:34 of “Flower in Aspic” or builds tiered crescendos on the same pitch 3:52 into “Bitter Aloe,” his clarinet a fountain of pitched nuance and color. Maybe best of all is the glissando 2:19 into “Pebble Dance.” Surman’s soprano slides gracefully, effortlessly, up to a note that falls just between the cracks, a blue note transmogrified, a pitch existing within and just beyond itself, inhabiting two cognitive spaces simultaneously, like his music does. As always, Surman is at home in any genre or style he chooses. Every track is a landscape in flux, and every album a series of them. For nearly six decades, Surman’s restless explorations have bolstered and defied genre categorization, but beauty persists. Beauty of tone, of timbre, of compositional conception and ensemble deployment, often an inward and reflective beauty, have been mainstays of Surman’ daunting and, happily, still growing and consistently superb discography. Much of it lives in the ECM catalog and may its entries multiply!

Marc Medwin

[tar-and-feathered]

tagged by @figsandphiltatos :)

shuffle your on repeat playlist (on spotify) and list the first 10 songs and then tag 10 people

First Time by Hozier -- Been listening to this one (and the album in its entirety) since last October and like much of Hozier, it spoke to me! I think my favorite part is about the flowers,,,, mothers gifting life to you again, how a plant lives mostly underground in the roots, deadened to light and sound but reaching for the light anyway, even when it's doomed to be cut back for its beauty?? how the plant knows it's dying but puts forth its every effort to make flowers anyway?? "fighting off like all creation the absence of itself, anyway" ANYWAY????? and the end hurts a special kinda bad ough! ough!

Sjamboksa by Gang of Youths -- god knows I love these boys, but this one is an unsung gem from their earlier albums. "In the thick of my heart, by the skin of my teeth, until I'm forgotten, and covered in weeds, and my withering soul is in the sea, i will hold on to you, hold on to me." It has a warm, heartful sound that gets me emotional

Keep Me In the Open by Gang of Youths -- not your typical love song. It's about a relationship in the end stages of failing. It's always been a heartbreaker, and I appreciate it filling an uncommon niche. "When did everything get this weird? how the fuck did it start? did you ever believe in me? was it always so hard?"

Welcome Home, Son by Radical Face -- I've loved this one since like 2018? or 2017? It's an EXCELLENT "thinking about your OCs" song with excellent vibes. Generally this band is good for this purpose, recommend their other stuff since I think this is their only big song. I enjoy Small Hands iirc. They have very visual lyrics that I can smell yk? "Sheets are swaying from an old clothes line, like a row of captured ghosts over old dead grass, was never much but we made the most"

Wildflower and Barley (Feat. Allison Russell) by Hozier -- This makes me think of Seurri and Erastos' year together in their mutual downtime, enjoying the glade together and Philander learning to be comfort in a gentle, quiet love. the fuck . the vibes are... like, jazzy and folksy. "springtime from my window, another month has not much longer now, the sun hesitates more on each evening's darkening, would all things god allows, remain above ground? like grief and sweet memory, wildflower and barley"

I Don't Know You by Mannequin Pussy -- Excellent intro to their show in Atl. Started us off easy for sure lol. It's soft, it's about regret, it's about knowing your regret and still being unable or unwilling to act on it i think. plus longing

Little Dark Age by MGMT -- I don't remember listening to this a ton recently but in general? yes. I'm claiming this one back from the fashy teens who wanna use it in ww2 edits, this song slaps severely and the dark and mysterious vibes speak to me. good for OC imagining lol "The humor's not the same, coming from denial" IDK if this song has a coherent meaning (ik MGMT can be cryptic) but I havent interpreted it and I like it that way frankly

Too Sweet by Hozier -- Who could have predicted! OHhh! who knew! This song is for Solomon and Solomon only idc idc idc idc "But you worry some I know, but who wants to live forever babe" like yess mercenary queen work i need you to concern your elf nobility non-wifey wifey endlessly

We Don't Believe What's on TV by Twenty One Pilots -- Middle school makes a bold return! I stopped listening to these guys before 2016 I think, but I got a hankering for this particular song because I'm so unsure of what I want to be or do, or if I can even be or do that. I want to be unafraid of the future with somebody and I don't think I could relate to this song in middle school but I get it now! Also I refuse to factor religion into my interpretation of top or I'll stop enjoying it again shh

Archie, Marry Me by Flyte -- This song is one I'd occasionally play on loop late at night, the echoing choir and soft, what, organ? in the background? If I had a wedding this would probably be in it. It's so warm and personal, but I love the original by i think Alvvays! This cover I just think I love more.

I don't think I have any steady mutuals who haven't already been tagged in figs' post so... like or rb this or otherwise let me know if you'd like to be tagged in anything in the future :)