#everything involved with this album feels like its more focused on aesthetics than the actual content of the album

[waterparksdrama]

your last tag feels exactly right like it makes him sound like hes saying absolutely nothing. sure it kinda makes sense but in context its a little lost on me because it feels almost.. generic? nonsensical?? sorry soulsucker.. idk again i dont wanna discount his experiences or what his thought process is with this but in a writing and performance pov im not sure its really connecting for me (sincerely one of your usual anons w/catholic upbringing who hasnt been totally wow’ed by this themes presentation)

yeah like he makes a big show out of something he barely elaborates on or explains because he is so scared of actually saying something overly personal but on the same album he's trying to present himself as baring his soul out which is a weird juxtoposition to handle. the album can't be about the things he put in his explanation bc he doesn't know how to show how he feels and not tell it straight up with some lyrics made solely to grab your attention - iz

[jkflesh]

Interview with jesu January 2021 New Noise magazine #56

Read the interview by Antoine "Neredude" Duprez below:

The “Terminus” Bandcamp page states that the album was done between 2016 and 2020. That's a long period in your standards! Did you get some sort of writer's block with Jesu? Or was it because you were so busy with your numerous projects?

— I never get writers block, I just simply move on to the next thing if I’m not currently inspired to work on a specific project. Most my records, for many years, have been written and recorded over extended periods of time; I work when inspiration strikes, when it doesn’t I move onto the next thing; there’s never a block for me with creation generally, maybe just specific areas. i take large breaks for my music so as to afford some sort of distance, gone are the times when an album would be hammered out in a month!

''When I Was Small'' has kind of a Radiohead thing in the vocals, whereas ''Alone'' reminds me a lot of Sigur Rós. Are those bands part of your background?

— Ok, interesting observation, but no Radiohead is not an influence on this song, the biggest influences on the vocals were Liam Gallagher from Oasis, and subconsciously "White Flag" by Godflesh (which I only discovered after the album was complete). I do love some Radiohead though, as I do Sigur Rós, but neither band is a direct or conscious influence. Musically “When I was Small” was mostly influenced by trying to recreate a vibe of early Neil Young mixed with Oasis, in a jesu fashion, coupled with a demo production; intentionally underproduced. I’m not sure where a lot of the influence on “Alone” came from, electronic pop music for sure, short and sweet was the intention, driven entirely by the voice sample.

Regarding “Terminus,” did you set yourself a framework or musical approach beforehand like you did for “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came?“

— Not really no, generally when I work on a bunch of songs things will fall into place naturally, the songs become a whole and then collectively the songs will become conceptual as i write, they build their own logic, so to speak, I don’t force anything, I let things happen organically as I write and record.

I think around 2013, you said “Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was going to set a precedent for the next album. Now that it's out, do you still think so? Personally, even though both records are different, I can definitely hear a connection.

— Yeah, shame it took 7 years to come to fruition! And many things changed over those 7 years, as ever. Jesu certainly documents my personal journey in life, it’s ultra personal, Godflesh is much more external comparatively. A lot to the solo jesu work took a backseat when I worked on the collaborations with Sun Kil Moon, but that was very refreshing and inspired me to take jesu further, I had notions of discontinuing the project at some point, but the collabs with Sun Kil Moon inspired me to keep pursuing jesu.

"Every Day I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came” was inspired in great part by you becoming a father. Can you tell us a bit about what was on your mind when you wrote “Terminus?”

— That’s very true, especially the initial journey of bringing life into the/our world. everything is there in the lyrics and artwork for "Terminus" so of course, like a lot of my work, depends on the listeners perspectives, they can make it their own, make it personal. But it’s essentially about endings, and my obsession with finality, my sensitivity to it and my fear of it. There’s a line in the title song that says “my end, our end, the end, the end”, which pretty much sums it up.

The EP “Never” you released before “Terminus” is quite different and more focused on electronics. I remember you telling me that you liked going experimental on EPs, doing stuff you wouldn't do on a full length. So I figure that's still the case?

— Yeah, I like experimenting with everything, I like satisfying myself with different ideas, obviously that doesn’t suit my listeners too much, but I make this music for myself, and I’m always trying to do better. I still don’t know why I put myself through the trial and hell of releasing music, I often think about just recording for myself and not bothering with an audience, but I’m not really capable of earning money in other ways, so I have to finish music and release it, let it go. For me "Never" was just another way of interpreting the jesu mood, nothing deviates too much from the original intention of the project. It’s weird, critically, it was perceived as this big electronic departure, whereas jesu has sounded pretty much like this most of it’s lifetime! “Pale Sketches", "Lifeline" even "Silver” is all mostly electronic, save a real drum loop in the song "Silver", but this EP seemed to get this thing that its all electronic, whereas it;’s no more electronically oriented than any other jesu record I have made. jesu is a mood that can be explored and experimented with, I’m not making the first album over and over, some can’t get over that, but that was a different moment in my life which I captured, and as an artist who challenges oneself besides the audience you can never win, and one will generally never win hah. This is a new jesu, it comes with age, transitions. "Never" was intentionally idiosyncratic and deliberately fvcked up sounding, and I think by and large critically the subtleties were lost on people.

“Never” features two version of ''Never There for You'', one of them described as the ''original vision''. Can you explained how you ended up releasing two version of this song?

— The “original vision” existed like that since around 2010, I shelved it, it was to be a Pale Sketcher song, I had an album’s worth of similar songs, I still do, couldn’t decide if they should be jesu or Pale Sketcher. I sent them to Aphex Twin / Richard James because he was a huge fan of the Pale Sketcher EP “Seventh Heaven”, we were talking about a release on his label Rephlex, I had all these songs that were floating between jesu and Pale Sketcher. But then he folded Rephlex for good, a real shame, so I was left with all these songs in limbo, I still am, but at that period I shelved them all. I returned to them around 2018 and started adding guitars and vocals, thinking that they will now definitely be jesu songs. “Never There for You” was one of them, so I wanted the listener to hear what it was originally before I added more of organic me. I’m working on finalising all those songs for Rephlex into future jesu, probably an album that I hope to release late 2021, it’s not a "Terminus" though, and probably most ppl will hate it hah.

“Terminus” is the first album to feature Ted Parsons in a long while. Did you invite him because you felt these songs needed his touch?

— I wanted some live drums, 3 songs only. I was going to play them myself, like on "Opiate Sun". "Infinity" etc, but I really wanted Ted involved and see how he interpreted my drum parts, he always swings something and makes it interesting. he’s a very real drummer, and a very real human being.

When touring is possible again, would you like to tour with Jesu, with Ted on drums?

— I may tour solo, with electronics and projections. The band thing is tiresome and always just sounds like a band, bands bore me these days because of the constraints of the instruments, rock records also bore me these days; same productions, etc, very little actual aesthetic, but its popular and what do I know. But I’d rather jesu now sound hugely expansive live, not just like a rock band. But i’m still unsure. Live drums swallow my voice live, I can’t sing above them, and jesu is a tiny project, can’t play big venues with stage separation and screens around the drums, and 8 guys diving around onstage, it’s not affordable. I stopped performing as jesu for some time due to all those reasons.

You said “Silver” is probably your favourite Jesu record. Are there other Jesu albums that stand out in your mind?

— Did I say that?! Haha. I don’t recall, and that opinion changes every day I feel. I like how concise and all encompassing "Silver" is; it covers most of the ground that I feel the project should cover. But "Terminus" is my favourite jesu album, and it should be, otherwise I would not feel I was moving forward, and I feel I am, it is the best jesu album I have made.

Last year, you told Olivier ''Zoltar'' Badin that the next Zonal album would probably go in the direction of it's title track ''Wrecked''. Is it still true to this day and what can you tell us about that upcoming album?

— Well, a lot of time has passed since, but I think Kevin and I are still quite struck on that song as a template for future recordings, although everything changes all the time, of course, and time is passing fast once again, we haven’t discussed Zonal in some time.

I know you don't actually consider yourself as a guitarist. With you focusing on your electronic projects like JK Flesh and Zonal lately, do you ever get tired of guitar? I'm asking this because I recently discussed the subject with Steven Wilson. He basically told me that after 30 years writing and doing gigs with guitar, he's feeling more creative and excited when writing music on other instruments and I wondered if you ever felt something similar.

— All instruments are just a means to an end for me; a tool for the bigger job, I don’t really wish to be overly proficient at any instrument, I liked that about punk, and it’s what I’m not that fond of about overly progressive music, it’s like it’s for show, I don’t do anything for show, I’d rather be shit than great, it’s more interesting, it reflects the human condition, imperfection. I don’t wish for things to sound perfect, whatever that is, people should not come to my music for that, they probably don’t and it’s probably why my audience is so small haha.

I recently discovered that you worked with Josh Eustis with the mastering of the JK Flesh / Orphx live album and was a bit surprised. How did that happen?

— Josh is a very good friend of Dominick Fernow’s (Prurient / Vatican Shadow / Hospital Productions, etc), and Dominick is a very close friend of mine. I was aware that Josh does very good mastering besides being an extremely talented artist, so Dominick suggested josh master that collaboration, and it sounds excellent!

I interviewed Lee Dorrian some time ago and we were talking about the impact Napalm Death had, not just the band itself but all the bands who were formed after playing in that band: Godflesh, Carcass, Cathedral, Scorn... Lee thought this legacy had a lot to do with John Peel broadcasting a wide array of music on young aspiring musicians. How would you explain such creativity and versatility from musicians who all played in Napalm Death at one point?

—  Lee is absolutely correct, a lot of very young kids listened to John Peel, most generations did, his taste exposed music to many of us who were already enquiring at a young age that we would not have heard anywhere else and of course back then this centralised things, not fragmented them like the internet does; a kid now can absorb an artist entire catalog in an hour, speed listen to it all, then have an opinion, but it’s informed, no context, no history, no experience. We heard music then on Peel and then hunted it down. It took work, valuable work that paid dividends. Peel’s broad appreciation of eternally subversive music and otherwise told us that music didnt need to exist in such strict compartments, that’s it’s all part of a greater whole, so when groups of musicians collaborated even at such young ages, our tastes were informed and wide, very rarely singular.

Can you tell us a bit about you latest remixing output? What were the tracks that you enjoyed the most remixing? Those are the names I could find: Full of Hell, Oathbreaker and a lot of projects I've never heard of.

— I always and love to remix, I love the fact that I didn’t create this music but can make something new from someone else’s work. Music is endless, for me, it’s just when you wish to end it, but ultimately it can never end. I have some remixes that I love moire than others, but only over time, I never let a remix go unless I am as happy as can be with it. Sometimes I would’ve loved to have done more, my Killing Joke remix is a good example of that, I wanted to go further, but Youth of Killing Joke told me they were happy with where I was at, I think I could’ve made it much better. The Oathbreaker remix you mentioned is a favourite of mine from the last years worth of my remixes. I’ll remix anyone, if they can afford my fee and I have the time!

I'm curious, since you released some of your music with your own label with Godflesh, Jesu and other projects, did it have an impact on the revenue you got from streaming platforms like Spotify, compared to albums released on Earache or Hydra Head? I'm asking this in the light of the neverending controversy regarding streaming revenue for musicians.

— On my own label more money can be earned from these services due to no split with another label, which usually would be 50/50, but streaming is very small as is common knowledge. I never see any royalties from Earache so can’t compare their rates etc since Godflesh is constantly recouping an advance from Columbia / Sony for the "Selfless" album that Earache, contractually, can recoup from, even though they didn’t give the advance, so they’re making money from the band and from an advance they never paid, which these days you would think that besides being unethical that it would be criminal, but such were the contracts in the 80’s / 90’s. So I’ve never seen a single penny from streaming with Earache!

I know it might be pointless to ask you, since someone's mind can change with time but do you still think “Post Self” may be your last album with Godflesh? Your told us last year that you weren't sure if you had enough in you creatively to do another album and also that the constant screaming was a bit harder to do.

— Hah, the shouting/screaming live now takes its toll, it does with age, I’m unsure due to not performing for so long thanks to the pandemic how my voice would be for Godflesh now in a live setting, I’d have very little problem in the studio. I’m still struck on the fact that there may not be another full length studio album from Godflesh, I haven’t been inspired to initiate one for numerous reasons, and I don’t wish for us to repeat ourselves in any way, I do have a lot of interesting old material though, some good rare stuff, demos, “Us and Them in Dub” which is also in the works, but I work on that sporadically, when I feel inspired to do so. So there’s a lot of good stuff coming.

Last time I interviewed you in 2014, Aphex Twin was making his grand return with “Syro”. I remember you telling me that the album was still shrinkwrapped on your desk. Knowing you're a big Aphex fan, I wanted to know if you liked that album, especially knowing that a lot of fans were disappointed by it.

— Ahh it was such a long time ago now that we spoke last! I love "Syro”, but I love Aphex, and since I first heard "Didgeridoo" when it was released and then "Quoth", he will always be a favourite, "Syro" may not be an Aphex favourite for me, but it’s still amazing, he is amazing; creative, subversive and doesn’t give a fvck ultimately, he’d also never release anything if he didnt really have to, he does this for himself, for me the best art is entirely selfish and should consider no one. People are always disappointed, a lot of people just can’t live with the fact that an artist strays from their own personal conception of what an artist should be, it’s some sort of misguided entitlement, I lost that when II was around 14, a lot of people don’t lose it and now these people have the internet. No artist owes me anything, if they gave me one thing in my life then i will always respect their art, regardless of whether it works for me or not, and if I don’t like it much, I won’t be peddling that opinion on the internet in an entitled egotistical manner, I’m glad I did not know that a lot of people were disappointed, haha.

Thank you very much! Best JKB, Jan 2021

[aleatoryalarmalligator]

What My Thoughts On Morrissey Today

In response to my writing idea someone gave me I picked this.

So basically, Morrissey’s nationalism in recent years has gotten in the way of me being able to appreciate much that he comes out with. This is wild because a few short years ago, I stood up for Morrissey and actually still feel very moved by a portion of his music. It got me through some really rough patches in my twenties.

I realize he’s human and has faults and I don’t know him completely but just eh, living in Portland and having seen the stuff going on I’m kind of not in the place in my life right now where I want to even try to dissect him. It’s not just a fact that he’s wrong, but that it seems altogether very much in rejection of the things that made his music so special. It was difficult for me to come to terms with it or fully make sense of why someone who’s unashamed expression of witty despair in the 80’s and 90’s, someone who was outcasted from the overall closed mindedness lower working class post ww2 world of northern England, unafraid to be gay and completely the antithesis of some Tory ideal could be bought by some tired nationalist agenda. It’s even more difficult to realize where his alegianced lie in a world that is starting to reject democracy, embrace anti intellectualism in the guise of some form of selective politically motivated skeptism, and I see the world move farther and farther into fascism.

Margaret Thatcher attacked The Smiths. Morrissey was taken in for questioning more than once out of fear for what he represented. Morrissey and The Smiths has some subversive element that really did threaten the establishment and cultural norms, in a way that I feel was a little more multidimensional than even a lot of bands in the English punk scene. I guess for me, even though I grew up in the Inland northwest of the US, I felt there was a lot of parallels in common. I too detest a culture based around animal consumption, was really not a part of the world I grew up in and didn’t want to work in the factories, I liked art and music and nobody around me was really into that stuff.

I still like the Smiths and most of Morrisseys old music. I read his autobiography. I know he is a dramatic self involved individual but I did feel that up till somewhat recently his heart was in the right place and he just liked to be controversial, which is somewhat true still, but now I think there was more to it, some nationalistic self preservation instinct kicking in. Its actually more prevelant than I even realized and I honestly think it’s getting the best of anyone with money or power, even those who once stood for something counter culture. It’s hard to think of him as racist in the traditional sense with his adoration for Latin America, but he might just be so self involved that his popularity in those regions gave him a bias. He probably separates the racism from the nationalism, blindly not wanting to see how the two concepts are quite inseparable. Falling right into it.

Him saying “everyone prefers their own race”, is kind of wild to me. I genuinely even try to entertain this as a possibility like a philosophical thought experiment or a deep dive of some kind into my own subconscious part of me I am avoiding somehow, and it’s not true for me or a lot of people. Who the fuck is he to say who prefers who, and how backwards and dehumanizing. It’s pretty repulsive, and being he is bisexual and felt the discrimination of homophobia growing up, I’m inclined to think he’s not able to see that he’s become the enemy he once represented the antithesis of.

The guy I’ve kinda been with is Mexican. I totally love him. I look into people’s eyes and I talk to and open up to people and if I connect with them I connect with them. Not like I’m trying to play the I gotta friend who is this or that as some kind of example of much, or that I don’t see color or some faulty implication, but I have been in situations where I’m the only white person at a party and I prefer them because they are my friends and I love them, and the idea of classifying who I prefer is to imply that the white race should be my main concern as they are the same as me and therefore superior and they aren’t. There is nothing inherently special to me or a kinship felt with other white people for either their appearance or cultural background. It’s nice to compare notes of pop culture but a lot of stuff people go through is universal. I don’t take too much issue with multiculturalism. My white skin is meaningless to me. I can’t imagine being so inept as a person that the color of my skin actually defines my identity rather than my autonomy or ideas or relationships and what I stand for and my ability to appreciate and connect with other people.

What gets me is that in his support of the far right is not even in line with his hatred of police, or the hatred he had a few years ago. I mean, he has always gone on and on about police brutality, he’s been harassed by them on multiple occasions. He shows them on giant projectors at his shows. Police are a very important staple for fascism and nationalism, and he is now on their side after all this time? What changed? The lost young man he once was in 1981 feels very very different from who he has become and piecing together that transformation has been something I’ve been trying to do for awhile. I try to embrace both but they seem like similar but different people at odds with one another, like an uncle and nephew.

Here is what I imagine happened, and I could be wrong about that but I was a Morrissey fangirl for quite awhile. I literally had his signed autograph above my bed with dried flowers around it like a shrine for a few years, and got a grasp of Morrisseys personality in some ways.

To start off, Morrissey is a very poetic and sharp guy but he’s very miopic about his interests and has always had the tendency to see the world in a black and white framework. This in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but it’s the core framework of who he is as a person. When he was young it was very much more a reflection of his hatred for authoritarianism and deceitful people and phony artists. It’s not bad and it contributed to his music and lyrics and became the thing he was loved/hated for. The way he goes about it really has always been the double edged sword of his charm and vileness all in one and something people have mocked time and time again. He likes to be the guy in the corner that looks fine and smug and believes he sees the virtues/dispicable attributes of everyone in the room and there have been times in his life where he was, and though he won’t ever attack anyone face to face he’s quick to speak his mind about it.

Morrissey is also a very vain person. It’s subtle but he is very singular on certain aesthetics. At times it made him brilliant and poetic and a visionary. The Smiths album covers are beautiful. His look is both elegant and absurd in its grasp for purity. It also makes him seem like a twat and a pretentious prince. The fact that he seems to be these two things at once is what gave him that kind of controversial star quality at times.

Those are just two natural traits he has always been obvious with. And he struggled with it and focused on his passions and dealt with depression in the 80’s. Then fame happened and the smiths ended. He kept to himself more or less in the 80’s and 90’s aside from his disdain for Margaret Thatcher, but he kinda lost his mind a bit when his drummer took him to court in the nineties. Right or wrong he fought for two years and lost a good chunk of his money from The Smiths and when that happened he kind of was forced to start again. He lost his home. He developed that early personalized sense of self preservation and victimhood. I think he lost faith in many of his more naive ideals when he was younger. When you read his autobiography and know what happened it’s like he had to step out of his old life and into something else.

Then, he’s always been a vegetarian superiority type. I liked that he calls it as he sees it but because of his need to black and white think everything he came off as deluded and smug. I mean, to be fair you can’t seem to win with people who want to eat meat and I agreed with a portion of his message, but he never questioned himself. He’s not good at that, or doesn’t appear to be. My personal interpretation of him was to agree with part of it and give him the cred for being not afraid to be a dick and say it, but to see also that he was so dramatic and self absorbed about it to also laugh at him and the way he said it.

Now to go into fascism and why it grew on Morrissey. I see the world as kind of falling into polarization and flux because of the failures of neoliberalism. It’s a long political explanation, but essentially the systems that are in place do not provide answers to a lot of catestrophic issues. Democracy, though the best thing we have, is flawed. I really like philosophy and have studied this and the various arguments that are made, and I don’t have the answer either but fuck if I will ever side with nazis.

People are seaking solace in new ideas that are actually quite old, namely socialism and fascism that provide answers that democracy fails to. Capitalism eats itself and created monopolies and unfair wealth distribution, technology is making human labor obsolete and therefore not a stable means to base our economic system on, those with wealth are hoarding it and trying to separate themselves from the world they helped ruin. We are destroying the planet, running out of natural resources, many of our leaders in the last three or for decades have been flawed, there isn’t a universal safety net for things like natural disasters and pandemics and there are still places stripped of their natural resources where human slavery is prevalent and children starve to death. Neoliberalism has promised some great answer but has actually been the contributor to this entire mess.

We are seeing the beginning of the end now, and I am sure Morrissey isn’t going to waste that without putting himself in the victim shoes, the white traditional quintessentially Englishman of wit, who sees his beautiful world he grew up in disappearing in multiculturalism and seeing himself and the culture of old England as a dying breed, that needs to be preserved at any cost. He probably was on the fence about it for some time, weighing out his disdain for authoritarianism, having a bougouis experience with the seemingly left leaning media that he never managed to win over and called him out for his every misstep. I bet he had a friend who opened him up to the idea that we don’t know about who changed his mind. I bet cuts in taxes for the rich helped him preserve his wealth that he definitely feels entitled to after losing the first portion of it in the court case. He’s rich, famous and old and often times that leads to being quite out of touch, even to the best intellectuals. He lost his mother who was dear to him and I can imagine, even though it’s not political, it created a deep sense of emptiness and dis ease. Nationalism often times gives people a sense of security and identity and purpose. And the idea of having an unpopular opinion excited him just as it always has, gave him the opportunity to be the smug poet in the corner of the party, and he sold out. Hard. And he’s probably proud of it.

He’s irrelevant now. Honestly his latest album wasn’t good, and I like later Morrissey. He doesn’t have the same energy. I just feel like he’s grasping at something that he never fully ever had. What’s weird to me is that I’m writing about him like this when honestly, I could also easily write about how beautiful and meaningful the Smiths and Morrissey has been to me. I can’t explain how it cut through the extreme isolation I’ve been in, not to mention how the Smiths really changed music for the better. There’s always going to be a part of me that wants to defend him. I’m not saying we cancel him. I kinda think he canceled himself. I’m not going to try to not enjoy the smiths or morrissey when I hear him, and I will still hear it and enjoy it but I’m not ever going to spend my own money on filling his pockets. I still nostalgically enjoy the person he was a very long time ago and what he used to represent. I realize at the end of the day he’s just a flawed person. But also fuck fascism, and fuck Morrissey for caving into it.

I mean, at the end of the day the hardest part is that I made him a part of my identity and I just had to stop doing that in a simplistic way. I tossed out a morrissey shirt I had (it’s was a cheesy shirt anyway), and I found new genres of music and while I still love the smiths it’s not like I can’t do without them every day. I break down and listen to them sometimes. I know the songs so well. I listen to Xiu Xiu which is a modern day similar equivalent in some ways but is absolutely better and the singer Jamie Stewart is fucking gold.

[tisthenightofthewitch]

GHOST – “I would say by early 2021, you can expect the next chapter of the Ghost story.” TOBIAS FORGE

From the underground to a bonafide global take-over, GHOST are fast becoming the most-talked about band in Metal music today, with legions of fans dedicating their total and utter commitment to the bands every move. Overdrive sat down with one Tobias Forge to discuss the bands success and that all important new album…

The spectacular rise of GHOST is a success story that nobody could have predicted. From their captivating live show’s, to a rich discography that continues to win over armies of fans the world over, GHOST are fast becoming one of the biggest bands in today’s current global Metal/Rock scene.

From the projects birth back in 2006 to conquering American arenas, winning a Grammy for ‘Best Metal Performance‘ (2016), headlining their first UK festival at Bloodstock Open Air (2017), selling out the iconic Royal Albert Hall (2018) and now, floating around Europe as very special guests with the biggest metal band the world has ever seen, Metallica.

One could say that that the Cardinal and his Ghouls are in a rather good place right now.

Prior to taking the stage for their Irish debut before 75 thousand fans (no pressure), Ghostmastermind, Tobias Forge is calmly hanging out in the enormous the backstage compound with his band members and crew, happily sipping on a hot coffee and eager to talk about his excitement in playing the impressive Slane Castle venue.

OD – Firstly, let me congratulate you on the continuous success of GHOST. From the outside, it’s been an incredible few years for the band. My question is how has it been for you personally, from the success of the album (s), playing to stadiums in the US, and now this tour with Metallica?

TOBIAS – Absolutely! I have moments where I have to step back and take it all in. You see, I’m not a very ‘in the moment‘ type of person. In fact, I’ve always been very distant and I guess a ‘dreamy‘ sort of person. If I look back on my life so far and I think about how I spent my childhood, I guess this comes with age and it comes from the fact of also being a parent because when you’re a parent, you can’t help to look at your kids from an upbringing point of view where you have to think about our progress.

I found myself asking the question;”Well, how did we do when we were younger?” [Laughing]. I guess there is a certain amount of reflection you have to do as an adult and now, for me, especially being an artist, I tend to have to think about my life and the journey I’ve had growing up and I’ve come to realise that very little has changed. I have spent my whole life drawing, writing and dreaming about doing all of these things that I’m now getting the opportunity to do.

So, at some point, that dreamy, adolescent looser just like, transgressed into this person who could go back into childhood again. The backside of that is sometimes, I have to remind myself that I’ve gone past the point of wishing to get here, and understand the realisation that this is actually happening. Like today for instance, getting to play this infamous venue, (Slane Castle) is huge for me. I’ve known about this place since the ’80’s.

I have a bit of a ‘now‘ moment with this today, but what often happens is that I play a certain venue, or meet a particular person and it’s like that moment just happens and I’m looking in from the outside, but afterwards I’m like; “WOW!” [Laughing]

OD – You recently did your first unmasked television interview, considering the history and the mystic of Papa Emeritus / Cardinal Copia was this a difficult decision for you to make and why did you feel that this was the time to do it?

TOBIAS – I think I thought and pondered for many, many years and at a certain point, in fact on that very day, it was one of those kind of ‘rip the bandaid off‘ kind of moments. Let’s just get it over with, no drumroll, no fanfare, let’s just move on. I try to be super transparent with this, but my choice of trying to be anonymous or should I say “masked” because anonymous is when no-one knows who you are. That choice was purely an aesthetic choice based on how I wanted this project, this band, this concept to become.

It was not my personal choice, because I don’t want to be famous, or a well known rock musician. So, fast forward to right now and when I look back, I have been involved with some very well-known bands and I’ve had my own share of recognition, so really, I don’t have a desire to become more famous. Bearing that in mind, I was noticing over the years that trying to maintain that vague order was causing a few problems and issues with the whole thing.

There was definitely moments when there was discussions and demands and enquiries about what can we do in order to enhance things. So, I figured well, at some point when I feel that the concept, or the band, or the name and it’s visual aspects are big and strong enough to stand on its own, I can do a thing like that unmasked interview, and hopefully whatever we are doing aesthetically and what we choose to present to the world, that will still be more interesting and better than anything I have to do on the side to appease journalists.

OD – What do you think of the critics who don’t look to favourably on what you do?

TOBIAS  – Well, traditionally I’ve noticed that the critics that are critical of the band have been so since day one. Often a lot of the times the shit that people click on is criticism that is not really meant to be positive or productive anyway. I’ve been very vocal towards those people and have to remind them that what I set this project/band out to be, happened to get very popular to an extent that I didn’t foresee.

There are people who say: “Ghost was way better back in 2010” and as a rock fan myself, we can start where my collection begins from ‘A’ and I too will have some critical things to say about each album/artists. That’s just the way things go. You can’t please everybody all the time.

OD – There has been reports of entering the studio for 2020, is this still something that is very likely and is the intention to release the album next year or 2021 or is it too early to think about that right now?

TOBIAS – I think about it all the time.  But, let me be very transparent here. I am indeed going into the studio where I will be beginning the work in January. We’re doing another American tour in September/October and then we’re gonna come back to Europe and that is gonna take us right up until Christmas basically.

So, after New Year’s we are gonna have maybe one or two small things at the beginning of the year and then it’s gonna be all about the new album.

People need to understand that I spend about 5 to 6 months in the studio. That’s not with red lights going or anything [Laughing]. But it’s just being in that creative environment you know? I also try to work ‘normal’ hours because I have a family also so, I try to work traditional hours, you know. I like to come in on Monday morning at about 9 am/10 am and then I do normal stuff like have lunch and think about what’s going on, and then I wrap up for the day and head home and see my family.

In order to make that record, it’s gonna take me about 6 months and then that’s gonna take me to the Summer, which we’ve already decided we’re gonna take a break a let the dust settle, and then hopefully by the end of the summer the record will be finished.

Unfortunately or fortunately, depends on how you see it, the US elections are happening, so bearing that in mind, it’s not the best time to release new material when peoples minds are focused on other things. I just want to make sure that when we release this new album, we have peoples attention.

OD – So, you’re hoping that the album is going to be ready by late Summer then?

TOBIAS – Well, that’s the plan but in the event that it’s not finished, it’s gonna be okay. I don’t want to stress the situation. Every record I’ve done has been under some type of time restraint, even ‘Opus Eponymous‘ (2010), that album was on a very tight schedule. It was definitely last minute [Laughing]. I just want to make sure that I have enough time to release the album that I’m thoroughly happy with.

When strategising about where Ghost is right now and where we want to go moving forward, we have to be aware of all the possibilities regarding the best time to release the new album.

OD – I’m sure you have big ambitions for the production of the new album also?

TOBIAS – Yes, totally. We now have the pleasure of playing in much bigger venues all over the world and with that comes the fact that there are a lot of tickets to sell. I hate to talk about it in this way, but it’s a huge part of this business. We have to take great care in everything we do now. Like the best time to announce a tour, a new album, as well as the best time of the year to release the new album. There’s loads of things to take into consideration.

OD – Do you think that some of the previous album releases were not timed well?

TOBIAS – Yes, some of our previous releases were not released at a time that was in our favour. In fact, I have memories of things being very stressful at times. At this point in the bands legacy, it’s far too important to just release the next album with no plan or strategy put in place first. Also, it’s very important that we give the production of the album a few weeks of rehearsal. Basically, we have to plan it like a rocket launch [Laughing].

OD – So, when do you see this album finally being released?

TOBIAS – I would say by early 2021, you can expect the next chapter of the Ghost story.

OD – With regards to each character, do you have an overall plan of what will be happening or is it something that are inspired about with the writing of each album. Does the writing of the album determine the character we will see when it’s eventually released?

TOBIAS – Well, at first there was no masterplan, but now there is one. A lot of the things that have been communicated over the last few years will be fined tuned and explained in the coming years.

OD – Can you give me an example?

TOBIAS – Well, there will be a number of non-album things that are going to happen. This will all happen in tandem with the overall story. These things might be happening next year also.

Even in the void of 2020 not really being an active year for us in terms of live performances, there will be other things that we will be doing in the interim where there’s going to be an album made.

OD – So, would you say that things are more conceptional now than ever?

TOBIAS – Yes, totally. In the beginning there is was lucid, but things have changed in a huge way.

OD – Have you ever considered making a documentary or perhaps releasing a book about your life?

TOBIAS – Well this can tie in with a previous answer that we have already spoken about. At some point or another, during the high points of Ghost, I’m sure there are people that would be interested in reading about my thoughts and my background. But I feel like I’m not really there yet, if you know what I mean.

I feel that I have a lot more to do, before I can think about something like that. Right now if feels like thinks are ever progressing and it just doesn’t feel like the moment where I need to document everything to date. I mean, who knows what’s gonna happen but for all I know, all of this could go tits-up in four years from now.  If that happens then I can look back and reminisce when it’s all over.

I just don’t feel like I’m anywhere near the end. I’m gonna be 4o years-old in 2 years time and i’ve got a lot more to do even before I hit that age.

OD – Do you worry about getting old?

TOBIAS – Not really. In fact here’s a little life hack about feeling better about your age. I have a lot of friends who are much older than me. Not only is that very interesting socially, but if I have any issues with the concept of ageing, sometimes it’s great to have older friends whom you can use as a sort of barometer.

I have a lot of respect for my older friends. I think to myself; “If I was half as cool as my friends, I would be very happy with that“. The concept of ageing is definitely hated by a lot of people. At the end of the day, regardless of all of this, my plan is to become a really cool 50-year-old [Laughing].

OD – Do you think it’s important to have role models that are older?

TOBIAS – Yes, very much so. You can not stare yourself blind at the idea of youth being the only state worthy of being because that will greatly disappoint you.

OD – So far, what has been your biggest personal achievement?

TOBIAS – Hmmmm, there are many to choose from. [Thinking..] I think the biggest achievement for me and what I really feel blessed about is..there’s not really a word that can encapsulate what I’m thinking here. Let me try to explain.

From a family point of view, knowing where we were and what our options and possibilities were 1o years ago when our kids were born to present day. I am extremely proud and happy and thankful that I managed to steer things around to something very different. I’m not saying that everything would be crap had all of this not worked out as we were still very happy back then.

I’m very happy that it turned out this way because I got to be one of the few that got to live out a childhood dream. Music really is the only thing that I can do intuitively. I’m quite able to do this and I get better at it with age [Laughs]. But, there is a lot of things that I can’t do, and I don’t exactly know if it’s because I didn’t do that certain exam or for another reason.

I have a hard time concentrating when I’m faced with doing things I don’t really like doing.

OD – How did you back in school?

TOBIAS – I actually wasn’t really good in school [Laughing]. I have no scholastic background, so basically the outlook 10 years ago, had this not happened, did not look that good.

OD – There are few (if no other) bands that have managed to achieve the success that GHOST is currently experiencing, although it’s an exciting and wonderful thing, surely that, in its own right, is a huge achievement for you?

TOBIAS – Up until I was 29 years old, I was on the outside looking into the music industry, trying to figure out a way in [Laughing] and during this time, this industry was not interested in having me as part of it.

Since I was a ‘late bloomer‘ in this business and I got this very coveted opportunity, I feel that my biggest achievement is doing the right things at the right time. This is a highly strange situation for me at times. For instance we are a crew of 25 people here today. I’m not setting up the stage, tuning the guitars etc… I’m expected to put my shit on and get up on that stage, do a little dance and sing my songs in the somewhat correct key [Laughing]

If I have to talk about someone else that made all of this happen, it’s my wife, who gave me the freedom and the pass to continue to chase my dreams when things were just starting to happen.

I remember her saying; “Why don’t you quit your job and just go for it?”

OD – At what point in time did this happen?

TOBIAS – Only a couple of months after Opus Eponymous came out. I was in a critical moment in time. I was employed in a position at a company doing a job that I was not really good at, and I didn’t really enjoy nor felt any value in doing.

She then said to me one day; “It seems like some good things are happening with your ‘rock dreams’, so why don’t you just quit your job and try that? It’s not like your job is worth anything to you. So, you can just do that and if it doesn’t work out, then at least you’ve tried it”.

When I look back on that and realise what she helped me do, most people don’t get that break. Most people who are in a relationship and are grown up, with children, just don’t get a pass like that.

Of course, my Mother also was a huge support for me. When I was in school, she was very saddened that I was such a poor performer and we went to many of the school teacher meetings where there were saying things like; “What can we do to aid you?” [Laughing] and my Mom was like [crying sound] “I don’t know what you want to do with your life“.

Meanwhile I’m over there in the corner being obnoxious, telling teachers to “go fuck themselves“. My Mom had to deal with a lot of worrying and hoping that life will fall in place for me. And by 2010 she was finally beginning to think; ‘Maybe this ‘rock’ thing is actually gonna work out!“, because I finally had a job and with two kids etc..

OD – As Mother’s do, she stood by you all the way.

TOBIAS – Yes, she believed in me.

OD – She’s been to the shows I’m assuming. She know’s all about the ‘Cardinal’ then?

TOBIAS – [Laughing] Yes, she’s been there and loves it. She is not an authoritarian. My Mom was born in the ’40’s and is very “arty“. She was very much a part of the ’60’s generation. In fact, a little bit of side information for you. My Mom bought my first and my second guitar.

OD – What kind of guitar was it and do you still have it?

TOBIAS – Unfortunately, I don’t have that guitar. Ironically, since we’re here with Metallica today, the first guitar that I had was a black Fernandes Strat,  just like the one that Kirk (Hammet, Metallica) had on the cover of the original “Garage Days‘ ’87 release.

That was my first guitar and I was so proud that I had the same guitar that Kirk Hammet had and here I am today, sitting backstage on tour with Metallica. Talk about full circle in life. It’s mind-blowing for me, it really is.

OD – I guess there was no hesitation when the Metallica offer came in then?

TOBIAS – I believe the term used was; “A stone-cold no-brainer‘ [Laughing]. It really felt like it was the right time to do this much more than say, if we were given this tour six or seven years ago.

OD – I remember the first time I ever saw Ghost live was back at the 2011 UK Download Festivaland you were on the Pepsi-Max tent, during Soundgarden’s performance on the main stage. There was only a couple of hundred people in that tent but that show was fantastic.

TOBIAS – I remember that show. Phil Anselmo and the guys from Anthrax were standing on the side of the stage watching. That was a really big show for us as we almost cancelled because we did a show in Sweden the night before and we just about didn’t make the journey. It happened because it was very much based on my will to play Donington Park.

Not only were we seen by a lot of cool people, but also that was when our now manager saw us perform for the very first time. I didn’t know that she would end up managing us at the time but it was because of that performance that things took a huge turn for us.

Ghost is very much a collective effort in many ways, from the people that work with us, our crew, techs, management, band members etc, they are all responsible for making this happen. That show was very much a landmark gig that changed the course of the bands destiny.

So, the message here kids is don’t cancel shows, you just don’t know what might happen. [Laughing] Just be cool to everyone because you just don’t know who you’re dealing with. One day a stage hand, or lighting tech, could very well become the next big label, booking agent etc. Just be cool to everyone all the time.

Catch GHOST on tour with Metallica NOW. US dates have also just been announced. Check out the full listing above. For more information, please click here.

ALL RIGHTS OWNED BY OVERDRIVE.IE

[happymetalgirl]

March 2020

Wow, March seems like such a bygone era, time doesn’t mean anything anymore with so much turned upside down (especially in the music industry) in the throes of the pandemic going on right now. One of those things was me losing my punctuality with this blog. While I haven’t been on top of my writing, I have certainly been listening as much as ever, with plenty to talk about this month, so better late than never I suppose. Here are the albums I listened to during March.

Code Orange - Underneath

I just wrote about the Pittsburgh metalcore juggernauts’ highly anticipated fourth full-length, but I’ll summarize again what led me say that Underneath is a good album, but not as good as the breakthrough album whose high bar this album was always going to have a hard time clearing. The band go all in on the industrial elements that accented Forever on Underneath, as well as push their luck on the more melodic, alternative metal-oriented hardcore tracks, which came with some growing pains, the latter more than the former. And I really think that they probably are just growing pains with the band getting more comfortable with this expansion of their sound, which (contrary to what the many zealous 10/10 reviews are saying) I think the band will get significantly better with if they keep this trajectory going into their next album.

8/10

Body Count - Carnivore

I really have tried to focus on the positive aspects of Body Count’s music, the fearless, topical, confrontational lyricism and the capacity the band has to generate a good hardcore breakdown, but the band really do seem to be unable to get out of this one-dimensional rut they’re stuck in, with Carnivore simply a few shovels deeper in. The band’s appeal tires very quickly with Ice-T’s recycling of lyrical themes and his band’s repetitions of generic hardcore tropes. They come through with a few moments of intensity, a sick breakdown or two, but the positive, hopeful moments are too few and far between. I would think that with not a whole lot of competition and a hip hop icon behind the microphone that Body Count would have the capacity to do more for rap metalcore, but they seem stuck in a cycle I do respect the stances Body Count takes against injustice, and I want them to be a more prominent, important voice in metal, but they have some climbing to do to get there.

4/10

My Dying Bride - The Ghost of Orion

The grand masters of gothic death-doom don’t ever really steer too far off course, rather they sometimes just take their foot off the gas, as they do on The Ghost of Orion. It has all the elements of any beautifully melancholic My Dying Bride album; the slow and burgeoning guitars, the downtrodden vocal melodies juxtaposed with bursts of growled anguish, and the melodrama of vibrato-laden strings; but it’s all arranged and conjured without much tangible passion or pain. That’s by the standard of the band’s pretty solid discography though, so with that considered, it’s by no means a terrible death-doom album, it just won’t be converting anybody or getting anyone more excited about My Dying Bride and death-doom.

6/10

Warp Chamber - Implements of Excruciation

Brutal death metal can often seem pretty one-dimensional, and it often is, but in the hands of a band who really has the ambition to make more of it than just some guttural rumblings from all the instruments involved, the genre can really take on a wholy new monstrous form, its horrific, deathly instrumentation heightened by the melody and the compositional nuance that a competent band can bring to it, and that is exactly what Warp Chamber do on their debut album here. Full of cavernous growls and ceaseless low-register battery, it can seem, at face value like just a regular brutal death metal album, but when the band starts breaking out the winding tangents and manic solos that, again, just heighten the chaos and compliment the brutality. It’s more than just regular-ass death metal, and I’m glad to have heard this debut. I hope Warp Chamber has more in store.

8/10

Loathe - I Let It in and It Took Everything

Do you love Deftones? Maybe you do. I do. But I don’t think either of us love Deftones as much as Loathe loves Deftones. I’m goofing right now, but Loathe really do channel their Deftones fandom real hard when they’re not in full hardcore mode or getting eccentric with the segues on this album. And it does offer a great combination of styles, with angular, low-tuned modern metalcore noise riffage juxtaposed pretty strongly against the gauzy shoegaze that immediately hearkens to that facet of Deftones’ music. The band struggle to get the flow just right on certain songs and across the album in general, with some pretty inconsistent songwriting, but it’s definitely outweighed by its still somehow immersive quality and the strength of the individual pieces going into it.

7/10

Earth Rot - Black Tides of Obscurity

The Australian band brings forth some more of the tried and true modern death metal a la Bloodbath, Carnation, and modern Cannibal Corpse, but with enough eerie, blackened oddity throughout the songs to keep the journey from being too homogenous. It’s these moments that both give extra life to the bludgeoning, but at-times basic, modern death metal the band is conjuring and kind of disrupt the flow of that muscly death metal. At times I do wish the band would chose to focus one or the other more exclusively, but if this pushes Earth Rot further into this kind of stylistically ambitious death metal, I appreciate the stepping stone this album acts as.

7/10

Myrkur - Folksange

After riding a pretty strong wave of critical adoration for her contribution to the growing wave of atmospheric black metal that culminated in the respectably sonically unique Mareridt in 2017, Myrkur’s Amelie Bruun has taken a step back to refocus or recalibrate artistically. As the title suggests, Folksange finds its creator rewarding herself for her contributions to black metal with a return to her love of Scandinavian folk music, and you can tell she loves it on this entirely folk-music-based project devoid of any black metal elements. I may not have been as head-over-heels as a lot of critics were about her black metal albums, but I certainly appreciated her folk-inspired ambient take on the genre, especially the unique sonic pallet of Mareridt. I liked those albums quite a bit, yet it is clear that the sound on Folksange is her forte, which makes sense if Scandinavian folk has been a longer-standing passion than black metal for Bruun. The instrumentation is absolutely beautiful and Bruun’s angelic voice fits so perfectly with it, but Folksange is more than just superficially aesthetically gorgeous. The songs (old and original) are written and arranged with such a natural knack for the style that makes it such a serenely enveloping experience that stands as Myrkur’s best work yet. I highly recommend it.

8/10

Old Man Gloom - Seminar IX: Darkness of Being

The famed supergroup’s first of two releases planned for this year after the loss of Caleb Scofield sees them dabbling around in an experimental array of genres that all the members have some sort of significant experience and specialty with. From post-metal of the sludgy, Isis-esque variety to the more noisily esoteric, Sumac-esque variety, to distinctly post-hardcore-influenced stylistic diversions, the band’s wide-reaching sound takes all sorts of twists and turns along their most recent experiment with the members’ varying pedigrees and influences guiding the music on quite the unusual nomadic trek. From the repetitive chord progression of the opening track to the album’s noisy finishing tracks (one of which features what sounds like rocks tumbling down a shaft of some sort for an extensive period of time), the band let their adventurers’ instincts guide them as they wander through their own experiment through the interplay of their members’ various styles. It’s weird, and not super polished, but it’s certainly fixating.

7/10

Candlemass - The Pendulum

After further cementing their relatively unchallenged status as the kings of epic doom metal with The Door to Doom about a year ago, Candlemass have offered up a quick little demo-focused EP with one new fleshed-out song, the title track, which takes them to the faster, more Dio-era-inspires side of their sound with the grand, soaring operatic vocals on the chorus and the relatively fast (by doom standards) guitar rhythms on the verses (think “Paranoid” or “Children of the Grave’). I love the very Dio-esque delivery of the word “fools” at the end too, very fitting. The demo track “Snakes of Goliath” slows it back down to Ozzy-era Sabbath worship in typical Candlemass fashion, the riffs and arrangement pretty respectable for a supposed demo track. The other full-length demo, “Porcelain Skull”, by contrast, does feel much less compositionally fleshed out and more like an actual demo piece. The other three demo tracks are just little instrumental studio doodles that don’t really add anything to the EP. If this EP could be interpreted as any kind of power move, it’s that Candlemass at demo level have just such a sharp compositional intuition for grand Sabbath doom metal and can pretty much nail it in their sleep.

demo-level 7/10

Igorrr - Spirituality and Distortion

I was definitely looking forward to this album big-time after the gloriously unashamed weirdness of 2017’s Savage Sinusoid filled a massive void I felt was needed in my metal bank. By contrast, Spirituality and Distortion is such a reserved project it feels either shy or cowardly from the usually hyper-eccentric band. The greater absence of the vocals of Laurent Lunoir on the album highlight also just how much character he brought to Savage Sinusoid through his zany performances. Without his vocal wildness across the album, the attention on Spirituality and Distortion is then directed to the significantly timid production and electronic finagling that doesn’t measure up to that of Savage Sinusoid.

6/10

In This Moment - Mother

*Sigh* In This Moment is one of those bands who I think really do show a lot of potential but just can’s seem to reach it. They get a lot of unnecessary shit for Maria Brink’s sexy stage presence and generally theatrical aesthetic and live show, but they do have the capacity to produce emotive alt metal ballads like “Whore” and bangers like “Big Bad Wolf” that give some insight into what heights they could potentially reach if they were much more consistent. I was hoping that Mother would be a solid rejuvenation/comeback after the benign disappointment of 2017′s Ritual, and while it’s certainly different, it’s not better. Mother really tries to take on this big, enveloping sound, and biblical, post-apocalyptic feel, and it can sort of carry it for a little bit and be temporarily immersive until the band needs to go full force. When it’s just some fancy eerie atmosphere and Maria Brink’s sultry vocal delivery, it holds up okay, but when the horribly synthetically produced arena-booming instrumentation really comes in and breaks that immersion, you remember that it really is all just trite alt rock whose lofty flair is all a facade.

4/10

Mamaleek - Come and See

Undoubtedly the most wildly experimental album to grace my ears so far this year, I was not expecting such a forceful avant-garde project from Mamaleek so relatively soon after Out of Time, but damn I’m glad I got it! The anonymous brotherly duo have always taken black metal on quite the far-off journey whenever they bring it along on one, ever making it their mission to create something one-of-a-kind with their work, and Come and See has to be their most enthralling album yet. Ramming together the transfixing manic anguish of their blackened experimental noise with the angular dynamism of jazz and even some blues rock in a musical particle collider, Mamaleek have made a truly one-of-a-kind album, and that’s even by their standards. I’ve mentioned before that I tend to like my jazz pretty rowdy and aggressive (like my metal), and the chaos that Mamaleek already generates with their brand of black metal is perfect to trim with and infuse with the angular dissonance of traditional jazz at its more energetically extreme. While the array of chaotic sounds may make Come and See their most intangibly black metal album, the ethos of that root genre pierces through by way of the harshly shrieked vocals just as much as the new jazz elements do. I really might just have to do a full-length review on this one because there is so much going on here that is worth admiring and I can’t stop loving it.

9/10

Phalanx - Golden Horde

This album came out a few months ago and has been making some pretty significant waves on Bandcamp, and for good reason. The relatively young band on their second release ever do showcase a pretty good knack for groove and death metal brutality, balancing slow, thick, tasty groove and blasting death metal without falling into metalcore breakdown clichés or death metal clichés. The three-pronged vocal attack the band touts isn’t quite as dazzling as they might think it is (with the abundance of talented vocalists capable of shapeshifting through a variety of metal vocal techniques), but I do think it would be cool to hear them use that approach with all three vocalists acting more simultaneously to more effectively convey the chaos of the war-related lyrical themes they focus on. Nevertheless, this quarter-hour taster is a great starter for them and definitely worth checking out. Hopefully it’s a foreshadowing of the blossoming of a bright new act for death metal.

7/10

Regarde Les Hommes Tomber - Ascension

I’ve been seeing a lot of praise being thrown this album’s way, and I honestly can’t disagree too much with that it is a pretty damn good album. It is very reminiscent of the Numenorean album Adore that I praised so highly last year. Like Adore, Ascension is an atmospheric black metal album that could easily hook your typical dude who hates Deafheaven and blackgaze and makes a really big deal about it. The band’does well on Ascension to avoid the reliance on generic post-rock guitar reverb ambiance that turns so many people off from blackgaze, working together a lot of unique sonic twists that don’t usually find their way into ambient black metal and channeling direct, cutting, yet humanly vibrant instrumentation that’s backed by raw cries of agony very similar to what Numenorean was doing last year. Perhaps this is the new way forward for atmospheric black metal and blackgaze. If so, Regarde Les Hommes Tomber are doing well to lead the way.

8/10

Deadspace - A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars

I already offered my praises to this album at length with my long-form post dedicated to it, but I’ll give it another shout for its brilliant, bittersweet sending off of the seemingly tireless Australian band. Deadspace give their oppressive/depressive sound the added magnitude and glory offered by choir and orchestral elements with more tact than most bands that use those elements regularly. I really am surprised that the band have decided to split up at such a high point in their artistry and I wish there could be more from them, but I have to respect their decision to end it here, and A Portrait of Sacrificial Scars is a great note to end on.

9/10

[shenlongshao]

GG Strive Thoughts: Part 3

Welcome to the last part of my Guilty Gear Strive thoughts!^_^ I'll be focusing on the art-style and character designs, so there will be lots of pictures in this post. I hope you enjoy reading!

Art-Style & Graphics ---------------

Guilty Gear's visuals always had a detailed, Sci-Fi fantasy anime look with creativity of the 1990s and early 2000s. This mostly stayed the same until Xrd SIGN, which introduced 3D cel-shaded graphics in a new way. The art-style also changed a bit from previous games, although it has kept its creativity.

GG Xrd SIGN and the following games(Revelator and Revelator 2) look beautiful, but it took me a while to get used to the art-style because of those dreaded chins. The characters should've just used their chins to fight cause of how long and pointy they are; just go "SLLASSHHHH!" XD  Certain features of characters were exaggerated like Sol's shoulders being a bit too wide for his body or how Baiken's hair is thicker and spikier. Some people say it's "too anime", but that isn't the right word for it. I would say "whimsical" is main trait from the art-style, which is fitting for how funny the interactions are in-game and lighter tone in story.

Guilty Gear Strive keeps the cel-shaded 3D graphics, but manages to expand it further. Instead of its presentation akin to an anime TV series, it's now akin to a high-budget anime movie with detail given to both the characters and the environments. It's less whimsical this time, giving the impression the story will be darker in tone. I'm really happy the art-style was changed to being closer to the older GG games like X2; no more ice-cream cone chins!XD  The characters also got redesigned to match the essence of the new game. I'll be talking about eachone in order from least to most in terms of design changes. I'll also rate them in Guilty Gear style grade form. POTEMKIN ------------------- There seems to be mixed reactions when Potemkin got revealed for GG Strive. Some were happy he looked generally the same while others were a little disappointed and asked, "How come he didn't get a huge redesign like the other characters?!" The answer is he already did; this is how Potemkin originally looked like in the GG series.

This design relates to Potemkin's story in the beginning. The Zepp empire in the past was a very corrupted, technology advanced nation. It contained battle-slaves with strength enhancement steriods and bound them with a special limiter. Potemkin was one of these battle-slaves with his huge, red metal color being the limiter. If he ever took it off, it would explode. However, Zepp was changed when Gabriel became President and freed all the Zeppian slaves, including Potemkin. He now serves as Gabriel's bodyguard out of genuine loyalty, gratitude, and care for his mentor and the renewed Zepp.

Judging on his old design by itself, I think he looked average(based on what he's wearing). His features definitely fit the saying "don't judge a book by its cover" because Potemkin is actually a gentle giant who's very intelligent. But the way he looks(except when interacting with certain characters), it's like he wants to break someone's bones, lol.

In the concept artwork in Guilty Gear X Plus(Japanese exclusive game), it hinted of what Potemkin will eventually developed into look-wise and story-wise. Even the pose from this pic was used later in Xrd SIGN. I really wish the design of the boots was used instead those weird looking ones he's wearing now, XD.

Now to look at Potemkin's design in Xrd SIGN.

This is Potemkin's drastic redesign needed because of the changes in his life and his resolve being tested. I love this design so much because it accurately portrays Potemkin's personality. The first is his steel helmet with a spike at the top, accented with the Zepp symbol at the center of his forehead. His face is mostly shrouded in darkness except for the glowing lens. The yellow ponytail fur attached adds to the essence of a modern steel knight. Next is the black collar having spikes at the front; he also has on spiked shoulder plates to emphasis his strength. The power part is also in the round-shaped limiters attached to the upper parts of his uniform and glove compartment of his gauntlets. The design of his gauntlets is derived from the GGX Plus concept art, except the gloves completely cover his fingers and has a robotic aesthetic to it. I notice green is the most dominant color in Potemkin's design and there's a reason why besides it being Zepp's uniform.

Here is the Green Personality taken from Color Psychology (https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-green.html):

You are a practical, down-to-earth person with a love of nature. You are stable and well balanced or are striving for balance - in seeking this balance, you can at times become unsettled and anxious. Having a personality color green means you are kind, generous and compassionate - good to have around during a crisis as you remain calm and take control of the situation until it is resolved.

You are caring and nurturing to others - however you must be careful not to neglect your own needs while giving to others. You are intelligent and love to learn - you are quick to understand new concepts. You are a good citizen and like to be involved in community groups. You have high moral standards and doing the right thing is important to you.

There is more, but I only taken pieces that describe Potemkin's personality, showing why green is his main color. Now onto his look in GG Strive starting with his helmet.

On the forehead of the helmet, the Zepp symbol is no longer a design mark, but an carved symbol with the words "Armor-clad faith" underneath. Instead of just darkness on his face, it accentuates the robotic aesthetic with the gears and the lens having an orange tint. Next is a full body screenshot of Potemkin.

The spiked shoulder plates is less noticeable and his uniform is more formal. There's now a maroon-red collar with white trim and yellow buttons. The spikes on the black collar part of his outfit is gone, there's thick pockets on the lower part of his suit and has a brown belt instead of black. His boots is also brown instead of black and the plates around his feet is orange instead of red. There's additional limiters on his upper back that is revealed when doing certain attacks, showing his power has grown more. His muscle mass has also gotten super HUGE to the point I wouldn't be surprised if he reached Sentinel(X-Men) size, XD.

Design Rating: S++(Fantastic!) SOL BADGUY ------------ ---------- Sol Badguy is the main protagonist, so there was never a worry or surprise of his GG Strive design. There's also the fact his design isn't really new; it's heavily derived from the artwork of Guilty Gear 2:Overture. But first is looking at Sol's most iconic design from the GG series.

I'll always love this design because I think it's stylish, cool, and timeless. He's handsome in the traditional tough-guy way and perfectly fits the anti-hero type. His metal red headband acts as a limiter for his Gear powers and has the words "Rock You" in the center of his forehead. Besides it symbolizing his love for Queen's "Sheer Heart Attack" music album and controlling his Gear powers, it also symbolizes how he keeps his inner thoughts to himself and close-mindedness. He wears a black undershirt layered with a sleeveless, chest-length red jacket with a buckle strap. This style is very unconventional, which is exactly Sol is; he doesn't follow typical conventions. His red and black gloves conveys his toughness while his belt with the "FREE" tells of his philosophy. This also hints complexity to his nature since the belt is from when he was in the Holy Order, an aspect of his past. This shows he's inwardly caring and values the people in life along with his experiences. Lastly, is his white pants accented with buckles and red shoes.

The GG2:Overture Short Stories goes into some detail of the events before the game like how he was entrusted to raise Sin(Ky & Dizzy's son), etc. The major difference with Sol's design from the short stories is he's wearing a sensible red jacket similar to his old one, but its design still has traits of being its own style. His black undershirt is slightly different with a small V-shape cut-out in the middle, longer sleeves, and slightly loose around his stomach instead of fitted. His gloves has more of a biker vibe to them and no aspect of red nor buckles within them. He still wears red shoes on his feet, though tweaked in its looks. While this did hinted of Sol's character development, it wasn't a large factor because alot of the huge events at the time and before were placed on him rather than him confronting it by himself. It's why for Xrd SIGN, he primary reverted to his iconic look, though his GG2:Overture Short Stories look did get tweaked and used within the game's Story Mode. Now for his GG Strive look.

His GG Strive design blends both his GG2:Overture Short Stories look and aspects of his iconic design, which I really like. The red jacket with black trim conveys his free-spirited persona, yet also comfortable and relaxed. There's also a little bit more white seen on the cuffs of his jacket, meaning his heart is more open. This relates to his character development of finally confronting his past, his feelings, and his relationships. But he's still Sol Badguy and there's much for him to find out and explore, especially since red and black is still his main colors. There is deep meaning to this too.

Red Personality(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-red.html):

You are action oriented and physically active - sex is a necessity to you - you have strong survival instincts. Lovers of red are the explorers and pioneers of the world, the entrepreneurs and builders who like to be first in discovering new physical realms. You are always in a hurry, wanting to do everything right now. Patience is not one of your strong points. Red people can be aggressive and easy to anger, often exhibiting a violent temper - this is negative passion and energy. You flare up instantaneously but calm down quite quickly once you get it out of your system and then forget it ever happened. You have a strong need for power and control which is connected to your basic survival instincts.

Black Personality(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-black.html):

You are independent, strong-willed and determined and like to be in control of yourself and situations. You may appear intimidating to even your closest colleagues and friends, with an authoritarian, demanding and dictatorial attitude. You hold things inside and are not good at sharing yourself with others, possibly out of fear. You may be retreating behind black during a difficult time in your life such as a serious illness or a period of grief - black protects, allowing for a deep inner healing without interference from others. I'll add traits of the color White since there's a noticeable amount on Sol.(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/color-white.html): Positive traits of White: Simplicity, self-efficient, growth/new beginnings, open, equality, rescuer, and sense of completion. These traits describe Sol. Overall, I like the design and feel it suits him well. Design Rating: S+++(Perfect!) MAY ----------- So far, May is the only female character revealed for the initial roster of GG Strive. There's mixed reactions with May's redesign for the new game. Some are happy she finally looks like she's in her early to mid teens(like 14 or 16) instead like a little girl. But others aren't happy with the changes to her outfit, saying it's bland. Let's look at May's iconic design. 

In my opinion, May is the coolest looking child character. Her open-sides style coat with side slits layered with a skin-tight bodysuit blends both cute and stylish. Adding to it is the tricon pirate hat, silver plating on her wrists and neckline, and orange short boots with black trim. Lastly, a black belt is around her waist while buckles accents her orange coat. This shows she's spunky, cheerful, and deceptively strong. In the story, her origins was unknown at the time, which perfectly fits due to there's black as part of color scheme(one of the meaning for black is mystery). Story-wise, May's development gradually grows from finding Johnny and later recruiting Dizzy as a member of the crew. Her curiosity of her heritage surfaces, causing some changes in her design.

In Xrd SIGN, Her skin-tight bodysuit is gone and replaced with just a black, fitted tank underneath her orange overalls. Her pants is loose-fitting along with having a big buckle around her waist and different boots still in orange with black trim. She doesn't have the silver plating collar, but other aspects of her iconic look like her pirate hat is kept. May finally finds out she's Japanese and dealing a mysterious condition that (currently) can't be cured. This is a huge story development for May that leads to be expanded further and another redesign. First is looking up the facial shot of May for Guilty Gear Strive.

May's facial features is the first noticeable difference. The art-style is a strong factor in this, but May looks physically older. She still has big, cute brown eyes, though not as large as in Xrd SIGN. This makes her face appear a little longer face to convey a hint of maturity. Yet, she still hasn't escaped being just cute in an innocent way. Another difference is her hair is slightly shorten to halfway to her back instead to her waist. It's also loose instead of a thick ponytail within her pirate hat, which I think it's a nice little change. Her hat is shaped more round instead of oversized tricon while still retaining the pirate skull at the front. The anchor design on the sides makes it both simple, yet stylish. Now to see the full body of May's new look!

.....Lol, May is wearing a dumb orange hoodie, XD. What's worse is the hoodie has no special designs pertaining to May's personality or style; it's overly casual. There's also no shape, making her look like a fat fish. The skin-tight black short-shorts doesn't help with how oversized the hoodie is, which if it weren't for certain angles, it gives the illusion she isn't wearing anything on her lower body. It looks like lounge wear meant to be worn around the house instead of clothing a person would wear going on an adventure. Speaking of adventure, she has a backpack.

The backpack itself is cute because it's Chimaki(mascot of GG) and do see the the letter J with a heart; meaning love for Johnny. But other than this, this backpack also doesn't really relate to May. Besides being the mascot for the series, Chimaki is specific to Sin because it's favorite toy. None of May's official art ever showed her having a Chimaki toy or accessory. The casual look gives me the impression she quit the Jellyfish Pirates, but her winning animation of her saying "Jellyfish victory!" and Leap(the elderly lady who cooks) being there disproves this theory. Besides the hat, the only things kept from her iconic look is her gloves and boots. There's a heart on one of her thighs; a fitting aspect for a pirate.

Now to look at the Orange personality since it's May's main color(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-orange.html): 

With orange as your favorite color, you are warm, optimistic, extroverted and often flamboyant. You are friendly, good-natured and a generally agreeable person. You are assertive and determined rather than aggressive - having a personality color orange means you are more light-hearted and less intense than those who love red. You thrive on human social contact and social gatherings, bringing all types together.

You live your life based on your 'gut reactions'. You are an adventurer - you love the outdoor life, camping, climbing mountains and indulging in adventurous sports such as sky diving and hang gliding. You are the daredevil, always looking towards your next challenge, your next great adventure. 

This definitely fits May's nature. My impression of her simpler look probably hints of May is unsure of herself and trying to figure something out. Her expression in her new character portrait has this too; it's the first one of her not smiling. But I still think this new look for May is bad(except for the hat,  the boots, and the gloves). Her design should've been something like this picture link below.

https://imgur.com/Ue1XdhT The top would need to cover her stomach, but this design perfectly fits with May's nature and role as a Jellyfish Pirate. It also conveys she's adventurous and can easily implemented the backpack as part of the design. But it wasn't used... I'm nicknaming her May of the Jelly-Fat, lol. Worst design so far(and hopefully the only one). Design Rating:D(for Derailed) KY KISKE ----------------- Ky's radical redesign for GG Strive was such a huge shock to everyone. At first, people thought it was Sin(Ky's son) until examining him closely. It's funny how many people are saying "Ky's handsome now" and saying he has an athletic body when in reality, he always did, XD. It isn't the first time Ky got big changes to his look based on the events in his life, but I'm going to focus on Ky's iconic design.

Ky is the opposite of Sol; the traditional knight-in-shining-armor type hero. This is another design I'll call timeless and my personal favorite look for Ky. He's very handsome in a princely way, which is fitting since Ky is a French noble. He wears a white shoulder cape containing a high collar with blue trim. It's attached to the blue knight-tunic with black trim in the front, accented with a white, trench-coat like detail. There's twin belts attached to his blue and black gloves while one is on his matching boots. Layered underneath his uniform is his black and white, sleeveless turtle neck and fitted detached sleeves. The belt around his waist with "HOPE" conveys Ky's philosophy. This attire is the Holy Order uniform, which conveys how strongly Ky holds onto the teachings and experiences he had during those times. His story at the time was about fulfilling his duty and doing what he knows and believes is right. Blue and white has always been Ky's main colors, which tells alot about his personality.

Meaning of White Personality(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-white.html): 

Having a personality color white means you are neat and immaculate in your appearance, in the presentation of your home and in your car, almost to the point of being fanatical. You are far-sighted, with a positive and optimistic nature. You are well-balanced, sensible, discreet and wise. You think carefully before acting - you are definitely not prone to impulsive behavior. You tend to have a great deal of self control. You may appear to be shy, but you do have strong beliefs about most things and love the opportunity to air those beliefs. The challenge for you is to be open-minded and flexible and to communicate your needs and desires. Meaning of Blue Personality(https://www.empower-yourself-with-color-psychology.com/personality-color-blue.html):   You are conservative, reliable and trustworthy - you are quite trusting of others although you are very wary in the beginning until you are sure of the other person. At the same time, you also have a deep need to be trusted. You are not impulsive or spontaneous - you always think before you speak and act and do everything at your own pace in your own time. You take time to process and share your feelings. You are genuine and sincere, and you take your responsibilities seriously. Having a personality color blue means you have a deep need for peace and harmony in your everyday life - you don't like having your feathers ruffled. You would benefit from daily meditation and quiet time for reflection, introspection and self-discovery.

You appear to be confident and self-controlled, but may be hiding your vulnerable side. Being a personality color blue means you are generally fairly even-tempered, unless your emotions take over - then you can become either moody and over-emotional, or cool and indifferent. You are sensitive to the needs of others and caring with your close circle of friends. While you are friendly and sociable, you prefer the company of your own close group of friends.

You are a rescuer and love to be needed but one of your lessons is to learn to love yourself first - you live from your heart and are always busy putting the needs of others first. You can be rigid - you like to stick to what is familiar to you and it is hard to sway you from your path - you stubbornly do things your way even if there is a better way. You need to have direction & order in your living and work spaces - untidiness and unpredictability overwhelm you.

You are approachable and friendly, always making people feel welcome in your life. You have a thirst for knowledge in order to gain wisdom and appear knowledgeable in whatever area interests you. You are spiritual or religious with a high degree of devotion to family, God, or other causes that are important to you. If reacting negatively, you are prone to self-pity. These perfectly fit Ky's personality and has mostly stayed with him throughout his character development. Now to look at his GG Strive redesign beginning with the head.

One of the obvious difference is Ky's hair is short, reminiscent of his iconic look. But it raises the question of how since according to the story, it's stated his hair grows rapidly no matter how many times he tries to cut it(due to heavily implying he's part Gear). I'm guessing either Ky followed Sin's method of cutting his hair every 3 days or he found a special hair product to prevent rapid growth, XD. I notice the style of his hair is a bit different; the strands of his bangs is shorter and thicker. It creates a boyish look instead of a young man, which doesn't fit Ky. It doesn't seem noticeable during gameplay, but cutscene-like sequences it's the opposite. His hair should've been exactly like GGX2.

His facial structure and eyes in GG Strive is exactly like in GGX2 except for one part; his chin. While Ky's chin was never wide like most male characters, it usually isn't this narrow either. The narrower chin makes him look younger and with how the hair is styled, it gives the impression it's Ky from an earlier timeline. If his chin was similar to how it was in GG X2, it will improve his look alot and show he's mature and sophisticated. Next is examining the full body picture of his new look.

This is a huge departure in many ways. The only aspect inspired from his iconic design is the shoulder cape, but it lacks the blue trim around the helms and collar. Instead, there's black trim at the helms and hints of blue at the back with the words "Illyrium". His semi-fingerless gloves with fingernail plating is something he doesn't usually wear, but the back of his hands does have plating saying "Nothing can be done without hope". It shows he still generally has the same philosophy and key traits he's known for. The fact his "HOPE" belt is replaced with 2 standard belts(one black and the other brown) implies his mindset he carried from the Holy Order is gone and became open-minded. His open, V-neckline shirt with a single sleeve is inspired from this.

I do find it interesting how this reveals(pun intended) a different side of him, XD. It adds a sense of sensuality that leading men from romantic novels have and obviously it being sexy. Next is his fitted pants accented with blue crosses at the front then his boots with blue trim at the bottom. The most significant change is how Ky's dominant color is now black, which has important meaning to his character development.

Positive traits of Black: Include protection and comfort, strong, contained, formal, sophisticated, seductive, mysterious, endings & beginnings.

Negative traits of Black: Depressing and pessimistic, secretive and withholding, conservative and serious, power & control, sadness and negativity.

All of these fit Ky and since he's wearing alot of black instead of blue and white, this implies he has or going to have an internal struggle. I haved mixed feelings about his new design.

I love the concept of it and think it's nice to see Ky wear something different as his main attire. By itself the outfit is good and easy to adjust to, it's just not as unique as his original design. The design of blue crosses from his GG Accent Core Plus ending should've been implemented in the new design and add some gold trim to balance out all the black. I think his gloves should be changed to be more stylish along with the silver plating. If it had these tweaks, Ky's new design would be perfect.  

Design Rating: A(Great!) CHIPP ZANUFF ------------------------ The reveal of Chipp's redesign has mostly been positive, but all of us immediately said "He is so BUFF!" People say he looks handsome now and have joked he worked out at the same gym as Chris Redfield, XD. Let's look at Chipp's previous design!

Chipp's iconic look definitely displays the street-punk style and rowdy persona. This perfectly fits with his dark past of being a former biochemical drug dealer and addict. He has wild spiky hair, small red earrings, and a leather choker around his neck. The fishnet undershirt is both punk-style and those who practice ninjitsu wears. He has fingerless gloves with silver, square-shaped plating. This aspect is also on his belt and short-length boots. There's two leather buckles strapped around the right leg of his white pants and has on a loose-fitting ninja vest with silver buttons. This highlights his newly adopted values he got from his mentor and father-like figure Master Tsuyoshi. Chipp even has on black eyeliner around his eyes to emphasizes the punk look. Since he primarily wears black and white with hints of red, this tells about his personality. Black and white together obviously means viewing things in a straightforward way instead of complex like gray. Red conveys of his hot-headed masculinity, passion, and impatient nature. Combined with the other colors, it shows Chipp's other side of having pure intentions, even though it doesn't always come across right.

In Xrd SIGN, only minor tweaks were made such as adding a red sash attached to his belt, extra detail on his pants and boots, and slightly thicker eyeliner. Ever since becoming president of a (currently) unofficial nation dubbed "Eastern Chipp Kingdom", Chipp's personality seemed to have mellowed some, though still has his impulsive tendencies. Chipp has been through alot of character development since the beginning. Now for his redesign for GG Strive starting with his face.

One of the things I notice about Chipp's face is while it's still narrow, it's a little fuller and smoother with slightly higher cheek bones. His chin is also about an inch or 2 wider than how it was in the Xrd series. His eyes still has the same defined shape, but the eyeliner isn't as thick. These tweaks to his facial features makes him look handsome and approachable instead of angry and rough. But his fiesty side is still there because besides his eye shape, his upper teeth now has some small fangs. Now to see a full body picture...

Chipp's hair also got tweaked; tt's still spiky, but more stylish instead of wild. Instead of strands of hair rest on his forehead, he has noticeable asymmetrical bangs. Besides his red earrings, Chipp's 2 main colors(black and white) is kept along with a little more red from the strings attached to his ninja gauntlets and strapped sandals. He still has the red sash attached to his belt, though this time he has a thick, rope belt(I think it's called "Obi"). His white pants is very loose-fitting and no longer has twin buckle straps, but does have a little more detail with the side silver buttons. On his upper body, Chipp has on a leather vest with a form-fitting, sleeveless turtleneck. The height of the collar covers his mouth and contains buckle straps. This look is inspired from his design in "The Butterfly and Her Gale".

It has aspects of the high collar, gauntlets, and boots, even though the boots was tweaked to be sandals. This redesign shows Chipp fully embraces Japanese culture and the ways of ninjitsu. I think it may also hint of him being or becoming a master himself and training others, especially with how he's gotten so muscular. The way they mixed old and new with Chipp's redesign is amazing and love the tweaks to his face and hair. I do think his pants maybe a bit too wide along with the rope-belt, but other than that his look is perfect.

Design Rating: S++(Awesome!) AXL LOW ------------------- "Axl got PANTS!" is the main reaction people had when he got revealed and the majority agree it's a much needed upgrade. This is the 3rd time Axl has gotten major design changes since GG:The Missing Link. His look from GGX and onwards greatly emphasizes he's heavily inspired from real-life singer Axl Rose. For Axl, I'm going look at his redesign for Xrd SIGN.

In comparison to the others, Axl's design was never high-fantasy or elaborate, but it makes sense he's from the 20th century. His look in Xrd mixes aspects from the 1st GG and GGX, which conveys his easy-going nature and trying to adapt to the future he's in while maintaining his values of the past. He still has his signature UK cap, brown fingerless gloves, and matching shoes. His white shirt has a unique black zipper tie that adds a hint of contemporary along with his blue jacket. Attached to his black belt on the hips is cloths of the UK flag and has on blue shorts. Red and blue has mostly been his main colors(with some white) that tells of his peaceful, friendly, and passionate nature. In the story, Axl is finally confronted about why he time-skips and must make a hard decision that forever change his life. The choice he made leads him to major character development along with what role he will play in the story, so he needed another redesign to reflect this.

This design shows Axl has embraced the current timeline while maintaining his love for his country. His fingerless gloves is a lighter brown along with his ankle-length boots. He wears a red plaid jacket with white sleeves and black with orange trim at the helms. Underneath is his a sleeveless, form-fitting tank with 3 zippers at the front and a brown buckle at the mid-section. On his lower body is a belt with a UK buckle and fitted, detailed black pants with zippers on the side. This look is inspired by the concept art.

I notice his new design as a mixture of colors compared to before, though it seems black is the most dominant color. One of the meanings for black is power and control, which fits with how Axl now has control over his Time powers. He also has an aura of confidence compared to his uncertainty in the past games. This is the perfect design for Axl because he looks amazing and conveys his personality well.

Design Rating: S+++(Perfect!)

Thank you for reading this! I'll make a series of this as more characters of the game are revealed in the future!^_^

[sluttyshakespeare]

Three Great Details About Apeshit By Beyonce & Jay-Z

“I can’t believe we made it,” sings Beyoncé in “Apeshit,” the first single from her surprise joint album with Jay-Z, Everything Is Love. And to prove that she and her husband have made it, in the song’s accompanying video, Beyoncé delivers this line from the Louvre. As the New York Times has pointed out, it is not actually that expensive to shoot a video in the Louvre (about $17,500 for a full day’s shoot). But music videos aren’t about numbers; they’re about how things feel — and there’s no place on earth that feels as lavish, as rich with accumulated cultural power and wealth and colonialism, as the Louvre. If you want to show that you have made it, that you are rich and powerful and one of the greatest artists of your generation, you go to the Louvre. And as an artistic choice, the Louvre is par for Beyoncé’s course. For the past few years, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter has increasingly cribbed from the iconography of classical Western art in her own image-making. Her pregnancy announcement photo shoot and her birth announcement photo shoot both referenced Botticelli’s Venus and the Renaissance trope of the Madonna and child, and her 2017 Grammys performance drew on goddess imagery from multiple artistic traditions. So when Beyoncé shoots at the Louvre — taking on by turns the poses of Venus de Milo and Victory — she’s continuing an artistic project of recontextualizing classical Western art, of making herself the aesthetic object on which so much wealth and cultural capital has been spent. And coming from a black woman, that’s a radical statement. “In a way, Beyoncé is exploiting/marketing her blackness as creativity — as a kind of weapon — within and against the very Eurocentric system of culture and consumption from which she has benefited,” says James Smalls, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That’s an especially radical statement to make in the context of the Louvre, where little of the art features people of color in positions of strength and power. “From the Middle Ages up to the 19th century, works of art that showed black people usually represented them as servants or secondary figures,” explains Smalls. “They were not deemed worthy subjects of paintings, sculptures, or other kinds of cultural works.” One of the few exceptions to that trend is Marie Benoist’s “Portrait d’une négresse,” also displayed at the Louvre. “That painting is an anomaly because it presents a black person as the sole aestheticized subject and object of a work of art,” Smalls says. And it’s the painting that appears at the end of the “Apeshit - Beyonce & Jay-Z” video, after shot after shot of portraits of white people.

Benoist painted “Portrait” in 1800, during a brief period in which France had abolished colonial slavery. (In 1794, the French emancipation proclamation liberated the colonies; in 1802, Napoleon reinstated slavery.) In that six-year span, portraits of heroic black people became popular in France, and that created an opportunity for an image of a black woman who is not tending to or subordinate to a white person, who is instead considered worthy of being at the center of her own portrait. As Smalls has pointed out, in its full context, “Portrait” is not a wildly politically subversive image. It’s most likely that the unknown and unnamed subject was a servant with few legal rights who had little choice about how she posed or whether she was okay with her breast being exposed to the world for the next 200 years. Benoist the painter has much more agency here than the black woman at the center of the picture. But in the context of “Apeshit,” with its montages of painting after painting of white faces and white statues, “Portrait” feels both shocking and subversive. It’s a black face in the center of the frame, apparently in control of her domain. And it’s one of the only figures in the Louvre that we don’t see get reinterpreted by either the Carters or their dancers: The only figure in the Louvre that can withstand the unstoppable force that is Beyoncé, that does not need to be remade and reexamined. Part of Beyoncé’s project over the past few years has been to treat art as a form of power: It is a form of focused aesthetic attention, of social capital, and of wealth given solid form. Taking over the Louvre means taking all that power for herself and for the black bodies she brings in with her — except for the “Portrait.” In “Apeshit,” it can stand on its own. What do Beyoncé, The Smurfs 2, and you have in common? All three have the theoretical ability to rent out the Louvre. Though there was widespread awe that the Carters’ video for “Apeshit” took place inside the most famous museum in the world, turns out, it’s actually not all that uncommon. According to the New York Times, about 500 shoots take place at the Louvre each year, which have included films on opposite ends of the “is this a good movie” spectrum, from last year’s Wonder Woman to 2013’s The Smurfs 2, which even the Louvre couldn’t save from its 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating. Though the museum only allows photography in the galleries for private use, it makes exceptions for professionals through written authorization. As of 2015, the Louvre’s policy states that to shoot a short film or music video, the cost for both interior and exterior shots would be just €4,500, or about $5,200. It’s possible that if the Carters had a crew of more than 50 people, that number would have been closer to €18,000, but as the Times notes, “there are hotel rooms here that cost more than that.” Hosting private events, however, will cost you a bit more. A tour for under 50 guests will set you back €10,000, while renting out the reception hall beneath I.M. Pei’s pyramid will cost, at the very least, €28,000. Though, to reiterate, that isn’t an amount at which anyone would gasp, “Mon dieu!” Lorde, I have an idea for you about where to film your video for “The Louvre.” Call me! In the video for Beyoncé and Shawn Carter‘s “Apeshit,” the first visual from the pair’s surprise joint album Everything Is Love, the two stars romp through the Louvre in Paris, seizing center stage in a high-culture palace that – like most Western art museums – historically made little room for non-white artists. Some of their mission involves the strategic highlighting of non-white images already in the Louvre. Beyoncé and Jay-Z rap in front of an Egyptian sphinx, and in galleries filled mostly with neo-classical French paintings – white artists, white subjects – the camera singles out black faces. (The video is directed by Ricky Saiz, who also helmed the “Yonce” video from Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s eponymous 2013 album.) Viewers catch brief glimpses of a pair of black figures in Paolo Veronese’s painting “The Wedding at Cana,” where Jesus turned water into wine, as well as a quick look at Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait d’une Négresse,” a depiction of a black woman staring guilelessly back at the viewer. But the Where’s Waldo? moments highlighting black figures are fleeting – the possibilities for this in the Louvre, or any major Western art museum, are limited from the start. So Beyoncé and Jay-Z set about interjecting blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance. They frequently film themselves moving in opposition to the frozen stillness of paintings by Jacques-Louis David, a French neoclassical artist whose work – like “The Oath of the Horatii” and “Madame Récamier” – invokes the Greco-Roman tradition. Much of the potency of the “Apeshit” video comes from the contrasts drawn between the “white” art on the walls and the black women on the gallery floors. In front of David’s “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine,” a court scene of relentless white extravagance, Beyoncé and eight black dancers hold hands and begin to dance. It takes just a few synchronized sashays to upstage David’s massive painting, replacing an ornate symbol of white authority with a celebration of black bodies in motion. The Louvre’s stature depends on people believing that “The Coronation of Empress Joséphine” is the art, but the eye tells a different story – hanging behind Beyoncé and her dancers, the painting is reduced to wallpaper. Throughout the “Apeshit - The Carters” video, Beyoncé and Jay-Z repeatedly upstage some of Western classical art’s most famous images in one of its central sacred spaces. Beyoncé holds a series of chopping micro-poses with her hands before Saiz cuts quickly to an image of a distressed character, hands held up to shield her head, taken from another David painting, “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” The placement of the hands connects the two frames, but Beyoncé’s is virile, aggressive and in charge, while David’s figure seems merely fearful.

Radical gestures roll in on a mightily slippery sliding scale these days, don’t they? We’re far past any cultural division between high and low or pop and art at this point, and artists on the charts are also sniffing out their next inspiration, album cycle, or comparison to their own personal affairs in the grander schemes of culture and history. You’d be hard pressed to find a more hallowed repository of the West than the Louvre, so of course that’s where Beyoncé and Jay-Z have rolled up to set their new music video for the track “Apeshit” from the fresh album they dropped like an anvil right on top of your weekend. Of course this isn’t the first time they’ve been there, nor the first time some Pop-ish upstarts made a Major Statement at the French museum, but it would seem to be a major escalation in the Carters x Louvre relationship, to say nothing of the pride re: their own marital ties that the album and video are so keen to showcase. When worlds (and genres) collide is still a strong trend across multiple spheres of art and culture—turning meaning and message into something of a competitive game of Russian nesting dolls or an arms race of spectacle-based oneupmanship—but what might we make of this night at the museum if considered in light of the 1960s Marxist avant-garde French Situationist International? Founded in 1957 by Guy “Barrel of Laughs” Debord and Asger “Beware the Palette Knife” Jorn, the Situationists were guys and gals, but mostly guys, who wanted to, as the name would indicate, create some situations and elevate to the level of philosophy the notion of taking a freaking walk outside. But they also had a strategy! And key among their techniques, to which you can probably attribute the rise of “culture jamming” and just whatever Banksy thinks he’s doing, was the détournement. Discussed in chapter 8 of Debord’s 1967 tract The Society of the Spectacle, the technique calls for taking advantage of existing cultural objects or canonized art, rerouting their message, and even advocates for theft: “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.” You would not have wanted this guy for your editor, but if you were looking to smash the state (of meaning), Debord was your man.

So, if “détournement serves as a reminder that theory is nothing in itself, that it can realize itself only through historical action and through the historical correction that is its true allegiance,” then is the spectacle of “Apeshit” a glam, historical correction of the Western assumption that houses of European culture contain the highest achievements of man- and womynkind? Beyoncé and Jay-Z have more clout and pull at this point than a merely rich person or garden-variety aristocrat putzing around the Cotswolds or Monaco, and they built that for themselves. When they pull off a stunt like this, it feels like another chime in the prosperity gospel that Doreen St. Félix examined in the arc of Rihanna’s career, as well as further evidence that the ability to make a compelling spectacle of oneself, to write a personal narrative as large as that of the progress of a civilization, is success. The false idea here is white supremacy, and perhaps the correction then is that European colonialists may not have had the time or the means to make their masterpieces if it weren’t for the economic boon of slavery and historical pillaging of resources from southern and eastern continents for the benefit of countries like France. The Situationists didn’t really like spectacle much (“The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living”) but they recognized that it was inescapable in modern society (“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images”). Given this circumstance, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, god bless them, would appear to be doing their best to create a spectacle that people who look like them can see themselves in too, as opposed to the near uninterrupted stream of black death spectacle the media and world is awash in on a day to day basis. Look forward to hearing this jam blasting out of car speakers this summer—it’ll be a real situation. The surprise release of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z’s new album, Everything Is Love, (credited as “The Carters” on the album to recognize they’re performing as a united duo, not as individuals) on Saturday, June 16 has left the music world reeling. Already, what fans have been carefully dissecting – and what we’re interested in unpacking, too – is the imagery from the music video for the album’s lead single, “APESHIT”. The six-minute video is likely going to be considered one of the best of 2018, with The Carters and a troupe of dancers taking over the Louvre. In case you couldn’t already tell, the fact that Bey and Jay Z even got unfettered access to the Louvre for their own use is a stunning power move – adding a glorious power to the “APESHIT” lyric “I can’t believe we made it/ This is why we’re thankful”. Let’s start with the primary location in “Apeshit”: the Louvre. Historically, it’s a predominately white space that primarily features white, male-created works of art. It’s a microcosm of history, which itself is mostly white, male, and heterosexual. Tradition and the Louvre go hand-in-hand, too, which means that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s presence is a total disruption from the beginning. For modern audiences and fans of The Carters, the disruption is surely welcome. Not only can we expect to see (and do see) The Carters standing next to some of the most famous works of art, including the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace, but we see that they are aligning themselves with it right out of the gate. Their presence in a place that preserves what history has deemed the most important artworks, standing next to said art while themselves looking like art and using their body language to engage with this art, already implies they are as worthy of being there as the older work. It’s a middle finger to convention, a dare aimed at squarely at the gatekeepers of history and artistic tradition: You know we deserve to be here. The Carters begin positioning themselves as iconography from the moment we first see them, standing in front of the “Mona Lisa”. Sure, it’s a callback to the first time they took a photo with arguably the most famous painting in history back in 2014, but something is different this time around. Like the “Mona Lisa”, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dressed simply, but powerfully. Suits for both, in bright colours and styles specific to their tastes and representative of the times they live in; again, just like the “Mona Lisa”. But even more of an echo of the painting is their expressions: a strong stare straight ahead, lips pressed together, shoulders back. They are telegraphing to us that they are as iconic as the “Mona Lisa”, without even saying a word. By donning expressions very much in the same vein as the iconic painting, they’re telling the viewer that they’re basically in the presence of a peer. But even more than that, they’re commenting on the beguiling and enticing space they occupy in our own culture. Much like the “Mona Lisa”, they are telling us that they know we think about them in a way we don’t think about other music artists. They know that we’ll spend hours analysing them and their work, attempting to find meaning in their movements and lyrics, trying to work out the symbols and icons they’ve put forth, and hoping to crack the impenetrable fortress they’ve built around them (from which they only emerge to become vulnerable when they want to). Humans have spent centuries trying to unpack the enigma of the “Mona Lisa” and still continue to do so to this day; do you really think you can figure out The Carters in a day? Another immensely important moment from “APESHIT” comes in the repeated glimpses of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait of a Black Woman (Negress)” from 1800. One of the few works of art painted by a woman in the Louvre, the painting is deeply important both as a feature in the Louvre and its place in art history, because it is the only painting of its time to depict a black woman who is not a slave or similarly subjugated person, but rather simply presented in all her glory.

The painting affirms that black women are worthy of being in artistic spaces, and in enduring imagery. The painting is shown a few times, and it’s the second to last painting we see before the video closes on Bey and Jay turning around to regard the “Mona Lisa” – further confirmation that Benoist’s painting and its subject deserve recognition. It’s also no accident that the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue is frequently seen in “APESHIT”. Implying triumph and power, the statue has endured over centuries, and The Carters imply just as much by once again standing in front of it, in perhaps a nod to their own triumph and the power they’ve achieved. According to the Louvre website for the piece, the statue depicts Nike, and was likely created to commemorate a naval victory by the Rhodians (who hail from Rhodes, part of the Dodecanese island group in Greece). The towering relic from the Hellenistic period is, as the Louvre’s description notes, intensely dramatic and glorifies the female body in connection with something traditionally masculine (victory in war). That endowment of power to a female body is then emulated in the female bodies that stand before it in present day, through Beyoncé and her troupe of female dancers. All of these women come together and move as one being, with Beyoncé presiding over them all. She is the modern image of victory over the warfare placed on her body, career, intellect, personal life; having succeeded, she can now dress like “Winged Victory” and, in a sense, pass along her victories to the women who dance on the steps in front of her. Twitter user Queen Curly Fry’s in-depth Twitter thread breaking down the art seen in “Apeshit” is thorough, and her comments on the incorporation of the “Venus de Milo” into the video is so neatly articulated that we couldn’t have said it better if we tried: “Here, Beyoncé once again models herself as a Greek statue, this time the Venus de Milo. However, in this shot she wears a nude bodysuit with wrapped hair, reframing both goddesses of beauty and victory as a black woman. This dismantles white-centric ideals of beauty.” Similarly, Twitter account Tabloid Art History nails why it’s so important and iconic for Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and her dancers to be dancing in front of “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine” by Jacques Louis David from 1804: “What I especially like about this part of the video is that the painting itself depicts a disruption, Napoleon taking the Pope’s role from him and crowning Josephine himself. Beyoncé further disrupts this by taking on Josephine’s role as the one being crowned.” If we consider Napoleon’s role as a major coloniser in the early 19th century, particularly in Northern Africa, then Beyoncé’s placement in the shot is extra symbolic. Beyoncé standing underneath the place where Napoleon is seen crowning his wife in the painting is a symbolic retrieval of stolen power. One of the other paintings we see in “APESHIT” is another Jacques-Louis David painting, “The Intervention of the Sabine Women.” Interestingly, we only see portions of the painting, never the entire artwork. This could be a sly comment on the dissection and appropriation of black bodies by white culture for their own aesthetic uses – or it could just be a deft use of quick cuts for dramatic effect for the video. Or maybe it’s both.   Twitter user Queen Curly Fry notes here that the painting, for the puposes of “APESHIT”, depicts “(white) female fear evoked by (white) male violence is juxtaposed w/ (black) female empowerment (‘get off my dick’).” The painting’s use of white female tears –long criticised as a way for white women to shift any blame they deserve for racist behaviour, or to turn a blind eye to racial injustice – is in direct contrast with Beyoncé and her dancers’ freedom, calm, and enlightenment. In the end, “APESHIT” is a triumph because it is a statement that only The Carters could successfully make. The visual tells the powers that be to fuck off with their tradition, their preciously guarded history that has sought to erase non-white people from the history books, and their preconceived notions about how black bodies can be ornamental. They’ve used art to push back, to demand honour for the work they’ve contributed. “APESHIT” is a force to be reckoned with, and The Carters’ use of art to make a statement is an announcement to the world that they’ve shaped culture as much as anything hanging on a gallery wall.

[thirstinmore-blog]

Best Albums of 2018

BEST ALBUMS 2018

20. Noname: Room 25

19. Jeremih & Ty Dolla $ign: Mih-Ty

18. Tierra Whack: Whack World

17. Parks Burton: Pare

16. Oneohtrix Point Never: Age Of

15. Angelique Kidjo: Remain in Light

14. Shannon Shaw: Shannon in Nashville

13. Curren$y & Freddie Gibbs: Fetti

12. Ariana Grande: Sweetener

11. Vince Staples: FM!

10. DJ Koze: Knock Knock

9. Mariah Carey: Caution

8. Courtney Barnett: Tell Me How You Really Feel

7. The Carters: Everything is Love

6. Snail Mail: Lush

5. Shannon & the Clams: Onion

4. Teyana Taylor: K.T.S.E.

3. Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour

2. Blood Orange: Negro Swan

1. Dirty Projectors: Lamp Lit Prose

(Spotify playlist)

(Capsule reviews of Top 10 below) 

10. DJ Koze: Knock Knock.  The music writing trope of “a sounds like b + c” is as lazy as it is played, but sometimes you hear a record and those type of comparisons spring to mind, like when I first heard Saint Pepsi’s Hit Vibes and instantly thought of J Dilla making a disco record.  That was also my response to Knock Knock, which sounds like the Avalanches making a more patient update of Since I Left You for 2018 ears.  The record is long and lush, and draws from roughly nine billion different aesthetics, but its particular mélange still manages to sound fresh.  As with SILY, the album is best experienced as a complete piece of music (though several tracks, such as “Lord Knows” and “Scratch That” would sound great in a mix or DJ set).  Knock Knock takes the listener through ambling pathways that wrap around and revisit each other, like an evening stroll through the spacious Joshua Tree National Park depicted on its cover.  It’s nearly a two-hour journey, but it’s well worth the price of admission.

9. Mariah Carey: Caution.  Mariah got a dirty mouth and I’m here for it.  As mother, a twice-divorcée, a woman nearing 50, her work and her image are all her own; if she wants to include the word “fuck” in a bunch of songs on her new album (“GTFO,” “With You,” “The Distance”), then who the fuck are we to tell her no?   It’s a refreshing twist from someone whose public persona is often so curated, but I’m burying the lede.  The real story here is that Caution is a batch of excellent R&B songs from one of the genre’s all-time greats.  It’s not overwrought – by contrast, the album’s sultry blue cover art is indicative of the moods within.  The Ty Dolla $ign-featuring “The Distance” is laid extremely deep in the cut, assisted by some subtle production from Poo Bear, Lido and—holy shit, Skrillex?  Yup, and like Mariah herself, everyone involved uses an even hand and measured patience to let each song breathe.  

A personal highlight for me is “A No No,” which flips the Lil Kim/Lil Cease classic “Crush On You” on its head.  Here, where Biggie intones “he’s a slut, he’s a hoe, he’s a freak/got a different girl every day of the week,” there is no irony intended.  She gauges her suitors’ intent and responds simply: “that’s a no-no.”  In fact, the word “no” accounts for easily half the song’s lyrics, but it’s still a blast on subsequent listens.  But don’t get it twisted – highlights abound herein, from aforementioned singles “GTFO” and “The Distance” to the thoughtful, expansive, Dev Hynes-helmed “Giving Me Life,” which begins as a downtempo club hit and morphs into a surrealist dream.  Mariah Carey is one of the artists who’s been in my life the longest – I’m so happy she’s still killing it.

8. Courtney Barnett: Tell Me How You Really Feel.  Courtney Barnett is what I was raised to believe an indie rock star should be: an unassuming, smart slacker with regular clothes and the ability to unleash earthbound poetry and atmosphere-puncturing solos with equal aplomb.  That effortless cool permeates every facet of her work, from her casual half-singing style to her loose but proficient playing, a mighty guitar god in the body of a humble 31-year-old.  (That she recorded a collaborative record with renowned cool guy Kurt Vile should surprise no-one.)  But what’s really striking about Barnett’s work is her wryly observant lyrics; whether she’s describing the banalities of urban life (“City Looks Pretty”) or eviscerating toxic masculinity (“Nameless, Faceless”), her keen eye and incisive wit pervade every line.  Tell Me is the sound of a strong artist getting stronger.

7. The Carters: Everything is Love.  I often say that as I get older, my favorite elements of songwriting are editing and restraint.  That’s why I tend to hate double albums and love EPs.  I just believe that most double albums would be better if distilled down to one really strong record.  EPs, on the other hand, leave the listener wanting more.  Such is the case with Everything is Love, which reads like a Beyonce trap record with a number of guest verses from Jay. Regardless of speculation on who did the lion’s share of the writing on the record, both are in top form.  Bey’s signature vocal virtuosity is on display as ever, but the real delight is in her capable delivery as a rapper.  She glides effortlessly through triplets like “Poppin, I’m poppin, my bitches are poppin, we go to the dealer and cop it all.”  Big Sean could never.  Meanwhile, Jay turns in a few of my favorite bars of the year (and also a very slick Drake diss) on “Boss:”

“You not a boss, you got a boss. N*ggas gettin’ jerked, that shit hurts, I take it personaly.  N*ggas’d rather work for the man than to work for me.  Just so they can pretend they on my level, that shit is irkin’ to me.  Pride always goeth before the fall, almost certainly.  It’s disturbing what I gross.  Survey says: you not even close.  Everybody’s bosses till the time to pay for the office, till them invoices separate the men from the boys. Over here we measure success by how many people successful next to you.  Here, we say you broke if everybody is broke except for you. BAWSE.”

I don’t know if they intend to release more records as The Carters, but Everything is Love is a fun, successful experiment.

6. Snail Mail: Lush.  There’s no reason for a debut LP to be this good.  The record, from solo project-turnt-band of 19-year-old Lindsay Jordan is focused, clever, and sophisticated.  Every component of these songs appears exactly as it should.  Jordan’s songwriting is clean and incisive (“I hope whoever it is holds their breath around you/’cause I know I did,” she sings on album standout “Heat Wave”).  The arrangements are smartly simple; seldom do they deviate from the four-person rock lineup, so the embellishments that are included (the French horn on “Deep Sea,” the layered keys on “Speaking Terms”) really leap out.  The playing throughout is lovely, with Jordan’s beautiful guitar technique front and center (the finger-picking on “Let’s Find an Out” is a particular delight). Everything in its right place – only where Radiohead’s inward gaze can be mopey and self-indulgent, the core strength of Lush is its efficiency.  There’s no filler here – just the exact amount of support that each piece requires.  The drumming feels especially strong in this regard – there’s an economic directness in Ray Brown’s playing that prioritizes the backbeat over everything, including his ego. The fills that he does include are modest and workmanlike.

It’s right that the record would be released by Matador, because these songs are drenched in the influences of the 90s slacker rock of Yo La Tengo, Sonic Youth, Sleater-Kinney and Sebadoh.  And as with each of those bands, Snail Mail’s songs are buoyed by excellent lyrics.  Jordan doesn’t just sound wise beyond her years, she actually seems to have lived more in her 19 years than many folks twice her age.  There’s a subtext of sobriety in some of the songs (“It just feels like the same party every weekend, doesn’t it?” on “Pristine,” or “I’m so tired of moving on/spending every weekend so far gone” on “Heat Wave”).  Perhaps the self-reflection that’s required in recovery has helped to distill her worldview.  

And look, I don’t mean to be patronizing here – this album would be a major achievement from any person of any age.  But to hear an artistic vision this crystal clear and laser-focused from a 19-year-old is something truly special.  I can’t wait to hear what she does next.

5. Shannon & the Clams: Onion.  Upon first listen, Onion struck me as the best record the Clams have released to date.  Now, admittedly, I’m a sucker for keyboards, and the inclusion of organist Will Sprott is pure Patrick-bait.  But beyond my own tastes, the organ both fills out and anchors the Clams’ garage doo-wop sound.  There’s a welcome succinctness to Onion: the songwriting is tight, the guitar playing is melodic and utilitarian, and the vocal performances from both Cody and Shannon are more technically refined than in any of their previous outings.  One wonders if Shannon’s work on her own solo album (the very good, Dan Auerbach-produced Shannon in Nashville, which also came out this year) pushed her to improve her technique.  And don’t get it fucked up – this is still a Clams record.  It’s still shaggy and loud and rambunctious – but they’ve worked hard to reign in their wildest tendencies.  Some might say that it’s layered, just like-- *an oversized cane hooks around my throat and drags me offstage* ….Well…..let’s just say it’s good.

4. Teyana Taylor: KTSE.  Of all the seven-song mini-albums Kanye produced in Wyoming this year, KTSE is both the best and the least talked-about.  She arrives seemingly out of the blue, a fully-formed artist who knows her strengths exactly.  She has bars when she feels like spitting them, a beautiful husky alto when she feels like crooning, and a profound connection to multiple styles of club music that’s borne of her history as a dancer.  It’s become a bit trendy to nod to vogue & ballroom culture in the last few years, but while Drake’s Big Freedia feature on “Nice for What” feels a little forced, Taylor can walk it like she talks it.  A dancer by trade, her comfort in the ballroom is palpable. 

Ye keeps it simple, remaining comfortably in his wheelhouse and flipping excellent soul samples such as Billy Stewart’s “I Do Love You” (which he repurposes into a nostalgic 4/4 slapper on “Hold On”) and The Stylistics’ “Because I Love You, Girl” (which he expands into a melancholy mediation on the horn section of the original).  It’s a welcome return to form.

3. Kacey Musgraves: Golden Hour.  In her SNL performance earlier this year, Kacey Musgraves appeared as a flat-ironed, longhair disco queen.  As she slayed Golden Hour’s catchy lead single “High Horse,” I was reminded of Dolly Parton.  I’ve been spending a lot of time with Dolly’s mid-70s and early-80s catalogue this past year, having purchased vinyl copies of All I Can Do, New Harvest…First Gathering, and Dolly, Dolly, Dolly.  Parton is one of those artists whose discographies are so gigantic as to seem practically impenetrable, so I’ve been trying to hear as much as I can.  Dolly, Dolly, Dolly is an especially interesting entry: released in 1980, it was her 23rd album, and it represents a pretty clear swing for crossover success.  A handful of the tracks are straight-up disco, and these are what Musgraves called to mind.  I was thrilled – Dolly’s disco experiments were widely panned, but I think there’s a lot of good there, maybe Golden Hour would be an attempt to vindicate Parton’s vision?

Unfortunately or not, I was incorrect.  In total, Golden Hour bears more resemblance to Dolly’s friend & frequent collaborator Emmylou Harris (Kacey’s hair should’ve tipped me off, SMH).  It’s a beautiful, understated, and thoughtful set of songs that could fit as well on a folk radio station as a country one.  Like Harris, Musgraves has an innate sense of how to let a great song be great, hanging back in both arrangement and vocal performance.  She’s emotive when she needs to be (“Rainbow”), and contemplative as needed (“Golden Hour”), always letting her writing breathe.  Also, she has the confidence to bury the lead single so deep on Side B that you almost forget it’s there (and are thrilled when it is).  As a person who prefers the full album experience to that of a shuffled playlist, this is one of my very favorite tricks.

Quite simply: great songs + great arrangements = a surprising list-topper for me.

2. Blood Orange: Negro Swan.  For years, the roles of sexuality and gender in black identity have been foci of Dev Hynes’ work as Blood Orange.  He spent time with drag queens and sex workers while writing his debut album Coastal Grooves, and has often cited transgender icon Octavia St. Laurent as one of his primary influences.  But while these interests have colored his previous albums, on Negro Swan they’re the bedrock.  In a press release preceding the album, Hynes described the album as “an exploration into my own and many types of black depression, an honest look at the corners of black existence, and the ongoing anxieties of queer/people of color.  A reach back into childhood and modern traumas, and the things we do to get through it all.  The underlying thread through each piece on the album is the idea of hope, and the lights we can try to turn on within ourselves with a hopefully positive outcome of helping others out of their darkness.”

These ideas are fundamental to the songwriting, and they’re reinforced by snippets of conversations with Janet Mock and Kai the Black Angel (who adorns the cover in a durag and angel wings) peppered throughout the album’s 49 minutes.  On “Family,” Mock defines community as “the spaces where you don’t have to shrink yourself, where you don’t have to pretend or to perform, you can fully show up and be vulnerable in silence, completely empty, and that’s completely enough.”  That search for community, the desire to be seen and loved and supported as your whole self informs each of these beautiful songs.  Already a competent producer, Hynes continues to grow, selecting beautiful flourishes like the jangly, perfectly out-of-tune guitar on “Charcoal Baby” or the soft, echoing snare drum on “Dagenham Dream” to characterize the thematic content of each piece.  Negro Swan is a powerful and complete work of art.  It sounds like he’s finally found some answers to the questions he’s been asking. 

1. Dirty Projectors: Lamp Lit Prose.  On Lamp Lit Prose, David Longstreth appears to be having more fun making music than he has in years, probably because almost 100% of his band has turned over (kudos to longtime bassist Nat Baldwin, whose playing tethers him to his own beginnings).  Beyond the new Projectors themselves, Longstreth spent the months during the writing of the album making new friends in the LA music scene, and bringing them around the studio to record various parts.  Members of Haim contribute to album standout “That’s a Lifestyle,” Syd (of The Internet) anchors the refrain in “Right Now,” and Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and Vampire Weekend alumnus Rostam Batmanglij stack harmonies onto the swirling ballad “You’re The One.”

I see LLP as the second half of a diptych begun by the self-titled Dirty Projectors, released last year.  While that record wallowed in the pain of a broken relationship with former Projector Amber Coffman, LLP reveals a healed and newly in love protagonist.  Both records feature David Longstreth at his most vocally competent: he’s now able to truly execute the melismatic R&B runs he lovingly wrote and charmingly attempted in his earliest work, his diaphragm now supports his every leap and bound, and his croon is sweeter than ever before.  But furthermore, both albums expand on ideas that have popped up throughout his illustrious and impressive body of work.  Whether he’s reviving the Rise Above era blasts of noisy guitars on “Zombie Conqueror” or revisiting the orchestral ambitions of The Getty Address on the stunningly soulful “I Wanna Feel It All,” Longstreth sounds like a worker with a complete toolbox and a detailed blueprint.  He’s been working at honing his craft for years.

I saw the Projectors in June, at a time when only “Break-Thru” and “That’s a Lifestyle” had leaked.  I didn’t know what to expect, being among the seemingly small minority of fans who liked their previous record.  But their set was staggering.  Flanked by his group of mostly-new faces, Longstreth was bouncing all over the place, proudly showcasing each instrumentalist & vocalist (seemingly everyone had at least one moment in the spotlight), visibly excited about playing with this group of people.  And that makes sense: LLP is Longstreth relishing the fundamental glee of musical collaboration.  The joy is positively bubbling over in tracks like “Right Now,” “I Feel Energy,” and “I Found it in You.”  To see him play these songs live is to wonder if he’s talking about the act of musicmaking itself when he sings: “Ask now, I’m in love for the first time ever.”

[doomedandstoned]

Tripping Through the Void with SUNNATA

It's been four years since Doomed & Stoned visited SUNNATA and my how they've grown in the interim! Three successful independent releases, legendary live performances, an exponentially growing fanbase, and broad critical acclaim have shifted the spotlight on the Warsaw doomers. Long before they became the juggernaut of the heavy underground, we knew them as an exciting upstart called Satellite Beaver. This week, we give Sunnata’s latest collections of songs a thorough going over and speak with Szymon Ewertowski (guitar, vox), Adrian Gadomski (guitar), Michał Dobrzański (bass), and Robert Ruszczyk (drums) about what fuels their fire.

Heart of Storm

By Simon Howard

Polish loners Sunnata offer the melodic pilgrim a ritualistic, dark, heavy journey into the atmospheric Outlands, hypnotizing us with an eternal 48 minutes of tripping. Pineal glands will decalcify, doors of perception will be cleansed, and the listener will be enlightened.

Sunnata have been creating a musical Zenith in a blend of genres since 'Climbing the Colossus' (2014) and 'Zorya' (2016). This well-crafted album is hard to believe, in the fact that this band have only been around since 2014. Incorrect. Jump in the TARDIS of Tunes, and rewind ourselves back to 2008. Under the moniker of Satellite Beaver, they released two demos and one final EP in 2012, aptly named, The Last Bow. If the reader is not familiar with Satellite Beaver, then you have an amazing musical journey ahead of you.

Outlands by SUNNATA

'Outlands' (2018) was recorded at Monochrom Studio, mixed and mastered by Haldor Grunberg of Satanic Audio, and brilliantly saturated in the artwork by Maciej Kamuda.

I really cannot attest to what was in the Kool-Aid at Monochrom Studio, but the results are spiritually absorbed into the listener's soul. Mind expanding mantras like "Lucid Dream," "The Ascender," and the epically entrancing closing track "Hollow Kingdom" appeal to me on planes we can only experience ourselves. Outlands transitions from mellow meditational hymns to heavenly heavy riffs, blending this album into something transcendental for avid or new fans of Sunnata. This journey will be taken upon by many, and many times. Musical Mecca has been found. The void has been filled.

Soon It Will All Be Gone

A Conversation with Sunnata

Interview by Billy Goate | Photos by Justyna Kamińska

How would you characterize the evolution of sunnata from ‘Climbing the Colossus’ to ‘Zorya’ to your latest record, ‘Outlands’?

It’s been a long way. I would describe it as emotional trip from anger on our debut Climbing the Colossus, through spatial epicness and a need for air on Zorya to introverted melancholia you can dive into on Outlands. In general, we have always been the "sad guys" who were into kind of a gloomy, dark state of mind and soul and our approach towards the music evolved along with our skills of using instruments to express what we feel inside. That’s why I’d characterize our evolution as a path to greater complexity of emotions, where our debut was the simplest and our latest album the most complicated, emotion-wise.

Are there thematic motifs that the band finds attractive when writing songs? Which themes were most influential on 'Outlands’?

We definitely have become more lyrically confident since our previous album and even though we still consider the role of our lyrics as backing for the rest, I think we can finally admit that Sunnata actually has something to say! (laughs) It might not be your most positive answer ever, but our motifs on Outlands consist of loneliness, despair, the negative influence of religious fanaticism, helplessness, and development of the self and whatever conflict you have inside of you. We dig deep, reopen wounds, and push to get to the core. We prefer fighting yourself to fighting others, until you turn into none.

Are the songs on the new album connected in any way? Is this all a “Lucid Dream” that culminates in a journey into the “Outlands,” with “The Ascender” climbing some forbidden mountain of the gods? And what is the “Gordian Knot” -- an internal fight-or-flight struggle? At the end of the journey, is the prize the conquest of a “Hollow Kingdom”? So many questions!

Sure! Song order always comes last, so we have no intention in putting a story together in any way. However, this sort of lyrical consistency allows us to arrange one after another in a way that triggers certain emotions and impressions. Let’s get through the album piece by piece:

"Lucid Dream" encourages you to give, not to receive; to understand that if you separate your self-esteem from the external world and build value of self and the will to explore, you will grow as a human.

"Scars" is a story of being misled, lied to, cheated on, and abandoned on the one hand, but also a story of growing strength and power to end whatever harms you.

"Outlands" was actually inspired by some politically related events. It's all about sacrifice as a way to bring attention to an idea or social problem ignored before. Too deep to dig into it in a single interview.

"The Ascender" track is focused around any sort of radicalism giving an illusion of being permitted to force your point of view on others. We disagree with anyone’s feeling to be justified for actions that do harm. It’s an illusion that keeps you away from self.

"Gordian Knot" is exactly what you have interpreted: inner struggle -- one that can make you fall apart or disintegrate, in any way.

"Hollow Kingdom" has been chosen as climax, the ending song in praise of emptiness. Its structure, repetitive feeling, and overwhelming melancholia are the best ending of an album we could choose from this track list.

Tell us about the artwork, the artist you chose, and the layers of meaning behind this many-faced wraith?

The only constant is change to us. That’s why this time, instead of going with the magnificent Jeffrey Smith of Ascending Storm once again, we decided to go with another talented artist, Maciej Kamuda, who is also author of Weedpecker and Major Kong artwork. We felt a strong urge to do something different. Deity presented on the front cover is a variation on deep symbolism of Goddess Kali. We didn’t want her to look in a way she’s known from Hinduism. We were inspired more by deep, complex symbolism behind her various forms. If you read about her, you will instantly get it.

One consistent word that comes up in all the descriptions of your music -- live performances especially -- is “ritualistic.” Whether it is the careful setting of the stage, the lighting of the incense, or the hypnotic, trance-like rhythms of the music. What is the importance of ritual for the band and what does this bring to your compositions and performances.

Ritualism in our music comes from trance-inducing forms we create. Immersed in void and drugged with noise, we jam a lot in search of the desired emotion trigger -- we can’t name it, we just get the feeling. If we do, we proceed further. Our work routine and who we are as people actually doesn’t have much to do with dark shamanism, but everything changes once we take instruments and start playing together. It’s similar to being possessed with something. All other details you mentioned -- stage setting, light, clothes, and merch -- are secondary to this and their role is to create certain atmosphere to take people on the journey with us.

I've heard rumors of a music video in the works?

Videos are our curse. We’ve been working on them for every album, but for various reasons all these projects were abandoned. Right now, we are at the beginning of production process for video of "The Ascender" song and we really do hope that it will work out this time. I can’t tell much yet, but we would like the outcome to be something similar to our music -- '90s aesthetics in a psychedelic, doomy setting. We’ll see what time will tell.

Let’s close by giving our readers a peek at your touring plans for 2018 and beyond. What “Outlands” are you off to in the days and months ahead?

We can’t reveal many dates since they are not officially announced yet, but after the our spring tour of Scandinavia with the crazy lads of Boss Keloid, we have various festivals in the summertime confirmed and good perspectives on touring Europe with Dopethrone in October, plus an appearance at Gizzardfest in Rotherham, UK. I believe that best is yet about to come. We just need to follow our own path.

Ruling Land of Emptiness

By Shawn Gibson & Billy Goate

To understand the significance of Sunnata's musical achievements, we need at least a cursory understanding of the soil in which the band is planted. Poland's heavy music scene has been experiencing a surge of activity over the past decade or two, but its music roots are deep-seated and stretch back generations to the darkly complex oeuvre of composers like Frederic Chopin, Leopold Godowsky, Karol Szymanowski, Henryk Górecki, and so many others.

Sunnata's home base of Warsaw encompasses an impressive if turbulent history, evolving from a smattering of villages more than 1400 years ago to become one of the ten largest capital cities in Europe. Warsaw has had more than its share of doom to contend with, too, from disease and famine to regional and global wars -- including the devastating Nazi occupation, which spurred the great underground resistance movement known as the Warsaw Uprising.

Given this context, it's significant that Sunnata has adopted a name representing one of the fundamental principles of Buddhism. Śūnyatā is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word शून्यता (pronounced as "shoonyataa"), which signifies voidness. Think of it as a meditative state of "emptiness" in which the mind is devoid of desire, specifically the stubborn presence of that word we all learn by age two: mine. Śūnyatā involves the diminishing of one's ego, and the band that wears this name has dedicated the better part of a decade to exploring this philosophy through the medium of ritual heavy music.

Photo by Aleksandra Burska

"Hollow Kingdom," the closing track on Outlands, is one example of Sunnata's approach to voidness, with its droning ups and downs and subtle twists. Sunnata let this song be the pedals of a cherry blossom drifting in the breeze. Another highlight is "The Ascender" (my favorite of the record). It's the kind of vessel one imagines boarding to cross over to निर्वाण (nirvana). The backing vocals near the beginning of the song calls to mind prayers and mantras of Tibetan monks. Guitars buzz like propellers, shuttling you along to another plane of existence. The heavy psychedelic vibe and stirring chorus makes for an uplifting experience that is, one imagines, not unlike astral projection. Sunnata are your gurus fixed atop the mountain, lulling you ever closer on an ascendant journey skyward. Along the way, there's an avalanche of emotions.

One imagines the many plagues, fires, wars, and uprisings that might have influenced "Scars." The song strikes a thrash-like tempo, with jazzy cymbals and a psyched-out tambourine. Then, at the five-minute mark, all hell breaks loose with a thundering bassline, fuzzed-out guitars, and a pummeling drumbeat. Doom has come to claim its reign! Similarly, "Gordian Knot" attacks like a nest of pissed-off hornets. Still rocking hard by the two-minute mark, things lighten up for a spell as fuzzy desert riffs and reassuring chants (with those wonderful backing vocals) lull you to sanctuary. The aggressive pace returns, leading to a crescendo of screaming vox to chase every worry from your mind. Only the journey consumes you now.

Taken in sum, Outlands is an exhilarating magic carpet ride, albeit with some turbulence. Sunnata hone the powerful elements of rock and metal like master alchemists, dispensing measured doses of doom, sludge, psychedelic, and stoner, melding them seamlessly, and transcending boundaries only few conceived possible. The heavy doom passages are somehow made even heavier by this psychedelic blend, which brings one closer to a state of voidness.

High spiritual concept meets the earthy might of doom in Outlands. It is the enlightenment of the yogis, the ascension of gurus, a musical Kathmandu. I've visited the temple now multiple times over the course of weeks and months and it continues to be a cathartic experience for me. Outlands will make your heart flutter and embolden your spirit with its mesmerizing riffs and hypnotic rhythms. It will usher you down a river of feeling and bury you in a cascade of sonic desolation. The chants and mantras sent my spirit soaring heavenward. Returning to earth, I felt as if I have been everyplace in existence and at the same time perfectly still, third eye open -- mind, body, and spirit aligned. Awareness is the gift I received from this Outlands. Who knows? In listening, perhaps you will find your own Śūnyatā, as well.

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[suzanneshannon]

Chapter 9: Community

In April of 2009, Yahoo! shut down GeoCities. Practically overnight, the once beloved service had its signup page replaced with a vague message announcing its closure.

We have decided to discontinue the process of allowing new customers to sign up for GeoCities accounts as we focus on helping our customers explore and build new relationships online in other ways. We will be closing GeoCities later this year.

Existing GeoCities accounts have not changed. You can continue to enjoy your web site and GeoCities services until later this year. You don’t need to change a thing right now — we just wanted you to let you know about the closure as soon as possible. We’ll provide more details about closing GeoCities and how to save your site data this summer, and we will update the help center with more details at that time.

In the coming months, the company would offer little more detail than that. Within a year, user homepages built with GeoCities would blink out of existence, one by one, until they were all gone.

Reactions to the news ranged from outrage to contemptful good riddance. In general, however, the web lamented about a great loss. Former GeoCities users recalled the sites that they built using the service, often hidden from public view, and often while they were very young.

For programmer and archivist Jason Scott, nostalgic remembrances did not go far enough. He had only recently created the Archive Team, a rogue group of Internet archivists willing to lend their compute cycles to the rescue of soon departed websites. The Archive Team monitors sites on the web marked for closure. If they find one, they run scripts on their computers to download as much of the site as they could before it disappears.

Scott did not think the question of whether or not GeoCities deserved to exist was relevant. “Please recall, if you will, that for hundreds of thousands of people, this was their first website,” he posted to his website not long after Yahoo!‘s announcement. “[Y]ou could walk up to any internet-connected user, hand them the URL, and know they would be able to see your stuff. In full color.” GeoCities wasn‘t simply a service. It wasn’t just some website. It was burst of creative energy that surged from the web.

In the weeks and months that followed, the Archive Team set to work downloading as many GeoCities sites as they could. They would end up with millions in their archive before Yahoo! pulled the plug.

Chris Wilson recalled the promise of an early web in a talk looking back on his storied career with Mosaic, then Internet Explorer, and later Google Chrome. The first web browser, developed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, included the ability for users to create their own websites. As Wilson remembers it, that was the de-facto assumption about the web—that it would be a participatory medium.

“Everyone can be an author. Everyone would generate content,” Wilson said, “We had the idea that web server software should be free and everyone would run a server on their machine.” His work on Mosaic included features well ahead of their time, like built-in annotations so that users could collaborate and share thoughts on web documents together. They built server software in the hopes that groups of friends would cluster around common servers. By the time Netscape skyrocketed to popularity, however, all of those features had faded away.

GeoCities represented the last remaining bastion of this original promise of the web. Closing the service down, abruptly and without cause, was a betrayal of that promise. For some, it was the writing on the wall: the web of tomorrow was to look nothing like the web of yesterday.

In a story he recalls frequently, David Bohnett learned about the web on an airplane. Tens of thousands of feet up, untethered from any Internet network, he first saw mention of the web in a magazine. Soon thereafter, he fell in love.

Bohnett is a naturally empathetic individual. The long arc of his career so far has centered on bringing people together, both as a technologist and as a committed activist. As a graduate student, he worked as a counselor answering calls on a crisis hotline and became involved in the gay rights movement at his school. In more recent years, Bohnett has devoted his life to philanthropy.

Finding connection through compassion has been a driving force for Bohnett for a long time. At a young age, he recognized the potential of technology to help him reach others. “I was a ham radio operator in high school. It was exciting to collect postcards from people you talked to around the world,” he would later say in an interview. “[T]hat is a lot of what the Web is about.‘’

Some of the earliest websites brought together radical subcultures and common interests. People felt around in the dark of cyberspace until they found something they liked.

Riding a wave of riot grrrl ephemera in the early 1990’s, ChickClick was an early example. Featuring a mix of articles and message boards, women and young girls used ChickClick as a place to gather and swap stories from their own experience.

Much of the site centered on its strident creators, sisters Heather and Heidi Swanson. Though they each had their own areas of responsibility—Heidi provided the text and the editorial, Heather acted as the community liaison—both were integral parts of the community they created. ChickClick would not exist without the Swanson sisters. They anchored the site to their own personalities and let it expand through like-minded individuals.

Eventually, ChickClick grew into a network of linked sites, each focused on a narrower demographic; an interconnected universe of women on the web. The cost to expanding was virtually zero, just a few more bytes zipping around the Internet. ChickClick’s greatest innovation came when they offered their users their own homepages. Using a rudimentary website builder, visitors could create their own space on the web, for free and hosted by ChickClick. Readers were suddenly transformed into direct participants in the universe they had grown to love.

Bohnett would arrive at a similar idea not long after. After a brief detour running a more conventional web services agency called Beverley Hills Internet, Bohnett and his business partner John Rezner tried something new. In 1994, Bohnett sent around an email to some friends inviting them to create a free homepage (up to 15MB) on their experimental service. The project was called GeoCities.

What made GeoCities instantly iconic was that it reached for a familiar metaphor in its interface. When users created an account for the first time they had to pick an actual physical location on a virtual map—the digital “address” of their website. “This is the next wave of the net—not just information but habitation,” Bohnett would say in a press release announcing the project. Carving out a real space in cyberspace would become a trademark of the GeoCities experience. For many new users of the web, it made the confusing world of the web feel lived in and real.

The GeoCities map was broken up into a handful of neighborhoods users could join. Each neighborhood had a theme, though there wasn‘t much rhyme or reason to what they were called. Some were based on real world locations, like Beverley Hills for fashion aficionados or Broadway for theater nerds. Others simply played to a theme, like Area51 for the sci-fi crowd or Heartland for parents and families. Themes weren’t enforced, and most were later dropped in everything but name.

Credit: One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age

Neighborhoods were limited to 10,000 people. When that number was reached, the neighborhood expanded into suburbs. Everywhere you went on GeoCities there was a tether to real, physical spaces.

Like any real-world community, no two neighborhoods were the same. And while some people weeded their digital gardens and tended to their homepages, others left their spaces abandoned and bare, gone almost as soon as they arrived. But a core group of people often gathered in their neighborhoods around common interests and established a set of ground rules.

Historian Ian Milligan has done extensive research on the mechanics and history of GeoCities. In his digital excavation, he discovered a rich network of GeoCities users who worked hard to keep their neighborhoods orderly and constructive. Some neighborhoods assigned users as community liaisons, something akin to a dorm room RA, or neighborhood watch. Neighbors were asked to (voluntarily) follow a set of rules. Select members acted as resources, reaching out to others to teach them how to build better homepages. “These methods, grounded in the rhetoric of both place and community,” Milligan argues, “helped make the web accessible to tens of millions of users.”

For a large majority of users, however, GeoCities was simply a place to experiment, not a formal community. GeoCities would eventually become one of the web’s most popular destinations. As more amateurs poured in, it would become known for a certain garish aesthetic, pixelated GIFs of construction workers, or bright text on bright backgrounds. People used their homepages to host their photo albums, or make celebrity fan sites, or to write about what they had for lunch. The content of GeoCities was as varied as the entirety of human experience. And it became the grounding for a lot of what came next.

“So was it community?” Black Planet founder Omar Wasow would later ask. “[I]t was community in the sense that it was user-generated content; it was self-expression.” Self-expression is a powerful ideal, and one that GeoCities proved can bring people together.

Many early communities, GeoCities in particular, offered a charming familiarity in real world connection. Other sites flipped the script entirely to create bizarre and imaginative worlds.

Neopets began as an experiment by students Donna Williams and Adam Powell in 1999. Its first version—a prototype that mixed Williams art and Powell’s tech—had many of the characteristics that would one day make it wildly popular. Users could collect and raise fictional virtual pets inside the fictional universe of Neopia. It operated like the popular handheld toy Tamagotchi, but multiplied and remixed for cyberspace.

Beyond a loose set of guidelines, there were no concrete objectives. No way to “win” the game. There were only the pets, and pet owners. Owners could create their own profiles, which let them display an ever expanding roster of new pets. Pulled from their imagination, Williams and Powell infused the site with their own personality. They created “unique characters,” as Williams later would describe it, “something fantasy-based that could live in this weird, wonderful world.”

As the site grew, the universe inside it did as well. Neopoints could be earned through online games, not as much a formal objective as much as in-world currency. They could be spent on accessories or trinkets to exhibit on profiles, or be traded in the Neopian stock market (a fully operational simulation of the real one), or used to buy pets at auction. The tens and thousands of users that soon flocked to the site created an entirely new world, mapped on top of of a digital one.

Like many community creators, Williams and Powell were fiercely protective of what they had built, and the people that used it. They worked hard to create an online environment that was safe and free from cheaters, scammers, and malevolent influence. Those who were found breaking the rules were kicked out. As a result, a younger audience, and one that was mostly young girls, were able to find their place inside of Neopia.

Neopians—as Neopets owners would often call themselves—rewarded the effort of Powell and Williams by enriching the world however they could. Together, and without any real plan, the users of Neopets crafted a vast community teeming with activity and with its own set of legal and normative standards. The trade market flourished. Users traded tips on customizing profiles, or worked together to find Easter eggs hidden throughout the site. One of the more dramatic examples of users taking ownership of the site was The Neopian Times, an entirely user-run in-universe newspaper documenting the fictional going-ons of Neopia. Its editorial has spanned decades, and continues to this day.

Though an outside observer might find the actions of Neopets frivolous, they were a serious endeavor undertaken by the site’s most devoted fans. It became a place for early web adventurers, mostly young girls and boys, to experience a version of the web that was fun, and predicated on an idea of user participation. Using a bit of code, Neopians could customize their profile to add graphics, colors, and personality to it. “Neopets made coding applicable and personal to people (like me),” said one former user, “who otherwise thought coding was a very impersonal activity.” Many Neopets coders went on to make that their careers.

Neopets was fun and interesting and limited only by the creativity of its users. It was what many imagined a version of the web would look like.

The site eventually languished under its own ambition. After it was purchased and run by Doug Dohring and later, Viacom, it set its sights on a multimedia franchise. “I never thought we could be bigger than Disney,” Dohring once said in a profile in Wired, revealing just how far that ambition went, “but if we could create something like Disney – that would be phenomenal.” As the site began to lean harder into somewhat deceptive advertising practices and emphasize expansion into different mediums (TV, games, etc.), Neopets began to overreach. Unable to keep pace with the rapid developments of the web, it has been sold to a number of different owners. The site is still intact, and thanks to its users, thriving to this day.

Candice Carpenter thought a village was a handy metaphor for an online community. Her business partner, and co-founder, Nancy Evans suggested adding an “i” to it, for interactive. Within a few years, iVillage would rise to the highest peak of Internet fortunes and hype. Carpenter would cultivate a reputation for being charismatic, fearless, and often divisive, a central figure in the pantheon of dot-com mythology. Her meteoric rise, however, began with a simple idea.

By the mid-90’s, community was a bundled, repeatable, commotized product (or to some, a “totally overused buzzword,” as Omar Wasow would later put it). Search portals like Yahoo! and Excite were popular, but their utility came from bouncing visitors off to other destinations. Online communities had a certain stickiness, as one one profile in The New Yorker put it, “the intangible quality that brings individuals to a Web site and holds them for long sessions.”

That unique quality attracted advertisers hoping to monetize the attention of a growing base of users. Waves of investment in community, whatever that meant at any given moment, followed. “The lesson was that users in an online community were perfectly capable of producing value all by themselves,” Internet historian Brian McCullough describes. The New Yorker piece framed it differently. “Audience was real estate, and whoever secured the most real estate first was bound to win.”

TheGlobe.com was set against the backdrop of this grand drama. Its rapid and spectacular rise to prominence and fall from grace is well documented. The site itself was a series of chat rooms organized by topic, created by recent Cornell alumni Stephan Paternot and Todd Krizelman. It offered a fresh take on standard chat rooms, enabling personalization and fun in-site tools.

Backed by the notoriously aggressive Wall Street investment bank Bear Stearns, and run by green, youngish recent college grads, theGlobe rose to a heavily inflated valuation in full public view. “We launched nationwide—on cable channels, MTV, networks, the whole nine yards,” Paternot recalls in his book about his experience, “We were the first online community to do any type of advertising and fourth or the fifth site to launch a TV ad campaign.” Its collapse would be just as precipitous; and just as public. The site’s founders would be on the covers of magazines and the talk of late night television shows as examples of dot-com glut, with just a hint of schadenfreude.

So too does iVillage get tucked into the annals of dot-com history. The site‘s often controversial founders were frequent features in magazine profiles and television interviews. Carpenter attracted media attention as deftly as she maneuvered her business through rounds of investment and a colossally successful IPO. Its culture was well-known in the press for being chaotic, resulting in a high rate of turnover that saw the company go through five Chief Financial Officer’s in four years.

And yet this ignores the community that iVillage managed to build. It began as a collection of different sites, each with a mix of message boards and editorial content centered around a certain topic. The first, a community for parents known as Parent Soup which began at AOL, was their flagship property. Before long, it spanned across sixteen interconnected websites. “iVillage was built on a community model,” writer Claire Evans describes in her book Broad Band, “its marquee product was forums, where women shared everything from postpartum anxiety and breast cancer stories to advice for managing work stress and unruly teenage children.”

Candice Carpenter (left) and Nancy Evans (right). Image credit: The New Yorker

Carpenter had a bold and clear vision when she began, a product that had been brewing for years. After growing tired of the slow pace of growth in positions at American Express and QVC, Carpetner was given more free rein consulting for AOL. It was her first experience with an online world. There wasn‘t a lot that impressed her about AOL, but she liked the way people gathered together in groups. “Things about people‘s lives that were just vibrant,” she’d later remark in an interview, “that’s what I felt the Internet would be.”

Parent Soup began as a single channel on AOL, but it soon moved to the web along with similar sites for different topics and interests—careers, dating, health and more. What drew people to iVillage sites was their authenticity, their ability to center conversations around topics and bring together people that were passionate about spreading advice. The site was co-founded by Nancy Evans, who had years of experience as an editor in the media industry. Together, they resisted the urge to control every aspect of their community. “The emphasis is more on what visitors to the site can contribute on the particulars of parenthood, relationships and workplace issues,” one writer noted, “rather than on top-tier columnists spouting advice and other more traditional editorial offerings used by established media companies.”

There was, however, something that bound all of the site‘s together: a focus that made iVillage startlingly consistent and popular. Carpenter would later put it concisely: “the vision is to help women in their lives with the stuff big and small that they need to get through.” Even as the site expanded to millions of users, and positioned itself as a network specifically for women, and went through one of the largest IPO’s in the tech industry, that simple fact would remain true.

What’s forgotten in the history of dot-com community is the community. There were, of course, lavish stories of instant millionaires and unbounded ambition. But much of the content that was created was generated by people, people that found each other across vast distances among a shared understanding. The lasting connections that became possible through these communities would outlast the boom and bust cycle of Internet business. Sites like iVillage became benchmarks for later social experiments to aspire to.

In February of 2002, Edgar Enyedy an active contributor to a still new Spanish version of Wikipedia posted to the Wikipedia mailing list and to Wikipedia‘s founder, Jimmy Wales. “I’ve left the project,” he announced, “Good luck with your wikiPAIDia [sic].”

As Wikipedia grew in the years after it officially launched in 2001, it began to expand to other countries. As it did, each community took on its own tenor and tone, adapting the online encyclopedia to the needs of each locale. “The organisation of topics, for example,” Enyedy would later explain, “is not the same across languages, cultures and education systems. Historiography is also obviously not the same.”

Enyedy‘s abrupt exit from the project, and his callous message, was prompted by a post from Wikipedia’s first editor-in-chief Larry Sanger. Sanger had been instrumental in the creation of Wikipedia, but he had recently been asked to step back as a paid employee due to lack of funds. Sanger suggested that sometime in the near future, Wikpedia may turn to ads.

It was more wishful thinking than actual fact—Sanger hoped that ads may bring him his job back. But it was enough to spurn Enyedy into action. The Wikipedia Revolution, author Andrew Lih explains why. “Advertising is the third-rail topic in the community—touch it only if you’re not afraid to get a massive shock.”

By the end of the month, Enyedy had created an independent fork of the Spanish Wikipedia site, along with a list of demands for him to rejoin the project. The list included moving the site from .com to .org domain and moving servers to infrastructure owned by the community and, of course, a guarantee that ads would not be used. Most of these demands would eventually be met, though its hard to tell what influence Enyedy had.

The fork of Wikipedia was both a legally and ideologically acceptable project. Wikipedia’s content is licensed under the Creative Commons license; it is freely open and distributable. The code that runs it is open source. It was never a question of whether a fork of Wikipedia was possible. It was a question of why it felt necessary. And the answer speaks to the heart of the Wikipedia community.

Wikipedia did not begin with a community, but rather as something far more conventional. The first iteration was known as Nupedia, created by Jimmy Wales in early 2000. Wales imagined a traditional encyclopedia ported into the digital space. An encyclopedia that lived online, he reasoned, could be more adaptable than the multi-volume tomes found buried in library stacks or gathering dust on bookshelves.

Wales was joined by then graduate student Larry Sanger, and together they recruited a team of expert writers and editors to contribute to Nupedia. To guarantee that articles were accurate, they set up a meticulous set of guidelines for entries. Each article contributed to Nupedia went through rounds of feedback and was subject to strict editorial oversight. After a year of work, Nupedia had less than a dozen finished articles and Wales was ready to shut the project down.

However, he had recently been introduced to the concept of a wiki, a website that anybody can contribute to. As software goes, the wiki is not overly complex. Every page has a publicly accessible “Edit” button. Anyone can go in and make edits, and those edits are tracked and logged in real time.

In order to solicit feedback on Nupedia, Wales had set up a public mailing list anyone could join. In the year since it was created, around 2,000 people had signed up. In January of 2001, he sent a message to that mailing list with a link to a wiki.

His hope was that he could crowdsource early drafts of articles from his project’s fans. Instead, users contributed a thousand articles in the first month. Within six months, there were ten thousand. Wales renamed the project to Wikipedia, changed the license for the content so that it was freely distributable, and threw open the doors to anybody that wanted to contribute.

The rules and operations of Wikipedia can be difficult to define. It has evolved almost in spite of itself. Most articles begin with a single, random contribution and evolve from there. “Wikipedia continues to grow, and articles continue to improve,” media theorist Clary Shirky wrote of the site in his seminal work Here Comes Everybody, “the process is more like creating a coral reef, the sum of millions of individual actions, than creating a car. And the key to creating those individual actions is to hand as much freedom as possible to the average user.”

From these seemingly random connections and contributions, a tight knit group of frequent editors and writers have formed at the center of Wikipedia. Programmer and famed hacktivist Aaron Swartz described how it all came together. “When you put it all together, the story become clear: an outsider makes one edit to add a chunk of information, then insiders make several edits tweaking and reformatting it,” described Swartz, adding, “as a result, insiders account for the vast majority of the edits. But it’s the outsiders who provide nearly all of the content.” And these insiders, as Swartz referes to them them, created a community.

“One of the things I like to point out is that Wikipedia is a social innovation, not a technical innovation,” Wales once said. In the discussion pages of articles and across mailing lists and blogs, Wikipedians have found ways to collaborate and communicate. The work is distributed and uneven—a small community is responsible for a large number of edits and refinements to articles—but it is impressively collated. Using the ethos of open source as a guide, the Wikipedia community created a shared set of expectations and norms, using the largest repository of human knowledge in existence as their anchor.

Loosely formed and fractured into factions, the Wikipedia community nevertheless follows a set of principles that it has defined over time. Their conventions are defined and redefined on a regular basis, as the community at the core of Wikipedia grows. When it finds a violation of these principles—such as the suggestion that ads will be plastered on the article they helped they create—they sometimes react strongly.

Wikipedia learned from the fork of Spanish Wikipedia, and set up a continuous feedback loop that has allowed its community to remain at the center of making decisions. This was a primary focus of Katherine Maher, who became exectuvie director of Wikimedia, the company behind Wikipedia, in 2016, and then CEO three years later. Wikimedia’s involvement in the community, in Maher’s words, “allows us to be honest with ourselves, and honest with our users, and accountable to our users in the spirit of continuous improvement. And I think that that is a different sort of incentive structure that is much more freeing.”

The result is a hive mind sorting collective knowledge that thrives independently twenty years after it was created. Both Maher and Wales have referred to Wikipedia as a “part of the commons,” a piece of informational infrastructure as important as the cables that pipe bandwidth around the world, built through the work of community.

Fanfiction can be hard to define. It has been the seeds of subculture and an ideological outlet; the subject of intense academic and philosophical inquiry. Fanfiction has often been noted for its unity through anti-hegemony—it is by its very nature illegal or, at the very least, extralegal. As a practice, Professor Brownen Thomas has put it plainly: “Stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a ‘canon’ of works; these fan-created narratives often take the pre-existing storyworld in a new, sometimes bizarre, direction.” Fanfiction predates the Internet, but the web acted as its catalyst.

Message boards, or forums, began as a technological experiment on the web, a way of replicating the Usenet groups and bulletin boards of the pre-web Internet. Once the technology had matured, people began to use them to gather around common interests. These often began with a niche—fans of a TV show, or a unique hobby—and then used as the beginning point for much wider conversation. Through threaded discussions, forum-goers would discuss a whole range of things in, around, and outside of the message board theme. “If urban history can be applied to virtual space and the evolution of the Web,” one writer recalls, “the unruly and twisted message boards are Jane Jacobs. They were built for people, and without much regard to profit.”

Some stayed small (and some even remain so). Others grew. Fans of the TV show Buffy the Vampire Slayer had used the official message board of the show for years. It famously took on a life of its own when the boards where shut down, and the users funded and maintained an identical version to keep the community alive. Sites like Newgrounds and DeviantART began as places to discuss games and art, respectively. Before long they were the launching pad for the careers of an entire generation of digital creators.

Fandom found something similar on the web. On message boards and on personal websites, writers swapped fanfiction stories, and readers flocked to boards to find them. They hid in plain sight, developing rules and conventions for how to share among one another without being noticed.

In the fall of 1998, developer Xing Li began posting to a number of Usenet fanfiction groups. In what would come to be known as his trademark sincerity, his message read: “I’m very happy to announce that www.fanfiction.net is now officially open!!!!!! And we have done it 3 weekss ahead of projected finish date. While everyone trick-or-treated we were hard at working debugging the site.”

Li wasn’t a fanfiction creator himself, but he thought he stumbled upon a formula for its success. What made Fanfiction.net unique was that its community tools—built-in tagging, easy subscriptions to stories, freeform message boards for discussions—was built with fandom in mind. As one writer would later describe this winning combination, “its secret to success is its limited moderation and fully-automated system, meaning posting is very quick and easy and can be done by anyone.”

Fanfiction creators found a home at Fanfiction.net, or FF.net as it was often shortened to. Throughout its early years, Li had a nerdy and steadfast devotion to the development of the site. He‘d post sometimes daily to an open changelog on the site, a mix of site-related updates and deeply personal anecdotes. “Full-text searching allows you to search for keywords/phrases within every fanfiction entry in our huge archive,” one update read. “I can‘t get the song out of my head and I need to find the song or I will go bonkers. Thanks a bunch. =)” read another (the song was The Cure‘s “Boys Don’t Cry”).

Li’s cult of personality and the unique position of the site made it immensely popular. For years, the fanfiction community had stuck to the shadows. FF.net gave them a home. Members took it upon themselves to create a welcoming environment, establishing norms and procedures for tagging and discoverability, as well as feedback for writers.

The result was a unique community on the web that attempted to lift one another up. “Sorry. It‘s just really gratifying to post your first fic and get three hits within about six seconds. It‘s pretty wild, I haven’t gotten one bad review on FF.N…” one fanfic writer posted in the site’s early days. “That makes me pretty darn happy :)”

The reader and writer relationship on FF.net was fluid. The stories generated by users acted as a reference for conversation among fellow writers and fanfiction readers. One idea often flows into the next, and it is only through sharing content that it takes on meaning. “Yes, they want recognition and adulation for their work, but there‘s also the very strong sense that they want to share, to be part of something bigger than themselves. There’s a simple, human urge to belong.”

As the dot-com era waned, community was repackaged and resold as the social web. The goals of early social communities were looser than the tight niches and imaginative worlds of early community sites. Most functioned to bring one’s real life into digital space. Classmates.com, launched in 1995, is one of the earliest examples of this type of site. Its founder, Randy Conrads, believed that the web was best suited for reconnecting people with their former schoolmates.

Not long after, AsianAve launched from the chaotic New York apartment where the site‘s six co-founders lived and worked. Though it had a specific demographic—Asian Americans—AsianAve was modeled after a few other early social web experiences, like SixDegrees. The goal was to simulate real life friend groups, and to make the web a fun place to hang out. “Most of Asian Avenue‘s content is produced by members themselves,” an early article in The New York Times describes. “[T]he site offers tool kits to create personal home pages, chat rooms and interactive soap operas.” Eventually, one of the site‘s founders, Benjamin Sun, began to explore how he could expand his idea beyond a single demographic. That’s when he met Omar Wasow.

Wasow was fascinated with technology from a young age. When he was a child, he fell in love first with early video games like Pong and Donkey Kong. By high school, he made the leap to programmer. “I begged my way out of wood shop into computer science class. And it really changed my life. I went to being somebody who consumed video games to creating video games.”

In 1993, Wasow founded New York Online, a Bulletin Board System that targeted a “broad social and ethnic ‘mix’,” instead of pulling from the same limited pool of upper-middle class tech nerds most networked projects focused on. To earn an actual living, Wasow developed websites for popular magazine brands like Vibe and Essence. It was through this work that he crossed paths with Benjamin Sun.

By the mid-1990‘s, Wasow had already gathered a loyal following and public profile, featured in magazines like Newsweek and Wired. Wasow’s reputation centered on his ability to build communities thoughtfully, to explore the social ramifications of his tech before and while he built it. When Sun approached him about expanding AsianAve to an African American audience, a site that would eventually be known as BlackPlanet, he applied the same thinking.

Wasow didn’t want to build a community from scratch. Any site that they built would need to be a continuation of the strong networks Black Americans had been building for decades. “A friend of mine once shared with me that you don’t build an online community; you join a community,” Wasow once put it, “BlackPlanet allowed us to become part of a network that already had centuries of black churches and colleges and barbecues. It meant that we, very organically, could build on this very powerful, existing set of relationships and networks and communities.”

BlackPlanet offered its users a number of ways to connect. A central profile—the same kind that MySpace and Facebook would later adopt—anchored a member’s digital presence. Chat rooms and message boards offered opportunities for friendly conversation or political discourse (or sometimes, fierce debate). News and email were built right into the app to make it a centralized place for living out your digital life.

By the mid-2000’s BlackPlanet was a sensation. It captured a large part of African Americans who were coming online for the first time. Barack Obama, still a Senator running for President, joined the site in 2007. Its growth exploded into the millions; it was a seminal experience for black youth in the United States.

After being featured on a segment on the The Oprah Winfrey Show, teaching Oprah how to use the Internet, Wasow‘s profile reached soaring heights. The New York Times dubbed him the “philosopher-prince of the digital age,” for his considered community building. “The best the Web has to offer is community-driven,” Wasow would later say. He never stopped building his community thoughtfully. and they in turn, became an integral part of the country’s culture.

Before long, a group of developers would look at BlackPlanet and wonder how to adapt it to a wider audience. The result were the web’s first true social networks.

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Chapter 9: Community published first on https://deskbysnafu.tumblr.com/

[panicpress]

“smile, and wave” SAINTE Album Review

After years of listening to We Are The In Crowd, I was upset when they announced their hiatus in 2016; I could remember going to their concerts and being bubbly with excitement, because their shows always felt like a party. They were what I imagined a high-school party to be like - with the bright flashes of color and a crowd that seemed drunk on the vibes from a good time; not to mention the heat. But my excitement involving them wasn’t saved for their shows only, as I can still remember the excitement I felt for the members of the band at reading the hiatus announcement, too. It was clear that the members were going to continue and do things they felt they’d gain more happiness from. I began to anxiously await what would come- and it’s finally here. SAINTE, Tay Jardine’s project, has its first EP, smile, and wave. It released June 30th with a surprising 7 tracks, and I couldn’t be more excited about it! Click below to read my review for it.

           The first tune, Eyes Are Open, has a brand new music video that you can check out here. The video deserves a review in its own right, all the videos for smile, and wave do, as it has such an overwhelming aesthetic to it that makes everything pop. It brings back the party feel, which excites me beyond belief. Just because Tay is doing something that isn’t WATIC, doesn’t mean the party’s over. The song itself is undeniably a toe tapper, something that makes you want to move with the beat of it. The music aims more to a pop side of things, but in this new division of alternative pop that seems to have come up recently in things like Paramore’s new album. The lyrics, though, deserve special attention. It screams a feeling of striving for a firm grasp on one’s self-worth, and getting a fresh start in acknowledgement of that self-worth after spending so long thinking of yourself as broken. For opinion's sake, at least.

           The second track, Technicolor, comes in with an intensity to it that the song keeps throughout. It’s almost dreamlike in parts, but sharp at others. The vocals convey this best, as Tay goes between a soft dreaminess and a sharp higher pitch of tone; especially during the chorus. The song is exactly what I’d imagine a musical equivalent to technicolor would be like, which in my book means this song is 10/10, or higher. I pictured it’d go well on a road trip playlist, something friends could sing together with the windows rolled down in the summertime.

           Speaking of playlists, With Or Without Me is a jam that belongs on every single one. Whether a road trip or mourning a break up, this song could easily follow you around. To me, that was actually a big part of WATIC. They’ve always had the most songs that crossover in playlists for me because they could move between so easily. Even with the brightness in music they brought, and that SAINTE brings, they could go onto sad playlists, and because of that brightness they could go on energetic or happy ones too. WATIC was always my biggest “breakup band” in that their songs went on repeat after every break up, and I already plan to add this song into that loop. The chorus brings a certain edge of emotion with the lines, “you’ll never be happy / with or without me” as it details that experience of someone who can’t figure out what they want. Though I’m a little unsure when it comes to the music, as it feels almost like something I’ve heard a few dozen times in other songs, I still truly enjoy every piece of the song as a whole.

           More than anything with the fourth song, Feels So Wrong, I was focused on the lyrics. The music almost became background noise as I got lost in the words Tay was singing. In the songs leading up, I felt like I was straining to keep track of the words she sung and struggled to really catch the lyrics. It almost felt drowned out by the music, which surprised me because usually in projects like this, the vocals and lyrics are almost overstated. That being said - with this song, go with the flow if the lyrics draw you in like they did for me. It brings some of that wit back that I can remember in WATIC lyrics, while remaining in that “break up playlist” feel I mentioned for the last song.

           After over half the album being nothing but fast and energetic songs, Lighthouse felt almost like a curveball. I expected I would’ve heard a slow song earlier if there were any, and, although surprised, I was glad. To me, a good album is full of both the energetic tunes, and the slowed down ones. My favorite albums take me through a wave of it. While I was excited for a slower song, I was cautious in the beginning of it. Something about it felt off: a weird adjustment made on the vocals. But as I got more into the song, I realized the way her vocals had been messed with matched the music, and it wasn’t just some weird version of autotune. Then, it hit me-- it sounds like the song could have been made underwater. The adjustment to her vocals and the way the music flows makes me feel like I’m being hit with the waves of an ocean, rather than sound waves. This song became an instant favorite at that realization, because it’s probably the most creative song Tay Jardine has ever done.

           White Lies is a song with lyrics that are filled with comments about someone else, someone Tay clearly isn’t so fond of nowadays, but amidst that is an anthem. An anthem of starting over, of finding oneself and being done with letting others hold them back. This message can be seen throughout the album when lines are looked at closely; no matter what the song is most dominantly about. But in this track, I noticed it the most, particularly in the bridge with the lines, “Wherever I end up, I know I’ll find myself again / Without you,” because it conveys that anthem well. No matter what lies ahead, no matter what the struggles are, she’ll be able to find herself without this person manipulating what she may find, perhaps through their “white lies.” And if I’m going to continue with my playlist theme, then this is one for a self-love playlist. Which, yes, everyone should have.

           The final track for this EP, If You Ever Feel Alone, embodies that sad / energetic crossover I mentioned a while back. While it’s a bouncy tune, it also conveys a struggle that Tay clearly must have. A feeling of loneliness; but it’s familiar to those who have heard Tay’s lyrics before. WATIC practically absorbed that feeling into most of their songs, and it’s what I think allowed for the feeling of a party at their shows, because everyone who felt alone came to their concerts. They were able to shed their skin for a little while and be part of something bigger. They didn’t go to high-school parties, and maybe they didn’t always fit in so well… But at those shows, everyone did, so the fans made it a party. Tay has always focused on creating a home for the weird kids, because she herself is one, and this song feels like a way of telling listeners that she still is one. People grow up, but a lot of emotions can linger. And while this song definitely has that sad tone, I also feel like I noted another sense of “new beginning” in it. Like she’s striving to shed her skin and enjoy life more.

           For all my references to WATIC and all the comparisons drawn; SAINTE isn’t that band. This is an uninhibited Tay. We’re finally seeing all of what she wants to give listeners, and I’m happy to say it’s absolutely incredible. Just because WATIC is over – at least for now – doesn’t mean that the festivity is over, and it doesn’t mean that having good tunes to relate to is gone either. Tay is still around, and even though the member count is definitely lower with SAINTE, I think the party is bigger. It’s at least more emotionally raw, but I think that just adds more color and life to the party. Purchase the album here, and stream it here.

[kvlt-ov-romance-blog]

Twin Peaks & Hauntology

A large deal of David Lynch’s content is surreal not just because of how odd it is, but also because of how familiar it is: For many entering the Twin Peaks universe in contemporary times, they have already been exposed to some imagery from the show or from David Lynch’s other work, which often makes many parallels to the show itself. For instance, prior to starting the original run of the series, I had indeed seen the classic portrait of Laura Palmer a myriad of times and knew the famous lines, “who killed Laura Palmer?” I had seen some of Lynch’s work too, and I also had in fact seen plenty of references to Twin Peaks in pop culture, but it was only when I began to immerse myself in Twin Peaks that I could say to myself, “this feels like deja vu.” The cinematography, the color palette, the dated film quality, the eerie music, everything about the show is setup so that it feels haunted, both from within its own universe and for those observing as though external spectators. Essentially, one of the main reasons why Twin Peaks is such a successful show in terms of endearment and also producing chilling reactions, is because it plays to humanity’s fragmented memories of time, rejecting a linear framework in favor of something that is more distinctly postmodern (i.e. time is not treated as a straight arrow as is the case for most shows). David Lynch innately flirts with these concepts throughout his career in philosophical and psychological manners that make many uneasy from various standpoints, including the metaphysical and ontological. One tiny yet distinctive and slowly emerging school of thought to grow out of the postmodern field of study is hauntology, coined by the French philosopher esteemed for his take on deconstructionism, Jacques Derrida, in his 1993 book, “Specters of Marx.” All things considered, Twin Peaks is an excellent example of hauntology expressed through an artistic medium, and here is some elaboration as to how and why.

So what is hauntology? Derrida originally developed the idea as a portmanteau of haunting and ontology, ontology being the study of life, hence “hauntology.” Specifically, his aforementioned book from 1993 extensively developed Karl Marx’s idea that “A specter is haunting Europe – the specter of Communism.” These were the opening lines to “The Communist Manifesto,” published in 1848 and yet managing to have widespread appeal on a major political levels, well over a hundred years after it had been written and even to this day, proving that Marx was right – Communism is haunting Europe and the rest of the world, chiefly due to the fact that it exists in opposition to the dominant mode of production around the globe, capitalism, but also because according to many scholars, we are perhaps living in a late stage of capitalism that is in fact quite similar to what Marx and his contemporaries envisioned, a stage of decay and corruption that gives way to a fork in the road of fascism, corporatism, and the like, but could also bring forth major developments in class consciousness with regards to revolution and unification. By treating Communism as a specter, it is essentially a faceless character, looming and lurking in the shadows, a ghostly apparition that either instills terror or hope into the hearts of those who find it depending on what side of the political spectrum they are on. Derrida also ties this idea into the Shakespearean play, “Hamlet,” which also began its first lines (“Who’s there?”) in a haunted sort of manner, involving an actual ghost. With regards to Hamlet, Derrida specifically makes note of how “the time is out of joint,” a similar occurrence to real world matters such as Communism and fictional matters such as Twin Peaks.

As Andrew Gallix of The Guardian describes hauntology, it is: The situation of temporal, historical, and ontological disjunction in which the apparent presence of being is replaced by an absent or deferred non-origin, represented by “the figure of the ghost as that which is neither present, nor absent, neither dead nor alive.” Peter Bruse and Andrew Scott further elaborate that: “Ghosts arrive from the past and appear in the present. However, the ghost cannot be properly said to belong to the past. Does then the ‘historical’ person who is identified with the ghost properly belong to the present? Surely not, as the idea of a return from death fractures all traditional conceptions of temporality. The temporality to which the ghost is subject is therefore paradoxical, at once they ‘return’ and make their apparitional debut.” From here, we note how Derrida’s own writing focuses on the presumed “death” of Communism in the post-Soviet world, the question of “the end of history” and most significantly, “if Communism was always spectral, what does it mean to say it is now dead?” All of these concepts tie into the lost futures of modernity, and as Wikipedia writes in depth: “Hauntology has been described as a ‘pining for a future that never arrived;’ […] hauntological art and culture is typified by a critical foregrounding of the historical and metaphysical disjunctions of contemporary capitalist culture as well as a ‘refusal to give up on the desire for the future.’ [Mark] Fisher and others have drawn attention to the shift into post-Fordist economies in the late 1970s, which Fisher argues has ‘gradually and systematically deprived artists of the resources necessary to produce the new.’ Hauntology has been used as a critical lens in various forms of media and theory, including music, political theory, architecture, Afrofuturism, and psychoanalysis.”

Now, regarding hauntology more as an artistic statement and genre than as something philosophical is the first way we can approach Twin Peaks. The style is unique yet also not: It is, as expressed by one of the most prominent artists of the style, Boards of Canada, “the past inside the present.” Most notably, hauntological art is expressed in music, paying homage to library music, vintage documentary-film scores, public information films, etc. This means a heavy dosage of old-school synthesizers, blips and bloops, samples of dialogue from long forgotten movies, and so forth. What we have on our hands here, is “21st-century musicians exploring similar ideas related to temporal disjunction, retrofuturism, memory, the malleability of recording media, and esoteric cultural sources from the past. Artists associated with hauntology include members of the UK label Ghost Box (such as Belbury Poly, The Focus Group, and the Advisory Circle), London dubstep producer Burial, electronic musicians such as the Caretaker, William Basinski, Philip Jeck, Aseptic Void, Moon Wiring Club, and Mordant Music, American lo-fi artist Ariel Pink, and the artists of the Italian Occult Psychedelia scene. Common reference points include library music, the soundtracks of old science-fiction and pulp horror films, found sounds, analog electronic music, musique concrète, dub, decaying cassette tapes, English psychedelia, and 1970s public television programs. A common element is the foregrounding of the recording surface noise, including the crackle and hiss of vinyl and tape, calling attention to the medium itself.”

Furthermore, “’hauntological music has been particularly tied to British culture, and has been described as an attempt to evoke ‘a nostalgia for a future that never came to pass, with a vision of a strange, alternate Britain, constituted from the reorder refuse of the postwar period.’ Reynolds described it as an attempt to construct a ‘lost utopianism’ rooted in visions of a benevolent post-welfare state. According to Fisher, 21st-century electronic music is the anachronistic product of an ‘after the future’ age in which ‘electronic music had succumbed to its own inertia and retrospection … What defined this 'hauntological' confluence more than anything else was its confrontation with a cultural impasse: the failure of the future….’ He explains that this is partly the result of stagnated technical advances since the 20th-century. The style has been described as the British cousin of America's hypnagogic pop music scene, which has also been discussed as engaging with notions of nostalgia and memory. The two styles have been likened to ‘sonic fictions or intentional forgeries, creating half-baked memories of things that never were—approximating the imprecise nature of memory itself.’ Early progenitors of the style include Boards of Canada and Position Normal.”

Lengthy quotes aside, the basic message is that hauntological art – particularly music – is dreamlike, vaguely nostalgic, and ghostly. Basically, musical deja vu. One could make a case that popular genres like chillwave and synthwave, which rely heavily on ‘80s aesthetics are also hauntological, but they lack the same sense of “dread” and “fragmentation” that established artists like Boards of Canada have (e.g. Boards of Canada’s last album, “Tomorrow’s Harvest” is directly linked to the themes of war, apocalypse, the end of history, civilization’s collapse, death and rebirth). The Caretaker, too, is another fantastic example of hauntology: Leyland Kirby publishes records dealing with themes of dementia (the absolution of memory loss) and much of his work is lo-fi, darkly reverberated jazz from no later than WWII; essentially, it is as though history did end with the second war, and when listening to The Caretaker, we are hearing ghostly apparitions committed to tape. “An Empty Bliss Beyond This World,” “Everywhere at the End of Time,” the titles of Kirby’s work alone is enough to suggest something hauntological is occurring. Kirby’s music becomes directly relevant to Twin Peaks: The Return when the viewer notes how similar the music and pre-1940s style are to The Caretaker in The Giant’s realm (some have even dubbed The Giant as a cosmic caretaker of sorts ironically enough). But in the meantime, it is important to discuss how this all relates to the original run of Twin Peaks. One may pose the question: “How is hauntology related to Twin Peaks?”

Remember when I said that we should regard hauntology as an artistic statement rather than a philosophical concept? This is the main and most easy way to comprehend the correlation of hauntology and Twin Peaks. In its original time period, airing in the early ‘90s, it appeared as an anomaly of sorts. The artistic style of the show was deeply rooted in something haunting, something to do with deja vu. Angelo Badalamenti, the composer of the show’s soundtrack, is known for his enigmatic and hypnagogic take on jazz and subtle ambient music, which connects quite well to the mysterious nature of everything going on throughout the show. What specifically helps mark a tonality of hauntology is the fact that the music constantly repeats itself, as if a record left on a repeat. And again, the music plays in direct relation to what is happening on the show: As soon as we hear the swelling, swirling synths or the melancholic piano of “Laura Palmer’s Theme,” we know something important is happening, often having to do with memories, or more menacingly, with doppelgangers and shadow realms. When we hear “Audrey’s Dance,” we know something surreal is going to happen, perhaps some backwards talking or a dancing dwarf. The music serves as a sort of specter, haunting the show and allowing us external observers to peer into the Twin Peaks universe and predict what may happen. However, because David Lynch and Mark Frost are masters of surrealist trickery, skepticism sets in: No matter how many times we hear the songs, few will ever know for certain what is going to happen, you just have to make educated guesses, which usually have the right framework (e.g. “something mysterious is about to happen”) but wind up lacking the correct response (e.g. “something mysterious did happen, but it was not at all what I had predicted”). We then become lost in a series of puzzles, clues, a labyrinthine of both artistry and metaphysics; we start to become haunted by our own theories and conjectures. Laura Palmer’s portrait, shots of diners and bars, foggy mountainous forests, elements from the show start to connect to each other but only in fragments, never in wholeness. In a sense, it may reflect upon the age old dilemma’s of duality versus totality, and even idealism versus materialism, but even theories pertaining to those ideas are never fully addressed and in fact there are arguments made that metaphysics and ontology are only meant to serve as emotional and aesthetic tools rather than as literal interpretations. This lack of knowing only deepens the mystery as well as the haunting effects of the show. It leads Twin Peaks to become a sort of solipsistic realm of sorts, and to the viewer, this is both utopian and dystopian; it leads us to become specters in its own twisted way.

There is also the cinematography as previously mentioned. For those watching the original series now, over 25 years after it originally aired, one thing you will notice is the dated quality of the visual imagery. Not in the sense that it has not aged well, but in the sense that everything is shrouded in ‘90s video-haze; subtle, muted colors, VHS-like quality. It adds to the mystique, and further expounds upon the notion of retro-futurism; now in 2017, there is a slew of television shows and movies that visually strive to recreate this retro feeling in the cinematography. Even musicians are becoming increasingly obsessed with this aesthetic, whether displayed in their music videos or in the music itself (beyond hauntology, as mentioned, there has been an increasing rebirth of ‘80s and ‘90s cultural obsession, for instance, vaporwave – which is especially visual and definitively postmodern – and even less abstractly, many major musicians are still drawing heavily from the ‘60s-’70s to the point where Boards of Canada’s unofficial mantra “the past inside the present” rings true). Watching the original series as well as Fire Walks With Me as they aired, untampered and unrestored, the surreal and dreamlike qualities of the show are enhanced, as is the hauntological pathos and logos: Time is thought to repeat itself, as one might say when they observe a new and younger generation of fans watching Twin Peaks. The older fans may note the quality and visual style of the series and feel haunted by it, but even for today’s modern fans, many of them grew up watching things out of the ‘80s and ‘90s and many have been exposed, even if unwittingly, to Lynch and Frost’s work, whether directly or through a more indirect means (e.g. modern shows which draw heavily upon their style, such as Mr. Robot). When the element of familiarity is added to the viewing experience of Twin Peaks, this is where the haunting effect of the show comes into place; viewers may go as far as the ontological route of questioning existential matters, as they find themselves placed in what seems to be a Lynchian role of their own – they are part of the puzzle and by extension, part of the same universe they are watching. While many would argue that time repeats itself, the other argument is more curious than that; time is an illusion, as are many things. The veil of Maya (the illusory nature of existence in Eastern philosophy which Lynch hints at throughout the series) runs deep, and on humanity’s quest to attain Moksha (enlightenment, freedom from the cycle of birth, death, rebirth) we become trapped in our own web of ego, self, identity, thought, emotion, and so forth. We are just as haunted as the characters in Twin Peaks, and when we watch the show, perhaps it is not meant to reflect separate human thoughts but to reflect upon the idea that we are one consciousness collectively and subjectively viewing itself; Twin Peaks is merely a mirror for our own enigma, and even Lynch himself is not free from this matrix as he plays the role of Gordon, because there are quite a few moments, most notably in Fire Walks With Me (e.g. the scene where David Bowie’s character Philip Jeffries vanishes) and in The Return, where even he is just as lost as other characters or viewers, even in spite of the fact that he most likely does possess some deeper knowledge of what is happening.

This brings us, logically, to the next interpretation of hauntology: The philosophical one, keeping in mind the fact that it is meant to represent an ontology, a means of understanding life and death. Twin Peaks does not shy away from the supernatural, and much of the time it would appear at first glance to be purely for showmanship. But the deeper you dive into the lore of the show, whether canonically or through your own interpretations, fandom, etc. the more these supernatural and science-fiction elements may relate to the history, the politics, the ontological, the metaphysical, and the spiritual. In the original show, plenty of nods were made towards Native American spiritualism, Eastern metaphysics, and even on historical levels, oddities like Project MK Ultra come to mind. Even on a sociological level, the show serves as commentary on the nature of small towns, federal versus local justice, human psychology, and so forth. What is problematic for viewers is that everything could be interpreted through very distinct lenses; perhaps the struggle between Leland and Bob represents the Kabbalah’s interpretation of the Sefirot and the Qliphoth (the tree of life and it’s shadowy counterpart respectively – which is especially possible when one watches The Return and notices the arm has now evolved into a tree of sorts). I have seen interpretations of the show that range from Buddhism to Rosicrucian to Masonic, some of which even go as far as casting doubt on the integrity of Lynch and portraying him as an occult figure with some sort of hidden agenda (conspiracy theorists fit right into the realm of Twin Peaks, though I believe most of their cause for panic is just misunderstanding Lynch’s eccentricity and morbid curiosity into hidden realms). The Return has featured the I Ching, Diane wearing colors that reflect upon alchemy, even a sort of genesis myth of Bob and Laura and perhaps everything else that occurs in this universe. The nuclear bomb dropping in the latest episode even brings forth to mind connotations of Shiva, of creation through destruction. Basically, since Lynch and Frost like to keep things secretive and keep us on our toes, we may never know for certain if there is a specific ideological current that fuels the show, if it is just a hodgepodge of different ideas, or if they are trying to say that all interpretations are egalitarian, that “your guess is as good as mine.” The last one would be quite an ontological statement to make, as it reflects upon the ideas of relativity, subjectivity, skepticism, perhaps even nihilism and absurdism; “can we ever find truth? Can we ever know it for certain?” That theme is addressed heavily on the show in various realms of existence, whether pertaining the surface level of reality (Laura’s death) or what may lie beyond (altered states, astral projection, time travel, you name it).

The Return is especially interesting in these regards. First time viewers of the original series were left haunted by their own theories and suspicions for 25 years before Twin Peaks would be visited again in a lengthy format beyond the movie; Twin Peaks faded into cult status, still familiar to many people but often looked upon with an air of uncertainty and wonder. When the show ended, numerous fanzines popped up trying to keep the legacy alive, delivering new theories with each new edition, but this was before the days of major Internet blogging and media distribution, so it was limited and obscure. But even when newer generations started to discuss Twin Peaks online, nothing was ever fully addressed; the haunting still lingered, both by the very facts of how the original show and movie concluded and by the nature of the series as being elusive, hard to pin down, and notorious for not lending viewers much explanation or help. Seeing the series return after being dormant for so long, it is akin to a spectral awakening of sorts. But that is not to say it is no longer haunted, in fact, far from it – Laura’s portrait, her diary entries, her soul, they still float about like ghosts, her theme song still occasionally popping up to haunt, and now the riddles are perhaps even more haunted because we are gaining more glimpses into the supernatural realms of the Lodges and even beyond, into what could be considered a sort of cosmic viewing lens of reincarnation or creationism and then-some. For much of the series so far, viewers have been particularly haunted by wondering when the “real” Cooper would come back, to the point this mystery seems to extend to ourselves: We identify with Cooper, we sympathize with him as being lost and we want him to find his way home because this is the happy ending we all wish for ourselves in life, we all wish to find ourselves and be whole. But as The Return progresses, it becomes increasingly difficult to gauge whether or not this is attainable and feasible, whether because we are looking at things from the wrong angle, because we do not yet have all the puzzle pieces, or perhaps most sinister of all, because of the possibility that we may in fact be a doomed species (something now hinted upon more than ever upon the contextual framework of the atomic bomb, the Dark Mother, the woodsmen, military secrets, etc.). In my opinion, The Return almost serves as a call to arms, that we should invest in more spiritual and metaphysical affairs because there may in fact be some validity to them. Whether or not that means deeply obscure occult references or just casually studying a philosophy is up to you, but I do believe that Lynch has always used his surrealist techniques to promote some form of critical thinking and higher consciousness, to the point where my own takeaway is that he is in fact going the egalitarian route, understanding that each ideology has its own merits and that instead of dogmatically following one, we should find balance. This is the foundation of perennial philosophy, and even in areas such as Thelema can one potentially reach this idea.

Twin Peaks in general reminds me a lot of the story of Lucifer; thought to once be God’s favorite angel, his rebellious nature meant that God cast him out of Heaven and he became a fallen angel. Lucifer’s name translates to “light bringer,” but from there, Lucifer is treated quite differently depending on who you are speaking to. There are many who believe he is Satan, that he is an evil figure commanding demons. There are those who believe him and Satan are one being, with Lucifer representing spiritual enlightenment and Satan representing earthly pleasure. There are those who believe Lucifer, the light bringer, represents our own internal means of achieving enlightenment (he is associated with phosphorus, the light energy essential to DNA) whether through ourselves our through Lucifer as an external deity. In Gematria, a method of interpreting Hebrew scriptures built on computing numerical values of words based on their constituent letters, Lucifer and Jesus both share the same value even. This is all to say: “How do we know the real Lucifer?” and from there, one may even ask the same of Christ, or of all religious figures. Religion is in and of itself a rather hauntological sort of philosophy, precisely because it requires faith in external narratives and storytelling, and much like with Twin Peaks, when the authors of such works are shrouded in enigma, it becomes hard to discern the facts from fiction and conjecture. Luckily, Lynch and Frost are alive for us right now, so their lore may one day be answered directly or we may one day have access to their private writings, but if nothing else, in the meantime, we are to be haunted by their mysteries. Ultimately, my personal belief is starting to become that the show is meant to function as a retelling of spiritual epics such as the creation myth, and their teachings such as Maya versus Moksha. In fact, this might be why some of us find ourselves experiencing such deja vu and familiarity, because in one way or another, we are familiar with what is happening, but the way Lynch and Frost portray the events is done in a new and innovative way that involves a sort of waiting game and a purgatory state of sorts: Twin Peaks was once the most bizarre and surreal show on television, and now from our vantage point in time – even among the postmodern background of a turbulent political, sociological, and metaphysical society – it once again is. Lynch and Frost serve as guiding figures, reminding us that even in the contexts of our most beloved displays of art and spirituality, we should not limit our understanding by just focusing on one source: In order to understand Twin Peaks, we have to look deeper and exercise critical thought, and utilizing a hauntological outlook will surely help viewers discern what is happening with regards to the woodsmen and fragemented, non-linear time narrative that is now occuring on the show.

[fck-dis-shit-im-out]

Seven Spectacular Details About Apeshit By Beyonce & Jay-Z

“I can’t believe we made it,” sings Beyoncé in “Apeshit - The Carters,” the first single from her surprise joint album with Jay-Z, Everything Is Love. And to prove that she and her husband have made it, in the song’s accompanying video, Beyoncé delivers this line from the Louvre. As the New York Times has pointed out, it is not actually that expensive to shoot a video in the Louvre (about $17,500 for a full day’s shoot). But music videos aren’t about numbers; they’re about how things feel — and there’s no place on earth that feels as lavish, as rich with accumulated cultural power and wealth and colonialism, as the Louvre. If you want to show that you have made it, that you are rich and powerful and one of the greatest artists of your generation, you go to the Louvre. And as an artistic choice, the Louvre is par for Beyoncé’s course. For the past few years, Beyoncé has increasingly cribbed from the iconography of classical Western art in her own image-making. Her pregnancy announcement photo shoot and her birth announcement photo shoot both referenced Botticelli’s Venus and the Renaissance trope of the Madonna and child, and her 2017 Grammys performance drew on goddess imagery from multiple artistic traditions. So when Beyoncé shoots at the Louvre — taking on by turns the poses of Venus de Milo and Victory — she’s continuing an artistic project of recontextualizing classical Western art, of making herself the aesthetic object on which so much wealth and cultural capital has been spent. And coming from a black woman, that’s a radical statement. “In a way, Beyoncé is exploiting/marketing her blackness as creativity — as a kind of weapon — within and against the very Eurocentric system of culture and consumption from which she has benefited,” says James Smalls, a professor of art history at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. That’s an especially radical statement to make in the context of the Louvre, where little of the art features people of color in positions of strength and power. “From the Middle Ages up to the 19th century, works of art that showed black people usually represented them as servants or secondary figures,” explains Smalls. “They were not deemed worthy subjects of paintings, sculptures, or other kinds of cultural works.” One of the few exceptions to that trend is Marie Benoist’s “Portrait d’une négresse,” also displayed at the Louvre. “That painting is an anomaly because it presents a black person as the sole aestheticized subject and object of a work of art,” Smalls says. And it’s the painting that appears at the end of the “Apeshit” video, after shot after shot of portraits of white people.

Benoist painted “Portrait” in 1800, during a brief period in which France had abolished colonial slavery. (In 1794, the French emancipation proclamation liberated the colonies; in 1802, Napoleon reinstated slavery.) In that six-year span, portraits of heroic black people became popular in France, and that created an opportunity for an image of a black woman who is not tending to or subordinate to a white person, who is instead considered worthy of being at the center of her own portrait. As Smalls has pointed out, in its full context, “Portrait” is not a wildly politically subversive image. It’s most likely that the unknown and unnamed subject was a servant with few legal rights who had little choice about how she posed or whether she was okay with her breast being exposed to the world for the next 200 years. Benoist the painter has much more agency here than the black woman at the center of the picture. But in the context of “Apeshit,” with its montages of painting after painting of white faces and white statues, “Portrait” feels both shocking and subversive. It’s a black face in the center of the frame, apparently in control of her domain. And it’s one of the only figures in the Louvre that we don’t see get reinterpreted by either the Carters or their dancers: The only figure in the Louvre that can withstand the unstoppable force that is Beyoncé, that does not need to be remade and reexamined. Part of Beyoncé’s project over the past few years has been to treat art as a form of power: It is a form of focused aesthetic attention, of social capital, and of wealth given solid form. Taking over the Louvre means taking all that power for herself and for the black bodies she brings in with her — except for the “Portrait.” In “Apeshit,” it can stand on its own. What do Beyoncé, The Smurfs 2, and you have in common? All three have the theoretical ability to rent out the Louvre. Though there was widespread awe that the Carters’ video for “Apeshit” took place inside the most famous museum in the world, turns out, it’s actually not all that uncommon. According to the New York Times, about 500 shoots take place at the Louvre each year, which have included films on opposite ends of the “is this a good movie” spectrum, from last year’s Wonder Woman to 2013’s The Smurfs 2, which even the Louvre couldn’t save from its 13 percent Rotten Tomatoes rating. Though the museum only allows photography in the galleries for private use, it makes exceptions for professionals through written authorization. As of 2015, the Louvre’s policy states that to shoot a short film or music video, the cost for both interior and exterior shots would be just €4,500, or about $5,200. It’s possible that if the Carters had a crew of more than 50 people, that number would have been closer to €18,000, but as the Times notes, “there are hotel rooms here that cost more than that.” Hosting private events, however, will cost you a bit more. A tour for under 50 guests will set you back €10,000, while renting out the reception hall beneath I.M. Pei’s pyramid will cost, at the very least, €28,000. Though, to reiterate, that isn’t an amount at which anyone would gasp, “Mon dieu!” Lorde, I have an idea for you about where to film your video for “The Louvre.” Call me! In the video for Beyoncé and JayZ‘s “Apeshit,” the first visual from the pair’s surprise joint album Everything Is Love, the two stars romp through the Louvre in Paris, seizing center stage in a high-culture palace that – like most Western art museums – historically made little room for non-white artists. Some of their mission involves the strategic highlighting of non-white images already in the Louvre. Beyoncé and Jay-Z rap in front of an Egyptian sphinx, and in galleries filled mostly with neo-classical French paintings – white artists, white subjects – the camera singles out black faces. (The video is directed by Ricky Saiz, who also helmed the “Yonce” video from Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s eponymous 2013 album.) Viewers catch brief glimpses of a pair of black figures in Paolo Veronese’s painting “The Wedding at Cana,” where Jesus turned water into wine, as well as a quick look at Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait d’une Négresse,” a depiction of a black woman staring guilelessly back at the viewer. But the Where’s Waldo? moments highlighting black figures are fleeting – the possibilities for this in the Louvre, or any major Western art museum, are limited from the start. So Beyoncé and JayZ set about interjecting blackness into a space that has never placed much value on it, claiming one of the centerpieces of European culture with gleeful defiance. They frequently film themselves moving in opposition to the frozen stillness of paintings by Jacques-Louis David, a French neoclassical artist whose work – like “The Oath of the Horatii” and “Madame Récamier” – invokes the Greco-Roman tradition. Much of the potency of the “Apeshit” video comes from the contrasts drawn between the “white” art on the walls and the black women on the gallery floors. In front of David’s “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine,” a court scene of relentless white extravagance, Beyoncé and eight black dancers hold hands and begin to dance. It takes just a few synchronized sashays to upstage David’s massive painting, replacing an ornate symbol of white authority with a celebration of black bodies in motion. The Louvre’s stature depends on people believing that “The Coronation of Empress Joséphine” is the art, but the eye tells a different story – hanging behind Beyoncé and her dancers, the painting is reduced to wallpaper. Throughout the “Apeshit - The Carters” video, Beyoncé and Jay-Z repeatedly upstage some of Western classical art’s most famous images in one of its central sacred spaces. Beyoncé holds a series of chopping micro-poses with her hands before Saiz cuts quickly to an image of a distressed character, hands held up to shield her head, taken from another David painting, “The Rape of the Sabine Women.” The placement of the hands connects the two frames, but Beyoncé’s is virile, aggressive and in charge, while David’s figure seems merely fearful.

Radical gestures roll in on a mightily slippery sliding scale these days, don’t they? We’re far past any cultural division between high and low or pop and art at this point, and artists on the charts are also sniffing out their next inspiration, album cycle, or comparison to their own personal affairs in the grander schemes of culture and history. You’d be hard pressed to find a more hallowed repository of the West than the Louvre, so of course that’s where Beyoncé and Jay-Z have rolled up to set their new music video for the track “Apeshit” from the fresh album they dropped like an anvil right on top of your weekend. Of course this isn’t the first time they’ve been there, nor the first time some Pop-ish upstarts made a Major Statement at the French museum, but it would seem to be a major escalation in the Carters x Louvre relationship, to say nothing of the pride re: their own marital ties that the album and video are so keen to showcase. When worlds (and genres) collide is still a strong trend across multiple spheres of art and culture—turning meaning and message into something of a competitive game of Russian nesting dolls or an arms race of spectacle-based oneupmanship—but what might we make of this night at the museum if considered in light of the 1960s Marxist avant-garde French Situationist International? Founded in 1957 by Guy “Barrel of Laughs” Debord and Asger “Beware the Palette Knife” Jorn, the Situationists were guys and gals, but mostly guys, who wanted to, as the name would indicate, create some situations and elevate to the level of philosophy the notion of taking a freaking walk outside. But they also had a strategy! And key among their techniques, to which you can probably attribute the rise of “culture jamming” and just whatever Banksy thinks he’s doing, was the détournement. Discussed in chapter 8 of Debord’s 1967 tract The Society of the Spectacle, the technique calls for taking advantage of existing cultural objects or canonized art, rerouting their message, and even advocates for theft: “Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.” You would not have wanted this guy for your editor, but if you were looking to smash the state (of meaning), Debord was your man.

So, if “détournement serves as a reminder that theory is nothing in itself, that it can realize itself only through historical action and through the historical correction that is its true allegiance,” then is the spectacle of “Apeshit” a glam, historical correction of the Western assumption that houses of European culture contain the highest achievements of man- and womynkind? Beyoncé and Jay-Z have more clout and pull at this point than a merely rich person or garden-variety aristocrat putzing around the Cotswolds or Monaco, and they built that for themselves. When they pull off a stunt like this, it feels like another chime in the prosperity gospel that Doreen St. Félix examined in the arc of Rihanna’s career, as well as further evidence that the ability to make a compelling spectacle of oneself, to write a personal narrative as large as that of the progress of a civilization, is success. The false idea here is white supremacy, and perhaps the correction then is that European colonialists may not have had the time or the means to make their masterpieces if it weren’t for the economic boon of slavery and historical pillaging of resources from southern and eastern continents for the benefit of countries like France. The Situationists didn’t really like spectacle much (“The spectacle in general, as the concrete inversion of life, is the autonomous movement of the non-living”) but they recognized that it was inescapable in modern society (“The spectacle is not a collection of images, but a social relation among people, mediated by images”). Given this circumstance, Beyoncé and Jay-Z, god bless them, would appear to be doing their best to create a spectacle that people who look like them can see themselves in too, as opposed to the near uninterrupted stream of black death spectacle the media and world is awash in on a day to day basis. Look forward to hearing this jam blasting out of car speakers this summer—it’ll be a real situation. The surprise release of Beyoncé Knowles-Carter and Jay-Z’s new album, Everything Is Love, (credited as “The Carters” on the album to recognize they’re performing as a united duo, not as individuals) on Saturday, June 16 has left the music world reeling. Already, what fans have been carefully dissecting – and what we’re interested in unpacking, too – is the imagery from the music video for the album’s lead single, “APESHIT”. The six-minute video is likely going to be considered one of the best of 2018, with The Carters and a troupe of dancers taking over the Louvre. In case you couldn’t already tell, the fact that Bey and Jay Z even got unfettered access to the Louvre for their own use is a stunning power move – adding a glorious power to the “APESHIT” lyric “I can’t believe we made it/ This is why we’re thankful”. Let’s start with the primary location in “Apeshit”: the Louvre. Historically, it’s a predominately white space that primarily features white, male-created works of art. It’s a microcosm of history, which itself is mostly white, male, and heterosexual. Tradition and the Louvre go hand-in-hand, too, which means that Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s presence is a total disruption from the beginning. For modern audiences and fans of The Carters, the disruption is surely welcome. Not only can we expect to see (and do see) The Carters standing next to some of the most famous works of art, including the Mona Lisa and Winged Victory of Samothrace, but we see that they are aligning themselves with it right out of the gate. Their presence in a place that preserves what history has deemed the most important artworks, standing next to said art while themselves looking like art and using their body language to engage with this art, already implies they are as worthy of being there as the older work. It’s a middle finger to convention, a dare aimed at squarely at the gatekeepers of history and artistic tradition: You know we deserve to be here. The Carters begin positioning themselves as iconography from the moment we first see them, standing in front of the “Mona Lisa”. Sure, it’s a callback to the first time they took a photo with arguably the most famous painting in history back in 2014, but something is different this time around. Like the “Mona Lisa”, Beyoncé and Jay-Z are dressed simply, but powerfully. Suits for both, in bright colours and styles specific to their tastes and representative of the times they live in; again, just like the “Mona Lisa”. But even more of an echo of the painting is their expressions: a strong stare straight ahead, lips pressed together, shoulders back. They are telegraphing to us that they are as iconic as the “Mona Lisa”, without even saying a word. By donning expressions very much in the same vein as the iconic painting, they’re telling the viewer that they’re basically in the presence of a peer. But even more than that, they’re commenting on the beguiling and enticing space they occupy in our own culture. Much like the “Mona Lisa”, they are telling us that they know we think about them in a way we don’t think about other music artists. They know that we’ll spend hours analysing them and their work, attempting to find meaning in their movements and lyrics, trying to work out the symbols and icons they’ve put forth, and hoping to crack the impenetrable fortress they’ve built around them (from which they only emerge to become vulnerable when they want to). Humans have spent centuries trying to unpack the enigma of the “Mona Lisa” and still continue to do so to this day; do you really think you can figure out The Carters in a day? Another immensely important moment from “APESHIT” comes in the repeated glimpses of Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s “Portrait of a Black Woman (Negress)” from 1800. One of the few works of art painted by a woman in the Louvre, the painting is deeply important both as a feature in the Louvre and its place in art history, because it is the only painting of its time to depict a black woman who is not a slave or similarly subjugated person, but rather simply presented in all her glory.

The painting affirms that black women are worthy of being in artistic spaces, and in enduring imagery. The painting is shown a few times, and it’s the second to last painting we see before the video closes on Bey and Jay turning around to regard the “Mona Lisa” – further confirmation that Benoist’s painting and its subject deserve recognition. It’s also no accident that the “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue is frequently seen in “APESHIT”. Implying triumph and power, the statue has endured over centuries, and The Carters imply just as much by once again standing in front of it, in perhaps a nod to their own triumph and the power they’ve achieved. According to the Louvre website for the piece, the statue depicts Nike, and was likely created to commemorate a naval victory by the Rhodians (who hail from Rhodes, part of the Dodecanese island group in Greece). The towering relic from the Hellenistic period is, as the Louvre’s description notes, intensely dramatic and glorifies the female body in connection with something traditionally masculine (victory in war). That endowment of power to a female body is then emulated in the female bodies that stand before it in present day, through Beyoncé and her troupe of female dancers. All of these women come together and move as one being, with Beyoncé presiding over them all. She is the modern image of victory over the warfare placed on her body, career, intellect, personal life; having succeeded, she can now dress like “Winged Victory” and, in a sense, pass along her victories to the women who dance on the steps in front of her. Twitter user Queen Curly Fry’s in-depth Twitter thread breaking down the art seen in “Apeshit” is thorough, and her comments on the incorporation of the “Venus de Milo” into the video is so neatly articulated that we couldn’t have said it better if we tried: “Here, Beyoncé once again models herself as a Greek statue, this time the Venus de Milo. However, in this shot she wears a nude bodysuit with wrapped hair, reframing both goddesses of beauty and victory as a black woman. This dismantles white-centric ideals of beauty.” Similarly, Twitter account Tabloid Art History nails why it’s so important and iconic for Beyoncé and her dancers to be dancing in front of “The Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon and the Coronation of Empress Joséphine” by Jacques Louis David from 1804: “What I especially like about this part of the video is that the painting itself depicts a disruption, Napoleon taking the Pope’s role from him and crowning Josephine himself. Beyoncé further disrupts this by taking on Josephine’s role as the one being crowned.” If we consider Napoleon’s role as a major coloniser in the early 19th century, particularly in Northern Africa, then Beyoncé’s placement in the shot is extra symbolic. Beyoncé standing underneath the place where Napoleon is seen crowning his wife in the painting is a symbolic retrieval of stolen power. One of the other paintings we see in “APESHIT” is another Jacques-Louis David painting, “The Intervention of the Sabine Women.” Interestingly, we only see portions of the painting, never the entire artwork. This could be a sly comment on the dissection and appropriation of black bodies by white culture for their own aesthetic uses – or it could just be a deft use of quick cuts for dramatic effect for the video. Or maybe it’s both.   Twitter user Queen Curly Fry notes here that the painting, for the puposes of “APESHIT”, depicts “(white) female fear evoked by (white) male violence is juxtaposed w/ (black) female empowerment (‘get off my dick’).” The painting’s use of white female tears –long criticised as a way for white women to shift any blame they deserve for racist behaviour, or to turn a blind eye to racial injustice – is in direct contrast with Beyoncé and her dancers’ freedom, calm, and enlightenment. In the end, “APESHIT” is a triumph because it is a statement that only The Carters could successfully make. The visual tells the powers that be to fuck off with their tradition, their preciously guarded history that has sought to erase non-white people from the history books, and their preconceived notions about how black bodies can be ornamental. They’ve used art to push back, to demand honour for the work they’ve contributed. “APESHIT” is a force to be reckoned with, and The Carters’ use of art to make a statement is an announcement to the world that they’ve shaped culture as much as anything hanging on a gallery wall.

[boaws]

BOAWS Top Records of 2016

Welp, I finally got around to doing something on here and finishing up my top 20 records of the year list. Wooooo. Anyway, activity around here has been slim, I know that, but unfortunately work and all that crap has gotten in the way a little more than I'd like. Hopefully the coming year will see a bit more reviews and maybe even a podcast or two if time allows. Who knows. But for now, BOAWS is still going and will not go anywhere. Without further hesitation, here is my top 20 recordsof the year. Have a good one. 20 – Spit-Take – Frog Rock (Ice Age) Real quick and to the point indie-rock jams from this Connecticut group. Caught my attention with their first full-length not all that long ago and then followed it up nicely with this second, and even better, helping of songs. Definitely a nod or two to the plentiful 90's indie-rock heritage of bands that focused more on the quirkier aspects of the sound like maybe Archers of Loaf or Sebadoh, thanks to instances of unpredictably that waver between some emotionally charged slower numbers to jolting aggressive bursts that burn brightly for roughly a minute or so and then leave before you know it. Interesting album in approach and songwriting, but isn't short of on the solid tunes. Spit-Take – Awful Long (stream) BUY IT! 19 – Youth Code – Commitment to Complications (Dais) I can see why people wouldn't particularly like this, especially those that would consider themselves very involved industrial enthusiasts (whatever the fuck that means), but I've never really been the biggest cheerleader of industrial music in general. I have nothing against it, and I like my fair share actually, it's just that I'm particularly picky. Youth Code, for all intents and purposes, probably aren't even really an industrial band...as they seemingly just bust out really harsh music that propel out of the stereo like hardcore music with drum machines and stuff. That's basically what I think the goal is, and probably why I'm as in tune with it as I am...since yet again, it's hardcore music and it's unwavering in its approach for better or for worse. Thankfully, to these ears, it's often for the better and for the duration of Commitment to Complications, it chugs and beats its way through songs that will fluctuate in sheer ugliness, but no less leave some sort of impression. Cathartic of sorts in its, occasionally over the top, aggression. But I'm digging it, big gross warts and all. Youth Code – Glass Splitter (stream) BUY IT! 18 – Fake Limbs – Matronly (Don Giovanni) It seems almost unbelievable that these guys haven't popped up on a previous best of list of mine, as their two albums prior to this one were both fantastic pieces of noisy, yet intricately designed noise-rock of sorts. There are plenty of bands that turn and choose to ravage the already fairly stripped mines of Chicago/Midwestern based noise-rock/math-rock, but Fake Limbs are a band that seems to get it more so than most. There doesn't need to be a strictly adhered sense of nostalgia here, there CAN be some fun to be had with it, which is one of the brightest spots to this band. Just by song titles/theme alone, you can gather that they can easily poke fun of themselves, just as much as the whole entire musical landscape of which they proudly occupy. In the process, they do it with being nothing short of riff monsters, slinging fuzzy goodness and shaping it in ways that have only been heard few and far between before. There is skill here, which is often disregarded when coming up with rock music that is simply designated and designed to be “noisy”. Fake Limbs have been ripping apart the idyllic stagnation of noise-rock one album at a time, and Matronly is just the latest and greatest of their efforts. Fake Limbs – Lil Bit (stream) BUY IT! 17 – Multicult – Position Remote (Reptilian) Multicult are certainly no stranger to these pages, as pretty much every album of theirs has absolutely destroyed in some way or another. Scarily consistent they are, which is why Position Remote is popping up here because it hardly deters from what has made the band so great. Skilled musicians doing interesting and actually strangely catchy things with the mathier side of the rock equation. It's hard to do, yet Multicult have been pumping out tunes that zig-zag in ways that could easily cause bouts of dizziness. To me, they've always shared the same quality mind unraveling aesthetic of the great Table, which in my opinion released one of the greatest and unheralded math-rock albums ever. So, for Multicult to have the same kind of craftsmanship and melodic sensibility as a band like that, says plenty of their music. It's not too late to get on board with this, as there are plenty of prior albums to dig and chew through if this one happens to hit that sweet spot. Multicult – Tesseract (stream) BUY IT! 16 – Bruxa Maria – Human Condition (Extreme Ulimate) First time hearing of the band Bruxa Maria and the label that put out their record Extreme Ulimate, which after hearing Human Condition is eerily accurate to what is portrayed here. Going through my list of favorite records this year, it actually turned out to be a pretty solid year for noise-rock, which I'd thought had been kind of suffering for the past couple years or so (probably longer). Between Bruxa Maria and that new Conduit EP, there may be hope yet! With Human Condition they come out with a bit of a red herring with the tune “The Hipsters and the Heathens”, which seems like some innocuous ramped up noise-punk, but quickly runs into the next track “Socially Cleansed” wherein that notion is immediately dispelled with jarring blasts of noise/distortion and electronics before locking into a grotesque distorted groove. The overall aggressive nature of this one is impressive, and is no less matched by vocalist Gill Dread, who screams and wails over this entire mess with little regard of the destruction that is likely being placed on her vocal chords. Dedication if there ever was such a thing. Bruxa Maria – Human Condition (stream) BUY IT! 15 – Behavior – 375 Images of Angels (Iron Lung) Interesting addition to the plentiful catalog of quality Iron Lung releases, Behavior takes on the minimalist side of post-punk to relatively decent results. Understandably, I don't think a lot of people really dug this record very much, but for whatever reason the unevenness of everything taking place on 375 Images of Angels seems to gel with me musically and personally I suppose. Behavior seem uncomfortable on every level of what they are doing, but do it in a manner that tries to maintain some type of freedom or outsider rock. I'm not sure, but it's the uncomfortable tendencies that draw me in and they sound pretty exhausted doing it. Have I reached that level yet? Possibly, but I envision Behavior and this album as my ultimate landing spot of pure disdain for everything around me. Overall, the songs range between sparse post-punk to compositions that come surprisingly fleshed out, but writhe in a distinct chill that still feels terribly rigid and tense. Good album, although I'd be shocked if we hear another from them. Behavior – 78 (stream) BUY IT! 14 – No Sister – No Sister (Self-Released) They have a song on this album called “This Heat”, which I feel like is more than just a reflection on a moment of sweltering weather outside for one or more band members, despite what the lyrics may suggest. Listening to No Sister, it's not at all out of the question that they got just a touch of their influence from the great avant-rock/experimental giants This Heat. While notably more tuneful and less experimental than This Heat ever were, No Sister strive for a sound that is similarly harbored in the deteriorated sounds of such a world, but skirting and lurking around in the dark depths of NYC no-wave shadows like Sonic Youth, Live Skull, DNA, or Band of Susans. Pretty much every song here is anchored by a heavily driving bass roll, while the jangle and squall of the guitars do the rest here. Very cool record that serves as a very nice flashback to a small sect of time where music like this was flourishing. No Sister – Making Wheels Spin (Louder Than Words) (stream) BUY IT! 13 – Lazy Legs – Visiondeath (Wild Patterns) There has always got to be one record that roots itself in shoegaze yesteryear that I will fall in love with, and this year it happens to be Visiondeath from the Chicago based Lazy Legs. Obviously I'm not going to sit here and try and kid anyone into thinking that this album is by any means some sort of genre altering excursion, because it's certainly not, however Lazy Legs do all the things right with Visiondeath that you'd pretty much want to hear out of a record of this nature. Taking a very similar approach to peers Cheatahs and implementing a fuzzier/grungier type of rock element sound allows it to be every bit as dreamy as it needs to be while still being able to maintain a bit of an alternative/rock edge that helps fill out of the sound and fulfills the small hole of proper noise that is always welcome but often sorely missed in a lot of modern shoegaze. Lazy Legs – Snaketeeth (stream) BUY IT! 12 – Human Hands – Morning Sun (Time as a Color / Strictly No Capital Letters) Still is somewhat of a shock that these guys are from the UK, because Morning Sun sounds so much like the great midwesterny slowcore/emo that was pretty common in the 90's. I probably spouted the same shit when I actually wrote about this record (one of the very few I motivated myself to do this past year) a handful of months ago. But whatever, it's true. These dudes are pulling all the right strings of the Codeine/Bedhead/C-Clamp area of things and don't make me want to fall asleep while listening to it, which is a real achievement...because lord there were a lot of bands like this that were just flat out fucking boring. I still haven't went back and listened to their prior album, which from what I understand is a bit different than this one, but if they decide to continue with this trajectory of sadness, then I'm on board. Keep being miserable guys, it's working. Human Hands – Cell (stream) BUY IT! 11 – Blue Smiley – Return (Self-Released) I've listened to a couple or so albums by Blue Smiley prior to this one and none of them really ever stuck, but from the get go of Return things were noticeably different. There is just something so effortlessly otherworldly to their music that kind of nestles itself between the norms of indie-rock and the jangly fuzzy nature of shoegaze, but doesn't quite fit in comfortably with either of them. It's odd. However there was something always in the back of my mind with Blue Smiley and Return that I knew it sounded vaguely like something that I've heard before, and then it finally struck me...they bare a bit of a resemblance to the underrated 12 Rods. I don't know, I think it's just the same kind of garish melodic choices that get me. Certainly fuzzier and warmer sounding, Blue Smiley are about as easy/breezy as it gets on Return, catapulting off of the basis of jangle-pop and ending up somewhere in fucking space. Really good record folks. Blue Smiley – Spin (stream) BUY IT! 10 – Horse Jumper of Love – Horse Jumper of Love (Disposable America) Lately Boston has been very rich on indie-rock that prides itself on appearing carefree/slacker-esque, however under all the posturing is a noticeable amount of nervous/anxiety ridden folks making music. It's been kind of glorious in a way, as bands like Pile have really taken to it like no other. However there are plenty of others to be found within that scene that are making similarly incredible/captivating music, and Horse Jumper of Love is one of those. It's easiest to think of them as a drowsy/sleepier version of Pile or Fat History Month, sounding as if they are occasionally medicated to some degree to help relax or reflect, whichever. While still sharing much of the same off-kilter note bending that much of their contemporaries feature, Horse Jumper of Love obviously have desires to be somewhere not heavily populated and stress free. The feeling of exhaustion within the album is heavy, but it's entirely relatable and they convey very well through songs that feel of desolation, isolation, and having to apologize for who we are. Horse Jumper of Love – DIRT (stream) BUY IT! 09 – Giant Peach – Tarantula (Don Giovanni) I know I mentioned it in my initial write up of this record, but I was thoroughly surprised to know Giant Peach was still a band. After releasing a single that I enjoyed about four or five years ago, they ultimately seemed to disappear, only to pop up out of nowhere with this fantastic record on Don Giovanni. Surprised in the best way possible I guess. Really, from what I can remember from that single, not a whole lot has changed in terms of approach on Tarantula, maybe just a bit tighter and ever so slightly more polished. However, if catchy throwback indie-rock is your type of thing then this record absolutely brings it. “Deserted” is easily in my top songs of the year, as its essentially a masterpiece of crunchy fuzz and melody. Any band that cut something as good as that wins my respect any day of the week. Thankfully Tarantula doesn't just tease with that song alone and reels off a bunch of other solid tunes that are of near ear worm quality. Hell, at least if the band decides to disappear for years again, they'll have at least released this fantastic slice. Giant Peach – Deserted (stream) BUY IT! 08 – Spray Paint – Feel the Clamps (Goner) Spray Paint have always been a band that kind of makes their living reveling in the darker corners of the world, however it's always been kind of a vague sense of ominous behavior or a sneaking suspicion of something amiss. On the Feel the Clamps the band decided to go all in on that aspect of their sound and what is created is a very lurid and scary mess of post-punk that rattles its way through eleven tracks. It's apparent that this record didn't quite go over as well as some of their earlier releases, and I feel like the absolute focus on moving into a more sinister space probably had something to do with that, or it's also possible that this record just isn't as good. But nonetheless, I'm a fan and it's a record that I envision towns like Big Tuna in Wild at Heart being the entire inspiration for or the sort of record that Chop Top from TCM 2 would make if he were a musician. Just entirely creepy from start to finish and the hammer like bass just never ever quits, even when the guitars seemingly fall apart or deteriorate into whatever bizarre black hole they initially crawled out of. Spray Paint – Burn Barrel (stream) BUY IT! 07 – Notches – High Speed Crimes (Cat Dead Details Later & Young Modern) Heard High Speed Crimes at the very beginning of the year and it still holds up. On top of that it produced one of my absolute favorite songs of the year with “Cure for Feeling Cool”, which is entirely too catchy and exceeds at being sort of an anthemic blast of, dare I say it, fuzzed out pop/punk? Either way, it's reigned in and self-aware enough to not become cheesy or overbearing, Notches are simply about good fun, high energy, and songs to match. The completely open guitars make for an extremely loud and noisier affair than the typical slick sounding bullshit that seems to gestate from this area of things, as High Speed Crimes delves into the sloppiness and gritty nature that Jawbreaker showed signs of in their earlier material. No matter, Notches harness a type of energy here that translates into an extremely fun album. Notches – Don't Care About You (stream) BUY IT! 06 – Animal Faces – Other Places (Self-Released) I listened to this record earlier this year without any kind of knowledge that this was the same Animal Faces that I'd heard like five or so years ago with their 7-inch Analytical Dreaming. As you can imagine, the reason being that they sound entirely fucking different from what they did then. The band I remember was a decent, but not overly inspiring post-hardcore/emo band. I mean, I kind of forgot about the single altogether, so that should tell you something right there. Apparently they'd been popping out a single or something of similar degree every year since but I failed to follow. I'm not sure if the trajectory on those records would have foresaw this or not, but Other Places is practically a record from a different band. What is found here though is very good and if it took years to get to this, then it's been well worth it. Animal Faces have adapted a very loose, easy going form of indie-rock that weaves in and out of odd harmonies and melodies for the majority of it. Sometimes it turns things up a bit and gets a fair bit noisy/fuzzy in an 90's alternative kind of way, but for the most part things are more or less centered on the sleepier/exasperated type of indie-rock that isn't too far from what Pile have been doing. In fact, the singers vocals sound eerily similar at times...along with some of the guitar tones. Can't really blame them though, it's working, and Animal Faces seem to be taking it in a bit more of a straight forward rock/emo territory, which kind of fits back with their roots anyway. Really odd way to end up liking a record, but I'll take it however I can get it these days. Animal Faces – Halfgrown (stream) BUY IT! 05 – Tongues - I Really Have to Get My Life Back on Track Before I Cut All My Hair Off (Moniker) Feels good to have a local band this far up on the list. Tongues are a duo from Kansas City that have undoubtedly spent a lot of time with some Godflesh, Big Black, and early Swans records at some point during their brief lives. The first song is called “We Live Under a Bridge”, and if I'd not already seen these guys, then I'd be inclined to almost believe that. The music, if you haven't already gathered, is of the grotesquely loud and monotonous pounding variety...employing added abuse from a drum machine that ranges from a slow breathe knocked out of your chest force or the speedier punk ADD fueled sounds that echo back to Mr. Ablini's earlier ventures. Honestly the drum machine plays a large roll into the success of this record, as the sound they get out of it is fantastically cheesy and dated that it works so well with what they are doing. Like they pulled it out of a dumpster somewhere, fired that piece of shit up and made some music. Indecipherable vocals are added to the mix, which only make things that more delightfully muddied and/or terrifying. Pretty excited to know these dudes are in my backyard of sorts. Tongues – Killing (stream) BUY IT! 04 – Exploded View – Exploded View (Sacred Bones) Late addition to the list, as this is probably the last great record of 2016 that I managed to hear, despite it likely coming out months ago. That's the way I operate now folks. Exploded View are a group featuring Annika Henderson, political journalist turned musician after her collaborative effort with Geoff Barrow. With Exploded View she takes her deep and somewhat breathy spoken word vocal style and pairs it up with the pulsating rhythms of cold post-punk and no-wave. Occasionally surrounding the rolling bass lines with a flurry of guitar hum/rattle, most of the work here is definitely being handled on the low-end. The real achievement for Exploded View lies in the atmosphere that is given by the record, as it's certainly a mood piece in many ways. It's cold, but not entirely lifeless...but also feels like the musings of the sole survivor drifting in a lost space station somewhere. The bleeps, bloops, and chimes that often crop up throughout only go to solidify this type of mood. “Lark Descending” is essentially staring out the port hole into complete nothingness, but boiled down into the musical equivalent. Exploded View seem to capture a bit of a noir feel throughout the album, but never fully latch on to it or go too deep with it. As much as it tends to rattle the walls, it's also very easy to let your mind drift to this one...an album that undoubtedly engulfs the listener from the very first notes. Exploded View – No More Parties in the Attic (stream) BUY IT! 03 – Wrong – Wrong (Relapse) Go ahead and give me all the shit you want about this one, but I'll go to bat for this record any day of the week. Wrong delivered the best heavy rock album there was to be this year with a set of songs that revel in full on taco riff glory. A lot of my love for this record goes back to simpler times when bands like Helmet, Tad, and Fudge Tunnel were the light of my life. Some of that desire to listen to those bands has survived...despite Page Hamilton's very best efforts to ruin anything good there ever was about Helmet. What Wrong do with their debut album is pretty much take all the best aspects of that era of rock/alternative and make a whole fucking album out of it. What's not to like? It's obviously not going to win any awards for originality, but there also hasn't been a record that sounded this good, that is of similar nature, since any one of those aforementioned bands were still releasing (meaningful) records. All in all, Wrong is pretty much a goldmine of riffy goodness and if you're like me and get WAY too excited about bands like Paw doing a one off show somewhere, then this album is for you. Wrong – Fake Brain (stream) BUY IT! 02 – Autolux – Pussy's Dead (30th Century & Columbia) Aside from being wonderful musicians, Autolux are also a group of the absolute best procrastinators. At least that's what I like to think, but there is probably a lot more to it than that...like you know...actually writing songs and stuff. However, whatever it may be, Autolux have become synonymous with the term “glacial pace”, as they've squeezed out 3 albums over the period of roughly 13 years. Their debut Future Perfect, in itself, had long been anticipated prior to its release in 2004 (unsurprisingly one of my favorite albums of that year). While 2010's Transit Transit was a bit of disappointment from my perspective, I thought Pussy's Dead was going to lead down the same path, but it didn't take very long to warm up to this one. I was hoping for something different and that's what I got with Pussy's Dead, although I thought it might be more of a return to the more rock version that had graced their debut. Instead Autolux threw me for a loop and pushed further into the electronic/dub/experimental side of things. In fact, when listening to Pussy's Dead there is very little in terms of actual “guitar” here...just a lot of bass, synth, and cut/chopped electronic fuckery, From what I understand, their stage setup for their live show is pretty impressive/daunting. Autolux has always operated within the dreamier side of rock/pop, and despite the push towards more electronics/beats, they still manage to come off as the orbiting spacey presence that they've always been, just in a very regrouped form. A song like “Brainwasher” is the type that bores its way into our skull and never ever leaves...it's brutally heavy in a way that most people wouldn't even begin to think of. There are aspects of this that remind me of the atmospheric qualities that are shared on HTRK's Psychic 9-5 Club, but not on the same level of minimalism. Honestly, this one gets better with each listen, and I know that's a pretty cliched phrase, but for once I think it's actually true. Shoot me. Autolux – Brainwasher (stream) BUY IT! 01 – Sigh Down One – Memory is Short Longing (IFB & L'oeil du Tigre) This was another album that I wasn't even sure was actually ever going to happen. The band had been trickling out digital only singles since around 2013 or so and the updates were pretty far and few between. Plus, I'm pretty certain that the majority of the members all play in different bands too. So yeah, this one was definitely nice to see arrive this year as I'd greatly enjoyed the little bits and pieces that they'd floated out there. The debut Memory is Short Longing is on one hand a throwback to the grungier alternative days of the 90's, but it's balanced out with the heftiness of bass heavy fuzzy tones that land them also in the good graces of shoegaze fans too. The band is almost as if Lush had opted for more distortion as opposed to heading down the Cocteau Twins ethereal path. The melodies are obviously the selling point with Sigh Down One, every song is just loaded down to the gills with them and tonally is strikingly heavy at times too...one slip up and it's easy to envision the band becoming a sludge-rock/doom act. No shit, things are that thick and syrupy here. I give them kudos, they did everything right here, nuanced to a tee and catchy as hell. Sigh Down One – Lake (stream) BUY IT!

[kpopdancings]

Why K-Pop Star Chung Ha Washes Her Face Three Times Every Night

New Post has been published on http://www.whatsupkpop.com/why-k-pop-star-chung-ha-washes-her-face-three-times-every-night/

Why K-Pop Star Chung Ha Washes Her Face Three Times Every Night

Why K-Pop Star Chung Ha Washes Her Face Three Times Every Night

Raise your hand if you’re ready for Chung Ha to have a goth concept. The 22-year-old Korean pop singer has covered the bases for cute and colorful looks since debuting with disbanded girl group I.O.I in 2016. Now that she’s been a soloist for a good year and a half, imagine her swiping on black lipstick before taking the stage.

Chung Ha doesn’t hate the idea when I suggest it during a recent phone interview. “Maybe for Halloween,” she tells me as she sits backstage before a performance in Seoul. “One day, I would love to try it.” She even brings up trying out a midnight blue lipstick because she loves dark lip colors, so I swear I’m not the only one who is putting this concept into the universe for Chung Ha.

At the moment, Chung Ha is focusing on the concept for her newest mini-album Blooming Blue, though. True to the season, the music video for its title song “Love U” radiates summer vibes, including but not limited to, Chung Ha’s beachy blonde-streaked brown hair and popsicle-stained lips. “[The concept] might remind you of a pool party,” Chung Ha says. I dare you to watch the music video and not want to slip on your bathing suit.

Experimenting With Beauty Trends

Some of this summer’s most popular beauty trends also dominate Blooming Blue’s concept. I have to admit that I screamed internally when I scrolled past a photo Chung Ha posted on Instagram to tease the album of her face speckled with pearls in the formation of freckles. It’s exactly the kind of experimental look that gets me excited about covering K-pop for Allure.

For another promo shot, half of Chung Ha’s hair was tied up into two mini buns, her cheeks were swept with a lemon-yellow blush, and her lids were covered in a shimmery wash of bubblegum pink. Bold eye shadow, in particular, has been incorporated into makeup as she makes the rounds on South Korea’s popular music shows to promote “Love U.” Like many K-pop stars, Chung Ha consistently has the same makeup for every performance. For this comeback, colorful underliner is the focal point of her makeup. “I put on different colored eye shadows on my [lower lids],” she says of her everyday look. Today, she notes that it’s purple, but she’s also done baby blue and fuchsia.

My favorite part of the whole look is the tiny star-shaped rhinestones placed right below Chung Ha’s tear ducts. While promoting her last title song “Rollercoaster,” Chung Ha points out that she had circular ones on the middle of her lower lids. For her goth concept, she can do tiny half moons on the outer corners of her eyes — just saying.

Because Chung Ha seems so on top of beauty trends, I ask her if there are any happening in Korea that haven’t made their way to the U.S. yet. “I’m not sure because we can share everything on YouTube,” she says. True. That’s how she recently found out about cryotherapy. “I haven’t tried it before, but I really want to,” she says. Maybe we should get cryofacials while we’re in Los Angeles for KCON LA? (I’m only half-kidding.)

The Impact of “Rollercoaster”on Chung Ha’s Look Throughout our interview, Chung Ha repeatedly refers back to “Rollercoaster.” Its bright concept truly helped solidify and define Chung Ha’s aesthetic in the K-pop world. Not only was has it been her favorite concept so far, but it’s also one that she says fits her personal style best. The glow-in-the-dark makeup was fun, but Chung Ha still isn’t over the amount of glitter involved. I thought I loved glitter, but Chung Ha lives for it. She brings it up so many times I start to wonder if it runs through her veins.

With copious amounts of sparkle on her eyes, outfits, and nails for the music video, the concept made Chung Ha feel more comfortable than, say, the cutesy, ice cream-themed concept I.O.I had for its final album. (She names this as the hardest concept for her to pull off.) While in the makeup chair for “Rollercoaster,” “I gave a lot of suggestions, like, let’s do glitter here, let’s do glitter there,” she says. “I love glitter so much.”

Turns out, giving input on her hair and makeup concepts is commonplace for Chung Ha. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t like input from others either. “I also love listening to other people’s advice, so I could try new stuff like the freckles,” she adds.

Chung Ha does have thoughts on her next concept, though. Surprisingly, the look she has is mind is completely opposite to her favorite look. “For my next concept, I’d like to go very matte with more of a nude tone,” she says. “And my hair not colorful, just black or maybe brown — really minimal.”

Chung Ha’s Go-To Skin-Care Routine Despite being experimental with her hair and makeup in her professional life, Chung Ha rarely tries out new looks when she’s not working. “Because I wear makeup all the time when I’m on schedule and on stage, I give my skin time to rest and breathe,” she explains. “I actually don’t put on makeup that much in my free time.”

Instead, Chung Ha concentrates on giving her skin some TLC with soothing sheet masks. “They’re comfortable and easy to dispose of,” she explains. Wash-off masks, on the other hand, aren’t her favorite because rinsing them off can be harsh on skin, and she’s all about gentle formulas.

Cleansing is also a key part of Chung Ha’s skin-care routine. “Even if you put so many good products on, there’s no use if your skin isn’t washed thoroughly,” she explains. If she’s wearing makeup, Chung Ha starts off with an eye makeup remover before embarking on a three-step process. An oil cleanser kicks things off by gently sweeping away any leftover makeup. (My favorite is the Banila Co Clean It Zero Original Cleansing Balm, in case you’re looking for a recommendation.) Then, she reaches for a foaming cleanser like the Neogen Real Cica Micellar Cleansing Foam.

Lastly, Chung Ha like to do what she calls “bubbling it out” with face wash that, well, bubbles. (She didn’t mention her go-to, but try the Belif Pore Cleaner Bubble Foam.) “That’s about it,” she finishes off the list, as if it isn’t an extensive cleansing regimen. I tell her some people just use a face wipe and call it a day, so I respect her washing her face three times. “Really?” she replies. “I thought I was really simple because I wear so much makeup.”

She thinks the rest of her routine was simple, too. Spoiler alert: It’s not. After cleansing comes her toner set. The first one is a cleansing toner. (Allure editors love the Acwell Licorice pH Balancing Cleansing Toner.) The second is a hydrating toner. Then, she smooths on an essence, a moisturizer, and a sleeping pack — in that order.

If you lost count of how many steps that is, Chung Ha’s skin-care routine adds up to nine steps. Occasionally, a tenth is incorporated. “If I would do another one, I would do eye cream,” she adds. “But I don’t usually do my eye cream. I forget.” Same. I’m glad K-pop stars forget to put on eye cream, too.

[gossipnetwork-blog]

Remembering AC/DC's Malcolm Young, Band's Rock Mastermind

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/remembering-acdcs-malcolm-young-bands-rock-mastermind/

Remembering AC/DC's Malcolm Young, Band's Rock Mastermind

“There’s very few rock & roll bands,” Malcolm Young explained to a Dutch TV interviewer around the time of AC/DC’s 2000 album Stiff Upper Lip. “There’s rock bands, there’s sort of metal bands, there’s whatever, but there’s no rock & roll bands – there’s the Stones and us,” he chuckled. When asked by the interviewer to explain the difference between rock bands and rock & roll bands, he replied, “Rock bands don’t really swing … a lot of rock is stiff. They don’t understand the feel, the movement, you know, the jungle of it all.”

Few rock & rollers have ever understood “the jungle of it all” like Malcolm Young, and fewer still have ever been as single-mindedly devoted to its perpetuation. From 1973, when he formed AC/DC with his younger brother Angus, to 2014, when dementia and other health issues forced his premature retirement, Malcolm never once allowed the band to deviate from its swinging, swaggering, riff-driven course. During Malcolm’s tenure, AC/DC’s recordings featured three different lead vocalists, three different bassists and five different drummers; and yet, the band’s musical aesthetic remained so stubbornly consistent as to make the Ramones look like flighty trend-jumpers by comparison.

AC/DC never mucked about with drum machines or synthesizers, never worked with “hit doctors,” never invited guest stars to appear on their records, and never made musically touristic forays beyond the Chuck Berry riffs and Australian bar circuit that originally spawned them – their idea of musical experimentation was to let Bon Scott take a bagpipes solo on “It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll),” or affix a tolling church bell to the start of “Hell’s Bells.” The most “pop” song in their catalog is “You Shook Me All Night Long,” a fist-punching paean to marathon fucking, and the closest they ever came to recording a ballad was “The Jack,” a nasty six-minute slow blues about contracting gonorrhea. “Rock and roll is just rock & roll,” Brian Johnson sagely opined in “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” – and by the same token, AC/DC has always been just AC/DC, doggedly mining the same vein for good-time gold.

But if AC/DC’s public image was largely defined by Angus’s naughty schoolboy, Bon’s lascivious pirate and Brian’s lusty bricklayer personas, it was Malcom who truly defined the band’s lean ‘n’ mean sound. In addition to serving as the captain of the good ship AC/DC, he was also its chief architect and mechanic, tinkering with riffs and songs as tirelessly as he tinkered with his 1963 Gretsch Jet Firebird, which underwent countless modifications as he strove to unleash the ultimate guitar tone. “He’s the engine in the Mack truck that is AC/DC,” Anthrax’s Scott Ian told Loudwire in 2014. “He’s the driving force behind that band; has been since Day One. To the casual listener, they probably don’t know who Malcolm Young is … but Malcom’s the guy. He’s the greatest rhythm guitar player ever.”

Indeed, while notable guitarists like Ian, James Hetfield and Dave Mustaine have regularly sung his praises – no less an authority than Eddie Van Halen has called him “the heart and soul of AC/DC” – the general public has remained largely oblivious to his importance to the band. (As a budding hard rock fan picking up 1979’s Highway to Hell for the first time, it was all about Angus and Bon for me; I wouldn’t realize until years later that the tiny guy on the album’s cover with the tight T-shirt, center-parted hair and thuggishly menacing gaze was actually the one responsible for so many of the clarion guitar riffs that attracted me to the record in the first place.) Such relative anonymity was perfectly fine with Malcolm, who was usually happy to let Angus, Bon or Brian handle band interviews. In concert, he rarely strayed more than a few feet from his Marshall stack, concentrating on keeping the riff machine stoked while his younger brother’s duck-walking, pants-dropping, guitar-shredding antics stole the limelight.

But Malcolm was far more than just a riff-meister. “From the get-go, Mal’s always been one to come up with melody ideas,” Angus explained to me in 2005, when I interviewed him for a Revolver feature about the making of 1980’s epochal Back in Black. “I’m a bit rough and raucous – I go for the rhythmic things – but Malcolm will dial in a melody, and likes to get it so it’s all hooking together and feels right.”

Malcolm had clearly internalized the lessons he’d learned at the knee of older brother George Young, who’d taken on a similarly low-key role as guitarist, songwriter and producer with legendary 1960s Australian hitmakers the Easybeats, and who – in partnership with Easybeats guitarist Harry Vanda – had already become a successful producer of other acts by the time Malcolm and Angus formed AC/DC. (George, who along with Vanda produced such classic early AC/DC albums as TNT, Powerage and Let There Be Rock, died on October 22nd at the age of 70.) Like George, Malcolm was never content with just a gut-punching riff, a swinging groove and a catchy chorus; everything had to be primed for maximum sonic impact, as well.

“Mal always had a better ear for recording and mixing than I did,” Angus told me. “He was more involved with that when we were younger, fiddling around with sounds and stuff. He tunes into it more than me; I’m more about just picking up the thing and play it. He helped me a lot with dialing in sounds from my amp; I would be saying, ‘I can’t get nothin’ out of this Marshall,’ and he would help me sort it out and get the best out of it.”

It was also Malcolm who kept AC/DC firmly focused during the traumatic weeks following Scott’s unexpected death-by-misadventure in February 1980. While the band’s management and record company pressured them to find a new singer, Malcolm was adamant that he and Angus direct their energies into finishing the songs that would eventually become the Back in Black album. “There were a lot of suggestions [about auditioning singers],” Angus told me, “But Malcolm kept saying to me, ‘We’ll do it when we feel we’ve got all our music together. The rest of it can wait!’ We didn’t want to be rushed into anything.”

While Malcolm’s death at the too-young age of 64 is certainly a massive blow for AC/DC fans everywhere, it’s unlikely that he would want Angus to bring it all to an end on his account. Even in his absence, AC/DC has continued to function like a finely-tuned clockwork mechanism – the band successfully soldiered following his retirement, recording and touring behind 2014’s Rock or Bust with nephew Stevie Young taking over for his uncle on rhythm guitar. That the band continues to thrive without Malcolm isn’t a reflection on his lack of importance to it, but rather a testament to the enduring brilliance of the material he wrote, and the perfection of the musical machine that he designed to deliver it. So long as there’s enough electricity left in the world for some guitarist somewhere to hit a ringing, window-rattling A chord, Malcolm Young’s spirit will live on. Rock in Peace, Mal.

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