#formatted this whole post while listening to the fun home soundtrack

[bluedalahorse]

Unsolicited August backstory headcanons (plus a bonus tangent about Blue’s undergraduate initiation)

Ahahaha well, I left my work laptop at work by accident. I guess that’s my subconscious is telling me to take a break and post the August headcanons I’ve been drafting on the bus each morning so…

There are a few posts floating around my dash right now that ask questions about what August would have done in certain hypothetical situations. The discussion has all been worthwhile to watch, but I’ve refrained from jumping in as of yet, in part because work has been busy and in part because of personal headcanon reasons. The thing with personal headcanons is that they just kind of live in my head and influence the way I write fic. They’re not really the kind of thing I can prove or argue for, they’re just… vibes? But vibes are still worth talking about in one’s fandom spaces so I may as well ramble.

One thing I believe as someone who spends too much time writing from this garbage boy’s POV is that August did not show up to his first year of Hillerska as exactly the person we see onscreen in 1.1. He was a full two years younger, which is significant for a teenager, and he would have been more recently impacted by the loss of his father. Moreover he would have been entering as a first year and would not have been immediately afforded all the at-school privileges the third year boys enjoy. Now, this does not mean he was a morally perfect angel—far from it, given that being landed gentry with generational wealth can still do a number on one’s psyche. However, if I assume that August came to Hillerska as the very same Full Titled Asswipe he is as a third year, I don’t get to explore systems of privilege and how they radicalize young men into toxic and harmful behavior. Which is something I’m interested in as a writer, both in my fanfic and my original fiction.

With that in mind, here are some of my personal headcanons for August’s pre-Hillerska and pre-season 1 life, with some Horn family headcanons mixed in…

August’s relationship to the royal family—or not—was a big source of conflict between his parents. Carl Johan wanted him hanging out with the royal family and getting to know his second cousins while Louise did not. For the most part, Louise won this argument when August was a child. In August’s early childhood, Carl Johan would frequently go off to visit the palace on his own, and came back with fun stories and various presents and the like. I base this on the fact that August doesn’t seem to have hung out with Wille or Erik as a child, and seems to have some seemingly “insider” knowledge of the royal family, but with like, weird gaps about things. He also tends to idealize royal life in a way Wilhelm doesn’t, given that Wilhelm has lived royal life. I feel like this is consistent with a backstory where August was mostly told about the royal life from his dad’s perspective. Like he’s got a lot of details but he doesn’t have all of them and he’s still got rose-colored glasses.

August before the age of twelve or so was one of those kids who was pretty bad at interacting with kids his own age, but was “better” at interacting with adults. He’s an only child, so he wouldn’t have grown up around siblings, and would have probably had to play alone a lot. I don’t know if I believe school or his local area would have been an easy place for him to make friends given what @sflow-er was saying about children of the nobility and what it’s like for them when they go to their local schools. I wouldn’t go so far as to say August was bullied. (I mean, maybe he was, I don’t know. From my experience of working with young people, it’s not uncommon for kids who are bullied at one school to become bullies at other schools they transfer to. On the other hand, I think we’ve seen enough of August’s personality to know he could potentially be prickly and arrogant and push other kids away. Regarding that question, I think I’d go with whatever the fic needs. Anyway!) I also feel like, with the growing tensions in his parents’ marriage, he potentially would have coped by trying to put up a mature facade at a young age, which would mean lots of convincing adults he can handle everything. By the time he gets to Hillerska that all comes crashing down on him.

Because I’m such a gothic lit weirdo I insist that there were rumors Årnäs was haunted. Young August probably got asked about that a lot.

Maternal backstory headcanons: Louise’s parents were diplomats or in international business or something similar, so she spent periods of her youth away from Sweden, and sometimes away from her parents, often in international schools or international boarding schools. I have nothing to go on here canon-wise, except there’s that line where August says Louise is off traveling when the Headmistress can’t reach her. It’s very much an excuse, of course, but I like to imagine a grain of truth to it. Louise’s youth abroad gave her a yearning for international travel, and it’s her favorite way to escape the pressures of life when they get too great.

Paternal backstory headcanons: perhaps one of my more… spicy? controversial? … whatever… headcanons is that Carl Johan and Kristina were one another’s Unfortunate Romances in their youth. But Blue, you say. They are cousins! Ew! Which, yes, but they are also royals, and that sort of thing isn’t completely unprecedented I guess. There’s also a neat little chiasmus in my head where Wilhelm’s “unfortunate romance” shakes up the royal court because they feel like he’s trying to pull the monarchy into the future too fast, whereas in Kristina’s day she was that the monarchy needed to modernize, and that sort of thing was less frowned upon centuries ago but these days it Isn’t Done. ANYWAY Carl Johan’s feelings for Kristina remained sort of unresolved for most of his life, and this was something he ruminated on as his addiction got worse. Louise and Carl Johan never spoke about this piece of his backstory, but it was sort of always hanging awkwardly in the air between them. This also fueled Louise’s desire to keep August away from the palace and the royal family stuff, and the fights between her and Carl John about that. None of the kids’ generation knows about the Unfortunate Romance. Well, maybe Erik did, but he’s dead.

You may be asking, if Louise was opposed to August going to the palace and hanging out with his second cousins, then why did she send him to Hillerska? That, my friends, was an act of resignation, and of her not knowing what to do. I imagine puberty was already making August pretty irritable and difficult to deal with. And, with things growing worse and worse between his parents and his father’s addiction growing more problematic, August was probably just… not in a good place. No one in the family was a good place. I don’t see his parents as fully divorced in the year or so leading up to his father’s death, but I do think they were separated—maybe in an obvious way, or  maybe they were pretending not to be. So, when Carl Johan took his own life, I imagine August’s anger and grief got even more explosive, and was often directed at his mother. Louise was not in a place where she knew how to deal with the situation, and sent him off to the school her husband had been pushing her to send August to. Sort of like she threw up her hands and went, “you know what? Fine. If this is his final wish, so be it.” And so August was sent away.

August showed up to his first year just sort of… quieter at first, with a lot of anger and grief simmering underneath. I mean why talk about feelings? He was also desperately, desperately in need of something that gave him a feeling of purpose. And then Erik found him. I think this was in part orchestrated a bit by Kristina behind the scenes; I imagine there was a call or text message where she nudged Erik to check up on her cousin’s kid, because even as complicated as the past was, Carl Johan was at one point Kristina’s favorite cousin. So what Erik did was appoint August as his first year lackey who takes care of everything for him—the one who knocks on his door in the morning, the one who pours the drinks at the party, and so on. Basically, August was in the Alexander role for Erik, and ended up taking it very seriously. This was the purpose he had been looking for, the sense of meaning.

I think August’s initiation would have played a role in helping him to feel a sense of purpose and community, too. Wait, what the fuck, Blue? That’s probably what you’re saying right now. Well… a lot of people talk about what the initiation sequence was or wasn’t for Wille, and how Wille’s initiation would have been worse than that of other students. And people usually only talk about that in terms of what Wille experienced. As someone who has attended a school with initiations (and who has even been initiated myself, albeit in a milder way because it was at a women’s college with traditions that differ from Hillerska’s) I actually don’t know if I think that’s true. I also think August’s initiation was probably a more… well, probably something he thought of as positive? Exciting? Seemingly helpful? (I mean, not helpful, but you know.)

EXTREME BONUS TANGENT: I can say that as someone who has been initiated myself, it’s certainly not a fun experience for everyone. That said, it was fun for me at the time, and remains important to me in a way. Speaking from the perspective of someone who enjoyed my initiation experience, it’s… well, it’s kind of weird. You’re in this strange state of torture for a while, like intense mental and physical discomfort, and everyone around you seems to be determined to contribute to that, and you feel very constrained and stretched to your limit. But then once you pass your initiation and you’re welcomed into your new community, it’s like this sudden switch over to an intense euphoria and a whole flood of endorphins. Like, I’m here, and they’re cheering me on, and I belong here, and these people are my family and I love them now. NOW, THAT SAID: initiations are not a good practice generally, because they are generally done en masse and there is a lot of potential for peer pressure and institutionalized abuse. I view my college’s initiation traditions differently now than I do when I was eighteen. That said, my college had also at least put some infrastructure in place as far as consent and contracts, to keep things from going wrong. You could opt out of any task at any time. Still—it’s not a perfect system, and Hillerska is far from perfect, so. You know. Personal memories I have complex feelings about.

Back to Hillerska… August seems to be someone who responds to extreme sensations, so I think he probably was someone who would have felt that intense endorphin rush from his initiation. (We frequently see him chasing other highs in the show, too.) And he would have gone through this at a time when he’d just lost his father and was Achilles-level angry at his mother, when he desperately wanted to feel like he was part of something and belonged somewhere. He probably came out of the ordeal worshipping Erik and ready to die for him, and I imagine Erik responded to that loyalty in kind. I expect that they grew close, but it was also definitely a relationship where Erik called the shorts and August followed his lead. This is, in part, why I struggle to buy into fanfics where August betrays or harms Erik, and why I can’t really sign onto the idea that August would have released a video of Erik. Or at least—he wouldn’t get there without multiple steps leading up to it, and multiple perceived trusts being broken, the way things were with Wilhelm. One of the steps, too, in August betraying Wilhelm, is Erik’s death putting August into a state of volatile grief. So there’s that. Like I cannot stress enough how much I don’t think he’d randomly turn on Erik like a mustache-twirling villain.

One more innocuous headcanon: Erik taught August how to dress, because August showed up to school with no damn idea, his first year. To be fair, so few sixteen-year-old boys know how to dress themselves, even when they can afford nice wardrobes. Some of August’s clothes are his father’s old clothes. I mean, definitely the outfit he went shooting in feels like something that could have belonged to his dad.

One less innocuous headcanon: August kept some pretty serious secrets for Erik. I still kind of think this is true in canon and that we could get a big secret revealed in season 3.

That’s all for now! I hope you enjoyed reading if you got this far. I don’t expect too much engagement but I am making an effort to be more real and honest about my YR enthusiasms in these posts.

[differenceenginegirl]

Everything seems a little dark and scary at the moment, so I have complied a list of links to cultural and/or educational things (and some just streams of cute animals, or just plain fun) that are available to watch or listen to or do for free (mostly) online. Some of these will only work for the duration of the current situation (marked with a *), but most are permanent (so far as I know) so can be kept around for a little bit of sunshine on a rainy day.

Feel free to add to this with your own links or ideas, and remember, we’ll get through this together (with the appropriate social distancing). Follow the advice that’s been given, wash your hands, and be kind to one another. 

The majority of links were brought to my attention by @theyahwehdance, @elleflies, and @buckysleftarm (plus a bit of a deep dive through my drafts). Under a cut because hoo boy it got long... 

(Some links in the linked lists may be broken, some may be region-locked, and some may be duplicated, I haven’t checked them all.)

Culture and Education!

The Metropolitan Opera, free nightly (19:30 EDT, 23:00 GMT) broadcasts of operas, available for 20 hours following the broadcast too. (Schedule for the first week)*

Berlin Philharmonic: 30 days free access to their virtual concert hall (redeem before 31st March 2020)*

Playbill have compiled a list of 15 professionally recorded musicals you can watch at home (Not all free) and are inviting people to join them in watching Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella Starring Lesley Ann Warren on 20th March at 20:00 ET! (video may be region locked) 

12 highlighted virtual museum tours and a whole load of others from around the world!

Science Twitter, a series of Skype with a Scientist virtual lectures! (A sign up with an email is required through the link in the tweet, running from 12:00-14:00 EST, (16:00-18:00 GMT)

30 virtual field trips! Links to virtual tours and live cameras of many different places! (Aimed at kids)

Animals!

Cincinnati Zoo Facebook Live virtual safaris, every weekday at 15:00 EDT (19:00 GMT)* Completed safaris will be posted to their website shortly after the Live finishes, and also kept on their Facebook.

Live Monterey Bay Aquarium Cams: 10 different cams showing various tanks and enclosures, and the bay itself!

Live San Diego Zoo Cams: 9 different cams showing various creatures in their habitats! 

Atlanta Zoo Panda Cam

Danish Sea Eagles Cam (this site in Danish, and may go dark, as the equipment is solar powered): A live feed of a Danish Sea Eagle nest!

Peregrines in Norwich and Bath!

Live Animal Cam, Ohio: A cam focused on a feeding station, with night vision so the feed continues even after the sun goes down! (This shows wild animals, so there is no guarantee that you’ll see creatures)

Shedd Aquarium let their penguins out to explore! (Under supervision) More exploration here! 

Two Oceans Aquarium did too, and look at these little cuties on the stairs!

A livestream of adoptable kitties!

And here’s a thread with some of these cams, and more!

Music!

Various people (started by cellist Yo-Yo Ma) playing/sharing music that comforts them on Twitter.

Virtual High School Musicals! (Original Thread) (Wider Hashtag) Many High School kids are now finding themselves unable to perform the musicals they’ve been working so hard on, so Laura Benanti invited them to video themselves performing and share it with her, so they still get to perform for an appreciative audience! (Some of these are absolutely stunning!)

Never before heard Hamilton track demo! 

A playlist of Quarantunes on Spotify, compiled by Rita Wilson (Tom Hanks’ wife)

A playlist of 101 Feel-Good songs on Spotify, compiled by @lanamlouise 

This guy made a really cool instrument out of PVC pipes!

A group of engineers in Stockholm turned a set of stairs into a piano to encourage people to use them rather than the escalator!

Stories!

Josh Gad reads a bedtime story (Olivia goes to Venice) with voices!

Various celebrities reading kids stories, as part of a charity initiative to keep kids fed during school shutdowns.

A bunch of free short stories, essays, audio and video by the wonderful author @neil-gaiman (Plus two photos of him in an ancient hat!)

Find your local indie bookstore and support them while also getting a new book! (US only)

And of course, you can’t leave out the marvelous Archive Of Our Own for fanfiction and fanworks for almost every fandom you can think of! (Remember to make use of the tags and filters to narrow your search or avoid things you don’t want to see/read!)

Food!

A recipe for Norwegian Christmas Butter Squares! (Apparently like sugar cookies, but in bar form and better)

A fudgy brownie-in-a-mug recipe!

A really nice chocolate pudding (in the British sense, so like a cake) with spiced chocolate sauce! (I love the whole cookbook that this is from, and it’s especially good for Discworld fans. Available from various sellers, I have linked my favourite money-sink, the Discworld Emporium: Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook)

My favourite biscuits (cookies) to make! Honey and cinnamon, with a picture book (Honey Biscuits by Meredith Hooper) that you can read alongside to explain to kids where all the ingredients came from!

Creativity and learning new things!

LUNCH DOODLES with Mo Willems! (13:00 ET weekdays, videos remain post-stream) Aimed mostly at kids, but don’t let that stop you doodling with the  Kennedy Center Education Artist-in-Residence!

A little list of doll makers/dress-up sites!

How to take really good photos of the night sky with a phone! (Please continue to observe social distancing rules while taking your pretty pictures)

Fancy making a language? Here’s a site with resources to help you get going with that!

A long list of sources of inspiration, arty websites, and some that are just fun!

Make your very own Peaches the Mouse by @my-darling-boy!

Want to learn 3D modelling? Fusion360 is free (for hobbyists and students) and professionally used, with a good network of tutorials and an, imo, fairly intuitive interface! (I use this a lot)

Want to play with Photoshop but don’t have the money? Here’s a free, in browser version! (Has ads, but they’re unobtrusive)

Want to try your hand at creating a sim? The Sims 4 Character Creator Demo is free! (Limited options, but still fun to play with)

Whether you play D&D or not, this is a really cool custom miniature creator, with loads of options that are being constantly added to updated! (And if you have the money, you can get it in a printable format, or printed for you in a variety of materials!)

Fancy learning something new? Memrise has a load of free courses, ranging from real languages like French or Spanish for beginners to fictional languages like Quenya (one of the Elven languages from LotR) or Klingon, or trivia bits like Harry Potter Spells or Noble Houses in Game of Thrones, and many more! (Available in multiple languages, although not all courses may be available in all languages)

Ever fancied trying to build armour or cosplay props from foam? R31 Studios has you covered with free PDF templates for all sorts of bits!

Meditation and Calm!

60 second meditation tool! Put a worry into a star, and watch it float away with a calming soundtrack and 

Meditation with Lizzo!

Customisable Rain Sounds!

Customisable Train Sounds!

And many more customisable noise generators!

Play with liquid/particles! (Warning: this one made me feel a bit motion-sick, but pretty!)

Interactive generative art!

Random bits I couldn’t catagorise!

Don’t want to dine alone? Have dinner with the Gaffigans!

A series of Mildly Interesting images from @catchymemes!

A group of stuntmen doing Super Mario!

Another list of Good Links (Really well organised!) by @secretladyspider! 

@thelatestkate draws wonderfully reassuring cartoons! (On Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook too!)

World Record Egg Instagram! Lots of nice little positive cartoons.

Happy news from The Happy Broadcast on Instagram, The Happy News, and HuffPost Good News!

Here’s an ongoing list of good stuff by @pftones3482! (Check the notes for more good stuff, and the latest addition)

Some feel-good browser games!

And finally, a little frog here to give you some reassurance!

[mahalkitajohnnysuh]

With Family (Part II)

This installment will be the last for now, but rest assured that I will write more of this since it’s something I have fun thinking scenarios of. 

One of my many inspirations for this part aside from my personal life was Johnny’s outfits when he went to America late last year. 

Heck, I even made a collage of it with one of Adam Driver’s looks in Marriage Story because both looked so similar but had different tones! Please see image below: 

In short, I really like big and tall guys. Dude has to be since I’m also like that in real life. Well, I’m not that tall, but others think that’s the case. 

Anyway, mahal ko kayong lahat! :) 

–––

Summary: After meeting Essie’s mother and sisters, it’s time for Johnny to meet her estranged father. Also, read more about the couple’s dynamic at home. Can you relate to them, especially those who have been in a relationship or are in a relationship? Please let me know by commenting on this post!

POV: 2nd person

Word count: 1,600 + words

Warning: Italics are for foreign terms. Since we have songs mentioned here again, please scroll down to the bottom of the post to listen to them while reading or whatnot. 

–––

“Baby, wake up,” you stirred at the husky voice of your boyfriend who was gently shaking you. 

“I’m awake,” you mumbled, slowly opening your eyes. You saw him in his usual brown hoodie and sweatpants, and he looked worse for wear like you are right now. 

“We have to leave the house at eight,” he pulled off the covers from your body, “since we’re going to have Mass with your family.” 

You stood up straight immediately and shrieked. “Oh my god, I almost forgot about that!” You covered your face in your hands, ashamed that you were almost running late and at the thought of Johnny meeting your father for the first time. 

He had already met your sisters and your mother a couple of weeks ago, but now he was going to meet your estranged father. 

You and your father didn’t have any beef. It was just him and your mother who had a complicated relationship. You grew in a dysfunctional family because of that, but that doesn’t mean that you love one parent more than the other.

“It’s okay, baby. I’ve already met your family except…” His voice trailed off, afraid that you might not like what he was going to say next. 

“Yes, you’re going to meet my father,” you dropped your hands on your lap and looked at him. He was concerned at how antsy you were feeling and kissed your forehead. “Don’t worry. I can handle him. Maybe he’s not going to handle me,” he chuckled, his hands taking in yours. 

“Well, let’s see about that…” you squeezed his hands, “but we better get moving, shall we?” 

He nodded and led you to the bathroom, wherein you saw your towels hanging next to each other on the rack. 

“So, who’s going to take a bath first?” You let go of his hands and placed them on your hips. “Of course, I’ll be the one who goes first,” he pointed a thumb to himself as he went to the sink and plucked his toothbrush from the holder. 

“Okay, why did I have to ask,” you grumbled, tugging on your shorts as you plunked yourself in the toilet. “And don’t look, just focus on brushing your teeth,” you pointed a finger at him as you shimmied yourself out of your panties. 

Good thing Johnny was intent on brushing his teeth while you peed. Since he was intent on brushing all corners of his teeth, he didn’t notice that you were done until he heard the flushing of the toilet. 

“Call me when you’re done with that, okay?” You said as you went back to the bedroom. 

\\\

A few minutes later, Johnny was done and went back to the bedroom to tell you it was your turn to brush your teeth. 

But before words came out of his mouth, he was speechless at the sight of you just in his shirt and your panties. Your butt was on full display for him as you lied on the bed scrolling through your social media feed. 

He slapped your butt, and you immediately turned to see him smirking at you. 

“You just had to do that, huh,” he whispered, pinching your thighs this time. You swatted his hands away from you and got up, pulling down your shirt, so he doesn’t see your panties anymore. 

“Take a bath now, please,” you said as you got your toothbrush and squeezed a pea-sized amount of toothpaste. “Yes ma’am,” he purred as he removed his hoodie, revealing his perfectly sculpted body. 

You tried your best to look away, but he didn’t let you – instead, he winked at you as he flexed his body in front of the mirror. 

“Like what you see, baby?” He said, slowly approaching you.  

You rolled your eyes in response, but deep inside you could feel your insides warming up. “Just take a bath now, please,” you said in between brushing your teeth. 

He slapped your butt again before he cackled his way to the shower. “If only we weren’t in a hurry, I’d want for us to take a shower together.”

“Younghooooo!” 

\\\

You returned to the bedroom again and groaned as you listened to him sing in the shower. At first, he sang ‘A Whole New World’ and you were singing Jasmine’s part silently. Then, he sang ‘Change the World’ (by Eric Clapton) and even did the guitar sounds of the song. The last song he sang was ‘True to Your Heart’ from the Mulan soundtrack, which you couldn’t help but sing along to loudly as well. 

Once he was done, he emerged in the bedroom with his towel wrapped around his waist. “It’s your turn now,” he said at the doorway while holding a seductive pose. You flipped the bird on him before removing your shirt inside the bathroom. 

“Damn baby, you’re looking finer each day,” he howled, his eyes focused on your chest. “Johnny, please! Get dressed now!” Your cheeks were burning as you stepped inside the shower. 

“But really, your boobs are getting bigger and your ass firmer!” You heard him say from the bedroom, and you screamed in annoyance.

\\\

You left the house at exactly 7:45 a.m., and both of you wore burnt orange. You rocked your favorite corduroy skirt in that autumnal color while he wore it in a turtleneck, which fit him snugly. 

“We totally look like a couple,” you said while you eyed your skirt and his turtleneck. “Well, aren’t we?” He replied, his hand slipping into yours as he drove with one hand as always. 

“I know,” you looked at him in the eye, and he winked, earning giggles from the both of you. 

“You’re such a flirt! Do you know that, my love?” 

“Yes, I know. But only to you.”

\\\

You arrived at the church right before the Mass started, and you saw your family waving at you at the far right corner of the place. Your mother was beside your father, who looked dashing in his black shirt and jeans. Sitting beside your mother was your elder sister and her girlfriend, while beside your father was your eldest sister and her American husband. You decided to sit beside your elder sister and her partner, with you sandwiched between your boyfriend and your sister’s partner. 

After the Mass, you had lunch at the nearest Korean restaurant, and Johnny was gushing how cute your parents were. 

“It looks like your mom’s totally in love with your father still,” he whispered as you waited for the meat to be cooked on the grill.

“I know, but he doesn’t really feel that same anymore,” you whispered back, tightening your grip on his arm. You saw that his face fell, and you pecked him on the cheek to cheer him up. 

“Don’t be sad, but that’s the truth. It’s rare for me to see my mother this happy though,” your eyes were focused on how your mother was feeding kimchi to your father, who took it hesitantly. 

“I want us to have a loving and long-lasting relationship, baby,” he kissed your hand after he whispered those sweet words to your ear. 

“Me too, love.” But before you could look at each other with goo-goo eyes, your elder sister cleared your throat and raised an eyebrow at you two. 

“Some of us are trying to eat here, lovebirds.”

You and Johnny mouthed your apologies and went back to eating. 

\\\

The day went by fast – everyone took a walk in the park and enjoyed what nature had to offer. Johnny was quick to assist your parents when they had difficulty walking or moving, and you followed suit. You endured the teasing you got from your family while your boyfriend tried his best not to join in and defend you. 

But the highlight of today’s event was his bonding with your father. You overheard them talking about photography, and you couldn’t help but smile at their interaction. 

“Essie, why don’t you set up a photo walk in all of the parks in the city? I know you did that before,” your father said as he noticed you observing them. 

“Yeah, I know, but I’m not sure if all of my photographer friends are still in the country,” you replied sheepishly. 

“Nonsense! There will always be people who love photography and would love to get to know people through it,” your father eyed Johnny with a smile on his face, “and let’s do it next week?”

You glanced at your boyfriend, who looked ecstatic at attending his first photo walk. 

“Sure, Dad. I’ll do that.”

\\\

On the drive home, Johnny was beaming with all the things he learned from your family. 

“Your dad’s so cool, baby! You never told me he’s like a master photographer of sorts! I can’t wait to borrow his medium format camera next week!” He was squealing like a teenage girl as he went into the nitty-gritty of photography. 

“Well, now you know,” you grumbled, looking at the car window. “I’m glad you enjoyed today.” 

“Yes, I did. I hope we’ll get to do this next time with my family,” He looked at your reflection on the car window and saw a panicked expression on your face. 

“Baby, don’t worry. Eomma and Appa love you already,” he squeezed your hand gently. “And they can’t wait to see you again.”

You cried silently on the trip home as he held your hand. Although you have already met his parents, you still felt afraid of them. Your heritage was something that you thought they would have issues with, but they said that it was okay. 

What mattered most was that Johnny was happy with the woman he loves, and they could see that whenever you were around him. 

It was after that second meeting with his parents that he admitted of his plans of settling down, and you fainted because you knew what would come next.

He was going to propose to you eventually. You just had to prepare yourself when and where he was going to do it.

–––

FIN

[todaysbiggesthits]

The Exam

Best Music Moment of 2019

BC: Three straight hours of this

in my Chapman Ryder Cup match with Code  -The Robert M. Chennault Playlist in my Ryder Cup match with Laser  -Vampire Weekend's "M79" with Parks and Rec theme interlude in Pawnee Peytonville with my babe  -Late night music game with JD and Chaps this Fall  -My kids competing for best air guitar solo to Daft Punk's "Digital Love"  -The Stones soundtracking Raceday morning with Counterfeit Kenny and the Kennel Boys 

Codem: -Picking up the keys after closing on #our house and listening to Arden's dreams for the pad while listening to the songs that brought us together in the first place. -Perched in the balcony of Park West watching Chromatics live and in person. -The Chapman format playlist that Brendon and I put together.  It was just one song on repeat.  Xtal - Aphex Twin -Plugging in my klipsch's for the first time in the new house to listen to elliott smith on the day of his death. the sound of his discography wafting throughout the whole house was a true delight.

Bronco: My 6-year-old discovering Green Day.  My 9-year-old discovering Metallica.  Both discoveries have awakened something in them that is hilarious and awesome to behold.  And seeing Tool was pretty flaming awesome.

JD: March: Realizing I’d never heard this Stones song, nodding along to the opening riff, and exploding into my biggest laugh of the year at the first line.

June: The Joni Mitchell performance in the Rolling Thunder Review documentary on Netflix. June: Catching the Thom Yorke Anima short film at the IMAX theater on the Upper West Side. July: Code and I getting a perfect 99 score on the greatest rendition of “Emotional Rescue” karaoke you’ll ever see. October: Playing the music game WAY too deep into the night with BC and Chap (look for the next day’s hangover on my worst moments list).

Chap: Patrick Stickles singing "I'm sorry dad no I'm not making this up" to his dad in the audience.

Nasty: Listening to music at BOB. Nothing but jams that whole weekend. Driving in with Laser - GOOGLE MUSIC JAMS. Trip to the casino - JAMS. Hanging out on the deck - JAMS. Driving to the course with Blazer Black - Fuck Buttons - Sweet Love for Planet Earth aka JAMS. In the cart with Code - JAMS. Driving Chappy and Sfreddo to the rental car - JAMS (but quietly).

Larse: Greta Thunberg speech dubbed to metal

Best Shows Seent in 2019

Nasty: The Killers @ Summerfest. Hot Fuss will always be an all-time favorite album and Mr. Brightside is the best pop song of our lifetime, IMO. Also, my wife loves them which is about the only band in middle of the venn diagram. 

Larse: The Lonely Island at Summerfest

BC: Dead & Company

JD: 1. The Rapture at Music Hall of Williamsburg 2. Viagra Boys at Bowery Ballroom 3. The Strokes and Parkay Boys at the All Points East fest in London with drunk lads screaming along to the guitar parts 4. B Boys at Union Pool 5. Titus Andronicus at Bowery Ballroom 6. Avey Tare at Market Hotel 7. Tame Impala at MSG 8. Weeping Icon at Elsewhere 9. Priests at Elsewhere

Code: interpol - chicago theater illuminati hotties - hideout it looks sad - subT downstairs robyn - riviera steve malkmus - art institute eleventh dream day - hideout colleen green - sleeping village swearin' - lincoln hall surf curse - subT shura - the bottle

Chap: TA was the only show I saw. It was great!

Bronco: All of them.  They were each great in their own way.  Aside from Tool I was able to interact with the band members at each of the shows.  One I didn't have a ticket for and scored one at the door.  One was in the tiniest venue I've seen a show at.  One had a surprisingly entertaining opening act.  And Tool surprised me with how much I enjoyed an arena show despite being so far away I couldn't see the facial features of the band members.  And there was SOOOOOOO much weed being smoked in the Garden that night.  And I was with a few good buddies.  And I was able to sell my fourth ticket for twice what I paid, simulatenously covering me and my fourth friend who had to bail because his life sucks because his wife sucks. 

Confession of 2019

Nasty: I consume more music at my cushy, suburban OrangeTheory workout classes than in my own free time. S/O to Coach Vanessa for having some Girl Talk on her playlists. 

Codem: i had more fun listening to stuff that i already knew about than stuff that was coming out.

BC: I saw a Yacht Rock cover band and didn't hate it -I succumbed to social pressure and saw DMB -I didn't realize until the last minute that my favorite album was released in 2018 (Wild Nothing). Removing it greatly reduced my loyalty to my list.

Bronco: I'm losing my edge.  I enjoyed way more lady singer bands this year than in any other year.

Chap:  Couldn't get my shit together on the tracks list so just posted a random playlist

Larse: Not really a confession but more of a TIL (today I learned), but Raphael Saadiq was an original member of Tony! Toni! Tone!

Biggest Disappointment of 2019

Bin: The National @ Summerfest. From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel "the frontman was completely detached, even confessing at one point that he was excited to get back home to his family. The result was an incredibly depressing show — which, given the band's dour songs, is really saying something." ... Huge Bummer.

BC: Didn't see nearly enough shows with nearly enough of yous 

Chap: Sturgill Simpson... unlistenable!

Bronco: Baroness.

Laser: Modest Mouse opening for The Black Keys

Code: i was really messed up by dave berman's passing. i had tickets to see him play at the end of august. it was going to be my first catching him live and in concert. i had waited for this moment since i picked up american water back in 2003.  two weeks before he was supposed to come through town, he up and died.  also, much less of a bummer, the chromatics show in miami that Arden and i were going to attend got canceled two days before the show.

Most Overrated of 2019

Nasty: Kanye's shoes

Chap: LEGACY! LEGACY! – Jamila Woods seems to have been highly regarded? Not my thing

BC: FKA Twigs

Bronco: Baroness.

JD: Big Thief

Code: cancel culture

Larse: Mayor Pete

Make it Stop 2019

Chap: In my house, the Nutcracker Suite. It's great, until the 300th time that day.

Nasty: Cage the Elephant (but children, instead of elephant, and in real life, not the band)

BC: Lizzo 

Code: lizzo

JD: Memes

Larse: Trump

Bronco: News

Biggest TBH Regret of 2019

Chap: Can't seem to get to more than one show per year; Jessica Pratt in a church by my old place

JD: Missin’ dat Pratt yet Nick!

BC: Should've listened to the Kanye album.  Should've spent more time with the Deerhunter record.

Rotty: Skipping CHVRCHES at Summerfest

Code: another year with no fog party

Nasty: Not going to Indy 500. lol jk.

Bronco: I didn't buy tickets to a few shows I would've liked to have seen.  One of them I went to the venue and didn't get in.  That bummed me out, but I crossed the street and had a few beers by myself for good measure, so it wasn't a total loss.

Detective Murtaugh of 2019

JD: Everything.

Bronco: Shows that don't start until 10pm. That Girl Band show nearly wrecked me.

Chap: How much I loved Bruce Springsteen's adult contemporary western-themed old-man album.

BC: The ten seconds I lasted with 1000 GECS

Nasty: For the life of me - I cannot figure out how to operate the "play next" queue on these apps. 

Laser: Lizzo at Summerfest - lot of younglings running around; people were racist towards Lizzo's security guards, she vowed not to come back to MKE, one of the most segregated cities in America :(

Resolution for 2019 Status

Laser: — How It Went: Who can even remember this shit...I'm sure it was that I'd do better at keeping track or listen to more shit people suggest and I'm sure I failed.

BC: Listen to one new album a week; reboot the Classic Album Review Club How It Went:  Noooot toooo gooooood

Code: catch ovlov, pictureplane, washer, chromatics, EMA and colleen green live this year. How It Went: i saw chromatics and colleen green. last i checked .400 gets you into cooperstown.

JD: Greater consciousness of how I’m using my attention - an ineffectual and meaningless protest of the ways the world is burning down in pursuit of it. How It Went: Not bad! I especially nailed the “ineffectual and meaningless” part.

Chap: Learn Piano; Guilt Joe Dons into finally inviting me to a concert. How It Went: Learned some piano but got to busy for it... Couldn't guilt JD to invite me anywhere but I DID invite him to a show! The same one I went to! With him!

Bronco: Read more 'classic’ books. I didn’t read many of them, even in school (especially in school? Never could read a book I was told to read). But I’m leaning in the sci-fi direction of 'classics’. I just read Dune this summer, and wrapped up Fahrenheit 451 the other day. I’m feeling an unexplained need to beef up my nerd credentials and this seems the way to accomplish it. How It Went: Nope.  Fell back in to zombie-apocalypse genre series that I've been reading for a while. But I am currently reading arch-nerd Neal Stephenson's "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell". It's almost 900 pages, I feel like I've been reading for months now, and because I'm a stupidly slow reader, I read only before going to bed, and can only make it 10 minutes before falling asleep and hitting myself in the face with my phone, I'm only 25% of the way through. But man is it painting a creepy yet eerily plausible scene of the near future. Guy just knows how to write.

Nasty: Hope last year I was smart enough to leave this blank. (editor’s note: [removes shoes, pets cat, puts on slippers, retires to favorite easy chair, sips martini, slowly pulls reading glasses out of cardigan pocket, dusts them off, loads todaysbiggesthits.tumblr.com, scrolls to ‘Resolution for 2019’] “Nasty: I’m sticking with it - get to NY for a show with JD.”)

Resolution for 2020

BC: See Phish in 2020

Codem: i'm making it easier this year. catch ovlov, washer, EMA and colleen green live this year. bonus points: see dom's much anticipated return to the stage.

Bronco: Build a vinyl collection. I know I dumped on Brendon for suggesting he press copies of Carpet Affair, but my kid's getting way into music and listening to it on his own (via Alexa in my bedroom which is super fucking annoying), so we're getting him his own record player and I think it's going to be a cool activity to go record store diving for whatever classics we can scrounge up.

JD: Get to more shows. Take more aimless strolls spinning tunes.

Bin: Send an email about music on the TBH! thread. 

Larse: None

Chap: Eh I'm cool

Most Anticipated of 2020

Code: my man dom said that he is coming back to the world this year. i have to believe that he'll keep his word. i'm thinking 2020 is going to be the year for chromatics' Tommy.

Chap: TWOD, Perfume Genius, Jason Isbell

BC: Huey Lewis and the News, Tame Impala, Run the Jewels

Bronco: Kvelertak and Mastodon, maybe some surprise extra Tool material?

JD: Working Men’s Club

Nasty: Spotify getting Jay-Z's catalog back. 

[sometimesalwaysmusic]

SILENT ERA CINEMA

Silent Era Cinema is the instrumental studio project of Ottawa songwriter and composer Kris Ward (KW), who has been active in the past in bands like By The Lights and Right By Midnight. We caught up with Kris, who is hot off the heels of releasing EP-02, and discussed his influences, scoring a film, and his plans for the future.

VITALS

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/silenteracinema/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/silenteracinema

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJBedLq4VB7R5oBb3NGsNrQ

Latest Release:  EP-02 (EP, September 2018)

Upcoming shows: Stay tuned!

SA: How did Silent Era Cinema come to be? KW: Believe it or not, this project came to be as a result of my day job. Ha! How very anti-rock and roll isn’t it? But it’s the truth. I was fairly active in music for nearly two decades, but recent years have found me in said full time job, a house, kids etc. Domesticated. That left me with a bit of a void creatively. Music has always been a big part of my life, especially the creation of music.  I can be having a bad day, or week even, but if I can write a song or idea my whole outlook can shift. So there I was at my day job wondering where I was headed musically. I decided one day to search for some instrumental music to listen to while I worked and up popped Tycho’s album Dive. And that was it! I was hooked. I ended up buying his entire catalog within a few days and was just completely into instrumental music. Ended up watching some live videos of his and was blown away by the idea that all of these sounds I was hearing was, and could be, created by a full band (well his later stuff anyway) and thought to myself, “I think I can do this!” That’s how it all started. I started writing guitar and keyboard parts in my little home-studio I have and built it up from there. By early 2018, I had released my first 4-song EP and now here we are fall 2018, releasing a follow-up 2 song EP, complete with a vocalist on one of the tracks. I’ve found my way to be creative at my own pace and have that outlet, while also having a project I really enjoy doing.

SA: What bands, musicians or artists would you cite as the biggest influences on your sound? KW: Without a doubt my biggest influence has been Tycho, not only because he was the first artist of this genre I discovered, but just because of how in-depth he gets into his songs. I follow him on social media and love watching his stories and videos on how he creates his sounds and builds up his songs. I’m also really into Bonobo and Jon Hopkins. Hopkins in particular is a bit more electronic than I would like to be, but his music is great. His album Opalescent has been on repeat in my headphones quite a bit. I also just downloaded some Aphex Twin that I’m currently listening to. I’ve always been a fan of instrumental rock music (post-rock?) as well. Mogwai is amazing. One of those bands that I find keep getting better and better. I thought Every Country’s Son was an absolutely fantastic record. So there’s a lot of stuff I listen to that really helps influence what I’m doing with my own project. I actually just decided to randomly pick up a Caribou record Our Love a few weeks back, it’s awesome!  

SA: Thus far in the project’s lifetime, what has been your biggest success? KW: I think the fact that this is even at a point where I have two releases under my belt is a huge success. When I decided to start writing this kind of music, I sat down with absolutely no idea how to do it. In the 20 years I’ve been playing and writing music I’ve always been a guitar in hand with pen and paper verse-chorus kind of songwriter. This completely changed everything. I had to up my creative levels, I had to write a bunch of different parts and pieces, I had to up my production knowledge, learn new studio and micing techniques and learn how to mix my own songs. It’s been challenging but so rewarding at the same time. With this second EP, I remember listening back to the masters and thinking, “You know what? This sounds great!” I’m happy with my own work and enjoying listening to my own compositions, so I’d say that’s a pretty big success.

 SA: On the other hand, what is the biggest challenge you have faced, and how have you dealt with it? KW: I don’t look at things as a big challenge anymore. More like some small obstacles to overcome. And I just try and tackle them one at a time as they come along. Obviously being on your own, working out of your own home studio, it’s a challenge to stay on track. Sometimes it’s a challenge to force myself to go into the studio and start writing. But I try not to be too hard on myself. I used to be really hard on myself, force things, but not anymore. If I need a night, or even week off, I take it. I think the music that’s created is all the better for it. I knew for this second release I wanted some vocals on one of the songs, but that idea of bringing in other people and their schedules starts getting daunting. But I reached out to Krystal, gave her the song, arranged a time in the following month to record it, and it just came together really well with absolutely no pressure at all. For the next EP, I’d love to incorporate a drummer into the mix, but not sure that will happen. I’m also tossing around the idea of taking this live, not sure how I will do that either yet. It will definitely be a challenge for sure, but I figure I will tackle it one thing at a time.

SA: How do you approach the song-writing process? KW: I don’t really have a set approach on how I write the music, all I do know is I try to avoid your typical format (intro, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, end). It’s just not really of interest to me anymore. It’s not to say I can’t appreciate a good song, but as a writer I’ve really enjoyed pushing my own boundaries a lot. It’s been a lot of fun and I think that’s what I try and do for the most part, just keep it fun. For a lot of the songs on the first EP, I actually started with just one riff, be it a beat, keys or guitar riff etc. and then just picked a random time length for the song and wrote a song using that riff in the amount of time I gave myself. For this latest release, I wanted to have a song that had some vocals on it, and I wanted the songs to be a bit darker in tone too. So it’s really just a matter of throwing ideas at the recording program and listening back and seeing what sticks. I’ve started coming up with ideas for my next EP I’m hoping to have out either end of 2018 or start of 2019, and I know I want it to be more guitar focused, but we’ll see what happens.

SA: What are your thoughts on the Ottawa music scene, in particular surrounding the instrumental style of music of this project? KW: I’m actually so new to this genre and type of music I don’t know too many other artists that are of this style. I really need to go out I guess. I’m sure they exist and it would be nice to network and meet musicians that are creating in the same spirit I am. I also want to reach out to other types of artists and creators and collaborate on some stuff together, maybe score a video for them, or come up with some visuals for a live show I hope to put together in the future. It’s funny you know, I’ve been making music in this city for 20 years, but this is one of the first times I’ve been in a project where I’m not at all concerned with what’s going on around me. I think when you’re in a really active band (especially when you’re younger) you have a bit of a competitive edge to you and you want to get where everyone else is, but the thing is you don’t take into account that there are a TON of external factors that result in someone’s success that have nothing to do with work ethic and talent. The music industry is mostly about being the right place at the right time with the right people to hook you up. I used to get hung up on that, but now that I’m older I just really couldn’t care about any of that stuff anymore. I figure I’ll put some music out, see if I can play some shows and if people like it great, and if they don’t that’s ok too. The scene itself, at least from what I can tell, looks like it’s doing great! Lots of cool new venues popping up, some cool shows coming to town. New local bands getting chances to play festivals and open for more established acts, it’s great. I’m happy for those bands, end up checking them out and find some local bands I really enjoy! Like No Mistakes In Space, their latest EP is awesome! So to me as somewhat an outsider, or at least not as involved as a I used to be, it seems like it’s really thriving and there’s some top quality music coming out!

SA: For someone who hasn’t heard your music before, what is the ideal situation in which to listen to your music? KW: Hmmmmm, tough one. I’m not sure to be honest. Some people have mentioned that my music is a bit more chill electronic, so maybe when you’re relaxing at home with a drink in hand and just listening to tunes? I think some of it is cool for that nighttime drive as well, when you’re heading out on the town on a Saturday night. It’s maybe not the music you listen to at the club when you’re dancing, but maybe when you’re driving to your destination under the city lights?

SA: If you could score any film, historically or to be released, which would it be and why? KW: Another tough one! I don’t know to be honest. I really like soundtracks or scores to Ryan Gosling movies for some reason. Whatever I may think of him as an actor, the music and scores in some of his films are great. Loved Drive, both movie and soundtrack. Wasn’t a big fan of Blade Runner 2049 as a movie, but really cool score. I also REALLY liked the score for the Superman movie Man Of Steel. But for arguments sake, although I know there’s a ton of movies out there, let’s go with Drive with Ryan Gosling. But if you asked me again in 20 minutes, that would probably change.

SA: You have the chance to sit down for a meal with three musicians, dead or alive. Who are they, and why? KW: Man, three tough questions in a row! Wow. Each tougher than the last. Well first up, I’d definitely love to sit down with Scott Hansen from Tycho just because of the impact his music has had on me in the last few years. He’s just so knowledgeable and seems like a really nice guy. It’d be great to “shop talk” with him on music, guitar effects, keys, recording, creating beats, writing music etc. Moving into the rock realm that I grew up in/with, I’d say Richard Ashcroft. I am a MASSIVE fan of The Verve (more so their early stuff pre-Bittersweet Symphony) and I think it would be great to have a pint and hear some stories of the band. He definitely has that rockstar persona but I think one on one you could probably have some really great conversations with him. I think the last guy, sticking with the brit-pop I grew up with, would be Liam Gallagher. He just seems like he’d be a riot. Plus he loves popping into pubs and having some pints with people. Can’t go wrong with that. He always came across as stand-offish, but I feel like if you saw him in the street and offered to buy him a pint he’d take you up on it. PLUS THE STORIES he has… I can’t even imagine. Again though that’s my answer right now, I feel like if you asked me this question again in an hour I might have 2-3 different people. I think a younger me would have answered with the “advice on how to make it” reply, but that’s so far away from my goals now.  

 SA: What comes next for Silent Era Cinema in 2018, and beyond? We wish you all the best, and good luck! KW: I’d like to just keep making and putting out music. The third EP is entering the beginning stages. I’d like to collaborate with other artists maybe making videos or YouTube content and eventually I’d like to take this project live with the help of some other musicians. So we’ll see! Just taking everything one small step at a time.

[maximelebled]

2016

Wo-ho-ho-ho there, it's time for my yearly blogpost again.

We all know how bad this year has looked; 2016 is a terrible year, 2016 was the worst year, 2016 this, 2016 that. And really, who could blame anyone for thinking that? But I feel like I'd be doing myself a disservice by focusing too much on the negatives; with our cognitive bias and all that, we tend to forget that the world keeps on getting progressively better and that despite appearances, overall, things are looking... up? Not that we should let our guard down; in fact, more than ever, we need to be aware of each other and look out for each other. The two greatest values you can have, and that you can transmit to other people, going into 2017, are empathy and curiosity.

But anyway, I'm not a skilled writer and other folks will have already said more or less the same thing already, so now it's time to talk about myself again!

Before I do that, though, I would like to give my most heartfelt thanks to the people who have supported me through this year, whether from close circles or from further. I know, it's cliché, but at the same time I feel like people don't realize how much their support means to me, and the true, hidden impact it has had on my life. You know who you are! ♥

I still find writing this blog post to be as oddly awkward as last year, but it's good to let things out, have it all laid out in front of yourself; especially when things keep becoming more of a blur over time. I can't really distinctly remember specific periods from this year as well as 2015, but then again I'm also writing this while coming down from a nasty flu. I've read that things become more of a blur over time the more you age, because you have more of a frame of a reference to go through. That prospect makes me uneasy, but at the same time, I don’t dread it as much as I used to.

2015 was arguably a worse rollercoaster as far as I was concerned, with higher highs but also much lower lows. 2016, smoother ride? Less exciting. Even though from an outside eye it may look more impressive, which feels like a weird contradiction.

In February, I got taken onboard at Nightdive Studios to work on a really cool project: a remake of System Shock. It started out as a 1:1 project (almost like a Doom source port, if you see what I mean?) but eventually the ambitions grew into actually doing a full-fledged reboot. We ended up releasing a "pre-alpha" demo for a Kickstarter that grossed $1.35 million, and people seem to be quite excited, which I'm happy about. I wasn't very happy with my animation work in the demo but since then, I got time to iterate on it and I'm more at peace with it right now. Of course, I wish I could talk more about the project, but I obviously am not in the position to! ;)

It's funky, going from nearly two years of Dota & "cartoonish" animation right into something more AAA-realist, with less stylization, and the transition is a bit hard, but of course, it's a very valuable process to learn how to dial your own style back. I’ve felt that animating kind of goes like this:

At first, you have zero idea what you're doing and everything is super stiff and robotic. Then you learn about follow-through and inertia and you start doing that everywhere because it makes things smooth... too smooth. So then you dial it back... back... oh wait, things are too stiff again! And ultimately, after 15 years of repeating that process, back and forth, you'll probably be an amazing godlike Pixar-worthy animator... when you reach the point of being able to animate stiffness that looks smooth.

Of course, all that is a (relatively humorous) generalization but it's a pattern I've observed in other animators, mostly in the SFM community; their growth in skill over time seemed to have this sort of trend.  I think I'm about halfway there... hopefully!

Right now, we’re in the middle of our vertical slice phase. My favourite part of the project is— well, I have quite a few of them, but I wanna say my coworkers are an absolute delight and our lead programmer is a freaking angel. I feel really lucky to be able to work with these people. And that’s gonna sound dumb, but it makes me feel weird that they LIKE ME BACK. But you know, impostor’s syndrome, etc. though that’s gotten better recently. Still, it’s hard to get used to the thought of things like “dude, there are animators from Blizzard who follow you on Twitter, stop doubting yourself for a second”.

July rolls around, and I decided to participate, again, to The International 2016′s Short Film Contest. This time around, I teamed up with EDJE (Erick Wright) and @zandraart — and I won again. First place! I was legitimately expecting to get third, at best, even though there were people like SirActionSlacks telling me “dude you won already stop worrying”. Unfortunately, my brain was louder than their voices; I remember the night before the results were announced, I couldn’t sleep despite having taken two sleeping pills...

As self-centered as a statement like that may sound, winning three animation contests and having worked on four games eventually ends up drilling in your head that there is no reason to let shitty people influence your brain. I guess it’s a self-esteem thing 😃

This sort of feeling that I was not being myself, forcing myself to not be me, well, it’s gone! And for the first time I’m starting to feel like I got my shit together, even if only just a bit, so that’s relieving.

We did the movie in two weeks again, but I’m not gonna lie, I’m not as happy with it as I was with Enigma’s Exasperation. The execution might be a little stronger but the idea is weaker for the one minute format. But a good thing to remember: it’s fine to not always outdo yourself even if you meant to.

That said, for next year’s contest, I hope I’ll be able to dedicate more time to making the film. I’m hoping they extend the maximum time to 90 seconds and make the prize pool less top-heavy again... but, unfortunately, knowing Valve, I wouldn’t count on it.

Here’s a list of my favourite music albums that I listened to this year:

The Timura Trilogy series of albums by Bjørn Lynne (Wizard of the Winds, Wolves of the Gods, The Gods Awaken)

Fortress by James Hunter USA (bandcamp)

Everything from Nelward

Orange Express (1981) by Sadao Watanabe

Memories in Beach House (1983) from the CBS/Sony Sound Image Series

The Dark Crystal movie soundtrack by Trevor Jones (if you’ve never watched the movie, you should, it is absolutely incredible)

Now onto health... I believe I've mentioned this subject a couple times before. Being a nerd who works from home, I'm subject to many of the sins that come with having a commute consisting of merely walking down the stairs from one's bedroom. The two biggest being 1) a terrible sleep schedule and 2) lack of physical activity.

I use the Sleep as Android app; upon telling it that I'm in bed, it starts using my Pebble smartwatch to track my motions and determine the quality of my sleep, the phases, the cycles, and whatnot. But the most insightful data doesn't even come from that algorithmic tracking; the times for "when I went to bed" and "when I got up" are more telling. Here's a chart of my sleeping times since the beginning of 2015. Each vertical bar represents the sleep of one day.

I've taken the liberty to highlight the time range between 22:00 and 9:00 in the morning, sleeping times that would make you say "yeah, this person is a reasonable adult". As you can see, my sleeping times often didn't fall into that range, and the whole graph has a stripey appearance because my sleeping times keep shifting a little every day, almost like I'm living 25, 26 hour days.

What I love about this graph is that you can definitely see the times when I had to get it together; The International 2015 is very noticeable, with no "stripe" pattern where there would have been three previously.

Here's a zoom on only 2016:

There’s actually a bit of improvement here; the length of the "stripes" keeps growing, and in the middle of some of the stripes, I hang to regular times for longer and longer before slipping away into indecency again. I’m trying my best to keep that progress on the right track. (a track that goes right to my bed)

Now, as for the lack of physical activity. It's very tempting to stock my fridge and then live like a hermit for 3 days, but I've tried to make sure this wouldn't happen. The goal is to not have a single day where I don't move at least a minimum amount of time, unless I have a very good reason to (like illness).

I use the S Health app to passively track my steps; it offers a few fun statistics, and also counts steps onto an additional counter if you've walked fast enough for a certain amount of time, that is to say, at a pace that is considered physical activity. If I were to walk for 1 hour, and during 15 of those minutes, I was at a pace that was above 100 steps a minute (I believe that’s the threshold), it would amount to about 6000 steps, 1500 of which would then be qualifying as "healthy steps".

I took all the average monthly values and put them in this chart:

It's really easy to see on here when my motivation just plummeted post-TI5, after all that terrible stuff I've mentioned before. It took quite a while to shake the depression off. I would consider 3000 steps per day to be the baseline goal, as it amounts roughly to 30 minutes of walking per day. In the latter half of 2016, I managed to reach that goal!

The last thing I wanna talk about, health-wise, is understanding, in my opinion, the two big hidden plagues on ourselves: the first one is sugar, the second one is stress. I saw a very eye-opening documentary on Arte that talked about how cholesterol was made to take the fall for heart disease and whatnot, and sugar is in fact the true culprit — combine that with recent studies showing how it’s, in fact, “similar to drugs”, and it’s easy to see how we’ve come to think it’s harmless but it’s not, much like how we thought cigarettes were good in the 50s. This makes me glad I stopped drinking sodas and eating candy as much as I did four years ago; I’ve largely replaced the drinks by either carbonated water or the stuff that’s light on sugar (both in terms of sugar AND taste).

The second plague is stress. This ties into mental health. I deeply believe that learning how to stay sane and relaxed, as weird as that may sound, is one of the fundamental keys to living well; don’t worry about stuff you can’t control. Of course, that doesn’t mean “be apathetic to the world”. Our cognitive bias makes us focus so much on the negatives that it’s become so hard to perceive the positive side of things. This is gonna sound stupid but I hope you see what I’m trying to get at here: for example, there are really shitty people being all like “I’m gonna run over Black Lives Matter protestors”, stuff like that, and we get outraged at it, and rightly so; but in the process, we forget that it’s a really good positive thing that BLM exists in the first place. You know what I mean? I don’t know how to phrase it. Like I said before, I’m not a skilled writer!

And it’s frustrating, really, to have all these ideas, vague concepts floating around your head; you know what you mean to yourself, but you don’t know how to communicate that to other people. Language, writing, and communication are skills far more important than most people realize!

Anyway, to reiterate what I’ve already said like three times now, it comes down to not worrying about things you can’t control. It’s hard to internalize and it took me years to understand it, but it’s a valuable life lesson.

There are a ton of other little life lessons that I don’t actively think about but which have been super valuable on a day-to-day basis; these are also, for the most part, hard to phrase into coherent words, but the best one would be that it’s okay to be wrong and to make mistakes, but it’s also (even more) okay to admit that you were wrong and that it’s not a personal failing, as in, a failure of you, as a person, to have made a mistake or whatever. I think it’s something that is extremely important to teach people, because it’s part of the entire “be open-minded” package, if that makes sense? It was hard for me to change myself until I realized that admitting that I made mistakes. It’s kind of like the five stages of grief; the first one is acceptance, and you’re not going to make any progress until you go past that...? When you say to someone, “you did something wrong”, or “you made a mistake”, whether it’s moral, personal, professional, whatever, if you don’t have that mindset, that person would perceive it as a personal attack. But to err is human, and errors are not reflections of your moral standing as a person. I guess it comes down to having this distance between... yourself... and what you do? See, here, words fail me again. That said, I hope you see what I’m getting at.

Anyway, that’s it for looking back on this year... here’s a sneak peek at my next big personal project, hopefully to be released in the first trimester of 2017!

[themarsupials]

100 Best Albums of 2017, pt. 4

25. Fever Ray – Plunge

Karin Dreijer is half of The Knife, but the tone for her second album as Fever Ray is vastly more immediate and inviting than her band with her brother; all restless rhythms, dense electronic beats and nervous energy, it’s not exactly dance music, but it certainly can’t sit still. Most surprising, though, is the unbridled lust in her lyrics, making this perhaps the horniest album of the year.

 24. Protomartyr – Relatives in Descent

This Detroit band’s fourth album is a masterclass in restraint and release, in using moments of peace and patience to skillfully maximize the impact when the noise kicks in. Anchored by the mighty voice of Joe Casey – who spits his lyrics with all the vitriol of Nick Cave in the 80s – it’s a thrillingly dark listen.

 23. Vagabon – Infinite Worlds

A recurring theme in music this year was the passing of the guard between indie rock generations; where big-name comebacks were often underwhelming (many notable by their absence from this list) in favour of thrilling debuts from voices often overlooked in the genre. Case in point, Laetitia Tamko, the woman behind Vagabon, an American born in Cameroon; with Infinite Worlds, she achieved the kind of debut other artists only dream of; tight, direct, unnervingly raw and honest, and downright unforgettable.

 22. Oumou Sangare – Mogoya

Oumou Sangare turns fifty next year, and has been performing since she was five; for Mogoya, though, the Malian music icon hardly rests on her laurels. She’s managed to dance a fine line in successfully creating a contemporary update on her traditional Wassoulou sound, for a thoroughly empowering and danceable record that’s at once instantly recognizable as Malian, without being bound the “world music” tag.

 21. Cable Ties – Cable Ties

There were a lot of great punk and post-punk records in 2017; few, however, hit with the power of this Melbourne band’s debut LP. Every track grabs you within seconds, and the tightness of the band’s performance keeps you hooked throughout. They’re playing Laneway next month, and if they’re not huge afterwards, there is no justice in the world.

 20. Oddisee – The Iceberg

My second-favourite hip-hop album (after the obvious), this is the best release yet from the impressively prolific rapper; his words, delivered with clarity and eloquence, don’t beat around the bush; and paired with the organic, live-band sound, this record is an absolute breath of fresh air.

 19. Jens Lekman – Life Will See You Now

Whilst Jens Lekman has never played the singer-songwriter aesthetic straight, his fourth album totally dismisses the tag, finding musical inspiration in disco and calypso. It makes for a real treat of a literary pop record, especially with his none-more-idiosyncratic lyrics, touching on everything from dinner dates to models of tumours to the Cambrian explosion.

 18. Downtown Boys – Cost of Living

A bigger budget and a bigger audience helped the Rhode Island punks broaden their sound on their second album, allowing for longer and bigger songs. Their firepower, however, hasn’t dimmed a bit; like their debut, the impact of these bilingual, saxophone-fuelled songs of rage make Downtown Boys one of the most exhilarating bands working today.

 17. Flamingosis – A Groovy Thing

A year after his last great album, Bright Moments, Flamingosis presented his greatest, most fully-realised work yet in A Groovy Thing. Like a slightly-less-whimsical Avalanches, this all-samples album unfolds as impossibly inviting, pastel-toned jazz-funk; every track establishing a warm, fuzzy groove you’ll want to inhabit for as long as possible.

 16. Naomi Keyte – Melaleuca

The best South Australian LP of 2017, Naomi Keyte’s debut LP consists of gorgeously expansive pop-folk, with songs that evoke the rolling, golden hills and windswept beaches of the Adelaide region. An album of songs to lose yourself in, and to make you ache for home.

 15. Broken Social Scene – Hug of Thunder

Wikipedia describes Broken Social Scene’s lineup as varying between six and nineteen members; for Hug of Thunder, their comeback record after seven years away, they managed to distill the potential of such an enormous sound into laser-like focus, resulting in a thrillingly joyous indie-rock success.

 14. King Krule – The Ooz

I always hate it when young people are intimidatingly talented, a point proven by the astonishing creativity of Archy Marshall, aka King Krule. At just 23, he’s created, for the second King Krule album, a sound so unique, so immersive, that it essentially inhabits its own musical universe. Seamlessly crossing ideas across blues, trip-hop, rap, dub, dirty jazz and garage punk, this is a rich, complex and challenging listen, bountiful with tricks and treasures to discover for years to come.

 13. Kendrick Lamar – DAMN.

Kendrick Lamar’s conquering of popular music culture is now so complete that he barely warrants any further justification. Let’s just say his flow and wordplay are unparalleled, and the raw sound of DAMN., after the elaborate To Pimp a Butterfly, continues to surprise.

 12. Sheer Mag – Need To Feel Your Love

Sheer Mag’s debut LP is probably the most purely lovable rock album of the year; there’s no messing about with high concept ideas, just song after song of kickarse riffs and vocals. Drawing inspiration from wildly unfashionable sources – 1970s hard rock and 1980s power pop among them – Tina Halladay proves an absolute powerhouse of a singer, providing enough grit to temper the sugar rush of the music itself.

 11. Kelela – Take Me Apart

After a number of EPs and countless guest appearances, Kelela’s debut LP finally appeared, and it was a revelation. In somewhat similar territory to fka Twigs, she twists contemporary R&B sounds into strange new shapes, with a near-impossible attention to detail in the production of every song, making this record a treasure for the body and the brain in equal measure.

 10. Sampha – Process

Sampha Sisay has spent a few year playing guest vocalist, for Solange, SBTRKT and Drake to name a few. When his own LP finally arrived, it proved remarkably complex, deep and rewarding for a debut; fully fleshed-out and well-considered progressive soul music, it’s clear that Sampha’s been meditating on and distilling the sound of these songs for a while, resulting in a beautiful, thoughtful and moving album.

 9. Fleet Foxes – Crack-Up

Even among a near-flawless discography, Fleet Foxes’ first record in six years managed to be their grandest achievement. A tour de force of complex majesty, these massive, multi-sectioned songs hit every note of aural pleasure, even with the immediacy of a single like “White Winter Hymnal.”

 8. Lorde – Melodrama

Classic pop albums – not indie-pop, not art-pop, just straight pop – are a rare beast, especially those that a greater than the sum of their singles, and particularly those that follow world-conquering teenage debuts. Melodrama completely blows Pure Heroine away, cementing Lorde’s position as one the world’s great pop songwriters.

 7. Feist – Pleasure

At the time, and following her surprise hit “1234,” Feist’s Metals album seemed shockingly raw; now, it sounds downright opulent, such is the stark, unpolished nature of Pleasure. Here, Feist drifts ever further from the mainstream, pushing her vocals low in the mix, and letting the songs breathe with an uncluttered, unrefined, downright dirty sound.

 6. The Smith Street Band – More Scared Of You Than You Are Of Me

Hitting full throttle within seconds, then barely letting up for another moment, this album catapulted the Smith Street Band into Australian music’s big leagues. Its core is Wil Wagner’s voice and lyrics, which split some critics between disarmingly honest and direct on the one hand, and mere bogan rantings on the other. For my part, I found his soppy romanticism and vulnerable realisations utterly gripping throughout.

 5. Jay Som – Everybody Works

This album, from a woman otherwise named Melina Duterte, is the very epitome of not just indie rock in 2017, but independent music of any genre. Written, performed and produced entirely on her own, this is an album of intimacy, honesty, directness and identity-formation. Most importantly, despite the easy tags, there are no ballads or anthems here; rather, despite drifting from subtle bedroom pop to fuzzed-out noise, Duterte’s compositions are all about shades of grey, a true sign of a gifted songwriter with a bright future.

 4. LCD Soundsystem – American Dream

The fourth official LCD Soundsystem LP builds on the dance-punk template of three perfect previous records, taking it into stranger, hitherto-unexplored places; the wigged-out guitar frenzy of “Emotional Haircut,” and the apocalyptic rhythms of “How Do You Sleep?” among them. It’s all representative of James Murphys’ increasingly no-fucks-given approach, allowing himself to take ever-greater risks than before.

Or, for a shorter review: James Murphy makes another amazing record – no one is surprised.

 3. Thundercat – Drunk

Drunk feels like the album Thundercat has been teasing his whole career; after some false starts, EPs, great singles, great collaborations, Drunk is, finally, the bass virtuoso’s masterpiece. Over twenty-three tracks – none of which surpass four minutes – it’s a funk album made of small moments, intricate ideas and quirky humour. Whimsical, self-deprecating, and a whole lot of fun, it’s an endlessly loveable funk odyssey.

 2. Priests – Nothing Feels Natural

Coming from Washington, D.C., this is undoubtedly the most exhilarating rock record I’ve heard in years. From a post-punk template, Priests keep you guessing with elements of surf, garage, goth and even jazz (check out the jazzy breakdown in the opener, “Appropriate”). With Katie Alice Greer’s howls and sneers accompanying ideas of identity, intersectionalism, democracy and general disappointment with the state of the world, Priests have provided the perfect soundtrack for 2017.

 1.    Perfume Genius – No Shape

2017 was, of course, a landmark year for Australia’s LGBTIQ community, with the long-overdue legislation of marriage equality. The path to get there was tortuous, damaging and painful; yet, in the aftermath of the campaign’s success, the time is right to celebrate what should be the mundaneness same-sex monogamy. It’s in this context, then, that we receive Mike Hadreas’ fourth Perfume Genius record; a thoughtful pop album that’s at once vibrant, decadent, tender, sentimental and celebratory. A lot has changed for Hadreas between records; on his previous, Too Bright, he looked upon himself with disgust, and approached his queerness confrontationally; for No Shape, however, he has nothing left to fear, no reason to retreat. As a result, this album – 2017’s greatest – is all celebration and acceptance of self, all odes to devotion and redemption, and, at the end of the day, sheer reverence for his lucky boyfriend, Alan Wyffels.

[tinymixtapes]

Interview: Wave Temples

The current crop of New Age and ambient projects emerging from the Bandcamp ether are mostly background noise, filler music for empty workdays or zone-out sessions at home. Tripp, ephemeral, forgettable… One project I initially lumped into that category, but quickly found much more beneath the surface, is Wave Temples. This anonymous Floridian journeyman takes the tired trope of field recordings littered over hazy keyboard riffs and turns it on its head, offering a loaded back catalogue that’s immersive, compelling, and puzzling. His most recent voyage, Isle Enchanted, was released via Not Not Fun at the close of 2016 (and now available in a limited second edition), and it’s as good a starting point as any for those ready to dive deep into the Wave Temples vibe (see also the vast and varied releases on his Rainbow Pyramid imprint). Tiny Mix Tapes caught up with WT over email, and, in keeping with the mysterious and anonymous nature of the project, I didn’t know what to expect until my inbox buzzed with responses touching on everything from a breakdown of his discography, swimming with sharks, and the influence of dreams on his work. --- Can you tell me about the formation of Wave Temples? How long have you been playing music, and what led to you start this project? Well, it’s complicated. This project has been growing from seed for almost 10 years now and the longer it’s gone on, the harder it is to tell where one things ends and another begins. I’d like to say it all comes from drugs, like maybe just some kind of old lazy new age indica, or a post-nostalgic opioid bliss floating up from some insta-vapor cloud in this seemingly never-ending digital culture loop, but that wouldn’t be totally accurate. I wish I could say more exotic, maybe a dark rich jungle sativa, mystic in epiphyte blooming succulent heart, feeding a dense foggy soul tattooed with shimmering crystalline waves, the dancing flicker of Maori effigies burning from a time long past, or the beckoning call of Easter Island. Oh, what a treasure that would be?! But that wouldn’t be the whole truth either. The truth is probably more ordinary, as it goes. I’d say it’s been far closer to star-charting moments of perfect coincidence in an otherwise chaotic sea of randomness; making the best of difficult situations and striving for a more harmonious existence. At some point I had become disillusioned by a lot of music culture and there seemed to be a line crossed for me when so many forms of music and art stopped being about any kind of idealized catharsis or post-tribal vestige and all just hollow ethereal fad, image, and celebrity. This is the way of things; I get it. I just couldn’t be a part of that kind of world anymore. A lot of this path has also been tied to deep self-analysis of how my own behavior and belief systems directly effect my own reality and how base energy through intention lead to certain outcomes. It’s in this regard that I feel it’s weird to just talk solely about music or aesthetic when the evolution of this project has so directly been symbiotic with a long path of serious growth and change in my own life. Maybe Desert Islands by Gilles Deleuze is a key for philosophy, but that came much later. An inevitable outcome of already set sails or a discovered lost treasure, perhaps. Or, maybe, just a byproduct of subtle homage to the Fourth Way spoken of by Ouspensky and flowering up from some post-Theosophical Gurdjieff-esque styled garden of allegory, maybe; or just willfully being as uncomfortably boring as possible as a contrarian middle finger to noise and punk kids, a peaceful rebellion to the attention deficit-disordered modern world. That would definitely explain some of the past live shows. All would apply. To speak of the Wave Temples project distinctly… It’s been deeply personal by design. It’s been influenced and furthered onward by unique and intense hallucinations and dreams. This statement may seem a little cliché these days but interesting to note because I’ve never been a person to invest too much in dreams. Maybe I’ve never dreamed this intense or had such a systematic interpretation as I do today, but I doubt it. I am a skeptic at heart and I don’t think I’ve had dreams quite like this prior to 2013. I have plenty of ordinary dreams and long periods without any dreams at all, but on the rare occasion there are these dreams that inspire and further the Wave Temples narrative that have been richly enchanting and rewarding. My original intentions leading to this project were just to follow a childhood love to create narratives and play around freely on a voyage of self-discovery. To this realm, Atlantis and islands of mystery, the alluring quest of the old tropics, and all the sacred mysticism that still lie in secret exotic portal locales across the world. “To be true to thy self” apart. Keys to the Inner Islands was monumental for me. It was recorded around an intense journey to the southern-most tip of Key West in spring of 2013 and waking up to deep, middle of the night dopamine overloaded hallucinations while sleeping in my car. What are some pieces of music, film, art, literature, and cultural ephemera that shaped the sounds you pursue with Wave Temples? Season 1 episode 10 of In Search Of… with Leonard Nimoy was totally a way back starting point for the aesthetic of this project. Not so much the scientific need to explain the unexplained or discover the undiscovered, but just the flirtation with the wonder of wild enchanted ancient mysteries set to that backing raw lo-fi mystical synth music. It does make for the start of a really great narrative. It’s a shame they never issued just the soundtrack. The ability to craft a unique atmosphere through sound has been a long time fascination for me. Lots of the original music from the first season of In Search Of… was really interesting. I’ve always liked that kind of electromagnetic dirty lo-dub weird and raw. The new age phase by Kitaro was a huge unconscious influence on me from a very young age. At the time I had no concept of New Age as a genre, I just thought of it like a film score to a film that didn’t exist and I really loved that idea. I spent a lot of my teens listening to my dad’s cassettes and letting my imagination roam. In retrospect, as much of a sad teenager as I was, I was really happiest during that time. My only critique was that it was just too clean. I wished that this kind of music existed with the same raw lo-fi DIY passion that I found in early punk cassettes, but this was before the internet, so it’s all I had. That’s definitely a vivid experience that originally inspired me towards this project. Had I known of stuff like Iasos’s early work or J.D. Emmanuel at the time, who knows… There are however, many other later influences or experiences both musical and otherwise that have either inspired or justified this project to continue. Ana from the blog Microphones in the Trees was vital support that turned me on to a lot of like-minded people through her massive compilations and reviews. The Laboratory in Gainesville and all the improvisational experimental shows that used to happen there had a very strong impact on me at a critical point in time. Seeing Moemlien on tour with Unicorn Hard-On and Container at Action Research Halloween in 2011 was really important to me, but there have been several really excellent musical and aesthetic intersections made over the years that are also totally worth the research for the internet adventurous. The more hidden side of Florida and her associations with the old Atlantean tropics have been a huge point of inspiration. Hermeticism, anonymity, individualism, isolation, adventure! Florida in general holds some interesting mystery portals all her own. A very weird place for the attuned initiate willing to keep her secrets. Your Bandcamp page links to this video. How does this influence the sound and aesthetic of Wave Temples? That is definitely, probably, a measured byproduct of seriously taking “not taking it serious” very seriously, or not? I’d like to think it has a lot to do with Bermuda ley lines, or Malta. Her mysterious allure is very much within the spirit of this project. I think that video sums it up perfectly. Isle Enchanted by Wave Temples Reading Britt Brown’s recent RBMA interview, the term “vibe sessions” stuck out for how he described his earliest experiences with new age and ambient shows. That phrase seems apt for what I hear when listening to Wave Temples’ back catalog on Bandcamp. With Isle Enchanted, were you going for a specific mood or feel? I don’t think I was aiming for any mood or vibe directly, other than maybe just good natured and peaceful. The desired outcome with this project tends to be more like room music or maybe an organic form of atmospheric wallpaper music would be a better term, where it works best when put at low volume on speakers and just allowed to fill the environment with ebb and flow. My main goal is always to make something that pleases my own environment: nature, cats, plants, bugs, birds, and now a fierce young lady dog. Low key plays a big part of it. I like soundtracking environments. The process however, always starts by returning to the narrative and often continues in intervals with notes taken periodically, experimenting with different methods, loops, and timbres, arranging technique or approach, then decoding it all together in post. It’s always cerebral first and foremost. I do have places that I’d like to go with albums like this one, but often the process defines itself as it goes along and ends up being new and uncharted. That is the most fun for me. The process is sort of like my journal, observing, documenting, and codifying the cross sections in the physical and metaphysical currents of my life and translating them into works of sound adventure. Up until this year, the voyage had evolved into a search for home and all the interesting human distractions along the way; pursuit of a lusting life and forgoing its destroyer. With Isle Enchanted specifically, it was coming out of the Cymatic Abyss, where stillness and patience dominate all vibration, discovering the teleporting island and now arriving at new destinations. Hearing rumors, stories, and mysteries. Reading up, daydreams, night dreams, hallucinations, investigations, just for a whole designated period dedicated to producing something. Once fully absorbed, clear the slate and just experiment. On the inside of the cassette cover of Isle Enchanted there is a non-linear track listing that kind of explains the narrative of this specific adventure. Reading back through it some 6+ months later, it sounds eerily similar to a sudden and chance adventure I had right about the time of this albums release… but was originally inspired at the crest of spring 2016 by tales of the adventurers employed by the Roman emperor Augustus in discovery of the yet to be tamed Isle of Capri, places like the labyrinthian Medici gardens of Florence, and the story of the discovery of Margate Shell Grotto in England… and how that all kind of related to the experience and possibilities of weird discovery of our own old hidden tropical-post-memphis styled estate that we’ve come to call home this year. Your releases give the impression of being formed from loose jam sessions. Is that the case? Do you put together tracks with an album or release in mind, or do you pick and choose from a lot of material? Aside from the inherent limitations of arranging within cassette format, I wouldn’t say loose jam sessions in any traditional sense. It became clear a long time ago that there is absolutely no fun for me in overly structured music, and I very much prefer a loose jam session with attuned people over some sort of monotonous rehearsal. Over the past 25 years of playing music, I have had a flirtation and/or chance to evaluate almost every type of music that exists on earth while trying to hone my own filter of influence. Methodical improvisation I’ve found tends to be the most exciting, especially in a live-show situation. A clean mental slate as far as technique is also helpful to keep it challenging. I often write for this project through live shows. Not only is it about the only fun way for me to perform something like this live, but it is also fun to pick up a show when I can and come out and sketch live for people or, on occasion, just willfully piss people off with being intentionally as boring or as sloppy (or as pretty sounding) as possible is totally fun too; especially opening at harsh noise shows. Most live stuff never makes it to recording as it’s performed either, so that’s great, too. Throughout the year I enjoy collecting sounds and timbres and moments that influence. Returning to the inner island is like a pilgrimage for me; a chance to center and sort things out. Though I am finding that the more I go along this path, the inner island is becoming more of an outer island and that to me has been the most rewarding outcome from persisting with this project. I spent a lot of my teens listening to my dad’s cassettes and letting my imagination roam. In retrospect, as much of a sad teenager as I was, I was really happiest during that time. My only critique was that it was just too clean. As stated earlier, each recording has been part of an ongoing narrative. Up until now it usually begins by arriving and ends by departing. Across the Shores of the Barrier Sea is a little different because it was from material created during a few years that I was totally lost, aimless, and in deep despair. It’s a mix of material from two highly orchestrated big gear live projection shows in the summer of 2011 mixed with cassette and battery-operated, reel-to-reel field recording experiments from late night sketchy bike rides in 2011 and 2012. At the time the project didn’t have a name but the process was already beginning to take root. There might also be some material slipped in from a quartet I joined for a show curated by Al Margolis at the Stone in Manhattan in early 2012. It’s never been officially released but I recently made it available to download on bandcamp by request. Keys to the Inner Islands was monumental for me. It was recorded around an intense journey to the southern-most tip of Key West in spring of 2013 and waking up to deep, middle of the night dopamine overloaded hallucinations while sleeping in my car. This proceeded a sudden chance adventure the next day to the increasingly lost but hidden, wild, and raw old Key West; eventually ending much farther north in hidden treasures near Cedar Key by Summer. That whole adventure sealed the deal for me. The album was released on cassette through Rainbow Pyramid, and later in short handmade run cassettes/digitally as the album Spring Ritual, which also included an extended kind of an ‘open ocean’ EP from the period right after departing the Isle of the Feathered Serpent that was 2013. In the Shade of the Island was darker days than Keys, definitely moving deeper into darker territory. A limited cassette only release from Mexican imprint Department Tapes that had a track play at the 24-hour guerrilla FM broadcast ‘The Dark Outside’ from deep in the Dark Sky Park of the Galloway Forrest Scotland in October 2013. Floating Garden/Hidden Temple was and is cassette-only, released through Rainbow Pyramid late 2013. This album joined an ending celebration of the Year of the Feathered Serpent, but started as a commission for a collaborative installation with a fantastic nature stop-motion filmmaker (also botanist and surfer) David C. Montgomery for a zoo’s festival of lights exhibition in December of that year. That album was also right in the wake of a lot of deep personal tragedy that would go on to directly influence the events of my life in 2016. Nice Dreams is all ocean exploration and was released on the Space Coast Florida imprint Illuminated Paths. It’s more of an intentional experiment based on research into sleep cycles. I wanted to soundtrack the rhythm and movements of sleep. This release was only part one though. The same outcome can still be achieved with just one part, but to get the full effect in theory, you have to listen to it through room speakers at a low audible level on repeat throughout the night. Every two cycles would approximately complete an average deep-sleep cycle, and it’s all math after that. Part 2 will get done one day. This is really the only album so far that was meant more for digital formats for the auto repeat feature. The cassette release was double repeat 90+ minutes but the tape still needs to be flipped. Sleeping Tortugas, released on Florida/California imprint Rotifer Cassettes, was more of an orchestrated and track-driven album. Set to a whole summer period in 2014 of intense, fantastical hot night dreams that bled into smooth serene day dreams and vice versa. A truly surreal place of intense feminine energy, sometimes dark, sometimes motherly, surrounded and hidden by fog; where the water shallowed and bubbled to the heartbeat of giant sleeping turtles. From the vast warm bubbling spring between their archipelago-sized bodies, to up under the gaze of high-tiered jungle cities and structures looming down from their massive shells, sometimes peaceful and surreal, and at times a place of dark adult rituals held in tiered fluorescent pools under a black starry sky, emptying down into a deep sparkling cenote lined in waterfalls that housed some ancient marriage ritual. I wasn’t able to stick around but it was intense stuff. A truly fantastical experience for me. A healing experience, but almost dangerous in its seducing allure after a while. It was hard to move on. After that we entered the Cymatic Abyss, with a brief excerpt Tales from… released as a split with dank ambient tropical sound wizard Heat Surreens via Rainbow Pyramid in January 2015. Right now there is an out-take from the Isle Enchanted sessions online via Hartzine in France and a track for the massive ‘World Ambient’ comp release at midnight New Years 2017 via Onmyodo imprint from Portland/Seattle. How did Isle Enchanted come to be released through Not Not Fun? Whose idea was it to write “Masterpiece” on the cover? I was introduced to Britt through fellow Floridian John Touchton of Severed + Said. He caught up with me very figuratively swimming with the sharks that surrounded our soon-to-be-home Hawaiki. We started talking in email during the voyage over and eventually things slowed down enough to be able to trade some stuff and lay down some material that had been building up. I knew a little of Not Not Fun via Russian Tsarlag and I was really looking forward to a solid excuse to unpack my gear and record something at Hawaiki for the first time. Ultimately it came down to time, chance, and circumstance lining up to afford the right conditions. As far as the cover art, I left everything up to Britt. I have a very hands off approach to working with aesthetics for labels. I originally sent some photo examples to help flesh out a vision of the narrative the best I could, but often a tight physical product design is what a good imprint does best and a micro-managed affair is not quite in the spirit of this project. I believe the “masterpiece” portion was keeping within the aesthetic of old pulp adventure books which I thought to be a very appropriate concept. While this interview is going to run in early 2017, these questions were sent right at the tail end of 2016. What are you proud of from this year, and what are you looking forward to, musical or otherwise, in the new year? To say 2016 has been a monumental year for me would be an understatement. Close friends have said that this was the year I finally grew up but I don’t agree. I don’t believe there really is such a thing as “growing up,” but long since planted seeds did begin to really flower and bloom. Chance and circumstance took me on one long surreal roller coaster of a wave all year long. I swam with sharks, crash landed onto my own little island life, got married, and saw the barriers between make-believe and reality blur in ways I could have never imagined; got to go on most excellent adventures, learned that the most exhilarating experiences come in the face of imminent danger; successfully quit smoking after 23 years, and had the fortunate opportunity to release this album on Not Not Fun, and everything else in between. It’s going to be hard to top 2016 for me. I’m not so much proud as just thankful because none of this would have been possible just a few years ago. Life is long and certainly a weird mysterious happening sometimes. I imagine 2017 is going to be a very busy year in many realms of existence; maybe too busy at times, probably turbulent considering. I’m still open to far out voyages but I’d also hope to explore more inland territory too. I’m interested to get more into experimenting with composed and/or orchestrated music. I’d love to record live on the Isle of Malta. I don’t know… I am truly infantile to a whole new life, open to the possibilities, both pleasant and otherwise. I am truly thankful that 2016 was what it was for me and at this point I just try to savor the calm quiet moments between surging tidal currents, keeping my eyes open and focused forward. We shall sea… http://j.mp/2mjKcLv