#its like art in that way. with music youre not necessarily representing what people hear but hwat they expect to hear.

[raspberryjellybrains]

Hello person I never talked to in my life I saw your tags and. Please infodump about the songs for headphones rather than speakers thing if you feel like it bc I really want to know

HI!! it has been a ridiculous amount of time since you sent this, so I am very sorry. however, disclaimer that I have no expertise in music, but I do have a basic knowledge of music theory and lots of exposure (which I'm sure sounds silly, but simply means that I have a trained ear, if not mind).

I have noticed that with music produced before common availability of more sophisticated in-ear listening devices such as IPods or smart phones paired with earbuds or headphones lacks a lot of subtle, atmospheric sounds that mark more contemporary music produced within the last 10-15 years. These atmospheric sounds are things as directly understood as a result of a more isolated listening experience such as bird chirping or rustling leaves or as subtle and musical in nature as a soft chanting refrain or droning tone. Both of these, while different in purpose and nature, serve to fill out the sound of the music where background noise would, allowing artists to fully control the sound experience in a way previously unavailable.

this change can also be considered with the more widespread availability and usage of digital music making; when you have access to a sound effect, you don't have to count on it being there or figure out how to make the instruments you do have make those noises. there have been arguments made for decades (literally since the invention of the synthesizer) as to where or not this counts as part of the artistry as a new facet of the medium to be experimented with and added or diminishes the ultimate purpose and goal of music production. when new phases of technology are created and shared, there is always a boom of exploration coincident with a boom of... laziness, for lack of a better word. those who aim to use this new technology as a crutch rather than a tool. then, as the tide turns on this new technology and all the magic is gone, there's a turn back towards acoustic sound, now with elements of the previous era infused. think heavier guitar of grunge and punk versus 50's rock and how that infusion occurred AFTER synth wave in the 1980's, where those sounds overlap and converge (and, for a more interesting dive into music's role in culture, what that shift signifies).

there's also the issue of volume and dynamics. listening to heavier music with earbuds tends to be kind of unpleasant because that's not how it's designed to be played! the point is that it is loud and disruptive to OTHERS so it is necessarily sort of difficult to enjoy beamed into your ears with the magic of technology. on the opposite end of the spectrum, bedroom pop gets a bad reputation for sucking, especially to play on aux because that's not how THAT genre is meant to be played. it's quiet and has lots of subtle elements that are really easily lost in background noise that genres like death metal are engineered to cover, meaning that elements which serve to unite and fill out more key elements of the song get lost and leave it feeling hollow. there's a philosophy difference there.

which brings me to hyperpop as a perfect example of this change (its an excellent example of a lot things happening in music, even if it's a bit passe now. to editorialize more than I already am, I think it's gonna be one of those things we point to 10 years down the line and see as a huge shift but that remains to be seen). hyperpop uses this technology to blend older approaches to music with more contemporary approaches to sound production, which creates something that feels simultaneously nostalgic and completely alien; it translates really REALLY poorly to speakers because it's that adaption of heavyfastloud to a more isolated listening environment and can't be taken out.

SO TO SUMMARIZE I have no real point I just think it's really neat to look at shifts in cultural understandings and uses of technology through music and I really like thinking about and discussing it! apologies if my tags made it sound like anything other than that. if you have any questions or opinions to add feel free!! I'd love to discuss this more :3

[mileshehimwhite]

ok i know this is played out but i wanna touch on how music is generally seen as one of the most socially acceptable art forms. it is impossible to live as a human and escape music, its everywhere. however, that really doesnt mean that music is upheld as an art worth discussing.

id say its pretty fair to point out poetry and music are fairly similar mediums. they cross over all the time, and the distinction of the two is more of a matter of subjective taste than concrete lines. something interesting ive found with poetry is that its not as easily accessible by the masses as music - why not? much of poetry is melodic or could be easily transformed into song. the iambic pentameter is infamous for its specificity when it comes to syllables, very akin to how lyrics in music must conform to certain tempos or become a noisy cacophony.

the kendrick vs drake beef has brought the idea of music being poetic back into the mainstream. i say "back into" but any kendrick fan can tell you that hes always incorporated poetic devices into his lyrics and instrumentals to illustrate the theme of his song/album better. its fun! its a way for him to showcase his skills while also making the music a participatory act for the audience. almost like a scavenger hunt, you know everything is THERE, its up to you to find WHERE. however, the beef has far surpassed kendrick and drake fans, hiphop/rap fans, and has become a discussion point for those who have absolutely no background in these mediums. this is not a diss, its an acknowledgement that for those of us who have and do revere music as an artform, a lot of the talking points can come off as very beginner - because they are, they're made by beginners who are finding their foothold in this new world, just like we all did at one time whether we were 5 or 50 when we first started.

disclaimers aside, my grievances aren't with the people intrigued by accusations. i mean, i dont like 2010 pop very much but if katy perry called pink a pedophile you bet your ass id have tuned the fuck in. im not even sure if thats a comparable accusation, as i think katy perry was more popular than pink? i dont know, you get my point. the accusations are more indicative of the system they're both existing in than kendrick saying this one guy sucks and if we get rid of him and his groupies hollywood will be rainbows sunshine and happiness forever. like, we should still get rid of him, but the systems in place that let drake rise to the level hes at and profit so widely from the communities he claims to represent wont disappear with him, they'll just find the next drake, or taylor swift, or james corden, literally fucking whoever fits the mold they need them to fit into, and if they dont, then adapt to the mold assigned to them. the system continues, the gears keep turning.

i dont even want to talk about the beef necessarily, though i do want to talk about the two songs meet the grahams and Not Like Us. meet the grahams was the heavy-hitter. the one that got everyone talking. Not Like Us was the chaser. a sweeter mixture to dull out the bitterness in the audience's mouth. there's been more controversy about the lyricism in Not Like Us than meet the grahams, and i find that it comes from a lack of understanding of what artforms really are - communicative devices. they're not trying to TELL you something, as something like a report or spreadsheet would with its analysis of sourced data, but it's trying to make you EXPERIENCE something. you can hear the sentence "Treat others the way you want to be treated." all your life, but if you've never experienced a situation where you need others to treat you with the same humanity they hold for themselves, it's a lot less impactful.

Not Like Us showcases exactly what kendrick lamar has already shown us repeatedly: he not only understands people, but he knows how to get through to them. meet the grahams will inevitably go down as one of the most vicious disstracks of all times, yes, but who's bumping that shit? nobody. its not supposed to be bumped. people discuss how it sounds very eerie and frightening, and its SUPPOSED. TO. BE. the instrumentals weren't picked for no reason. the unintelligible yelling in the background? purposeful. the vocals of kendrick going in and out of rage, of him simultaneously saying he wants drake dead and also that he wants him to improve himself by going through ego dissolution? purposeful. this is not just kendrick showing his own emotions regarding the scenario, he's priming the audience to be on his side by proactively aligning himself with their emotions - which leads me to Not Like Us.

okay. like, even the title you see it clearly. Not Like Us. kendrick, even before the song begins, has the audience creating an Us VS Them dichotomy with drake and his crew. kendrick also doesnt define a clear 'us' within the song - he does directly call out drake's culture vulturism in his music, but notice how deliberate he is with it. kendrick points out how drake uses "the people" to get himself a larger paycheque. that is, purposefully, relatable to every working class person regardless of race or location. he uses specific black people in his examples because of drake's anti-blackness, and while he mentions drake being half white in a few of his songs his criticism is always very carefully cushioned by the fact that kendrick DEFENDS drake's white half. he says hes a culture vulture for profiting off of such an important artform made by and for black america, yes, but he also points out that the inauthenticity towards his mother's side of the family and his nationality as canadian is pathetic and disloyal. he SPECIFICALLY MENTIONS how drake lied about his religious views not because kendrick hates the jews secretly but because DRAKE CAN'T PROFIT OFF OF BEING JEWISH THE SAME WAY HE CAN BEING BLACK. that's why he doesn't claim being jewish as hard as he does being black, if the inverse was true i doubt drake would EVER try to 'fit in' to the hip-hop crowd, in the same way he rarely if ever mentions his upbringing in a jewish household.

this is very important and VERY strategic of kendrick. he CANNOT be making enemies in this stage. kendrick has been banking on this reaching far past hip-hop/rap crowds. drake is fluid and, to the core, mainstream. therefore, kendrick NEEDS his lyricism to be just as easily approachable. think about the difference between kendrick's double entendres. "Tryna strike a chord and it's probably A Minor" has been a joke since, probably literally the day we quantified the concept of chords in music theory. some people criticize the line because of that, accusing kendrick of being a hack for using such an easy joke. what they dont understand is, THE JOKE HAD TO BE EASY. it had to simultaneously be easy to access for the general public and also still somewhat biting. kendrick already planted the seeds of drake being a pedophile in meet the grahams, and he's reaping his harvest by dropping that line and "Certified Loverboy, Certified Pedophile". they not only dont have to be clever, THEY CAN'T BE. they can't be more clever than what the layman would gather with one listen, they're his hooks in the song.

some people use Not Like Us as kendrick stepping up to the dick measuring contest on drake's terms. "oh, you think you so good cause you can write something that'll get em jumping? not only can i do that, i can do it BETTER." and i do agree with them! Not Like Us was incredibly well thought-out. it gives us basically no new information, but it doesnt need to, Not Like Us owes its purpose to beating people over the head with a few of the concepts addressed in euphoria. and meet the grahams, yes, and also to prime the audience against drake, yes, and also to show the audience that anything drake does you can get somewhere else and done better, YES! even the beat is produced by DJ Mustard, whose works are both familiar to rap fans, and widely loved. DJ Mustard producing it reinforces the Us VS Them. i mean, even casual listeners of rap have heard the notorious tag "Mustard on the beat, ho!".

im not going to claim this hasnt been pointed out before, i havent seen it, but im sure it has. kendricks discography has primed old fans to indulge in every lyric to make sure no nuance is missed. i dont think kendricks artistry has been in doubt once the entire time this beef has been widely popular. so it seems a little silly then, to start this goddamn dissertation off with a criticism of how music isnt treated with the same consideration by its fans like how a similar artform, poetry, is. and thats because... well, 1: music is way more popular than poetry, like i said. and that leads into 2: people dont recognize music as... important.

some music is. that's true. i mean, remember during the pandemic when celebrities were singing john lennon's Imagine from their mansions while the working class were dying from completely preventable causes? we can say what we will about that era, and oh boy do i have a lot to say, but it does prove that we on some level acknowledge the impact of music. why else choose a song? why not literally just say the words, or words to that impact? because music is better? well, no. people say impactful shit everyday - sans music. Inspirational speeches are a type of communication basically always devoid of music and yet they serve very similar purposes. so, no. music isnt always better. in fact, during the situation i outlined above, i could not think of anything WORSE than breaking into a little tune and jig. there is some tact necessary.

music, however, does excel in one thing inspirational speeches don't: community. this may make little sense, because inspirational speeches are notorious for being purposeful in their bonding of individuals into one united movement. but i want you to consider this: what role does the speaker hold? in inspirational speeches, they're on the same side as the crowd, yes, but they tend to hold some position above or differing from them. a figurehead or trusted authority figure to a movement. they're fighting for the same thing, but they're in a unique position to the crowd.

think about music in that same concept. the singer doesnt tend to hold that same difference. how could it? the audience sings along, the audience dances, the audience taps their foot or bobs their head, whatever participation is included, its necessary. kendrick's Not Like Us, no matter how eloquently reworked, would have NEVER gained the same traction as an inspirational speech. it would make kendrick seem too different from the masses. it would remind us that... he's a celebrity too. he isn't working class. he isn't the one getting affected most by drake's culture vulturism, misogyny, or alleged pedophilia. which would then ask the question: well... why didnt he point this out earlier?

some people are still asking that question, which i think does hold merit. kendrick lamar is not our friend. he has done amazing things for his community and black americans at large and we absolutely cannot discredit that, but kendrick lamar could personally fund my lifestyle forever and that still wouldn't mean i know him or his mindset. he is much more impactful to me because a lot of his songs about growing up in poverty or in crime-ridden environments resonate with my own upbringing, and hearing his experiences heightens that level of relatability because kendrick DID experience what he's writing about, unlike drake, but i also know me. i know people from my block, people who died or got on drugs. im aware that it isnt a black and white scenario, that someone could do amazing things in one area and hurt people in another, and that both are true simultaneously. kendrick himself is obviously aware of this, he addresses it routinely in his music.

i truly believe that kendrick lamar showcases an incredible wisdom of people in his music. i believe that is more necessary to contributing to music than having a good ear for what sounds right. music is a communicative tool, and kendrick knows exactly what to say, how to say it, and when, to elicit the response he wants. THAT is why the people who thought drake would ever win the beef were, at the very best, not paying close enough attention. roasts are not just insults, they're insights to another person's flaws. a metaphorical airing of dirty laundry to the public to initiate change. kendrick can get away with outright admitting he hates shit about drake for no reason and not be seen as petty because he articulates it in a way that has the audience agreeing with him. sometimes you hate somebody for a reason you can't pinpoint - and the funniest part is that kendrick CAN pinpoint exactly why he hates, for example, when drake says the n word. he literally goes on to say why! very explicitly! but now he's made it more comfortable for people to start bashing on drake for any given reason because "the vibes are off".

TLDR; be careful what you listen to, because theyre definitely listening to you.

[banghwa]

i wonder how you feel about namjoon? i find what he's doing in chapter 2 really interesting. he literally said 'fuck the trendsetter'. 🥲 wildflower might be the best song he's ever written (lbr if taylor swift released a song with such lyricism, we'd be hearing about it for years lol), and once again it has this theme of the rift between ideals and reality, of trying to hold onto yourself and your values when the world pushes back and breaks your heart. indigo was about choosing to be a human being, to create art beyond trends and limitations, to stand tall as an artist on his own terms. he chose to perform in like. a 200 max capacity venue bc that was his dream as a teenager before everything happened. he befriended the entire k-indie scene lol. it's amazing how he's overcoming the pressure of bts' crown. he's doing exactly what fans demand of their faves (authenticity & artistry), but then indigo is probably one of the least supported/commercially successful solo releases. 👀

he's also the only member i think that's kind of ambivalent about the future of bts. i think he's distanced himself from the Brand as much as possible for his own health, but i find his uncertainty about what bts are gonna do and what they will say in the future intriguing. he was definitely right in last year's festa when he said that bts have ran out of messages to give to the world.

anyway sorry for ranting sm about namjoon in your askbox, i just think it's amazing how much he's giving his all to be a true Artist in the most corporate era of kpop ever lol.

ohhhh I won’t let myself get too sappy about it but. i really do love namjoon so much. i dont think I can put it into words. hes such a brilliant lyricist. you’re so right if it was a white woman who wrote wildflower people would be screaming about it being the sadgirl song of the decade. he’s also just. really inspirational to me, i look up to him in a lot of ways. when i was first getting into bts, he was my first “official” bias i guess until hope world came out and changed everything lol. but he continues to have such an important space in my heart. i love the way he thinks, i love how genuine he tries to be, how he knows he’s very flawed and doesnt see it necessarily as a compromising thing. he means a lot to me :’)

ithink you’re right too like. things are probably very complicated for him around bts “the brand”, rm the artist, kim namjoon the person, which are things he explores to beautifully in indigo. i think he’s probably the member whose ties to bts as a “brand” are probably the tightest and not as easily severed bcs he’s the leader and the face and all of his mistakes now represents the group. and i think you’re so right, while indigo seemed to do well (then again, im so out of the loop that i dont rly know what doing well or not means in kpop anymore lol) or at least be very well received, it definitely is not being recognized for what it is by armys themselves…..its weird i feel like namjoon is sorta in this paradox where he can’t separate himself from bts but he is also too different from/too real and flawed for the bts brand that ppl dont rly pay attention to him…..but he’s also really respected by other people who are just really and genuinely into music. idk where im going with this all this to say i love him a lot i genuinely plan to get everythingoes tattooed and if he ever releases his own book I would be first in line to buy it

[evergreensounds]

its been a minute, hope youve been doing well

i honestly dont know too much about led zeppelin but ive been following the srs22 tag a little bit and i think youre the second person to answer that type of question with LZ lol. i did some research and yeah, i gotta agree with you. jimmys a shitty dude

thats a neat cover!! its so simple but yet so expressive. i always love covers that show you the actual artist behind the songs. its like getting a little glimpse into who they are

omg so do you have a playlist for weird songs?? i love fun, kind of humorous songs that tell a story so transfusion was a fun listen!

and yeahh i started getting odd vibes from hank when i listened to a song where he went on and on about sin and the devil and whatever else. i guess i didnt go deep enough to hear the misogynistic stuff but the normal songs were fun. but dont be sorry about any perceived negativity!! i think its important to be aware of both the good and the bad

also about the celebrating christmas thing, i can relate. i live with family so i go along with it, and even though theyre christian theyre not too weird about it thankfully. i just enjoy the festivities

-🦈 (i realized i totally forgot to sign off with this last time immediately after saying id use it. oops)

im not surpised people hate on Jimmy Page.

I do know a lot of weird songs but I looked into the lyrics of some of them and they were all just about being violent to women. I know it's not necessarily an expression of their desires or sometimes it even is to represent cruelty. I'm not feeling them right now.

Luckily the ones that are similar to Transfusion aren't like that mostly

There's trouble brewin by Jack Scott weirdd

Uranium Fever by Elton Britt

I also know a lot of music that is weird because it sounds very ethereal and or weird and out of time.

Some artists I recommend here are: Branko Mataja (not only his album covers are really good), Joe Meek (legendary producer but what discussion about him there is is rarely about his work but about his tragic and messy life), Charlie Megira, Link Wray and Mamman Sani. I feel like these guys get usually labeled outsider, a term I don't particularly like because it treats queer and mentally ill or just generally weird people like Zoo Exhibitions while not actually having any stylistic consistency.

However the four guys I mentioned above do have similarities like a focus on lo-fi instrumental music, use of electric equipment/sounds/instruments that haven't been done in the way they did (Charlie Megira technically doesn't use technology/sound in a way the others do, considering he was mostly active in the last 20 years, but he uses it in ways his predecessors did without giving it a commercialised sheen while also carving out some darker and noisier sounds)

My opinion on outsider music is definitely complicated because the art of people that are othered by our society is important, but a lot of audiences are very weird about it, and it does more bad than good to focus on arbitrary similarities in the lives/experiences of musicians while ignoring their waaaast differences. Like none of the five artists above ever met and except for Link Wray and Branko Mataja who lived in America weren't even living on the same continent meaning they definitely weren't a scene or something.

It's also worth noting that being mentally ill doesn't define somebody's art, meaning that poining at somebodys art and saying they could only have created it because they were mentally ill is dumb.

Not to mention that a lot of "outsider" artists were diagnosed and institutionalised at a point in time where mental illness was understood very differently and diagnosis was used as a way to other/label people who did not conform.

Thanks for letting me rant about a subject I am deeply interested in.

[d-criss-news]

1883magazine.com

Darren Criss

On his new EP ‘Masquerade,’ the multi-talented Darren Criss welcomes everyone to the party.

Throughout his career, Darren Criss has never been one to shy away from boundaries. As an actor, he has won numerous awards and critical acclaim for his portrayal of Andrew Cunanan in Ryan Murphy’s award-winning drama American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace, as well as hearts and a cult-like following for his portrayal of Harry Potter in Team Starkid’s A Very Potter Musical. As a musician, his talent shows the same range; he is as well known for his ability to belt a broadway ballad as he is for his covers of Top 40 hits on Glee.

For Criss, this is because all music is simply music. Musicians and listeners alike need not box themselves into certain genres and while this concept is currently growing in mainstream media, it is one Criss has known since he was a teenager. At Warped Tour, he encountered fellow San Franciscans Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, a punk-rock cover band that specializes in the unexpected (their most played track on Spotify is Country Roads.). Inspired by what he’s always known was possible, Darren’s career has had freedom most artists take years to explore — and with his new EP, it’s clear that is the most recent chapter.

‘Masquerade’ is an exploration into Criss’ more eclectic side with each track on the record representing a different persona or masque for the artist. The overt character-driven quality of the EP lends not only to allowing fans to learn more about Darren Criss, but also to create a project where something can be found for everyone.

1883 Magazine spoke to Darren Criss about his perception of genre, his new EP, and the curse of creative people.

Congratulations on ‘Masquerade’. I love it. It’s so fun!

Fun is a very fair adjective, I would agree.

I feel like there’s a very cohesive vision or aesthetic to it. When you set out to make the project, did you have this end goal in min  or were you just making music?

Yes and no. First and foremost, when you’re dealing with the whole of what an artist does, there are so many different facets that make the whole piece. To start, I’m just a songwriter — that’s the main thing that seeds everything else. But, because I’m a creative person, I’d like to think that I have a somewhat cohesive vision for my projects. However, you can conjecture and pontificate over what you want to happen, but ultimately a project is going to come out how it does. The thing that ties it all together, hopefully, is the artistry of the music or the person’s voice. When I heard you say “cohesive” my mind was like, “Phew!” Because we’re all scatterbrained people and we just constantly pray other people somehow think that we planned something or we had it envisioned all along, so to hear that is an enormous relief.

That being said, I had hope for how the EP would come together. I’ve been leaning into this notion of a character-driven song. The dirty secret about that is all songs are character-driven; all art is character-driven in some way or another. I just use that wording to aide folks that might be perceiving me as an actor and to apply that methodology to music.

How so?

I always thought it was a bit of an unfair double standard — where actors can be in a horror movie or romantic comedy — and we’re still behind that person as an actor. Actors can put on a prosthetic nose or a wig and do different things to service whatever story they’re doing. Historically music has been a little trickier, but now I think that’s changing. I’ve always been a self-proclaimed genrephile. I love so many different kinds of things. Growing up it was difficult for me to really assert this without confusing people. Now, that kaleidoscope has shifted in my favour, because people are more into eclecticism and musical diversity due to playlist culture and the whole homogeneity of everything. I’m employing this notion of being an actor and being behind a character and applying it to music by treating each song as its own kind of character. I want the art to correspond with that.

That’s an interesting concept to apply to music.

I know that everything I just said is horrifically more cerebral than it needs to be. If you like the music and it’s fun, great. I’m just trying to help people out that might be confused by perhaps some of the cognitive dissonance that’s happening between some of the styles. At the end of the day, it’s an artist’s voice, literal singing voice, and heart voice — what they have to say and how they say it — that tie everything together. People are more accepting of that than they used to be. This is exciting for me because I finally got to lean into something that I’ve always leaned into my entire life.

The last EP you released was ‘Homework’ in 2017. How do you think you’ve grown as an artist since then?

For me, obviously, there’s personal growth and professional growth. I think my growth is much more technical — getting better at recording music or being able to translate abstract ideas into physical recording — the things that I don’t think necessarily would be seen on the records. Again, much like an actor, ‘Homework’ was me playing the part of making a very low-key, singer/songwriter record. I’m a big believer in dressing for a party. I had some singer/songwriter songs that I wanted to honour. Each record I release shows a different version of myself that I haven’t gotten around to sharing.

The songs on ‘Masquerade’ are not like, “oh man in the past few years, I’ve suddenly become this person.” The EP was me finally getting in touch with my more Garage Band musician roots that I hadn’t been able to flex. It made sense to me to finally make this music. I had linked up with people that I thought could help me bring it to life in a way that hadn’t been done before and I felt like the timing was right. As I mentioned, it seemed like audiences might be a little more privy to this kind of thing.

I don’t want to be so stubborn as to think that there hasn’t been growth. I’ve been so lucky as an actor, that I’ve been busy as an actor. The only obstacle to me putting out more music, which I wish I was doing all the time, is time. I’m not an artist that just shows up, sings, and checks out. I’m writing, I’m producing, and I’m really in the weeds. It takes a great deal of investment, emotionally and mentally when I make music.

So, when you say, “you wish you were always releasing music,” do you mean to imply you have more music or at least ideas for more music?

I think the curse of creative people is that our ideas move faster than our bodies can execute. What this inevitably will create is a huge queue of unattended things that you will always be haunted by. From there, you have to catch as catch can. At any given moment, there’s still so much more in the queue that I want to put out. It literally took a global shutdown for me to finally have the time to look at the said queue, and say, “Okay, which project do I not only really want to do, but also do I have the resources to do and do I think fits into where I am right now?” Because I’m very cognisant of l where I am in my career. I have this huge selection of songs and when I have the time to focus on music, I go through and pick the ones I think fit where I am mentally and how I think other people are feeling.

With all these different genres of music you’ve released and all the music-centric projects that you’ve been a part of, is there a type of music that you enjoy performing the most?

I would say everything, but I don’t mean that in a way to just include everything. By nature, I’m a dot connector; I like shortening the distance between two things as much as possible and showing people how they can coexist. It’s my MO personally and professionally. Genre, while it has a lot to do with the cultural background and history of a type of music, is the boxes that we’ve arbitrarily made up to categorize and market music. I’m completely nondenominational when it comes to genre because all I can hear is chords, melody, and lyrics. It’s never been separated to me. When I’m performing live, I relish getting to lean in and bring together genres. I love using the setlist to show an audience how similar different genres are. For example, I’ll play a punk rock song and right after that I’ll sit at the piano and sing a ballad. My voice will be a little different, but it’s still my voice. Just like in acting, no matter what character an actor is portraying, it’s still their face and their body. Trying to minimize a distance between genres when I perform is an exciting prospect because I like getting audiences to rethink what they think they know about the differences between genre and how really at the end of the day it’s all just storytelling. So…I like performing it all.

I didn’t say you couldn’t say you liked everything. [Chuckles] That’s a perfectly acceptable answer.

I like putting all of it together specifically to show the similarities. Historically, all the great steps forward in a new kind of art form have been by mashing two or three seemingly unrelated things together. It’s happening constantly. It’s happening right now. Culture is a constant conversation back and forth. It’s a sharing of ideas that ebb and flow to create something new. I’m not saying that I’m taking part in this ancient conversation, but I’m certainly enjoying it. When I see pieces of it that I would like to showcase, I jump at the opportunity to do so.

Since ‘Masquerade’ has been in your creative bank for a while, what would you say inspired it?

Every song has its own inspiration. The album doesn’t really have an inspiration. If anything, I’m trying to make sure that I can show up for myself. I feel like with everything that I’ve done musically, I haven’t gotten to represent who and what I am and what I do. To me, this EP gets me closer to that goal. I still think that only a small percentage of me has been represented and that’s just because of time. I haven’t been able to focus on music in the way that I’d like, but ‘Masquerade’ is a huge stride for me.

Speaking of you being on Broadway, Elsie Fest is Sunday! On top of it just being exciting because it’s back, it’s your first public gig in almost two years. What did you miss most about the festival?

Listen, even without a global pandemic to worry about, putting on a music festival is hard enough. It’s one of my favourite times of the year because I’m very proud of what we’ve built and what we’ve continued to build and expand upon over the years. There’s been a community that has been built around not only people that come to the festival but people that have been part of it. I’ve followed these performers’ careers and I’ve been really grateful that we got a piece of their magic and got to be part of their journey at Elsie Fest. Magic which I can’t take credit for. I just lucked out with having incredible people perform. Over the years, we’ve had Cynthia Erivo perform twice. The first time she premiered a song called ‘You Will Be Found’ from a musical that would open in a year called ‘Dear Evan Hansen.’ We premiered a song from a movie called ‘The Greatest Showman.’ Keala Settle went on to win a Golden Globe for that song. Last year, we had a young girl from Disney sing for us — her name was Olivia Rodrigo. Those are just three examples. There’s been a lot of people that I’ve been thrilled to see do their thing. This year we have an incredible lineup. Barlow & Bear are coming, along with Jordan Fisher, Adrienne Warren, Pentatonix’s Kirstin Maldonado, and Alex Brightman. It’s gonna be great.

The obvious and the biggest answer is getting to perform live within as much of a safe and comfortable environment as humanly possible. Luckily we’re an outdoor festival, so that’s already to our advantage. I will be performing this new EP, but there is also a lot of music to catch up on and a lot of music I want to share. I’m mainly excited to share it with other human beings. I look at performing as a service industry. Everything that I do isn’t worth a whole lot unless other people experience it because it takes on a life of its own. The audience is not there for me & I’m there for them. I’m trying to service an experience that’s bigger than both of us and create something that couldn’t have been there if both parties were on their own.

Before I let you go, I need to tell you that Tramp Stamp Granny’s is one of my favourite bars in LA. I’m obsessed! I haven’t made it back yet. Like I said earlier, the editor Kelsey is also one of my best friends and when she comes, it’s top on my list of places to take her.

Really?! That makes me so happy. You couldn’t have said a better thing. We’re open again to limited capacity. We require vaccinations cards at the door and we’re only open Thursday-Saturday. Talk about being with people — the night we reopened, about a month ago, I got pretty emotional. It was nice to see people just being happy to sing and celebrate life with strangers. That was a really encouraging sentiment because despite the use of digital communication which I do think is an amazing thing, we, so clearly, inevitably, yearn for each other. Despite everything, people were coming to the bar and were so happy to be there and be around other people. Our need for other human beings is a constant that is extremely encouraging to me as a bleeding heart idealist. It’s nice to be a small part of that.

Finally, you said earlier Barlow and Bear were going to be at Elsie Fest. I cannot wait for the Unofficial Bridgerton Musical and was so excited to see you’re involved.

It’s cool meeting them because in a much more organized and impressive fashion they’re doing what my friends and I did ten years ago with ‘A Very Potter Musical.’ They are insanely talented and deserve to be the huge phenomenon they have become. They’re the future. I’m trying to grab onto their coattails however I can. [chuckles] They’re just getting started. I’ve been a big fan of Emily’s for a long time. She hates it when people say this, but [mock yells] she was a child prodigy and she still is. She’s an amazing human being.

Masquerade is out now.

Follow Darren Criss @darrencriss

Interview by Sydney Bolen

[wordsoflittlewisdom]

Watching bop again

I kinda forgot Cass was at the roller derby game. Love how all the characters are connected

Why does Roman’s voice...sound like that

Boss Bitch is weirdly nostalgic now

I like that the whole roller derby team is wearing like. team jackets. and harleys got her whole fringe sleeves thing going on

YES LOVE WHEN SHE THROWS THE NECKLACE AWAY

The chemical plant blowing up as fireworks was a very Harley choice

“So I’ll start where I fucking want” four minutes ago

huntress huntress huntress huntress huntress

I read somewhere that this huntress and Montoya scene was one take and they just changed the lighting to show the change

romans middle name being beauvais is probably the clearest clue they could have given that he was from a rich family

Love that Renee finds the necklace and knows Harley and the joker broke up. I like this idea that superheroes/villains are kinda like celebrities in this world

The egg sandwich scene is great what more can I say

Love that there’re cars and people just living their lives in this city

It’s a crime that we never see Harley wear this glittery fanny pack

The music is really good in this

It’s neat how the line between her narration and her dialogue is blurred, like how she’ll say the first part of something in narration and the second part in dialogue

Huntress’s little flute theme

And Montoya knows Cass; c o n n e c t i o n s

Montoya’s been going after Roman, too

And now we’re flipping back to the bertinelli massacre and diamond

Even if the whole missing diamond plot isn’t that unique, everything’s woven together so neatly

And now Dinah and Renee are on the phone about Cass and the diamond

It’s all connected

Harleys whole “I’m here to report a terrible crime”—she could have just run in there but she wanted to be Dramatic

I do wish the vocals were a little louder here maybe?

Big fan of this fight choreography

Harley pausing on a frame where she’s making a weird face before rewinding to explain about the diamond—it’s so rare to ever get to see women like. making weird faces in movies. All the women in his this are gorgeous but they don’t always have to be; they look beat up after fights and get dirty and make weird faces and it’s great

Dinah singing? Exceptional

“Loans, liquidity, laundering” ah yes the three L’s of illegal business

I unironically listen to Black Canary’s man’s world.

I like that everyone just calls Dinah “Canary”

“I’m all on my lonesome. It’s great” Harleys even an unreliable narrator when she’s just talking

I’ve really never seen a movie that feel like it’s from the female gaze visually as much as this one—all the rings and earrings, the hair, the makeup, it feels like what women might fantasize about dressing like

Dinah yelling “you motherfucker!” While beating some creeps up is quality

What time of day is it? Dinah would probably be leaving early in the morning, but I Refuse to believe that Roman would be awake particularly early any morning

She either canary is leaving her nightclub singing gig in the late morning/early afternoon or roman is still awake from the night before and is going to go to sleep soon

Cass and Dinah in the same building. (Bernie voice): I am once again talking about the connections

I’ve riffed on this before but i refuse to believe that Roman can drive

This Dinah and Renee scene establishes character, backstories, and moves the plot along all at once

Jesus some of ewan mcgregor’s acting in this is painfully bad

I love that Cass has a big bomber jacket and longer, looser shorts

Jurnee’s abs wow

The lights from behind the hands with the eyes behind Harley, who’s surrounded by people and then Roman and Victor emerge from the back, whispering to each other? Beautiful

One of the grievances roman has against Harley is “constantly interrupting him, like I’m doing right now”

Harleys “you’re really not as complicated as you think” bit is almost satirical of this cult we’ve created of “complicated” white male movie villains who have massive fan followings (cough cough joker)

Interesting that Roman holds the knife to Harleys face but hands it off to Victor to do that actual cutting

Someone handed Roman a bowl of popcorn

Harleys pocket tampon

It’s diamonds are a girls best friend yeah babey!

The male backup dancers are wearing muzzles/masks (Roman has one too for a split second) is an interesting flip on the way women are typically the ones being silenced, as well as Harleys desire to silence the men around her and be the one telling and controlling her own narrative

“Hey! you’re that singer no one listens to!” “Hey! You’re the asshole no one likes!”

Harley with her glitter gun

Harleys reaction when the sprinklers go off is perfect—Margot makes her feel like a living cartoon

This cell block fight scene is a showstopper

I like that cass doesn’t immediately want to stay with Harley. It gives her some agency in a story where she’s mostly just following the curveballs life throws her

Harleys little stare straight into the camera when cass admits to eating the diamond

Harley at the grocery store really emphasizes that she’s a total weirdo

I think I heard somewhere that the pic of child Harley with the nuns is a pic of young Margot??? Not totally sure though

Cass not knowing who the joker is goes with the whole supers are like celebrities thing—cass probably follows a whole different group of them (like how most kids follow different celebrities than their parents)

Huntress huntress huntresssss

“Give me number 32. Mild”

This kid in helenas flashback doesn’t really look like she’s grow up to look like Mary Elizabeth Winstead

This filming in this flashback has so much style

Helena practicing in the bathroom mirror with her drawing and her multiple bottles of travel mouthwash

We’re in the scene where Roman makes the girl dance on the table and oh god it’s so uncomfortable

No no no no no not this hate this

Alright that nightmare’s done

“and that’s why you should never pay federal income taxes”

Harley offering to bring cass to Roman after hearing doc say “business is business is interesting

OH ITS HIT ME WITH YOUR BEST SHOT TIME

Dinahs car is yellow because it’s...canary yellow

Roman putting on the mask is cool and all but he’s just gonna have to take it back off to get changed

This Harley vs Renee fight is fun because they keep mirroring each other—they’re fighting each other, but they’re really on the same side

The way the women all kind of circle each other at first and don’t immediately get along

Cass popping up with the gun also gives her some agency—she’s at the end of her rope with the diamond and being betrayed by Harley

“I am nOT THE CROSSBOW KILLER”

The way Huntress sounds so uncertain when she says “...and now I’m done” Mary’s acting really popped off

Roman’s a bitch but I like his outfits

Helenas little smile when Harley says “you just killed his BFF”

I love how excited Harley is when they all agree to work together

Roman’s giving his little speech in the back of a pickup truck?

When all the guys turned around with masks on I got chills

“I love this chick she’s got rage issues.” “I DONT HAVE RAGE ISSUES”

Huntress stabbing the guy while going down the slide is peak cinema

This set lights up as the scene progresses and reveals more

I love love love that Helena is genuinely caring towards Cass and recognizing that children shouldn’t have to go through trauma like her

“When the fuck did she have time to do a shoe change?”

THE HAIR TIE YEAH

Forgot to mention this but it’s a stroke of genius for this place to be called the booby trap

Love me some canary cry

“Told ya she had a killer voice”

Harleys chase was a real group hurrah—the canary cry cleared the way and pushed her forward, Huntress towed her, Renee gave her the gun with one bullet

Cass and Roman are just sitting in the back seat. That must have been an awkward car ride

Cass pulling the gun away from Roman when he tries to shoot up at Harley when Harleys on top of the car is elite

Damn this is one foggy pier

When Harley starts with “your protection is based on the fact that people are scared of you” you expect her to say that it’s wrong or something but she says “I’m the one they should be scared of” this movie messed with tropes so much

That also includes the whole “one bullet” thing—Harley misses with her one bullet, and you don’t really know what’s gonna happen next

“I took your ring”

You can pinpoint exactly when Harley and Roman realize what Cass did

I’d put the entire taco scene here if I could

Renee moving the drink away from cass shows her caring side—she doesn’t want a kid to get into alcohol and make the mistakes she did

“Does she always talk like the cop in a bad eighties movie?”

Harley and Cass stealing the car is a fun way to show that she may be on the side of the good guys sometimes, but that doesn’t necessarily make her one

“Woman” by Kesha

Wow the outfits in this scene are iconic

I mean they are in the whole movie but I especially like these

Cass riding around with Harley and a hyena, wearing cute outfits and learning the ways of chaos

Harley got her sandwich!

The credit art for this movie is cool

Especially how they represent each character

In conclusion this is still my favorite movie

I know I’ve been kinda absent recently, but watching this again has really reminded me how much I love it. I got really busy but I’m going to Make An Effort to be a contributing member of the bop fandom again.

[passionate-reply]

In this installment of Great Albums, we’re back to talking about albums nobody’s ever heard of! You might not know who Zaine Griff is, but you’ve probably heard of a guy called Hans Zimmer, and Zimmer is the real mastermind of this record: a masterpiece of New Romantic synth-pop made long before he made his name composing for the big screen! Not to mention contributions from Ultravox’s Warren Cann, YMO’s Yukihiro Takahashi, and even Kate Bush. Find out all about it by watching this video, or reading the full transcript below the break!

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today’s installment is going to feature an album that is most definitely towards the obscure side--but, like most of the more obscure artists and albums I’ve talked about, I think this one is every bit as good as the classics. Zaine Griff’s Figures is not only a forgotten album that I think deserves more acclaim, but also an album that, in many ways, feels like it could have been a huge success in its own time.

Zaine Griff grew up in New Zealand, and moved to Great Britain in the 1970s in the hopes of pursuing a career in music. His debut LP, 1980’s Ashes & Diamonds, would mark him as one of the many artists straddling the musical landscape in the aftermath of glam, in the long shadow of David Bowie. With keen visual panache, a suave way of slurring when he sang, and the requisite killer cheekbones, Griff fit in perfectly with the so-called “New Romantics,” as stylish and sophisticated as Visage, Ultravox, or Japan.

Music: “Ashes & Diamonds”

The real turning point in Griff’s career was his being “discovered,” so to speak, by Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann. Cann had already become a figure of some renown, as the percussionist for the aforementioned Ultravox. Despite his tremendous fame today, Zimmer actually had much less to show for himself at this point, aside from a somewhat dodgy stint in the Buggles. While geniuses in their own ways, neither of them were necessarily natural frontmen, and Zaine Griff seemed like the perfect missing piece to fit into their pop ambitions.

Even setting aside Zimmer and Cann, Figures is actually full of recognizable talent, and I think it may have the single most stacked list of album credits I’ve ever seen in my life! You’ll also hear contributions from Yellow Magic Orchestra’s Yukihiro Takahashi, backing vocals from Linda Jardim, who was also the soprano on the Buggles’ famous “Video Killed the Radio Star,” and a guest appearance by none other than Kate Bush. That’s really a lot of clout going around, which is one of the reasons I’m so surprised this album went nowhere. Anyway, that aside, the most dominant sonic footprint on display here is certainly that of Hans Zimmer. Zimmer is credited with producing the album, and his dynamic, expressive, perhaps “cinematic” work with digital synthesisers is surely the driving force behind Figures’s sound.

Music: “Fahrenheit 451”

It’s easy to imagine “Fahrenheit 451” is the thumping theme to some delightfully 80s adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s classic novel. Its theme of lustful but dangerous romance is a constant throughout the album, most notably on tracks like “Hot” and the haunting closer, “The Beating of Wings.” The song’s tense and dramatic mood is well bolstered by those soaring synths, courtesy of the Fairlight CMI. One of the most distinctive sounds of mid-80s synth-pop, the soft, breathy tones of the Fairlight hadn’t yet reached full saturation when Figures was made--Zimmer was an early adopter of this particular musical revolution. You might be surprised to learn that “Fahrenheit 451” only saw minor distribution as a single, exclusively for the French and Belgian markets. I think that sort of mismanagement on behalf of Polydor really shafted this album. Its lead single was actually its title track.

Music: “Figures”

The title track of Figures isn’t the worst song I’ve ever heard, but I do think it just might be the worst song on this album. With a strident, stabbing synth riff and a somewhat sparse and anemic soundstage, the title track is not particularly exciting, and also not particularly representative of what the rest of the album sounds like, with no indication of the lush and vibrant textures that dominate tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” It also has less lyrics than the other tracks, and offers Griff little opportunity to demonstrate his pipes. Thematically, though, its imagery of wispy and mysterious personas, flitting in and out of substance in a world where appearance and identity are trifling and ephemeral, is something that resonates strongly with the album as a whole, as one might surmise from its title also being used for the album. “The Vanishing Men,” another song that easily feels like a better single than “Figures,” handles the same sort of subject in a more playful and upbeat manner.

Music: “The Vanishing Men”

The titular “vanishing men” are quite clearly the life of the party here, and in the world of this track, the insignificance of true identity is portrayed as an invitation to experiment and have fun with it--though not without a slight hint of danger as well. Perhaps it’s a good metaphor for the curated aestheticism of the New Romantic movement, decried by some as “style over substance.” New Romanticism really didn’t have much time left by the time *Figures* came out, being so strongly associated with trends in fashion that were on their way out by this point. Even Ultravox would find themselves pivoting towards more of a pop rock-oriented sound for their final classic lineup LP, 1984’s Lament. I can’t help but think that the changing landscape of musical trends is part of the poor reception of Figures, which is such a consummate New Romantic album, which basks in the full flush of the movement’s prior penetration into the mainstream. As stated above, “The Vanishing Men” is all about the glamour of mutable identity, but other tracks on the album seem to assign this theme a bit more weight, as in “The Stranger.”

Music: “The Stranger”

The titular character of “The Stranger” is described as “a stranger to himself,” but also “no stranger to anyone else.” This track seems to be more focused on the negative aspects of fashionable persona-play: losing the dignity and security of a true form, the people around you seeing through your charades, and becoming trapped in an existence defined by arbitrariness and artificiality. I’d also be remiss not to mention this track’s winsome pentatonic synth riff, which helps create a mercurial and ambiguous mood. It might be interpreted as a nod towards the rampant Orientalism of New Romantic music, which ran with the early 80s verve for all things Asian, and wasn’t shy about appropriating “Asiatic” musical motives like pentatonic scales to evoke mystery and wonder. Griff and friends’ use of such here is relatively subtle, though, and perhaps a bit more tactful than how many of their contemporaries approached other musical ideas associated with the East.

The unforgettable cover of Figures is as dramatic and infused with capital-R Romantic sentiment as the music contained within. Above the text relating the artist and title, which uses a V for a U for a touch of the classical, we see Griff splayed dramatically in a pond of lilies. With sharp makeup that emphasizes his lips, and a diaphanous, blousy top that turns translucent in the water, he seems to be the perfect tragic hero of some lost work of Shakespeare’s--complete with another flower stylishly pinned to his chest. As I mentioned before, Figures is an album that rides the wave of New Romanticism particularly hard, and I think its cover is yet another symptom of those sensibilities.

Speaking of Shakespeare, I can’t help but want to compare this image with a famous painting of one of Shakespeare’s best-known characters: Ophelia, by Sir John Everett Millais. Painted in the early 1850s, Millais’s Ophelia depicts the moment where Ophelia, driven mad by Hamlet’s romantic rejection of her, drowns herself in a river. It’s exactly the kind of story of wild, passionate, and doomed love portrayed on tracks like “Fahrenheit 451.” Ophelia is also associated strongly with flowers in the text, and features in a particularly memorable scene where she doles out various symbolic blossoms to members of the royal court. Besides the affinity of subject matter, even the composition of Millais’s work resembles the cover of Figures, contrasting its subject’s pale skin with the dark and murky natural surrounds, and emphasizing the drapery of their wettened attire. Ophelia is often considered the definitive masterpiece of the short-lived art movement, the “Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood,” who, as their name implies, sought to recapture the intuitive, colourful, and emotive power of art created prior to the High Renaissance. Not unlike New Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelite movement would crumble after only a few years, but not without leaving behind a trail of masterpieces that would continue to inspire future artists and admirers, far removed from their own time.

After the release of Figures, Zaine Griff remained involved with Hans Zimmer and Warren Cann, and, as the supergroup “Helden,” they embarked on an even more ambitious musical opus together: Spies, a sort of synth-pop oratorio about immortal Nazi super-spies falling in love in a futuristic dystopia. Spies is about as out-there as it sounds, and brings the flamboyant musical excess of Figures into a suitably theatrical setting. It’s also got nearly as star-studded of a cast as Figures, featuring not only Zimmer, Cann, and Jardim again, but also Eddie Maelov of Eddie & Sunshine as a mad scientist, and the enigmatic French electro-cabaret chanteuse Ronny, in the role of a super-computer with a sultry female voice. Griff portrays one of the titular immortal spies, known only as “The Stranger”--which, of course, begs comparison to the track of the same name on Figures, and prompts the question, to what extent was Spies already in the works when *Figures* was being written and recorded?

Music: “The Ball”

We all know the rest of the story for Hans Zimmer, who began working with music for film in the mid-1980s, such as the queer cult classic My Beautiful Laundrette. But Zaine Griff obviously never became a household name. Despite being finished in 1983, Spies never got to see an official release, as it was a bit too out there for a label to take a chance on at the time, and it would probably be lost media today if it weren’t for a vinyl bootleg that’s thankfully fairly easy to find online. Griff decided to retire from music shortly after this, and recounts a story of having walked past an extremely talented street musician, and having a sort of epiphany about just how hard it was to make it in music. After all, if a true virtuoso could end up busking on the street, how fair and rewarding could the industry possibly be? Disillusioned with the world of pop, Griff returned to his native New Zealand and got a day job as a golf instructor. More recently, though, he’s also released several new solo albums in the 2010s, surprisingly enough, and attempted to push forward into some very contemporary-sounding pop rock. The world is, of course, a very different place nowadays than it was in the 20th Century, and particularly in the world of music distribution, so perhaps it makes sense that our brave new world has room in it for someone like Zaine Griff to return.

My overall favourite track on Figures is probably “Time Stands Still,” which I think is perhaps the most accessible, pop-friendly track to be had on the album, and the one I would’ve released as the lead single had I worked for Polydor. With a big hook and simple, repetitive lyrics, it’s a true pop song through and through--though, if an artist releases a commercial-sounding album in the woods, and nobody is around to buy it, is it still really “pop?” Anyway, I also love this track’s delightful outro, imitating a skipping record to represent a freeze in the flow of time...though I admit it’s a lot less harrowing to hear when listening digitally! That’s all I have for today--thanks for listening.

Music: “Time Stands Still”

[letterboxd]

We Bought a Cryptozoo.

As their kaleidoscopic new film Cryptozoo lands in theaters, filmmakers Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski talk to Jack Moulton about misguided compassion, the beholder’s share, Akira, Watership Down and life imitating art.

“Occasionally we watch a horror movie together, but I like to do things while I watch and Dash wants the lights down. We spend so much time together working so when it comes time to relax, I want to be as far away from him as possible.” —Jane Samborski

“Jurassic Park on acid.” This is the mystical world of Cryptozoo, the new film from personal and professional couple Jane Samborski and Dash Shaw. Cryptozoo takes place in a 1960s hippie society where mythological beings—griffins, krakens, unicorns, gorgons and the like, collectively known as cryptids—live among humans, though unhappily, since people have a habit of hunting them down.

We meet Lauren (voiced by Lake Bell), a protector of cryptids, on a mission to rescue a baku—a Japanese supernatural creature that devours dreams—from the military, who plan to weaponize its powers. However, in collecting all the cryptids into a sanctuary that feels more like a mall (echoes of Disney’s Epcot are plainly hinted at), the cryptozookeepers begin to realize that those they’re trying to safeguard are likely better off without their assistance.

Loaded with clear allegories for xenophobia and colonialism, Cryptozoo has proven both a hit and a miss among Letterboxd members with the nature of its metaphors, even if we can all agree it absolutely skewers white-people-savior complexes. Shaw and Samborski placed careful focus on the casting, for example, enlisting Greek actress Angeliki Papoulia to portray Phoebe, a Medusa-esque character from Greek mythology, who assists Lauren in her journey to locate the baku, and provides an essential perspective and critique on Lauren’s overzealous activism.

Steeped in detailed and surreal world-building, the kaleidoscopic, hand-drawn approach can become pure sensory overload. More than a few of our members felt compelled to light up first and check it out again if it ever hits Adult Swim. But among those happy to be overwhelmed, Andrew found himself “captivated by its tactile imagery; its texture and sketch and color, the full-body chills and immense sense of self—it is beautiful and passionate.”

Cryptozoo premiered earlier this year at Sundance, where it picked up the NEXT Innovator Award for its makers. (Although only Shaw is credited as director, Cryptozoo uses an ‘A Film By’ credit to emphasize Samborski’s visionary contribution as animation director.) The couple had previously collaborated on Shaw’s debut feature, My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which is much more of a roughly sketched-out daydream, whereas Cryptozoo represents a more serious shift, and a step up in ambition and craft.

Making films is far from Shaw’s only enterprise. After graduating from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, he has written comic books, graphic novels, lyrics and plays. Meanwhile, Samborski has appeared in several films as an actress, and lent her animation skills to productions including Netflix’s Thirteen Reasons Why. Among their animation influences, the pair have mentioned the films of Ralph Bakshi, Suzan Pitt’s Asparagus, René Laloux’s Fantastic Planet, Takeshi Tamiya’s Astroboy and the century-old films of Winsor McCay and Lotte Reiniger (especially The Adventures of Prince Achmed).

Shaw and Samborski sat down with Jack Moulton for a chat about expanding the scale of their work, life imitating art, the “heft and violence of Watership Down” and the best comic-book film ever made.

‘Cryptozoo’ director Dash Shaw and animation director Jane Samborski.

What stuck out to me when I finished the film was your ‘A Film By’ credit; it wasn’t just Dash, it had Jane’s name as well. How were the directing responsibilities divided in order to explain that credit? Dash Shaw: It just felt like the most accurate way to describe the movie.

Jane Samborski: I make a lot of the decisions about character acting and I’m taking the voices and using them to inform my understanding about the characters. In some cases, I was able to use video reference of the actors, but most of their physical mannerisms are coming from my brain, so in that way I’m taking a directorial role. While there’s a huge amount of the aesthetic direction that’s coming from me, Dash is definitely the one steering the overall ship. There were a few instances in the film where I got a little off-message and he pulled me back.

DS: Maybe it’s even more confusing with animated movies because people are doing a lot of different things, so when it comes to crediting we talk about what we think makes the most sense. We could have written our names on the backgrounds to try and figure out who drew what, but it just seemed like a film by the both of us.

JS: Everything is by us, except this thing, and this thing, and this thing…

What I found really interesting about the film is the way that all the characters are so fallible. It demonstrates how an egocentric allyship can do more harm than good. Why was it important for you to explore that idea of misguided compassion? DS: I think that that happened while trying to do something else. I had seen this Winsor McCay short, The Centaurs, and I wanted to write something Jane would enjoy painting. My first idea was about mythological beings, and then the next idea was that they were from actual mythologies in our culture and instead of being a fantasy world, they’re in our world.

That is when my mind went to these things that you talked about, like museums attempting to take imaginations from all over different cultures and introduce them to the public, and how that often damages the power of those artworks. There’s definitely a Cryptozoo movie that could’ve been made by a different person that didn’t get into any of this stuff, but because of my personality, those things ended up being embedded in the script.

You embraced the opportunity to utilize thin lines in Cryptozoo, as opposed to the thicker lines of My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, which opens up what you can achieve cinematically. Can you talk about expanding that scale and how that may have approached your limitations? JS: It definitely was one of the first aesthetic decisions that was made in the film. There’s a broad simplicity to High School Sinking, so we wanted to zero in on fewer but more specific drawings. I was doing quite a bit of minor puppet work, especially in the latter parts of High School Sinking. I really love working in that way, so this was a match that played to an aesthetic that I responded to for a long time. It was logistically a lot more difficult as it’s very hard to turn in space with a puppet, so there were definitely times where we would run up against a problem and then throw out our rulebook and do cell animation. But I think that is the joy of setting up your own rules—you keep them as long as they’re useful to you.

Your film acknowledges very early on that “utopias never work out”. On the other hand, perhaps utopias never work out in movies because they’re just not dramatically interesting to explore when they succeed. What are your thoughts on sculpting a utopia in commercialized fiction? DS: You kind of know that it’s going to fail as soon as the movie starts. It’s a good fall. I find utopian art very inspiring and beautiful and that’s what I like about a lot of the art of the 1960s. I would not put this movie up against that imagery.

JS: Yeah, a utopia is certainly something we all want to experience but not necessarily something we want to hear a story about.

DS: That’s something that’s famously said about what’s really powerful about early seasons of Star Trek, and seeing all of these different people working together.

I imagine it was strange to be working on Cryptozoo for so many years, and then you have a storming-the-capital scene in your film, which premiered at Sundance only a couple of weeks after it happened in the real world (for very different reasons). How did that make you feel regarding the film’s timing? JS: It was a bit of a freak out!

DS: It was strange, even if we didn’t have that line in our movie, just to see that going on. It made me think of this art school thing, the “beholder’s share”, where the artists make 80 percent of the work in their time and place, and then the last twenty percent is completed in the viewer’s mind, in their own time and their place. You have to love that hand-off.

JS: The world changed so much over the course of making the film. Dash wrote the film before Trump was elected President. We started out with a script that we thought was talking about really interesting things that felt a little bit further away. As we worked on the project, it got closer and more real, so we just hoped that we were able to talk about it with honesty. The project feels like something larger than us and that’s really exciting.

When you look at some of the reactions, you can see how it’s really easy for audiences to dismiss the movie as too weird, but I do feel there are many accessible and mainstream elements to the plot. What are your instincts for playing in and out of the comfort zone? DS: One of my first ideas for wanting to make animated movies is that they would have a pop-art quality. They would be blockbuster movies that have been defamiliarized—they’ve been messed up, disorientated, changed, altered in some way. High School Sinking is like Titanic, and Cryptozoo is like Jurassic Park. There’s a blockbuster movie inside of them, but we keep veering away or disrupting it in some way that might make it seem stranger. It was right there as one of the first missions of making these films.

JS: I feel very differently. I love the experimental stuff, but if there wasn’t a clear story through-line, I would get bored. It’s the perennial music-video problem—it’s all gloss and no heft. So we have that clear action-adventure storyline to pull you through this crazy ride. We feel differently about what it’s doing for the audience, but it seems to be working, whichever one of us is right!

Are there any hidden or background details in the animation that you’re concerned people will miss? JS: For me, if somebody felt that there was so much going on that they wanted to watch it two or three times and they found something new each time, that would be the best thing ever. The idea that I would be able to make something that is worth multiple viewings far outstrips worrying that somebody is going to miss something I did.

What was the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? DS: I wonder if Jane is going to say Watership Down…

JS: I am! That was my favorite movie as a child. I liked to torture my friends with it. It’s particularly that segment right at the beginning when they tell the myth of El-Ahrairah—it’s so expressive and less representational, but it also has this heft and violence. It was definitely the first adult animated film that I saw. My parents wouldn’t buy it for me because it was at the local library, so we’d rent it again and again and I’d watch that beginning segment over and over and it would get scratchier and scratchier, so eventually the VHS just snapped from me watching it so many times.

DS: I would have to really dive deep to come up with a really good answer to that but for some reason the one that pops into my head right now is Todd Haynes’ Poison. I saw it at the School of Visual Arts. Poison felt like a collage movie with three different parts that kept pulling a special combination of ingredients. It felt like an art film and it also had very overt genre elements that were being used in an unusual way. It was one of the key movies to me that had a great independent spirit.

El-Ahrairah faces a challenge in the prologue to ‘Watership Down’ (1978).

What animated films have you seen recently that blew you away? DS: I want to plug an incredible movie we just saw at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Bubble Bath, which is a restored Hungarian film from 1980. I hope it will get a US release.

JS: We were also lucky enough to see an exhibit [at Annecy] for Michel Ocelot. I had seen the Kirikou films, which are phenomenal. I really like his work.

Do you have any movies that you often watch together? DS: We really don’t watch movies together. I wish she would watch movies with me!

JS: Occasionally we watch a horror movie together, but I like to do things while I watch and Dash wants the lights down. We spend so much time together working so when it comes time to relax, I want to be as far away from him as possible.

DS: I’m really glad we saw Bubble Bath together.

JS: That one was just amazing.

You’re a comic book writer, Dash. What’s the greatest comic-book movie ever? DS: Akira.

JS: Yeah, hands down.

Related content

Our animation correspondents Kambole Campell and Alicia Haddick in conversation about the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival

Letterboxd’s Top 100 Animated Feature Films, a list by Rahat Ahmed

Vulture’s The 100 Sequences that Shaped Animation list on Letterboxd

Follow Jack on Letterboxd

‘Cryptozoo’ is currently screening in select US theaters.

[animatedminds]

What If: Every Character In Dragonball FighterZ Had a Dramatic Finish? (Pt. 1)

Consider this a nerdy thought experiment. I’m a big Dragonball fan, and a big FighterZ fan, and anyone who is either probably knows well by know what Dramatic Finishers are: in one of the most amazing steps of fanservice in recent memory, Arcsys created intricate animated adaptations of some of Dragonball’s greatest moments, which can be triggered in special situations. Huge explosions, great comebacks, cool ends to some of the series hypest fights.

But it gets you thinking - and its something that a lot of fans have asked since the game started: which if X or Y character had a Dramatic Finish, instead of the select few who have some in the current build?

Well, over the next few days we’re going to figure that out. With DLC on the way bringing us a brand new and thoroughly expected Finish for Kefla, this seemed like a great time to do it. Now, let’s be clear: this isn’t an attempt to say that all of these characters should get a Dramatic Finish. Arcsys’ style of animation these days is very intricate and extremely time consuming, which makes any new animation something of a godsend in the first place. As a result, not only are most of the characters who don’t already have one probably not going to get one, I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them weren’t ever considered at all. This is more as a hypothetical: if these characters were considered, what would their Finishes be? What references would be best for them, to give cool moments from Dragonball history? To give another note, for this the point is to ensure every character gets an appearance in a Dramatic Finish. Not necessarily a win (that’s simply not possible for everyone). Some of these characters are going to have losses listed. Some might even have to make due with Dramatic Openings instead. For the most part, we won’t be assuming the existence of any characters who aren’t currently in the game: it has to be within the current roster.

You can listen along to the entire list right now if you don’t want to read a wall of text over the course of several day: just check out the track on Soundcloud! It’s everyone from the beginning to the end of the roster, with dulcet tones and some neat Dragonball music.

But... if you don’t have the time to hear nerd talk for twenty minutes, go ahead: we’re skipping the ones who already have one - I mention them all on the audio even though I still skip them, just for completeness (and so people don’t ask me why I didn’t think of other ones for existing characters) and in order to make quips - but this is going to be shorter.

Part 1, we’ll go over the first three characters - mostly the Dragonball era with one addition - and so the first character to not to have a Dramatic Finish is...

Tien (or Tenshinhan, depending on your version)

Tien spends a lot of time away from the plot - unlike most of the cast, when he’s not there to do something significant he’s typically just absent, only appearing when he does. However, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have options for a Finish: far from it. I can think of at least two that would make decent choices.

The first is probably the one everyone thinks of when they think of Tien: the moment where stalls Cell with the Kikoho, blasting him into the dirt repeatedly to give 18 and 16 time to escape. It’s a classic epic scene with Tien, and one that a lot of people remember:

A couple caveats with this one: first being that this wasn’t actually a Finish - Cell gets ups just fine afterwards - but if Base Goku’s Finish against Freeza is any indication, that’s not necessarily a problem if the scene is a strong enough moment. The other is that the version of Cell that this happens to - Semi-Perfect Cell - is not strictly in the game: its Perfect Cell. But the game has cheated with this as well in the past. The stage this would happen, however, is already in the game - so no problems there.

It’s not hard to  see how this would work. The typical Dramatic Finish beginning, Cell  looks up and finds Tien already above him, ready to rain Kikohos down  upon him. The way I see this working best is similar to those infamous  Quan Chi and Chronika fatalities in the Mortal Kombat series - the ones  that don’t ever actually end, they just keep going over and over until  the players ends or (more likely for this game) the screen transitions  to the next on its own. Here, you could have Tien just keep Kikohoing  again and again until the Victory Marquee comes up on its own. Very funny, very epic.

The second idea, however, is one I think is  better reference for Tien himself - one of the classic moments from when  his character was more current: the time he narrowly defeated Kid Goku  at the Tenkaichi Budokai:

Albeit without the blowing up the stage on this one.

This fight involved Goku and Tien going at it in midair: Tien able to fly, while Goku couldn’t at the time - they end up plummeting to the ground, but only one is able to avoid a ring out. It’s another one with that same caveat: Kid Goku is technically not in the game, but GT Goku is basically the same character with  few additions, so he can easily be used as a stand-in. This one would also give the World Martial Arts Tournament stage something special, which it doesn’t have yet.

For this, have the fight continue into the scene - a la Super Broly’s - and end up in midair, where they both start to lose steam. Goku knocks Tien down, but Tien is able to knock Goku away. A fun extra they could do is - since the original version had Goku fall into a highway and get his by a car - do like the Jiren Finish and change stages in the middle of the scene, ending at the City. Goku crashes (complete with car, for fun), Tien doesn’t, and the latter enjoys a weary victory pose. Next up:

Piccolo (or if you know what moment I’m thinking of already, Piccolo Jr)

Piccolo, while he’s always around in roles of semi-importance, is another who was phased out of a major slot in favor of stronger rivals and later characters. But he’s always good for a least one awesome moment per arc, and there’s one major scene in particular that I think would be perfect for a Dramatic Finish:

The end of his fight against Goku at the World Martial Arts tournament.

This scene is actually - to me - a no brainer: it and the moment against Piccolo Daimao where the moments where the series really started getting into having villain defeats with built-up, dramatic physical conclusions, and the defeat of Piccolo Jr in particular was the culmination of everything that came before it. I was actually surprised that when Base Goku was released, and this moment wasn’t added in addition to the Saiyan Saga content: I was at least expecting moments from this fight to be represented in Base Goku’s moveset, as it features such identifiable things to draw from. Either way, there are two moments from this fight that would work in a Finish - the second, incidentally, happens immediately after the first, but either would work. The first being what the Budokai games eventually named the “Meteor Combination” - where Goku seems to defeat Piccolo once and for all after blocking his ultimate attack.

Not going to lie, this ranks pretty high one my personal list of the best action sequences in the entire franchise - it’s pictured above for a reason - and I’m a little disappointed I couldn’t find a video clip with the whole bit beforehand with Piccolo’s explosive attack as well.

It’s a triumphant turnaround, a very dramatic conclusion with a lot of flow and weight, and would be perfect animated in a Dramatic finish. Plus, it’s another that gives the Tournament stage some content. You could either have it begin like Cell’s Dramatic Finish - where Piccolo attempts an attack (the Destructive Wave, in this case), only for Goku to turn it around, or you could simply have Goku go straight into the attack, knocking Piccolo to the ground and finishing with a titanic Kamehameha from above.

As I said before, it’s a little surprising they didn’t add it in some way already. End it with a thumbs up to the camera, like in the original scene, and you’re gold. Or...

The moment right after, where it turns out Piccolo is just faking his defeat, and turns it around only to be defeated by Goku in the end anyway:

This is the infamous one where Piccolo tortures Goku, but that doesn’t have to fully be in the Finish. In this one, you would start the Dramatic Finish with Piccolo getting knocked down, and Goku giving that thumbs up I was telling you about... but then Piccolo hops up and blasts Goku through the shoulder - which is easily done bloodlessly. He then presses the attack, laying on the ground, broken, and is about to torture him, when... For this next part, you could either require Tien and Krillin (or Yamcha) on our team alongside Base Goku to perform, or you could do it with whatever teammates you have: they jump in to help Goku, but Piccolo blocks them with a ki attack. Then he looks down, and finds that Goku is gone! He looks about to find Goku rocketing at him to deliver a titanic headbutt that ends the fight for good. In the source, after getting healed Goku did a dramatic leap into the air to celebrate finally winning the tournament - without a healing segment, that can just happen automatically, and that would be a fine last image of the Finish.

With Piccolo out of the way, the next characters up for a Finish skip a whole saga, and go straight to...

The Ginyu Force

This one took a bit of thinking, as all the Ginyu members fought individually, and most against different characters, but I realized if I was going to pick one there was really only the one option: The moment where Ginyu tries to body change with Vegeta, and ends up in the form of a frog.

Forgive the lack of embedded video on this one - it’s potholed above, but I didn’t want the first post to just be two characters, and alas with the combination of Tumblr’s five vid limit, my coming up with two legit ideas each for the previous two (that won’t happen often for the rest), and needing two entire videos for just one of the Piccolo ideas, I ran out of embeds. Still, this one is a keeper.

This would be a Base Vegeta win, requiring Base Goku to be on his team. The original moment was all vertical: Ginyu flew up in the air and Vegeta flew up after him, but you could just finagle it and do it horizontally instead to cut back on extra animation. The set up for this is simple as anything: do the knockback, trigger the Finish, Ginyu gets furious - while Vegeta is too arrogant to notice - and starts the Body Change, catching Vegeta off guard. At the last second, Goku throws a frog in between them, and Ginyu is left stuck croaking. The last shot - like the Janemba Finish - could be the POV of Frog Ginyu as he runs away, while regular Ginyu hops around like a frog. This more funny that epic, but it is a very memorable part of the Freeza arc, and definitely the most memorable thing attached to Captain Ginyu himself, so in my opinion its the best bet for him.

And that’s the first three: 

There’ll be more than three in the next segment, trust me.

If you like the idea, happy to have you. Make sure to listen to the full track on Soundcloud if you just want the list right away without waiting a day for each installment, and let me know if you agree with the list or not - what you would pick instead, that sort of thing. Either way, stay Sparking!

[aeide-thea]

tagged by @crushcandles​ in a beautiful circle of reciprocal memery!

birthday: august

zodiac: virgo sun / taurus moon / cancer rising; i don’t, like, Believe in astrology except in the way that some of tumblr did, for a while, which is to say, as a sort of mystical lens through which to focus one’s self-examination, but i’m told the above triad translates into ‘is a perfectionist who tries to hide eir own messiness, values stability and security and beautiful material things, has a lot of Feelings,’ which sounds about right!

last song listened to: i’ve had the amazing devil’s the horror and the wild on repeat for the last... many days, as i know many of us have, but for some reason tonight i got to thinking, all sweetly-nostalgic, about the music an almost-lover shared with me in 2014, and so the answer to this question is actually, a little anachronistically, dave carter & tracy grammer’s ‘tanglewood tree’ (i yearn away, i burn away, i turn away the fairest flower of love, which, oof is that triad painfully on point).

hobbies: …does blogging count as a hobby? i’ve loved and left a lot of art forms in my time, including poetry and classical singing; i really enjoy bicycling, and rock climbing although i haven’t been in ages, and figuring out how to use the largely exorsexist language of fashion to represent my nonbinary gender, which if not a hobby as such is definitely a project! would love to incorporate some more Making of Things into my life, though, particularly in this next housebound stretch of time—might work on turning that fannish ~queer persistence~ design concept into an actual patch or shirt or something, maybe?

last movie you watched: babel (2006), with the fam, which i wouldn’t say was exactly a Representative Viewing Choice—that said, i liked it a little more than i’d necessarily expected, although i kind of felt as though the film, idk, gestured grandly in the direction of some ideas that it wasn’t ultimately quite deep enough to fully encompass?

dream job: lmao that sure is a question! teaching, maybe? i used to tutor and i loved that to bits. previous, mostly-given-up-on answers to this question have included: classics professor; poet (not, as it turns out, actually a Job); carpenter à la @carpentrix​; and just, like, being ian bostridge.

meaning behind url: any classicists reading this have already rolled their eyes and skipped to the next question, because wow did i make a basic-bitch choice of url when i made this blog, but! it’s from the iliad, whose first line in greek is μῆνιν ἄειδε θεὰ Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος (mēnin aeide thea pēlēiadeō akhilēos), or in english ‘sing, goddess, the wrath of peleus’ son achilles,’ though why i felt, twelve years ago, that my perblog needed an ~invocation to the muse~ (since the two words i pulled are specifically the ‘sing, goddess’ bit), i cannot for the life of me tell you. tl;dr the sporadic firing of my so-called synapses is actually the ragged fusillade of the western canon.

top 4 ships: god, never ask me my favorite anything, i invariably stall out through a combination of ‘i’ve suddenly blanked on everything i’ve ever liked in my life’ and ‘are these really the most representative options out of Literally Every Possibility Ever, please hold while i do this optimization problem…’ having said that, one possible answer is something like: rms carpathia; the dawn treader; eärendil’s ship vingilótë; and then maybe skíðblaðnir from the eddas, for all your edc needs (since it folds up so it’s pocket-sized)? with honorable mentions going to the argo and to arthur’s ship prydwen from the preiddeu annwn, because i do love me some welsh-flavored arthuriana. but that response is admittedly something of a jade’s trick!

reading: uh, mostly a whole lot of geralt/jaskier fanfiction, lately! and then also the romans: from village to empire, for my sins. (the last Published Fiction i read, since i think that’s what this question is angling for, was ben aaronovitch’s false value, which—spoilers or whatever—i personally found to be much less fun than any of its predecessors, for a number of reasons including (1) insufficient nightingale (and therefore insufficient opportunity for generation gap banter, which has historically been the engine powering these books), not to mention (2) a disconcerting choice wrt how to present a trans character in text, namely ‘having the POV character actively misgender said character in their head until he introduces himself, at which time the narrative switches pronouns’: my personal feeling on this was, why not just skip straight to the introductions, and leave out the mental misgendering altogether? happy to hear out differing reactions, though.)

what food are you craving right now? not super-hungry just at the mo, but i’d take some kind of fancy sweet bun situation—a kardemummabulle, maybe, or else a yeasted bun swirled with, idk, orange and pistachio and some sort of light floral honey? or, ooh, speaking of pistachio, i could totally go for a pistachio financier, maison kayser makes a pretty great one if ‘going outside for frivolities’ is ever a tenable course of action again…

tagging: god, i don’t know, who are new people/people with urls i want explained/people i didn’t tag in the last meme? @oatplant? @giantsquidastern? @the-mirador​? @designatedloveinterest​? @raisedbyhyenas​? @leighway​? @pinehutch​? @reinvent-and-believe​? @obstinatecondolement​? anyway no pressure, obviously, do the thing if you want and don’t if you don’t! <3

[mirrormirrormag]

shine theory spotlight: hiba alshahal

I first started talking to Hiba after I slid in her DMs partly because I wanted to be and her friend and also because I was jealous of how cool her style and photography was (in a good way). A couple months later, we finally met in person for a photo shoot she wanted to do. Since then, she’s continued to use her perspective to capture beautiful and sassy portraits featuring her bold style and voice.

We recently hung out so I could shoot a photography project from school and took the opportunity to take pictures with my phone as well. So what else could I do with pictures of someone as cool as Hiba? Interview her, of course.

Hopefully this will be the first of many posts featuring some cool, multi-faceted, and intelligent girls I know, but for now enjoy this spotlight on HIBA ALSHAHAL (@hibach.i)

ST: What medium of art do you mainly work in?

HA: photography

ST: What drew you to photography?

HA: After downloading the app VSCO i become really inspired to get into photo and editing but growing i've always been drawn to photography

ST: Who inspires you in your work?

HA: My family is my biggest inspiration always. It's just so inspiring being a first generation immigrant and hearing the stories of my family making something out of nothing. If they could come to America barely knowing any English and being able to grind hard for their family and achieve their dreams than I can achieve so much. 

ST: What are some of the projects that you’re most proud of?

HA: A project I'm definitely most proud of is my first real shoot which was with a photographer named Kyle Meeks who helped guide me through the process but also I think i'm most proud of the times when I shoot when I don't necessarily want to or when I feel super unmotivated. Taking pictures when you're in that energy is one of the hardest and most frustrating things but it helps you grow as a photographer a lot.

ST: How has your fashion been influenced by your identity?

HA: I think my fashion represents my identity because its constantly changing all the time 

ST: Who are some of your fashion icons?

HA: Haha my dad. A true legend tbh. No but for real my dad was actually the person who really got me into fashion. I remember when I was little staying up really late with him on school nights just talking about shoes and new pieces dropping. My dad also just rocks everything he wears with confidence and that definitely inspired me. But other than that I don't really have a main fashion inspo I just like to spend hours looking through a bunch of people on pinterest and instagram and steal inspo from anything I like.

ST: In what ways is your fashion political?

HA: Well at my school im known for wearing very controversial shirts which can be uncomfortable but I find so much power in being able to stand with your opinions 

ST: In what ways have you used your voice for the better or made your voice heard?

HA: I hosted a protest for the corruption in Lebanon! One of the scariest and most exciting things I have ever done. I would never expect for someone with my power to do that so for me to get my voice heard by so many people was super important to me

ST: Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

HA: I could not see myself doing something that doesn't  get me creative and inspired everyday so probably somewhere in fashion or photography but also i'm really interested in the justice system and wanna stay active in politics. It would be ideal if I could find something where I'm able to stay active in both my design and political sides. 

ST: What kind of message do you want to make with your art?

HA: I think the biggest message I want to get across is the importance of being yourself. I know that sounds cliche but it's something I struggled with a lot growing up and still sometimes struggle with now.

ST: What are some challenges you’ve gone through in your efforts in creating art?

HA: My biggest challenge is comparing myself to other creators and finding inspiration

ST: How have you overcome them?

HA: Listening to new music and watching movies/shows always gets me excited and surrounding myself with new people/ environments too. Also just making sure that I force myself to get out and shoot helps a lot

ST: In what ways has confidence/security in your identity shaped the way you approach art?

HA: Confidence I think is what makes everyone's work different and unique and through the years you can see the change in my photography as my confidence grew. In middle school I remember doing exactly what everyone else was doing and not just in my art but in the way I dressed and acted too which was such a boring way of living compared to everything I do now. I'm still growing as an artist but my confidence with my self helps me try so many new things.

[sunriseinorbit]

KazeTsuyo’s One... Questionable Soundtrack Decision: Lazy or Brilliant?

SPOILERS UP TO EPISODE 19

The fact that KazeTsuyo has a good soundtrack should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, since Yuki Hayashi has been making straight bops for like 10 years now, but it’s really good. I’ve listened to We Must Go at least 15 times in the past two days alone, and the rest of the soundtrack is just as good. (It’s on Spotify, go listen to it)

But when I was actually watching the show, I noticed one sound direction decision that was really fucking weird. And I’m not trying to nitpick, nor do I think that this decision was necessarily bad, but it’s something I’ve never seen (or heard, I guess) before in anime and it’s baffled me to no end since I found out about it. 

So let’s unpack:

At the beginning of episode 14, Haiji shows the team a documentary about the Hakone Ekiden. An old, wise narrator talks about the determination of the athletes and other sentimental bullshit over an inspirational backing track complete with Yuki Hayashi French Horns. But there’s something about said inspirational backing track that doesn’t sit quite right with me for some reason.

And at the beginning of episode 19, right before Prince starts the first leg of the marathon, the same thing happens. For some reason, there’s something really weird about the music.

(sorry about the play symbols, i used the screen recorder on my computer to grab these)

During the scene in episode 14, I had a hunch about what could be going on, and I paused the episode and went to Spotify to find the track and listen to it to see what’s so weird about it. But after I listened through the whole soundtrack, song by song, I found something even weirder: The song that plays during this scene isn’t on the soundtrack at all. 

At that point, my hunch seemed more correct, but I was still very confused because I kept telling myself “No, they can’t do that, they would never do that”, so I went to Reddit. I looked up the episode discussion page for episode 14 and scrolled through, and I realized that the soundtrack discrepancy wasn’t just a figment of my imagination. Other people were talking about it, too, and even more strangely, I was right. 

So what’s up with the music during these two scenes? Where does it come from? Why aren’t these on the soundtrack? 

Here’s the track that plays during episode 14, and here’s the track that plays during episode 19. Weird, huh? 

Now, onto my main point. Was this decision lazy and unimaginative, or was it inventive and thematically resonant? Well, that’s up to you to decide, but my answer, as it often is, is that it’s a lot deeper than you’d expect.

At first, I definitely thought it was lazy. After all, you have a beautiful original soundtrack created just for this series, why would you give that up just to use music that’s 3-5 years old? 

Well, first off, you wouldn’t be hard pressed to find similarities between Haikyuu!! and Run with the Wind. Besides having a plot structure and character tropes typical to their genre, both series are produced by Production I.G., have similar art styles, and have soundtracks by Yuki Hayashi (yes, I know Asami Tachibana did half the Haikyuu!! score, who do you think I am?) with similar moods, textures, and orchestration. Not to mention the Kakeru-Kageyama jokes. I’d definitely call the two sister series, and I think a lot of people would agree with me.

But that still doesn’t answer the question: Why would you use music from an entirely different anime?

When I first watched episode 14, my answer to that was that it represented that the Hakone Ekiden was something out of reach. The track itself is called “Longing”, and having it play in a documentary within the show makes it seem distinct and separate from the plot and characters outside of it. The Hakone Ekiden is meant for the best of the best, and at this point, the Kansei team isn’t there yet. There are so many good teams out there, there’s no way they could even qualify.

But at the same time, they’re so close. There’s still the qualifier to worry about, of course, but the vast majority of their members have official records. The Hakone Ekiden is definitely within reach. So there’s a bit of a discrepancy with this reading. 

Except... there isn’t. Because let’s step back. This scene happens at the beginning of episode 14. What happens at the end?

At the beginning of the episode, Prince is the only member of the Kansei team who doesn’t have an official record. At the end of the episode, he achieves one, and the whole team is eligible for the qualifier as a result. This episode is Prince pushing himself and catching up to the others, going from seeing the Hakone Ekiden as something impossible to being just one step away from participating in it himself. 

And what happens at the beginning of episode 19? Prince is preparing to run the first leg. 

The thing that connects these two scenes is Prince. And somehow, it makes perfect sense. Why? Because Prince is a huge fucking nerd. 

Prince loves manga. He reads it all the time including before and after races, his room is filled with stacks upon stacks of volumes, at one point Kakeru tells him to just think “After this, I’ll be able to go home and read more manga” when he’s running to get him to run faster, and while he doesn’t actually say the line, he’s the one who points out the MOTHER FUCKING JOJO REFERENCE. And in episode 19, it’s clear that he reads a fair amount of sports manga, too. 

Because the episode is filled to the brim with references and homages:

This shot is the most obvious example, but he also quotes Slam Dunk, Hajime no Ippo, and Yowamushi Pedal, and the fact that Production I.G. was able to directly reference all these series is astounding. But I think the overload of references is necessary, just to show how much Prince values the genre. These characters are his heroes, and their stories are ones he looks up to and is inspired by. Now that he’s living one of those stories himself, sampling music from another series just makes sense, because that’s the mindset he’s in and the background he’s coming from. That’s probably the music playing in his head right now.

I think the reason they chose to use Haikyuu!! specifically was just the similarity between the two scores, since a complete switch in musical style would have been jarring and ruined our sense of immersion in the series. But even with the similarity, if you’re listening hard enough and know the Haikyuu!! score well enough, you’ll recognize it.

But that sense of recognition and familiarity goes a lot deeper than the music, and Prince’s love of sports anime and manga in itself ties into it, too. Because what I’ve found over the past twenty episodes is that KazeTsuyo is a sports anime for sports anime fans, but specifically sports anime fans who have grown up. The character tropes and simple plot structure are still there, but gone are the absurd, over-the-top superpowers of series of old, now replaced by a nuanced take on the genre itself. Not only are the characters in college and thus dealing with issues and goals specific to an adult audience, but the themes are more mature as well.

Over the course of the series, one of the most important lessons to be learned is that winning isn’t everything, and that running is what you make of it. Whether you’re running because you love it or because it’ll make you healthier or stronger or because you want to push yourself to do something you’ve never done before, it’s going to enrich your life somehow, even if you don’t win the race in the end. And other sports anime have played with that theme, too, but KazeTsuyo makes it a main point. Every sports anime can be inspirational, but the message KazeTsuyo sends - that everyone has a different reason for wanting to run, and every one of those reasons is right - really pushes it above the rest in that regard, at least for me.  

Remember when Haikyuu!! got big on tumblr in 2015-2016? I was 15-16 then, and now I’m a few months shy of being 19. A large chunk of the fandom has done a fair bit of growing up since then, whether that’s going from middle school to high school like my sister, high school to college like me, or college to beyond like some of my friends. But for me, Haikyuu!! was the first anime I really loved, and it holds a very special place in my heart to this day. So when I hear its score in KazeTsuyo, there’s something distinctly nostalgic about it. 

But was that decision lazy or brilliant? I don’t know, but it feels like coming home, and that feeling is really, really cool.

[starberry-cupcake]

So, about that post on ya lit and age...

Regarding that post about how all YA books are about teens and why there aren’t YA books with adults/actual young adults and how readers want the same themes of YA books in adult books (I hear you pal, believe me). 

I wanted to point out that when a book series has themes of fantasy and sci fi, even if it has adult characters and is aimed to an adult audience, it’s widely read by what we can consider a YA demographic. Because that demographic is, as of the standards of today, the “fandom” demographic, and is growing up as the years go by. Nowadays I’d say it goes up to at least the mid to late 30s. What people consider the YA audience is what people see as the actively online fandom audience of today. This is what publishers, to me, have been doing wrong for the last 10+ years when it comes to YA and boy oh boy did I have to attend congress upon conference upon lecture on the subject with traditional publishers not understanding the point. 

Because I happened to have grown in the fandom sphere and studied publishing as the online fandom culture was growing and I was, on one side, an active fandom person collaborating with fan-run book-based projects online for 0 money (podcasts, fanfiction, fansites, forums, you name it) and, on the other side, I was dressed impeccably pretending to be an adult with my official lanyard attending conferences during my early 20s. 

What is often overlooked in conversations about YA is that stuff like LOTR, ASOIAF, La Saga de los Confines, Good Omens, and so on and so forth, even if they are aimed at an adult demographic, are widely consumed by the YA audience. We’ll talk about differences in publishing perception of male authors and female authors and binary normative pre-conceptions on another time. 

The problem to me isn’t necessarily just that publishers don’t see YA extending further than teen leads, it’s also that they don’t see that what generates a fandom audience, which is the one they call YA without really delving into whether they are YA or not. They don’t see that isn’t about themes or similar characteristics but on content. 

One of those days in which I was at one of these congresses, I attended an international panel on YA and children lit. This was the year 2013, it’s very important for my tale. In the panel there was one representative of a French publisher and she was talking about numbers and demographic and they said that the jeunesse category had some “strange” behaviors because one of the best sold books in that demographic on the early 2013 period had been Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. And she was like “well, it’s a classic I guess, who knows what happened there, moving on...”

So there I was, sitting on that crowd of people, listening to this talk with info-graphics and numbers and percentages, while knowing full well why this was happening. Knowing full well that my 9-chapter mutant au Les Mis fic being currently written was a good sign of what the fuck was going on. 

The Les Mis fandom had awoken after a period of silence because in December of 2012 the movie of the musical came out. And, for better or worse depending on which side of the preference you stand on, the movie re-ignited an online fandom that had been mostly dormant, in comparison to other fandoms at the time. 

Suddenly Les Mis had thousands of fics posted on AO3, hundreds of essays on differences in translation posted on tumblr, dozens of people looking for Hugo books. I knew full well what was happening and it had nothing to do with chance, providence or the YA demographic being “weird”. Les Mis had come back in the right moment of time and provided themes that never went out of date with the social and political climate to a young audience that was experiencing it for the first time and others who had been experiencing it in mostly dormant silence and the renewed fandom was exploring its limits once more. 

Another very visible case was Pride and Prejudice coming back with full force in 2012-2013. Kids in high school absorbing Austen prose like no tomorrow. And even if the 2005 movie had put it back on the forefront of shelves, this time it was getting the full-on fandom YA treatment. Again, I knew full well why that was, because I myself was an avid subscriber of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. And boy did that webseries open up a path for literary classics in the 2012-2016 period. 

My point is, it isn’t just an age thing, it’s a content thing. Publishers don’t understand fandom because they think is merely a commercial form of consuming, which is the furthest from the truth as possible. 

One side of the publishing spectrum wants to bask in fandom culture for the big bucks and thinks that producing 120 books eerily similar to one that was popular is a legit way of finding “the next big thing” (how many supernatural romance books came out after Twilight? How many young wizard books after Harry Potter? How many dystopias after The Hunger Games? and yet those three big names are entirely different from one another). 

On the other side of the publishing spectrum you have the editors who think anything remotely commercial in success is a “lesser form of art” so YA is a marketing stance and not a proper literary genre and the fandom audience as a whole is a waste of time to them (I swear to god I’ve heard this more times than I can tell in all these lectures and seminars and things I’ve been to, I kid you not). 

The truth is that demographics are useful to know where a book goes, for librarians, for editors, for book stores, for writers to understand their readers. But they shouldn’t be a limitation to your creativity. Don’t stop writing your book because you think it doesn’t fit within a spectrum or you’re scared it will fall on another. Listen to your story first and foremost and readers will come. 

[littlewitchystar]

How To: Energy Reading

I know that @thymewitch has a post like this floating around so this one won’t go into as much detail as hers but I do think she and I have different styles of reading energy so I wanted to make a post of my own for those interested.

What is an energy reading?

To put it simply an energy reading is well...reading a person’t energy. We do this every day in mundane ways through observation. If someone is fidgety it might be because they are a nervous person. When I do an energy reading I am moving beyond the mundane and sensing the energy that surrounds them. This is basically telling me who they are as a person either in very generally or in their present situation. Energy does change frequently so essentially you can gain almost any information you want from a person’s energy. How they feel in the moment, how do they cope with anxiety, what makes them tick, these are all questions that can be the focus on your energy. But when I do a reading I like to focus on the parts of the energy that are pretty stable and don’t change as much. 

What does energy appear like?

This will be different for everyone. I’ve seen energy readings done primarily through art or through scenes. When I do my energy readings I tend to experience energy through all of my sense. Sometimes I will smell something, or hear something. Usually my energy readings consists of seeing/interacting with a color, seeing an image or scene unfold in my head (through words I don’t actually see things visually) and physical feelings that might describe how the person I am reading usually feels. 

You’ll experience energy in your own unique way. It might not even seem like energy at first. You have to trust yourself and latch on what is presented to you. There is no wrong way to read energy.

How do I read energy?

Again, everyone will do this differently. Here’s my way that utilizes a sort of meditation approach.

Figure out who you want to read- are they physically present or distant from you. If they are physically present you might want to touch them in some way or make sure they are close. If they aren’t physically present you’ll want to know some things about them. I personally like a name (or blog name) and a fact about the person. Others will use just a blog or just a name. It’s up to you what information you want. (If you are reading for a person physically present but don’t know much about them you may still want to the information you’d use for a person not present).

Sit in a comfortable quiet spot and take a few deep breaths, just to calm and center yourself. You want to forget about your surroundings. Some people will like to be in touch with the ground here, I don’t necessarily need that. I would recommend that you don’t listen to music as music has its own energy that can muddle up your reading.

After you are calm and centered go over the information you know about this person: their name, the fact they gave you, any info you picked up about them through their blog. Dwell on it for a minute in a meditative sort of way, try to build this person in your mind’s eye. You don’t need a clear image at all. Sometimes just saying: “this is X’s energy before me” will be helpful.

Once you have the presence of the energy in your mind’s eye (even if it’s super faint, that’s ok!) start probing at it. Sometimes my hands actually move physically when I do this. I like to ask (in my thoughts or aloud) “tell me about so and so” be ready to experience things quickly! 

When you are first starting out don’t be afraid to ask for a specific aspect of an energy reading. Something like “show me a color that describes X” will be helpful but be patient, sometimes it takes a while for whatever you asked for to appear because that wasn’t how the energy planned to manifest itself. 

Advanced tip: Be prepared to take control of the energy reading. I think all energy readings can be interpreted but somethings need to be done during the reading in order to interpret it. For example, I like to interact with the colors that I see in energy readings. They become sort of physical beings to me. You can read the color as it is, i.e. the color green could represent a person in the midst of healing. But we can get more information. Try to touch or talk to the color and see how it reacts to you. Sometime the color is firm and you can guess this person is serious. Sometimes the color shys away from you or flinches when you reach for it. This can mean your person hurting and afraid. Is the color presented to you vibrant and smooth? Is it peeling and lifting up to reveal another color underneath? It all means something.

Once you collect your information on the energy (I usually set a limit on descriptors and only do 3 or else I can be there for a while) exit your meditative like state slowly. Then write down everything you saw, felt or experienced.

Time to Interpret! Trust your gut on this one. Different things will mean different things to people. Your interpretation won’t be wrong because its your reading. The energy presented itself to you in the way you would best understand it. So write down what you think the energy was trying to tell you.

That’s it, you’re done! You did it!

Tips:

Crystals can help- I like amethyst as it’s both calming and aids in divination

You can focus your reading on a specific question- Instead of asking “tell me about this person”, ask your question instead

You don’t always need to interpret your reading. Some things will make no sense to you. If that happens, it’s ok. It’s your job to share that information with the person you are reading for. It might mean something to them or might in the future.

TRUST YOUR GUT- it is so easy to doubt your ability read energy. Don’t do it! Go with the flow and write what you feel. Your client’s feedback will help you figure out how accurate you were and what changes you need to make in for future readings.

Don’t over do it. Energy readings take a lot of energy! Start small. If you do too much in the beginning you will feel it physically and it won’t be fun.

If you do energy work in any way start that way. I do a little bit of energy work when reading tarot. One day I decided to play with the energy I was feeling before drawing my cards and tada! it resulted in an energy reading. So start with something you are familiar with and go from there!

Ok that’s a long post! But I hope it’s helpful! If anything is unclear or confusing feel free to send me an ask or a message. I’ll be happy to help out. Good luck <3

[fayewonglibrary]

Extraordinary 3,000 seconds (1998)

* SOME REVISIONS TO SPELLING/GRAMMAR/WORDING *

Text: Liu Jie Qi

Before flying off to Hong Kong for my interview with Faye Wong, the record company promotions manager told me: "Since Faye Wong entered the music industry, this is her first time formally accepting a face-to-face interview with Singapore media. It is really considered an extreme rarity”. She then jokingly said: "You can consider it as 'the big empress’ giving face, right?"

But even then, not until the last second, no one can guarantee that this interview with Faye can go smoothly. Not until I see her in person, there's no confirmed outcome.

Maybe because of this reason or maybe after hearing too many reports, everyone was feeling worried, especially the reporter from "8 Days" who was going on this trip too. She was very interesting. Before the interview, she was browsing through all her notes and taking deep breaths as if she was in gastric pain.

I consoled her: "Relax a bit. Faye Wong is not a three-headed monster. She is just a person." Just like this, we got into the record company's car.

When the big door was pushed open to the small meeting room, Faye who was chatting with the make-up artist Zing turned around and looked at us. She smiled and said hello to us. She wore a simple light-colored T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, and her face was calm. From the beginning to the end of the interview, all we saw was a person.

Faye Wong Live Interview Date: 22nd September 1998 (Tuesday) Time: Evening 6:08 pm to 6:58 pm Place: Hong Kong Person(s): Faye Wong, i-weekly’s Liu Jie Qi, 8-days’ Andy Chen, Zing, record company manager Ah Han, our photographer Alfie Lee & special image director Daniel Goh.

Q: In your new album, the style seems to go in many different directions. What is the most important thing that you wish to express to music listeners? Faye: What to express? I’m not expressing much. Actually...how to say it... actually every time I make an album, I never think of expressing a particular issue or whatever. I only wish to make a very good album. If I can be totally involved in the compositions, that would be best! However, I don’t make many compositions, but will try my best to put in more of my own things, just like that. Actually whether it expresses something or not is open to the audience's opinions, I only wish to make a good album.

Q: In your albums, there are more and more of your own compositions. In the near future, will there be a full album of all your own songs? Faye: I really hope it can be like this. But I feel that currently I still cannot fully do that. Because although now, I only release one album per year, but I still feel that the time is too short.

Q: Then how much time do you feel is the most ideal to complete one album? Faye: This is very hard to say. Cannot guarantee if it is 3 or 5 years, 8 years or....keke (Faye's laughter is not the big ‘haha’ type) Actually my ideal thought is to make my album as my interest and not a job, maybe I can do that.

Q: Many singers hope to release at least 2 albums or more per year to let their popularity grow and to get a stable income. As for your style of only releasing one album per year, as compared with typical singers who follow the formula, are there any disadvantages to that? Are there any problems to maintain a living?

Faye: I don’t feel it is hard to maintain, can still maintain a living ah! keke....but if I could spend a very long time to produce an album that I like a lot, I feel it would really be worth it. Maybe you release 2 albums per year, but it is poor quality and the results are not good....I feel the most important thing is still quality.

(At this time, Andy asked her about the conflict between interest and work, she replied: "Currently it is hard to separate between interest and work, so sometimes there will be a dilemma. Because music itself is not a business product. But now it became a business product that is popular, thus very naturally will result in this very hard to solve dilemma. Unless I don’t continue to sign on with any record company in the future and only purely do my own music, if I can also make a stable living that way, then I think I would be happiest." As she says this, she smiles again.)

Q: Will you feel that you are helpless when faced with those questions regarding the sales of your albums and the market problems? Like you are living in very hard to control surroundings?

Faye: Yes, thus I need to make it balance. But I feel it should not be like that. Like the environment that I am in now, I feel that I should go and face it and not just feel helpless. Thus I feel I have to make it balance. To do it is quite hard, but I will try my best.

(Andy wished to understand why the song she wrote for her daughter "Tong" was in the dance genre, she replied : "Many songs written for children are those heart-warming and soft [gentle] types. Actually heart-warming things do not need to be only expressed in soft ways, because she is very active. This song was arranged with Dou Wei. We discussed beforehand to make a dance kind of song, thus when it was finished, we feel it is very suitable for Tong Tong."

Q: Have you let Tong Tong listen to this song? Did she dance to the music? Faye : Yes, yes!

Q: She likes this song?

Faye: Yup, I think she likes it. (smiles)

Q: Your image in this album seems to give people an innocent feeling?

Faye: (immediately turned to Zing who was sitting next to her) You explain lah .......actually I never really think carefully of what image to use. Also I never really seriously go and plan it. I give it all to Zing, the art director, the hairstylist and the photographer. They will have meetings and discuss it. Actually it is all very natural, go with the feelings.......I think the main thing they want is for it to still represent me?  keke.

Q: Is this also the more true you? Faye: There's really no true or false I guess? No matter what make up he puts on my face, it still needs me to express it, thus no need to say if it is true or false. It is all me.

Q: Basically you will not have any objections? Faye: Sometimes there are some images I don’t accept or don’t like...but usually it’s not the case because we have been working together for very long. We are friends and they all understand me. We all have a kind of chemistry. They know what suits me and what I don’t like.

Q: You give people the impression that you have an "I do things my own way" kind of image. And towards music, it is also the same manner. Basically are you concerned about the direction of the music industry?  Faye: It’s not that I am not concerned. But my music still starts with myself. I will not do what is popular in the market now. I don’t necessarily follow it. It mainly still stems from my own likes.

Q: Your good friend Na Ying in a recent interview said: "Privately, Faye is very friendly to guests, loves friends, loves having fun, sometimes can get wild. She is like a totally different person from what you all see". To what she said, do you have any agreements or disagreements? Faye: I don’t disagree. Actually I...how to say it? Actually I'm not like what the outside people say. Maybe I’m cold to strangers. Maybe it is because of my character, I'm not too good at socializing and will not take the initiative. But if we become friends, I'm quite active and can be very wild, keke....but no choice lah, the audience is still the audience. No matter how much they like my songs, there's still a distance between us. There’s no way that they can fully understand me. I feel there is also no choice here, I also don’t wish to force them to fully understand me. As long as they listen to and like my songs, that is good enough.

(Andy asked Faye what makes her feel very happy? Faye thinks for a while and said: "Many things can make me very happy and unhappy. A small matter can make me very happy, but can also make me unhappy, I feel I am a sensitive person and my emotions tend to change quite frequently. Actually I'm not much different from the past, still in the state of paradox....humans are basically paradoxical!" When she was saying this, she was smiling but there seemed to be some dilemma expressed in that smile.)

Q: After having Tong Tong, were there any changes in your attitude towards life? Faye: Actually many thing have two sides. Being a mother of course is very happy, but there are also many worries, many troubles....being a person is like that, good and bad, right and wrong. It has two sides.

Q: What about the way you view things? Any changes?

Faye: I'm always quite an optimistic person, even if my emotions are bad at times, I will still try to find a positive direction...

Q: There's people who view life as very very important. In a limited life span, will you very enthusiastically wish to do all that you wish to do? 

Faye: I cannot say that I’d be very enthusiastic, but also not unenthusiastic. I will try my best. The main thing is let nature take its own course! In this way, it is more comfortable.

Q: You will not force it?

Faye: Right, there are many things you cannot force.

Q: What is your ideal life?

Faye: Ideal life? Ideal life ....(she is stumped for almost 18 seconds, can sense that she is seriously thinking about this question) Actually I feel that there is no truly ideal life. What I mean is, if you currently think you will be like this and that in the future and that’s good enough, but when you reach this and that later, you might still not be satisfied, you will always wish for more things. Thus I will not think about what I wish to be like, I only wish to face the problems in the current times. I feel this is life. Don’t think too far ahead.

(At this point, Andy asked her how she feels about Kit Chan’s performance in “Snow Wolf Lake". Faye's first response is laughter: "She finished already? She hasn't yet right?!" But after a short while, she realizes she seems to be overdoing it a bit and think we have misunderstood her reply to the question as not good, thus she immediately calmed down and said: "Kit Chan is good, I always felt she is someone who can sing. She is quite suitable for the musical world too, as compared to me, I'm always scared of acting." These few words dissolved the almost awkward situation.)

Q: Because you are scared of acting, is that why you have had no more new projects after "Chungking Express"?

Faye: At this point not yet, but I will not say I threw away acting in movies completely. But I must definitely have interest and I must have confidence in myself.

Q: Wong Kar Wai will not let you off easily.

Faye: (smiles) He found me before, we are still discussing the part and still have not reached a final decision.

Q: This album is called "Sing and Play". Was that the producer’s idea or yours? Faye: The producer. Actually my thought was to call it "Faye Wong", because I have no concept. I only wish to do a better album. I don’t have any particular thing to express, not much concept. I suggested naming it "Faye Wong", but they said it would be the same as the last album......

Q: We saw the album cover and inside pictures of this latest album and were all very very surprised that Faye can actually be so cute and so fun.........

Faye: Haha ......you all thought Faye Wong can’t smile, right? Wouldn’t that be so horrible! haha.....

Q: In the 1994 "Movies Double Issue", there's an interview where you said the job that you don’t wish to do is "interviews". I wonder after so many years, has  your attitude towards the media changed? Have you softened a bit?

Faye: The situation now does not allow me to soften. I feel that the Hong Kong media is overdoing it now and became worse. Actually my attitude change in the past was not because after I became famous that I became uncooperative. It is because I feel that some Hong Kong media are too unreasonable and I don’t want to have anything to do with them. If it’s about work, I will not mind. What makes me dislike them is their following and chasing you. Like today, we are here doing this interview, I do not have any objections. Because if they do something that makes me feel uncomfortable, I will have an attitude towards them. I never like people to interfere with my personal matters, I feel everyone doesn’t wish for that. Some artists will feel it is part of their job and cannot avoid it, but I will not allow such things to happen. If they have ways to secretly take photos, whatever, I have no way to stop them. But it is not possible for me to cooperate with them on this matter and my attitude will not soften. I’ve always been like this.

FANS QUESTIONNAIRE

Q: Which is your most favorite song of Teresa Teng?

Faye: Too hard to say. I like almost every one of her songs.

Q: Can you play any instrument?

Faye: No

Q: What is the most touching thing that a fan has done for you?

Faye: (thinking for 16 seconds) I can’t remember.

Q: Besides singing, what else do you very "crazily" like?

Faye: I love to play, as long as it’s a game, I like to play it. (she asks Zing next to her) I play mahjong, does that count?

Q: What is your most favorite Singaporean food?

Faye: That green cake....( Zing smiled and said: "It’s pandan cake.") Because it left a deep impression, other than that I have not eaten much. Oh, I still like Hainanese chicken rice, I feel it is quite good, better than Hong Kong.

Q: If possible, what is the thing that you wish to change most in life?

Faye: Never thought of it before.

Q: What is the degree of your eyesight?

Faye: 400 degrees, I have a bit of astigmatism too but it’s mild.

Q: Normally when you need to leave your daughter, will you miss her?

Faye: Cannot say lah! Depends on what I am doing. If I'm playing mahjong.....(everyone understands her meaning: if I'm playing mahjong, I can forget her for a bit longer! Thus, everyone including Faye laughs.)

Q: Now what do you feel is the difference about the media in different areas (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Japan, China)?

Faye: Actually it seems like I haven't been in contact much with Beijing media. I only live there and very rarely have interviews .....actually the media that I have the most contact with is the Hong Kong media. I think the most uncomfortable is the Hong Kong media because they are closer to me. I spend a lot of time in Hong Kong, so they have many chances to follow me. Maybe if I lived in Taiwan, it would also be this way?

Q: Where do you wish to spend most of your time?

Faye: Paris, France. Because I like Paris. It gives me the feeling of living in Beijing, I feel very free.

Q: For a fan that has not been to Beijing, what is the most attractive thing about Beijing?

Faye: Beijing is a historical place and has many historical monuments, places of interests...of course, I don’t live in Beijing because of that keke.......There is a family feeling....this should be easily understood right? At home is where I feel the most freedom.

[Faye's autograph to i-weekly readers] (in Chinese):

Singapore friends: Wish you happiness! - Faye

Me & Faye: Two Feet Away Story

When the interview was over, Faye opened her eyes wide and asked: "Finished?" She could not believe that we so easily "let her go".

But I still heard her softly give a sigh of relief. She smiled, stood up and twisted her waist and continued to chat with the other company people happily. The atmosphere was very relaxed and pleasant.

Actually, for everyone present, who wasn't giving a sigh of relief?

When we exited the building, my companion Daniel very excitedly said: "Faye is simply too good, I love her even more!"

Everyone was very happy. We felt that this interview was too perfect and not painful at all.

After we returned to Singapore, whenever I talked about this interview with colleagues, friends and family, they all had the same two questions: “You really spoke to her face-to-face for 50 minutes? What is she like?" It seems that Faye gives people the deep impression that you "cannot get close to her and better not mess with her because she is very hard to handle". However, if you see the above interview, you should be able to make a decision on her character now.

The interview with Faye was in a small meeting room, at a circular table, her every gesture and every smile was clearly shown.

Frankly speaking, Faye is just like any one of us. When she talks, she is full of expressions. Her big eyes always love to look here and there. She looks like a mischievous child. She also has her own friends and family. When talking about them and mentioning some funny events, she will also laugh.

After thinking carefully, I feel that Hong Kong, Taiwan and China are bigger markets than Singapore. So why did she choose our interview and not spend more time with the other three medias?

There's only one conclusion: Faye Wong only does things accordingly to her own wishes. She wants to be true to herself because she knows you still need to face yourself in the end. Thus she said: "I was like that in the past, I am like that now, and I will always be like that."

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

SOURCE: I-WEEKLY // TRANSLATED BY: UNKNOWN - PLEASE CONTACT ME

[passionate-reply]

Whether you’re a Superman, a judge, a mom, or a dad, we can all appreciate the avant-garde genius of Laurie Anderson, the topic of this week’s installment of Great Albums! Find out what made Anderson’s breakout hit the most unlikely chart smash of the 80s, and what the rest of this amazing LP has in store, by watching my video or reading the full transcript below the break.

Welcome to Passionate Reply, and welcome to Great Albums! Today, I’ll be discussing one of the most unique and unforgettable albums around: Big Science, by Laurie Anderson. It’s very possible that you may not necessarily recognize her by name, but this album’s big hit has been riffed on and re-used many times throughout Western popular culture, so when I play it for you, it just might seem hauntingly familiar.

Music: “O Superman”

Put simply, “O Superman” is not your conventional pop hit, by any stretch of the imagination. It features little more than a sparse, barren electronic instrumental, and Anderson’s eerily vocoder-treated voice, not so much singing as acting out a one-woman stage play. It has much more in common with the avant-garde, minimalist works of 20th Century “modern classical” composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich than it does anything you would hear on pop radio in the 1980s.

While you might assume that it entered mainstream consciousness through being used in some art film, it actually was a bona fide pop hit--particularly in Great Britain, which has always had a pronounced affinity for surprisingly weird chart entries. While the single was initially given only a small release, like most of Anderson’s earlier work, the prominent British radio DJ John Peel discovered it...and fell in love with it. And thanks to his frequent playing of it on the air, a lot of other people fell in love with it too, propelling it to #2 in the UK charts. I think it’s a testament to just how different the media landscape used to be, once upon a time in the 20th Century. Nowadays, the radio doesn’t really have room for idiosyncratic tastemakers like Peel, and the independent DJs who remain certainly don’t have the reach that Peel did. I suppose it’s the 20th Century version of sea shanties and other oddities becoming trends on social media.

But anyway, setting aside the strange legacy “O Superman” has as the world’s least likely hit single, we can appreciate it perfectly well as a moving work of art. “O Superman” is not really a pop song, but what it is is, perhaps, a desperate plea for comfort and protection. The figure, or concept, of “mother” seems to be the focus of the text, and serves as the apparent “final resort” of its insecure, searching rhetoric. We get this idea in a microcosm in the famous opening line, inspired by an aria by Jules Massenet: “O Superman, o judge, o Mom and Dad.” It’s an appeal to any and all higher powers, but culminates with perhaps the most primal, intuitive authority we can understand: our parents. Towards the end of the piece, the narrator begs to be held in the arms of “Mom,” but they’re described not as soft and warm, but “automatic,” “electronic,” and “petrochemical,” creating an uncanny conflation of innate human connections and the harshly artificial, technological conditions of modernity. Have we made the promises of technology and science into some sort of idol, looking to them for reassurance, and projecting onto them a goodwill or benevolence like a mother has for her children? Themes of high technology, as well as the search for safety and security, are found throughout the rest of the album, as is the stark, minimalist instrumentation.

Music: “From the Air”

Expanding somewhat on the references to aeroplanes found on “O Superman,” opening track “From the Air” is narrated by the captain of a doomed flight, instructing the passengers how to handle the imminent “crash landing.” It’s many people’s very worst nightmare, and plunges us straight into the sense of fearing for our lives, in a situation that’s completely beyond our control. A bold move for the very first track we hear! “From the Air” leads with somewhat plausible suggestions, like a very dated request that passengers “extinguish all cigarettes,” but gradually becomes increasingly surreal, adding to that nightmarish feeling. Anderson delivers her lines with a palpable sense of authority, that stirs you to want to obey her character even as they prove their unreliability. A taut, unresolved saxophone-driven ostinato throughout the track provides a constant sense of tension and anxiety, which certainly suits the mood. Until the end of the song, at which point it abruptly cuts off--presumably to represent the crash occurring, and the sudden deaths of those on board.

I like to think of “From the Air” as a sort of dark counterpart to “O Superman,” the latter of which is the opening track of the second side. While “O Superman” deifies technology as a source of maternalistic comfort, “From the Air” presents us with the ultimate failure of technology: slick and polished until the end, but unable to provide any real hope of meaningful security. That human desire for security is interrogated more directly on the final track of side one: “Born, Never Asked.”

Music: “Born, Never Asked”

While “Born, Never Asked” is much more laconic than tracks like “From the Air” and “O Superman,” it’s no less probing and thought-provoking, presenting us with a world of people who are, fundamentally, “free”--and yet deeply unsatisfied. “You were born,” quips Anderson, “and so you are free.” But we’re all too busy asking for a bigger answer, and some explicit, deeper meaning to our existences, that we can’t appreciate the simple freedom to live our lives however we want to, in the absence of any overt goals. The track begins by establishing a stately, handclap-driven backing, which serves to underscore the plainness or simplicity of its message, and is ultimately overtaken by a mournful violin outro--perhaps the embodiment of our emotional turmoil, as we seek the comfort of clear answers despite the fact that they never arrive. If only the world were as simple and well-defined as it seemed to be when we were children, filled with unthinking and unconditional love for our mothers!

“Born, Never Asked” asks us to question what it really means to be “free,” and whether or not it’s even satisfying or helpful to possess “freedom.” It’s worth noting that all of the pieces that comprise Big Science were chiefly intended as part of Anderson’s much longer magnum opus, entitled United States, which she completed in 1984. In that context, criticism of the value of “freedom” is perhaps also criticism of certain traditional American moral values. While “O Superman” prominently mentions “American planes,” I think the track that has the most to say about being American is the title track of the album.

Music: “Big Science”

The title track of Big Science takes us to a desolate and mostly empty landscape, defined more by its potential to be moulded into something habitable than anything it already, innately is. It’s a frigid perspective on America as terra nullius, a wasteland filled with nothing but ultra-recent and ultra-artificial capitalist “developments” as opposed to any real history or meaning. With its chilling coyote-like howls, and nods to Western movies and dependence upon cars, it can easily be contextualized as particularly American, but ultimately, the human drive to “improve” our environment through questionable (and perhaps even destructive) means is fairly universal. Much like the emotionally unsatisfying sense of freedom bestowed upon those who are born, in “Born, Never Asked,” the title track of Big Science shows us a world full of endless possibilities, but devoid of any true happiness born of those possibilities.

The term “big science” dates back to the Mid-20th Century, and has been used to describe the increasingly large scale of many significant scientific efforts, particularly those supported by world governments...and particularly, their militaries. During and after the Second World War, it became increasingly necessary for nations that wanted a place on the world stage to rope science into the military-industrial complex, especially in light of the development of atomic weaponry. Given the album’s thematic emphasis on the way we look to science and technology to provide some aegis of protection, and often in harmful or destructive ways, it’s a very fitting choice for the title.

I think that connection to the nuclear bomb is also an important key to interpreting the album’s cover art. On the cover of Big Science, we see Anderson lit very harshly from the right--so much so that her sunglasses are rendered completely white by the powerful light. While her pose is very deliberate, and perhaps even stilted, she appears to be raising her arms as though to shield herself from whatever is casting this bright light. Is Anderson perhaps portraying an atomic scientist, observing a nuclear blast with its signature burst of radiant light?

Overall, however we interpret this gesture, the black and white imagery and completely empty backdrop seem to pair well with that sparse and minimalistic instrumentation. Anderson appears on the cover with her signature costume, a solid white suit which, when paired with her short hairstyle, gives her a somewhat androgynous appearance. It also looks a bit like a labcoat, often worn by scientists and doctors--figures who culturally embody the principle of benevolent authorities backed by the power of technology and science.

Whenever artists who only briefly felt the spotlight of mainstream success are discussed, it can be tempting to ask whether or not such figures “deserved” more or better. In the case of Anderson, though, she never expected “O Superman” to become the breakout hit that it did, and never followed it up with anything actively pursuing the pop charts. In the wake of her most famous work, Anderson went right back to doing what she had been doing: making great, but totally avant-garde, art. She’s a figure of “art music,” and the “art world,” through and through, performing her elaborate multimedia works at museums, appearing in a number of festival-circuit art films, and accepting honourary degrees. Anderson has had a perfectly successful career, dwelling precisely in the realm of her choosing, and I don’t think there’s any better outcome than that. If you like Big Science, you’ll find plenty more striking and evocative works throughout the rest of her long and ongoing career.

Music: “Sharkey’s Day”

My favourite track on Big Science is “Sweaters.” With a Celtic-sounding melody, a grating fiddle, and perhaps the most vocally hated musical instrument of all time, the bagpipes, “Sweaters” is a dirge about an ancient subject: falling out of love. But despite its backward-looking folk setting, the jump from “I no longer love your eyes” to “I no longer love your sweaters” anchors it into the realm of the totally mundane...if not banal. Overall, though, what I think really makes it stand out on the album is its sense of levity. As I’ve discussed earlier, Big Science is loaded with really heavy themes about technology, Americana, and the meaning of life...so a song that’s not only about a romantic relationship, but also about sweaters, pens, and pencils, jammed into the middle of the first side, really feels like a sort of palate cleanser while you’re listening to this. That’s all for today--thanks for watching!

Music: “Sweaters”