#like someone really wrote this and then put it to beautiful instrumentation

[harmonictechnicality]

there’s this wild misconception that if you’re into choral music, that it’s all religious stuff.

but let me tell you something. Carmina Burana is like two hours of angsty smut. Like it sounds like the perspective of an emo teenager that just had sex for the first time.

Choral music is so unhinged I fucking love it.

[m1ssunderstanding]

Get Back Rewatch 55 Years On: Day 18

Staring John Lennon, as that kid I should’ve been nicer to in first grade who always smelled like PB&J and was never to be seen without his pokemon cards

The dancing is really too cute. They’re just absolutely giddy. Making each other laugh AND an excuse to touch? John and Paul’s heaven. 

John saying he was too excited after yesterday to go to bed. Like a fucking kid on christmas.

Everybody is serving today. While the candy-land suit is fun, I actually just love that vivid purple so much that I think it’s better without the coat over it. Billy looks extremely suave and classy.  And those red polka-dots on Ringo. Red suits him, and I think with his very frank, masculine aspect, he looks so beautiful and bold in feminine fits. Paul and John are both just wearing what they wore yesterday. Yeah. But John is still a cutie, and Paul, well, you all know.

The advice chain about finishing a song while you’re working on. Paul → John → George

Paul honestly does a great job being supportive of George and his work. Coming over and grooving with him, then hopping on drums then guitar (right-handed, may I add). Just to give George musical atmosphere to flesh out his song and start thinking of arrangement ideas, I assume. Then letting him bounce ideas around. And the whole time being overly-enthusiastic to build George up. Look how happy George is with the love and attention. 

John helping move some equipment in. We love a man who sometimes doesn’t think he’s too good for manual labor. 

Yes, clean that homeless man’s palm sweat off your instrument. Probably smart. 

TFW you made Paul McCartney jealous of your musical abilities. 

John really knew so well when to be his little impish self and when to be hard and intimidating. Exhibit A, going from, “Can we have our microphones, oh, mister, can we please?” to “And get one for Billy too.” In a matter of seconds.

George Martin stepping in when they’re all getting panicky about the sound and they need an authority figure to reassure them in ways that someone like Glyn Johns never could. Just, perfectly cool and collected, puts everything right as they’re all shouting at him like school children who’ve just had a terrible time in PE. 

“Believe me, when I tell you.” “Oh, I do.” Oh, good. He did put it in. That’s nice. Right, and this is the moment Yoko decides to tell John her divorce has come through and pull him in for a big smooch. Honestly, it just shows how threatened she feels by Paul. Nevermind her whole, “good thing Paul isn’t a girl or he would have been a great threat,” quote. Clearly, he just is a threat regardless of sex.

And then John, “I’m freeeee.” At Paul. Honestly, the amount of things they direct specifically and aggressively at each other that should’ve just been general statements if there wasn’t some weird thing between them. It’s really something. Normally, you’d announce something like that to the whole room. But it seems John specifically wants to impress upon Paul that he and Yoko could get married right now if they wanted to. I mean, it’s a little difficult to make the point, because John and Paul almost aways seem to be talking only to each other. But through the whole discussion of Yoko’s divorce, John does not take his eyes off of Paul. 

Oh my gosh, Ivan Vaughn is here? How many emotional support boyfriends does Paul need to make up for John having Yoko? Glyn, Linda, George Martin, Dennis, Robert Fraser, and now Ivan? Fuck’s sake, Yoko, you’re a powerful woman.   

Paul’s Strawberry Fields piano. Let me be as vulnerable and broken as possible in my singing, since I can’t show you any other way that you’re killing me. Do you remember this song? That you wrote when we were at the height of our partnership only two years ago? How happy we were then? How beautiful the world seemed for that one brief moment? And John can’t look at him, because, yes he fucking remembers and yes he knows he’s hurting Paul. But for whatever reason, (my theory is he wanted something more Paul couldn’t give him. What that was and whether it was ever specifically vocalized I don't have a guess) going back to that time would be more painful to John than this has been.  

So they’ve been goofing off and Paul gives this little speech to get them back on task. “Alright Chawn Love. I’ve gotta call order, John, now, valuable time, here, son. Cool down, son.” But John’s response, “Don’t let me down, babe” completely switches Paul’s gears. He now thinks it’s important enough to get in this little snatch of a *meaningful* cover, “Take these Chains from my Heart,” reversing the course of productivity he’d got them on and ignoring the fact that they were about to do a take on two-shilling-a-foot tape. My interpretation of this moment is a bit tin-hatish and long, but suffice it to say, John is not happy with the message.

Everyone convincing Paul to do another take of his song is surprising, considering everything we always hear about how Paul was a tyrant task-master who just forced everyone to keep doing his lame muzak over and over when they all clearly hated it. Mal, “You can always go back to it.” Paul, “Do you want your head kicked in?” John, “We’ll never get a chance to do it again.” Paul, “Okay, honey bunch. Let’s hit it one time, tutti-frutti.” 

Yoko watching Paul check out her boyfriend’s ass. Classic. Also the fact that she literally copied his outfit? I get so much second-hand embarrassment for her, and it’s not when she’s being a weirdo and a statement-maker. It’s the having to physically stick the gum you were offering your boyfriend into this hand because he won’t take his eyes off his boyfriend for two seconds to look at you. 

Everyone laughing at Perfect Paul being out of tune is so funny to me. Like when the nerd finally gets a question wrong and the whole class is all “ooooohhhh!”

Ringo having a grand old time on the drums. I love that he just knew that’s what he wanted to do from such a young age and he never wanted to do anything else. And why would he? He’s a genius at it.

Paul. “John’s got something at 1:30 and so have I.” Smirk emoji. Side-eye emoji. George is with me. “Yeah we've got something too. I’ll do Ringo at 1:30.” I'm dead.

This moment right here hurts me. Paul’s enjoying a nice cuddle with Ringo until he remembers the camera. You’re not going to get in trouble for having your friend’s arm around your shoulders, Paul. Why are you like this? 

[invisibleicewands]

“If It’s Not Grueling, It’s Not Worth It”: John Cale, in Conversation With Michael Sheen

Michael Sheen heard John Cale’s singular voice for the first time as a teenager in his bedroom in Port Talbot, Wales. “Someone cool must have given it to me,” he says of listening to White Light, White Heat for the first time. “I knew nothing about The Velvet Underground, I knew nothing about anything… Then I hear this voice on the song, ‘The Gift,’ and I’m like, ‘Hang on, that’s a Welsh voice.’” On his eighteenth studio album, POPtical Illusion, Cale, now 82 years old, is still possessed of that distinct, boundless instrument. Its emotional tenor, as Cale points out, is “snide,” and throughout the record, there’s an air of humor but also repressed rage boiling just beneath its poppy surface. The legendary musician wrote most of the album during the first Covid lockdown, averaging three songs a day. “I was really angry,” he told Sheen on a call earlier this month. “But I didn’t want the anger to really predominate.” To celebrate the release of Cale’s new album, the two Welshman delved into their respective creative processes, Cale’s relationships with Lou Reed and David Bowie, and the transformative power of public libraries.

MICHAEL SHEEN: How are you?

JOHN CALE: I’m good. I’m just delivering an album.

SHEEN: I’ve been thoroughly enjoying listening to it.

CALE: Oh, really?

SHEEN: Yes, they sent me a link.

CALE: That’s good.

SHEEN: It’s absolutely beautiful, John.

CALE: Good. Well, are you in Port Talbot?

SHEEN: I was in Port Talbot until the weekend. I’m in London for a little bit now. I’ve just finished doing a play. I’ve been playing Nye Bevan.

CALE: Oh, that’s great.

SHEEN: For the last three or four months, we’ve been at the National Theater here in London. Then we did a couple of weeks in Cardiff at the Millennium Center last weekend.

CALE: Who wrote the play?

SHEEN: Tim Price, the Welsh writer. It’s a new play directed by Rufus Norris.

CALE: Very good. Glad to hear you moving on. I’m trying to remember a photograph of him when I was growing up in Garnant and he was a political heavyweight.

SHEEN: Oh, yeah. He’d started off working down the mines. He was a draft door boy.

CALE: That’s right. 

SHEEN: Both of you had fathers who were miners.

CALE: Yes. My dad was a fitter. You know what a fitter is?

SHEEN: No.

CALE: A fitter is a guy who goes in and puts the wrenches and the bolts and everything together. He doesn’t go down shoveling coal or any of that. He just puts gear together.

SHEEN: Well, it’s funny, because listening to the album, I was reminded of a scene in Nye, where you see Bevan as a young boy going into the Tredegar Library. He had a terrible stutter, a stammer. The library gave him the opportunity to increase his vocabulary so he could use different words. Literally, libraries gave him power.

CALE: Listen, the library in Garnant gave me power. It was a little place stuffed with books, but they have these cards where, if you wanted a book that they didn’t have, you could fill out the form and they’d run off and get it. And not only that, they filled out forms for music. The music was attended to by the Marlborough-MA Public Library. If I put down Schoenberg, they would find the book.

SHEEN: Wow, that’s amazing.

CALE: I learned so much from that.

SHEEN: One of the most moving scenes in the play is this scene in the library because, of course, it gives Bevan his freedom. He’s able to talk. And on your new album, a line that really jumped out at me was on “Company Commander,” when you say “right-wingers burning their libraries down.” You think, “Here are the things that gave the working class in Wales power and now we’ve got people, as you describe, burning the libraries down.”

CALE: As a social activist, I’ve watched you approach that subject not just carefully, but penetratingly

SHEEN: Well, that line really jumped out at me. And I think the album is beautiful, disquieting, but I also found it incredibly moving at times.

CALE: Really?

SHEEN: Well, just seeing a song called “Davies in Wales,” immediately my ears pricked up, especially knowing that your name is John Davies Cale. I’ve listened to that a few times today. What was going on there?

CALE: It’s a laugh. You’ve got to have some of that in your life otherwise you’d die of boredom. “Shark-Shark” was one that really doesn’t have any sense to it at all. You just do it as a goof.

SHEEN: Am I right in saying that the very last word on the album is coal?

CALE: Code.

SHEEN: Code, right. See, my Welsh ears heard coal because I couldn’t help but be tempted into thinking of you floating down a river like a magical piece of coal, John. Is it too late to change it to coal?

CALE: For you? No.

SHEEN: But am I right as well in saying that in the space of a year you wrote over 80 songs and that this album has come out of that?

CALE: Yeah. The lockdown took over about a year-and-a-half ago and I just shut the door and took precautions and got on with some work. When I came out of that, there was an album already. At the end of the day, I had 80 songs. This is about finding poetry in the strangest places.

SHEEN: Did the lockdown color the nature of the songs in terms of their tone?

CALE: Yeah, I had a lot of energy. I was really angry. I didn’t want the anger to really predominate. It was really about trying to find out what else there was around you that you considered as part of your persona. If you’re writing lyrics, you start with a lyric and then you go to the music. Or you start with the music, then go to the lyrics. You really don’t want to obey too many of the laws of poetry and rhyme too much. You don’t mind tripping over your own shoelaces. Making mistakes is really important sometimes, and I’m still growing.

SHEEN: Have you carried on writing at that kind of pace since then?

CALE: Yeah.

SHEEN: Wow. That’s an extraordinary creative explosion. Is that just to do with the lockdown conditions or is it also where you were at in your life?

CALE: I think so, yeah. I’ve had enough of certain things. But the whole process welcomed me like, “Hey, why don’t you do this?” You find the rest of your ideas by rifling around all the ideas you’ve had to the beginning of that lockdown and eventually, you don’t have a lockdown.

SHEEN: Well, it clearly wasn’t a kind of creative or imaginative lockdown. Did you know they were always going to be for a solo album?

CALE: No, the collaborations happened on the first of the albums. The rest of it was just me playing with my instruments. I just had a pile of instruments in my studio and off I went.

SHEEN: But this album feels so crafted and so textured. It’s interesting you said that you were very angry because maybe that’s one of the “poptical illusions” of the album, because it doesn’t immediately feel like an angry album. It feels incredibly lush. Even at its most lush, it’s never comfortable. There’s always disquiet there. My hearing is getting worse, and I’ve never been able to hear lyrics very well, so I have to listen over and over to get to the lyrics. As I listened to the songs more and more, you do start to hear the anger. It’s so rich and lush and textured and yet there is a darkness in there as there always is in your work, John.

CALE: Yeah, I appreciate that. “Snide” is an appropriate word.

SHEEN: It’s a good word.

CALE: It’s handy.

SHEEN: We were at a very particular time when we were in those lockdowns. You start to think about the western world over the last 10 years or so, and not only were we in that bizarre situation of being locked up in our homes, but we were also at a time in the world where things were and still are obviously unhinged in all kinds of ways. Is that what was feeding that sense of anger that you were talking about?

CALE: Well, people don’t want to be lectured. You don’t want to say anything because then you’ve got the responsibility of answering the questions. You want to see if you can get away with as much humor as you possibly can.

SHEEN: That’s where snide comes in.

CALE: It’s a good to have a sense of humor with some snide.

SHEEN: Well, it’s funny you talk about your sense of humor. The very first time I heard your voice, I was a young teenager in my bedroom in Port Talbot. I had my first record player. My musical tastes were fairly conservative when I was younger. But somehow I’d got hold of White Light, White Heat. An older cousin must have given it to me or something. Someone cool must have given it to me. I put it on and I’m listening to this album and it seemed like the epitome of the exotic for me. It’s American, it’s the coolest thing ever. I knew nothing about Velvet Underground. I knew nothing about anything, really. Then I hear this voice on the song “The Gift”, and I’m like, “Hang on, that’s a Welsh voice!” I couldn’t believe it. That’s when I discovered you and who you were and where you’d come from and all that kind of stuff. But that dark humor, that was my first introduction to you and dark humor itself.

CALE: When we did that album, people were wondering, “What is this about? What are these guys doing?” I thought to myself, “I have to wait until the end of the album to have a clear idea of where I stood in the European world and where I did not stand in the European world.” Most of the songs on a lot of those albums were reflections of what I was missing about Europe. Those were a lot of loose songs, granted, but a lot of the songs I came up with at the end of that period, like “Paris 1919,” for instance, were written from California.

SHEEN: When you were in New York in the ’60s, did you feel like a European in America?

CALE: I did, but I didn’t have time for it. It’s a weird position to be in. You’re sitting in New York and you’re hanging out with Andy [Warhol] and the factory and all those other characters, all just amazingly brilliant in their own way and full of ideas and kind and gentle. It was a nonstop fountain of inspiration. What am I trying to say? It was an artistic revolution in New York. A lot of it probably came from the sexual revolution that was going on. There was so much of that going on. I was really interested in a very specific kind of music that happened to have been started in 1963 in Stockhausen. But all of a sudden, I was with LaMonte Young in California, where he was a jazz saxophone player. He was moving to New York and he was interested in totally different things about drones. He took that influence with him across the water. Then Viola Monte Young starts introducing droned violas to the Velvet Underground and we have modern music, essentially.

SHEEN: Part of your extraordinary career has been about connecting and working with younger artists coming up, whether it’s The Stooges or The Modern Lovers, right up to Kelly Lee Owens and Nirvana. How do you stay plugged into that? How do you watch out for what’s going on and see who you want to work with?

CALE: It’s pretty easy. It’s all over. With the new technology, you can’t avoid it.

SHEEN: But if you’re writing songs, how have you got time to listen to other people’s music as well?

CALE: That’s one of the problems. It’s just one of those things that you run into in life. You can’t do it all the time. You can’t do it for very long. But it’s just knowing what’s going on, where and when. But the other stuff is, I can just keep going. I’m not fragile yet.

SHEEN: No, you don’t seem fragile in any way, John. Although I have to say, in some of the lyrics and some of the music on this album, there’s a vulnerability there.

CALE: An important characteristic of your creativity is how fragile you are in the process. You reveal more of yourself in that way. I think revealing more of yourself has no limit. I think it’s something you’ve got to recognize in the process.

SHEEN: I was talking about this recently, but when I was a younger actor, I thought good acting was essentially about showing off. I thought it was about working out how to be really entertaining and clever and funny and smart. Then, as I got older, I realized that the more uncomfortable I was when I was acting, that’s actually where the good stuff is.

CALE: Yes, absolutely.

SHEEN: That’s where the magical pieces of coal are.

CALE: Don’t tell anybody.

SHEEN: So a lot of people came out of lockdown having watched a lot of box sets on TV. You came out of it with multiple albums and god knows how many songs. I don’t know about this album, but certainly on the last album, you have a song like “Night Crawling” where you’re going back over stuff with David Bowie. Was there a lot of that happening in lockdown as well? I don’t mean reminiscing in a nostalgic or sentimental way, but a sense of drawing from the past?

CALE: Only when I wrote the song. It was something that happened. I was a little embarrassed about having to have a character in my songs that you can really appreciate for other reasons. I was trying to be kind and generous about it.

SHEEN: You’re bound to be aware. If you are writing a song about something that’s happened to you, and it involves someone that everybody knows, there is an awareness of the weight of that, isn’t there?

CALE: Yeah. You try to be generous with everybody.

SHEEN: If it involves going back to working with Lou Reed and everyone else, do you feel a need to make it slightly more cryptic? 

CALE: That happened already. That’s part of history. I dealt with it and I’m satisfied with it. I’m glad that we wrote Lou’s Drella together. When we finished the whole piece, I said, “Lou, we’ve written all these songs and they’re all about all these characters that we know and we love and lived through. But you didn’t write a single verse about the Velvet Underground.” He went away and wrote one and came back.

SHEEN: Well, I suppose it’s difficult. If you’ve lived a life like you have lived and you’ve been around the people, it’s going to be difficult to write any song without somehow involving people that everyone knows in some way or another. Do you remember when I came to New York and when there was that exhibition about the Velvet Underground?

CALE: Yes, that’s right.

SHEEN: You were surrounded by people the whole time, so I didn’t want to bother you too much. But before I left, I wanted to come up and say hello. As I was with you, Laurie Anderson came up to us and I totally embarrassed myself by suddenly going, “Oh, ‘Superman’ was such an amazing song for me.”

CALE: She deserves it.

SHEEN: She quite rightfully paid me no heed and walked off.

CALE: Really? I’m surprised.

SHEEN: I felt so embarrassed.

CALE: No, she’s a kind soul. I’m glad you did it.

SHEEN: More and more now, actually, I feel like I want to tell people when they’ve had an amazing effect on my life. There’s so much shit in the world. There’s so much stuff that makes you feel shitty. And that’s another reason why I find listening to your new album moving, because you are one of those people for me. Are you going to be touring this album?

CALE: Yeah. It’s starting in January. I’m doing a couple of gigs in Mexico. It’ll be interesting now that they’ve got a new Prime Minister.

SHEEN: Indeed. Touring and playing live, is that something that has become more important to you, or maybe less?

CALE: Oh, it’s always been important. It’s been like a life-giving source. You get an audience out there. There’s nothing better than that.

SHEEN: Is it grueling?

CALE: If it’s not grueling, it’s not worth it.

[merrycrisis-if]

i love qiu so much (the grip they have on me fr) but this one is for nat and shay!!!! they are both so great and their routes are so fun (personally i love doing a shay route w a musician mc like. the idea of being with someone who gets ur art) and im SOO excited for nat to show up next chapter the likelihood that i will cry is extreme

YeahhH!

Someone who you can nerd-out and discuss music theory and who can listen to a song you wrote / composed and really understand the choices / work you put into every instrumental riff / verse, and who just gets the intensity and vulnerability of performing one's original stuff up on stage. Even if MC and Shay don't get involved romantically, that's a powerful connection.

And yeah, same for Nat—even if MC and Nat don't get back together, I think they'll always be in each other's lives in some way or form, and also think back on their relationship as a beautiful chapter.

[dustedmagazine]

Dusted Mid-Year 2024, Part II (Lumpeks to Z-Ro)

Rosali

Part two of our mid-year round-up provides a second perspective on albums that at least one Dusted writer loved.  Here we cover the second half, alphabetically by artist, with entries from Lumpeks to Z-Ro. 

If you missed Part I, check it out here. 

Lumpeks — Polonez (Umlaut)

Who nominated it? Bill Meyer

Did we review it? No

Ian Mathers’ take:

I’m honestly not familiar enough with either jazz or traditional Polish dance music to be able to spot or articular exactly where this intriguing and very enjoyable fusion of the two has joined them. There’s a similar feel to other acts I’ve heard that both clearly deeply respect the traditional music they draw on and are unafraid to put their own spin on that source material (both Xylouris White and Black Ox Orkestar came to mind), and as with those other cases the results on Polonez could equally be ancient or brand new. That the quartet’s main instrumentation (which also includes Louis Laurain on cornet, Pierre Borel on alto sax, and Sébastien Belief on double bass) includes steady, deep frame drumming (using a local variation called a bębenek obręczowy) from Olga Koziel (who also sings) gives it plenty of distinct character. And the mostly French group cares enough about actually understanding and respecting that traditional Polish music they made a short documentary about the field research that went into making Polonez. There’s an energetic, joyous swing to both the jazz and folk sides of Lumpeks’ music that makes the result much more than just an academic curiosity.

Mdou Moctar — Funeral for Justice (Matador)

Who nominated it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? No, but we did a Listening Post. In the intro, Jennifer Kelly wrote, “The new record is as sharp and impassioned as any Moctar and his band have done so far, and it is inflamed with political energy.”

Andrew Forell’s take:

Mdou Moctar is an extraordinary guitarist and must be incredible in a live setting. The rhythms, the vocal back and forth and the moments Mochtar sprays power chords and shards of riffs that explode like bombs are all great. You feel his rage and frustration even when you don’t understand the lyrics. But the super intricate, high-speed soloing, whilst impressive, had the same effect on me as listening to electric blues-rock. I’m caught between the passion of the band, the eloquence of their anti-colonialist, pro-African politics, and the technically brilliant guitar noodling. The title track is a fantastic meld and it’s hard not be carried along but I really prefer the slower tracks, particularly “Takoba” and “Imajighen”, which lope along behind the drums while the bass darts around between entwined guitar lines and call and response vocals. Funeral for Justice is an album I admired and enjoyed hearing but, for me, the pyrotechnics get in the way.

Jessica Moss – For UNRWA (self-released)

Who picked it?  Ian Mathers

Did we review it?  Yes, Ian said, “sorrow and elegy and rage and strength all course throughout the piece.”

Bryon’s take:

This is a beautiful album born from an ugly situation.  Violinist Jessica Moss released this Bandcamp-only album to raise money for the UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) after nation states halted funding when it was erroneously thought a few of its members were aligned with Hamas.  It’s a 42-minute suite of violin, electronics, and vocals that Moss captured at a live set in Berlin.  As someone who hasn’t had the pleasure of investigating her solo work but is enamored with her contributions to Silver Mt. Zion and other bands, I find this album to be an effective port of entry.  It swells with all the emotions that Ian describes in his review, unfurling with a beauty and grace that at times evokes stillness and at others exudes passionate fervor.  Based on this piece alone, I’ve decided that I need more of Moss’ music in my life.    

NYSSA — Shake Me Where I’m Foolish (Six Shooter)

Who nominated it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? No.

Jennifer Kelly’s take:

NYSSA gets its kick from the charisma of the eponymous front woman, a wailing, belting, crooning dynamo, whose delivery is part punk, part roots rock, part blues and part adrenalized, corruscating confession. NYSSA’s first album, Girls Like Me, was long-listed for the 2021 Polaris Prize. This follow-up is less synthy and more rock, fleshed out by a ripping band. It’s larger in every way, from the stomping, vibrato-laced rager, “Werewolf,” to the torchy, piano-bar introspection of “Blessed Turn.” “I’m good for nothing but the hell I raise,” NYSSA intimates on the rollicking “Hell I Raise,” but she’s wrong. She’s good at lots of things.

Rosali – Bite Down (Merge)

Who picked it? Jennifer Kelly

Did we review it? Yes. Christian Carey wrote: “Rocking out is on the menu” and “the connections between pleasure and pain seem to coalesce in Rosali’s work.”

Alex Johnson’s take:

It’s a ferocious album, but intimate too. I hear a lot of Christine McVie in Rosali’s vocal. The way her delivery of “I want to feel right at the end of the day/I’m letting things come as they may” on “Rewind” contains warmth and sadness and joy and a sense of power in powerlessness that’s somewhere between cynicism and hope. It’s right out of Rumors. There’s some Fleetwood Mac in the groove of the title track too. But the spaciousness and spontaneity that Rosali and Mowed Sound capture remind me more often of the Oldham family — Will, Ned, et al. — from the raucous and inviting Viva Last Blues of “My Kind” to the clanging Anomoanon-ish country rock of “Hopeless.” 

This is music that not only lets you in but keeps you there. Like how the primordial bass drum in “May It Always Be on Offer” both grounds the rhythm and carves out a space you can practically sit in. The charismatic draw of Bite Down, though, is the guitar work. There’s so much texture and dimension in, say, the fraught duet that rips through “Change is in the Form” or the gravelly solo patched under the strings of “Slow Pain,” echoing the toughness of “maybe I’m just used to it/maybe I don’t give a shit.” With their various yelps and rumbles, the guitar tones that run through “Hills on Fire” don’t so much create the atmosphere as define it, adding a palpable, tectonic heat to the song’s otherwise easy daze.

Bite Down is a big, organic album, full of sensations — heard, articulated, and felt. Someone yells “act natural” as “My Kind” gets revved up — I’m surprised the band needed a reminder.

Thou — Umbilical (Sacred Bones)

Who nominated it? Jonathan Shaw

Did we review it? Yes, Jonathan wrote, “If we set aside Umbilical’s thorny thematics, we still have a superlative metal record, loud, as aggressive as it is palpably aggravated.”

Andrew Forell’s take:

At the end of his typically on point review of Umbilical, Dusted’s Jonathan Shaw pondered whether Thou singer Brian Funck might agree with his assertion that “pleasure isn’t what we need most from culture right now” and asked, “Should we listen to him?”. On the first point, there’s not much pleasure evident on Thou’s new album, which perversely or not appears to be this half year’s metal album de jour with even The Guardian unguarded in its praise. And yes, there are so many reasons right now when pleasure seems futile in the face of No Future. To the second point, a definite yes! Once you acclimatize to Funck’s voice, a dyspeptic shredder of a thing which renders his lyrics nigh indecipherable, the wall of sound coming at you is a caustic bath for the ears. The drums and bass a thumping foundry shaking and burning whilst the guitars surround you like a swarm of rusting chainsaws. Amidst this maelstrom, Funck screams as if his spleen is about to join his word splatter. Now, that’s a t-shirt I’d wear again without washing. Umbilical is a nasty, irate fury that I will be revisiting.

Uranium Club — Infants Under the Bulb (Static Shock)

Who picked it? Alex Johnson

Did we review it? Yes. Alex wrote, “these enigmatic Minneapolitans fling their conceptual heft in a new direction and expand their musical objectives without ceding much, if any, of their signature, careening tension.”

Patrick Masterson’s take:

When I first heard Infants Under the Bulb in the spring, it was with only a cursory commitment; I understood its tinny, furiously strummed contours, but the full thrust of its oddball conceptual heft passed me by. A second, much closer listen for this midyear exchange has proven far more rewarding, and while Alex pretty well nails what makes this record so interesting in his review, what I keep coming back to are the myriad voices across this record. I think core members Brendan Wells, Harry Wohl, Ian Stemper and Matt Stagner all take a turn behind the mic, though liner notes prove frustratingly (appropriately?) limited, and Molly Raben drives the four-part “Wall” sequence. A few points of order unite the Club and its associates — namely, all of them take pointed barbs at contemporary society in different ways, all of them play with noticeable tightness (even Raben in the New Age-y “Wall” songs), and none of them can sing. Musically, “Small Grey Man” might be an obvious single to that effect, but it’s the guitar licks in “Game Show,” “2-600-LULLABY” and “Abandoned by the Narrator” to which I keep returning. More than anything else in Alex’s review, what hits home hardest is very succinctly tucked away in its middle (my emphasis): Chorus of voices aside, Uranium Club has been and remains a great guitar band.

Waxahatchee — Tigers Blood (Anti-)

Who picked it? Christian Carey

Did we review it? Yes, Christian said, “Tigers Blood doesn’t have a weak cut on it. One imagines it will be in heavy rotation for many long after its release.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Tigers Blood starts out promisingly enough. On opening track “3 Sisters” it’s immediately evident that Katie Crutchfield has an intensely expressive voice, plus the skill to wield it with nuance. There’s plenty of space for her to emote, then when the song takes off, it feels well earned. From there, things start to feel too rote to fully engage. The band is clearly playing in the country-rock pocket, but there are no surprises to be found in the songwriting to capitalize on the promise of that opening song. Ultimately, it mostly ends up sounding a little hokey. A genuine shame, as I had high hopes coming into this one.

Whitelands — Night-bound Eyes Are Blind to the Day (Sonic Cathedral)

Did we review it? Yes, Ian said, “Right from the start, there’s a clarity and focus in the songs here that belies their sometimes diaphanous settings.”

Tim Clarke’s take:

Right from the opening blare of guitars, British quartet Whitelands nail a particular shoegaze aesthetic: Ride’s Going Blank Again. The six-strings are loud, but with enough delay and reverb to create a blurry wall of sound, while the rhythm section keeps things punchy to give the songs plenty of momentum. Can’t say there’s anything here that quite rivals the first wave of shoegazers who combined hallucinatory sonics with catchy songwriting, but Whitelands are clearly tapping into some inspiring sounds, which will hopefully mean their next release will have its own distinct personality. 

Winged Wheel — Big Hotel (12XU)

Who nominated it? Bryon Hayes

Did we review it? Yes, Bryon wrote, “No Island hinted at Winged Wheel’s ability to craft such a sonic space, but that record was merely an appetizer for the hefty dose of momentum that Big Hotel provides.”

Christian Carey’s take:

A collection of artists who also belong to other bands, Winged Wheel coheres far more fluidly than most “supergroups.” On their second recording, Big Hotel, the band recorded in the studio together rather than remotely collaborating as they did on 2022’s Big Island. The difference is palpable, particularly in the power and execution of the rhythm section, which now includes Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley. At the beginning of the recording, the one-two combo of the spacy and clangorous “Demonstrably False” and “Sleep Training,” on which Whitney Johnson supplies beguiling singing amid a raft of guitar textures. The songs tend to move directly into one another, underscoring their interconnectivity. Most of them stretch out a bit, clocking in at around the six-minute mark, but “Aren’t They All” and the album-closer “From Here Out Nothing Changes” are both under three minutes. The former is a bustling instrumental featuring oscillating riffs and urgently rendered and foregrounded percussion. The latter begins with a brief, disjunct, nasal wind solo and a discordant guitar duo, that rhythm section punching away. Johnson shares a brief, delicately delivered vocal, which then disappears into a concluding maelstrom.

Z-Ro—The Ghetto Gospel (One Deep Entertainment)

Who nominated it? Ray Garraty

Did we review it? No

Jonathan Shaw’s take: Much contemporary hip hop is lost on me, and The Ghetto Gospel doesn’t do much to convince me that I should be paying more attention. That judgment has little to do with the record’s sonic qualities, which I am in no competent position to evaluate closely; but I like the mix of late-1970s hard funk, R&B swooniness and occasional flashes of (yep) gospel’s dramatics. And Z-Ro’s flow and vocals are pretty great to groove on. His seamless, artful shifts into more conventional singing, especially at some tracks’ refrains, are deft and pleasurable. But the constant focus on money—having it is unassailable proof of virility, craft, power, self-worth; when one’s antagonist doesn’t have it, or doesn’t have as much of it, that confirms he’s a fool and a loser—is by turns tedious and sort of depressing. The just as constant self-aggrandizement, endemic in the genre, is so ever-present that it’s completely unconvincing. When I can tune out the lyrics’ content, The Ghetto Gospel is just fine. Patient, cool, smooth. When, inevitably, I begin paying attention to Z-Ro’s rhymes and their themes and figures, the record irritates me. If I had the savvy to place his performances of black masculinity in hip hop’s regionally or generically specific modalities, I might find them more engaging. But that would require plowing through a lot more music, much of it singing the praises of cash as an end in itself and celebrating “pimpin” as a variety of socially compelling activity. It ain’t for me.

[pupuyvs]

Words aren’t the easiest thing especially since she renders me speechless half the time (or dying of laughter) but omg yunjin is everything. Shes just so silly all the time like there is literally never a moment where she isnt being goofy asf and the high energy is just so infectious it makes me happy seeing her happy and having fun with the other fimmies.

Shes so pretty and her visuals are just amazing. Girly pulls off red, orange, black, brunette and blonde hair so well its crazy. (SHES BLONDE AGAIN RARGH) Yunjin also manages to be simultaneously sexy/hot and cute/adorable. Like at one point itll be like omg shes stunning wtf and the next itll be omg why is she such a loser. Her personality is lowkey one of the best parts abt her, shes seems so genuine and sweet and just an amazing person overall. But back to the loser thing istg she is the biggest loser idol ive seen so far, she really puts the HUH in Huh Yunjin 😅🤣 Actually her and kazuha in particular are the most loser duo in the whole group (Shinez my beloved 💕) i swear they only have one braincell when together but omg they both fit the loser in a hot body description so well. (Exactly my type lmao 🤭🤭) AND THEM IN GLASSES 😫😫 We love a hot nerdy loser gf moment

But aside from how entertaining and beautiful she is, she deserves kudos for even being here. Yunjin is literally (like every other idol) just a person with a dream. She could’ve given up when she got kicked off p48 and got all that hate just bc the public favored someone else at the time. (which btw her performance was great and those vocals 😮‍💨 she deserved the position) She could’ve stayed in america and finished business school but she got up and gave it another shot. I legit wrote about her im my english exam bro im not even joking. The question was something to do with celebrities being good role models or something and guess who got a fucking A? Me. And i hate english (mostly the writing) Its just the effect of Huh Yunjin 🤪

And for the record shes doing fucking amazing. She helps compose and produce not only songs for the group but also for her solo songs too. Shes got 4 solo songs in which shes done basically everything herself and theyre all very good. The lyrics are well written as well, each with their own meanings behind them and she can play multiple different instruments. Basically shes talented asf. Also i read somewhere shes in the top 10 kpop soloists with the highest spotify streams or monthly or something (dont come at me if this is inaccurate) and she hasnt even properly had a solo debut album or anything yet. Oh and the solo songs have had little to no promotion either so what does that say about how great she is?

Yunjin is so adorable and precious to me i have no idea how i got so attached but shes my ult bias without question.

Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Yunjin i love you 🥰

[I wrote this last night lmao dont judge. Its 540 words btw]

wow….i think u may be in love with yunjin 😭😭

[taylor-on-your-dash]

CLEAN TURNS 10 YEARS OLD!

Voice memo here;

“'Clean' I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date – it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, ‘Oh, I hope he’s doing well’. And nothing else. And you know how it is when you’re going through heartbreak. A heartbroken person is unlike any other person. Their time moves at a completely different pace than ours. It’s this mental, physical, emotional ache and feeling so conflicted. Nothing distracts you from it. Then time passes, and the more you live your life and create new habits, you get used to not having a text message every morning saying, ‘Hello, beautiful. Good morning.’ You get used to not calling someone at night to tell them how your day was. You replace these old habits with new habits, like texting your friends in a group chat all day, and planning fun dinner parties, and going out on adventures with your girlfriends, and then all of a sudden one day you’re in London and you realize you’ve been in the same place as your ex for two weeks and you’re fine. And you hope he’s fine. The first thought that came to my mind was – I’m finally clean.”

“'Clean' is the last song on the album for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it felt like the complication of this emotional process I’ve been going through for the last couple of years. You know, I feel like my personal life was really, really discussed, and criticized, and debated, and talked about to a point where it made me feel almost kind of tarnished, in a way. And the discussion wasn’t about music. It broke my heart that I had made an album that I was proud of, and I was touring the world, and playing sold-out stadiums, and still they managed to only want to talk about my personal life. At a certain point I felt a switch and it was at the end of recording this album that I began to feel like my life was mine again and my music was at the forefront again. I was living my life on my own terms and I really no longer cared what people were saying about me. That was when I started so see people talk less about the things that didn’t matter.”

“I had this metaphor in my head about being in this house, there’s been a drought but you feel like there’s a storm coming. Instead of trying to block out the storm you punch a hole in the roof and just let all the rain come in, and when you wake up in the morning, it’s washed away.”

[Imogen Heap] “We met at my studio in London. She had the bare bones of “Clean.” She had the lyric, the chorus and the chords. I thought it was brilliant.I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises, played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great. I knew she loved it. She said she loved it and her mum loved it. But I wasn’t sure it would be included on the album. But everyone felt it had something special. It came together really magically.”

Imogen's detailed blog entry about this songwriting session.

[Taylor about Imogen Heap] “The coolest thing about Imogen for me was that there was no one else in the studio. There was no assistant; there was no engineer. It was her doing everything.”

[From my writing of 1989 Timeline]

[lilac-udon]

long alien stage thought will be a rough summery of all videos spoilers

I'm very new to this, so information might be missed, very messy english i wrote it for myself blehhhhh

round 1

mizi and sua, an entry with the mystery of what alien stage is. I like the stage is much smaller compared to the Round 5,6. They did a great chorus to tie their score. How Sua was supposed to be shorter but on the stage, they stand at equal height( high heels?), fitting the plan that they want so sync together and letting the audience hard to pick one winner.

In additional comics, they did explain Sua's plan to let Mizi win, I was so confused about how Sua made it work, but I found it might be how Sua placed her mic very far away in some scenes. Sua and Ivan are the logical and top students, Sua should have won easily but also have the ability make it seem like she was so close to Mizi points but still lost like naturally. I always feel like as the poster child of the alien stage, they have big plans for Sua. However, in the actual videos, sadly we have so little about her, adding how it crushed Mizi , there isn't any additional song from mizi that talks more about Sua. Different from till, we see his perspective of mizi, and Ivan gives many contexts of the place they grew up, himself, and Till from their songs.

all in all, for sua, I felt that to balance the story they will let Sua use some shape or form, whether memory or other ways to fulfill her lack of involvement.

mizisua

I will talk about this video first out of order to continue Mizi and Sua's story. Mizi is treated like a favorite cat, whereas sua is treated like an actual pet and badly. I always like this storytelling of picking Mizi as the MC, she is the most like us, humans that are not under the abuse of alien. From an owner who took good care of her, she is innocent, which is not normal in alien stage environments, she is rare. From the official, we see Sua owner has many "children" pets, and I like how Ivan and Mizi who are treated more decently have their names on their arms, and Till and Sua on their necks, which is more degrading, and convenience Mizi has her hair dyed blue for alien stage, she was looking forward to it. and I like the symbolism of how it was cut in ALL IN

side note of the children Ivan and Sua are top and popular students, Mizi is good at sports, Till likes to compose and is talent with instruments(they added they want him to skip grad which I often think if he the youngest in his class), hyuna can mimic voice(?)and natural leader, luka is a genius at singing but has health problems.

round 2

I want till to sing rock pop inspire style music again… his song is just a huge "I like you mizi, please cheer up! " the song to me is till very hot headly shut his opponent and get what he wants, attention from mizi, to wake mizi up from misery. In till eyes, mizi is pure and beautiful, I saw someone stated it like this" till sees mizi as his god, a coping mechanism considering how much he's been abused. He knows mizi is out of reach but her existence is enough for him to keep going." I have a lot to say here, first, they grow up together around 10 years and it's weird to me how sided and feel like a fresh crush. Till really kept his distance, might be the face he subconsciously knows mizi is with sua so he always put himself as an admire position. His point of view is solely on mizi but not the entire mizi, like he don't know much as a whole. But I guess this is an abusive situation because Till is very focused on what he wants to see. From the new annverisy art we also see till is on a device that makes him focuses on playing instruments. I was thinking he might be train to do that due to pain, and that's why he is composing all the time. This behavior also greatly affects him to be very focused on the things that bring him joy, mizi, and music.(guess Back to the video, He was impatient and disregarded his opponent(another person he knew from 10+yr), maybe changed the song too? , at least it became a solo after mizi felt miserable. When his opponent finally sang , he smashed his guitar to catch mizi's attention but leads to himself getting beat off the stage. And it's important that he was unconscious until the very end of round 3

round 3

black sorrow is so moving, and I can feel the weight and despair Ivan is definitely my favorite character, but that might be also a flaw in the story because he is the only character who feels like is giving a complete story, everyone is still halfway but Ivan has a started to finish. And besides that there is so much details and mystery on him which confuse me are they going to do more with this character that already feels like have more story them the mc .Even though both songs are screaming "I love you till" it also is super throughout of why he is that way, how he met till and why he likes till, etc in the song. I don't blame his action for being weird because I feel like this should be the norm in alien stage setting, those children all live under trauma and like mizi to Till, till is Ivan's purpose in life. And is also sad Ivan has so maybe symbolism of seeking freedom but he still stay by till. noted, ivan is the creepy kid, much like Luka, but when he got more mature, he was made to be a perfect model. From the round 3 video, the quality goes up, and we can see Ivan never has a collar if so, it's green(You can compare it with the other two kids on the left, at least one of them are obviously showing red, but he is green

So my question is, why does he not have a collar? What I can think of, the collar does not working on him, it's always green. second, his owner give him the privilege of not wearing one. the late one is a theory I saw, saying the alien implanted the device into his neck. second mystery, why is this boy so good at opening keys or collar??? I saw that the theory is from the first shot of getting throwing off the building, he might have try to escape with all the kids etc but still get caught, this boy is built to escape

this part I think the creator confirmed (i might be wrong) that it was Ivan's doing to lead mizi till to the cave. I think it might have this scene of till chasing the flower crown may be Ivan POV , i was thinking till might be chasing mizi or mizi is call for help, (like maybe the flower crown can fly in this universe but? we already know it camera so maybe it real they can also fly lol) Why I say this is because till collar is red, so some people has speculated it might be a heart rate for changing color but I still like to think is more of emotion detecting. So till’s face might be in panic but it looks claim in ivan pov right now, and then after the spark in the eyes, Ivan falls in love bleh bleh bleh. My interpretation is he was still testing till at this point so he set up the dog alien. and he likes the spirit of Tills giving. And the second seance he broke till out and the rest is history.

Also till is asleep most of the song so I was guessing in the garden Ivan probably already openly and straightforwardly confessed to till before but till brushes it off. I am not sure about this one, because rather till awake or not it won't change much anyway, I just think it’s ironic, that this is probably a love song for till, but till missed most of it

can I also say I think Ivan rigged the game to at least let till not face Luka or mizi first, or else I think his luck is pretty good. Also Ivan’s stage is super fancy, which I also think because he got more sponsor

round 5

soooooooooooooo, I was always confused about this part, why is part 4 an opponent in a bathtub thing on the stage? then I have a theory that this is not on the stage but Luka has the authority to see the fallen opponent. So in theory even though they are pets, my hopeful thinking is aliens still won't randomly waste their body, and how the official said Luka's owners are making the perfect contestant, can I believe they are storing the bodies? Luka is a test baby, a clone or other test is a possibility, and Luka might know more due to his ower and being a previous winner. also, this is a far fetch one, but the hair looks short and black, not like his round 4 opponent of long and brown hair sooo

I really like this, Luka is spinning around Miz like he's the moon and she's the planet

the problem is this is Luka from are point first time on screen competing, but we know this round 5 is made for him, and many symbolisms of the moon. How Luka was the previous winner and how I speculated that mizi was the most normal of the group, she was at the lowest winning level he is mocking mizi in every way, how alike he sings like sua, how the lyric, this part of he showing how much his fans love him when he is singing giving mizi the whole world

next one, I think many have already pointed out, those guards are weirdly all human in size and shape, are they robots or…?

I do need to point out , the style greatly changed in this where, round 5,6 we all feel like there is a huge time skip. It might be just the art style change or really time passes a lot, and that not impossible to see ing how till get gig in between rounds 5 to 6, it might also be years due to alien years might be translated differently to human years. to sum up, the timeline is confusing, however, round 1,2,3,4 happen at a similar time due to seeing them all in pods with the same clothing, and till faint between round 2 and woke up at round 3

back to Mizisua video, like how I said Luka resembles moon, and hyuna often associated with the earth, this is probably a human-resistant train? and on the left corner, there's an earth sticker, it might be represent humans as a whole but also hyuna

top 3

this got me confused, ok so the setting is humans are too fragile, short-living , and maybe not as intelligent as aliens so are seen as pets. Even though alien has similar fashions and make idol culture of human. Alien stage is an occurring thing and quite a big thing in this universe? so I see it like horse betting? with a lot of gambling including that can events rise an alien wealth a lot ?

I have no idea about this image but some mention something about religion, alien stage has a lot about believe in god and such but I don't have much to say currently, have no further useful thoughts about this

All In

repeat again, how the owner looks all huger but the guards look stupidly human shape and small like a human??? Aren't there big efficient robots or aliens???

farfetched because this also might be a fashion thing but the military dog tag thing is extremely human culture? it has been 50 alien stage, consider luka age of 30, mizi age of 22 , for example, if will be around 5 years each alien stage apart it should be going on for 200+ years? of human adoption, this should be rare. but whatever, I also have a theory this guy is an old solder guard thing but hasn't been brainwashed that hard but this is very silly. But why are you so buff ok? you guys should be suffering with limited resources idk. Secret military for humans only because if aliens handle humans they will squish to death easily that's my stupid theory

So the thing about luka and hyuna, good toxic straight. Luka is obsessed with hyuna and conflict with her bother and her bother dies. I did wrote a theory of hyuna and her bother anniversary art of they might be testing which on is superior or something and luka knowing that get rid of her bother etc. the blue hand showing Luka’s bad health

I always question why hyuna let mizi join the mission( obviously for plot reason and she the mc), bc Mizi should be like cage canary, super unhelpful in this situation saving till and Ivan, she is emotionally and physically not very suitable for rescue missions. My thoughts,she beg to help Ivan till because they are her only friends left, or second reason , time might pass a lot in-between , she is now able to join , third, she knows the alien stage interior design which is helpful for them. I go with the time skip then plus everything above. I also feel like because the human resistance success once they got a bit cocky, I think might be a art design thing but just how little people accompany concern me

All in is the only song not a love song but more a self love song, saw someone point out the color in the song represents emotion which is a nice touch

round 6

Till leading first I always see is the opponent let you take a bit of advantage, also how the songs go, Ivan's part is mostly the following one, not the main. That's how I felt, I'm not good with music so forget what I wort

till looks miserable, I almost don't recognize him, maybe it's the style or the time jump, he looks mature. The stage design is beautiful don't get me wrong but with the rain and lighting, I'm just going to assume it's fake and muted, bc for a singing contest, this is really a natural disaster, we won't be hearing anything from the rain, and lighting, but it's dramatic though!

I'm honestly confused about this part, it a may or may not happen, but just pointing out that they tried to collar him but possibly drugged him in the end. There may be patron information that I didn't know because I'm very confused as to what the collar is for. Let owners know how their pets are feeling and determine their level of danger. or devices to soothe them? besides the white collar till is usually seen with choker-like things, is it the same as the collar or?

the part he sees young mizi is sad, this leads more of Mizi is a coping mechanism, crush too but in time thinking of her , and the positive part of her is the only way he can cop his pain

and there already dozens of theory and thoughts about the last part so I'm goanna end it here

sum up I was thinking so hard about how they will continue because everyone automatically see till isn't able to win Luka(it's true though) and I have no idea how it should continue because it will definitely not be a traditional round 7 due to till���s state. Also wonder how the aliens will do for having two incidents of contestant violence toward one another, and Ivan being the fan favorite probably will have more delay for the last round with the organizer needing to give a response at least to the aliens. (Was thinking they make a glass to block luka and till for stage 7, would be fun, also if you really want you can jump down the stage)Mizi and hyuna are in trouble. How the overall story is very Ivan-heavy, due to him having the fullest arc. Are we getting a hyuna and Luka duit ? I really don't know how, if till sings again, it will be SUA- 2 Mizi-2 Ivan-2 Luka1 hyuna-1 song , till is going to sing a third song in this order , which is more then mc , Mizi. Will the series end? at round 7 or it will go scifi and much more to balance the song? (probably not bc all the players are dead, my hopeful thinking though )

in conclusion, I want till to sing rock again

[anchorandrope]

I NEED YOUR SIBWAWC ANALYSIS IM BEGGING 😭😭😭

hi love,

okay, i wasn't planning to do this because i don't do analysis anymore (mainly because i suck at it) but since it wasn't the only ask i got, i'm going to try. obviously this is my interpretation, it doesn't mean that it's the only one etc etc.

Disclaimer: i took out the parts that are repeated. i will also add definitions of "obvious" things (so that non-native english speakers can better understand).

Context

first, before analysing the song, let's see what Louis had to say about it.

Written in the same few days as the last two songs. Dave [Gibson] turned up with this picture on his phone of the title ‘She is beauty we are world class’ it was written in the toilet mirror of a train. Felt like a weird place for such a poetic sentiment (Louis via twitter, Wednesday 16 November 2022)

Louis tweeted about all the songs on FITF on 16 November 2022 because there was a listening party for the album. If you check the order of the tweets you will see that he tweeted the songs in this order: [his top 3], high in california, the greatest, waoyf (x), btm (x), ftm, chicago, all this time, out of my system, headline (x), saturdays (x) (x) (x), silver tongues (x), sibwawc, common people (x), holding onto heartache, ttwlg. the same order as the album, only in the tweets he didn't talk about angels fly. so, we can deduce that sibwawc was written together with saturdays and silver tongues. these 3 songs were written by David Sneddon, Joseph Cross, Louis and Theo Hutchcraft and produced by Joseph himself.

On this song, She is Beauty We Are World Class, it’s a thought-provoking title I don’t, you know, I’ve got I’m not certain what it means to me I’ve got an idea but it’s one of those phrases that I think is open to interpretation. Now Dave Sneddon, who I wrote this with. Joe Cross and Theo as well, really mad story he got the train down to the to the writing camp and on the toilet… in the toilet on the train written on the mirror was “she is beauty” and then he got a picture of it and then below it in a slightly different colored pen so we can’t work out from the same person someone, looks like someone had finished it off and put “we are world class”. He just kind of came with his picture, he was like this is an interesting title and that’s where this song kind of came from and I kind of like that someone else wrote it. We don’t really necessarily know what it meant to them; we know what it means to us. That was that was an interesting moment I think this is where we said, “let’s really try and go all in on the dance-ier sound of things” because I kind of allude to it on like All This Time but like it’s not quite as like trancey as this is. Almost has that kind of DMA’s lift with it with the instrumental that comes in on the post chorus. This for whatever reason this is, like it’s my best mate’s favorite tune I do really like this song but I think, it’s another one of those songs it’s important for the record to give a different flavor yeah. (Louis via youtube - Tuesday 13 December 2022).

what we learn from this is that 1) the title DOES mean something to Louis, 2) his #bestmate loves the song *pretends to be shocked*, 3) he believes the song is important to the album in a lyrical and musical aspect 4) links the song to All This Time for its musical part (he said it on twitter too, he said att and sibwawc are tracey - we love this pair of sisters 😌).

I’ve always loved All This Time. Just feel like a feel good tune from the off. James had a great vision for this song, it also helps ‘she is beauty’ not sick out on its own @LlSTENlNG_PARTY (Louis via twitter, Wednesday 16 November 2022)

Title

For reference: beauty is a noun that means an attractive quality that gives pleasure to those who experience it or think about it, or a person who has this attractive quality (cambridge dictionary).

we know that louis believes that the title is divided into “she is beauty” on the one hand and “we are world class” on the other. here we have two subjects “she” and “we”. it's interesting, because if we want to talk about the beauty of a person who uses the “she” pronoun, it would be “she is beautiful” but, in this case, we are saying that “she” is THE beauty herself. then there is a “we” (2 or more people) who are not up to her standard or level of beauty. so, if “she” is the beauty herself and “we” are not at her standard, that means that “we” is not up to the beauty standard. that could be one interpretation, another could be that “she is beauty” is being used as an idiomatic expression where it's synonymous with “she is beautiful” and the “we” is the rest of the world. a phrase of love, contemplation and admiration. only a person truly blinded by love could claim that there is, in effect, one person who is above the beauty of the rest of the world. we can also think that “she” and “we” are replacing something. i mean that Louis uses the pronoun “she” to refer to a thing or person and the pronoun “we” to refer to things or people.

Verse 1

Conversation is currency

“currency” can be the money that is used in a particular country at a particular time or the state of being commonly known or accepted, or of being used in many places – according to the cambridge dictionary. so it could be “conversation is money” or “conversation is diffusion”. both cases make sense. Louis is a person who sometimes - literally - gets paid to talk. also, being a big-name international artist, it makes a lot of sense that he also says it in the form of “sometimes i have to talk to people who just want money”. and, of course, the conversation is diffusion, of what? information, facts, anecdotes, opinions, preferences, literally everything. in this interpretation, there is something that spreads as people speak out. i think Louis could be alluding to both meanings, but, personally, i think it speaks more to the fact that there is something that is spreading.

Shapes become a language

relating to the interpretations of the first sentence, if we keep talking about money, the shapes could respect numbers or mathematical symbols. if we talk about diffusion, we could say that there are shapes that are being related to each other and that take on meaning.

Square eyes and sunglasses

we could say that square eyes is an idiomatic expression used to refer to when a person consumes a lot of media, especially tv. (source: cambridge dictionary). sunglasses cover the eyes, so we could say that this person, who consumes a lot of media, wants to hide it. If we continue talking about money, we can say that there is someone who consumes or is inside the media who wants to hide and if we talk about diffusion, we can say that there is a group of people who receive a lot of information and that is why they decide not to take it all, either because they like it or because they cannot.

Finding faces in the trees

this clearly alludes to pareidolia. if we continue with the interpretation of money, we can say that there is someone who thinks they are finding their way out but clearly they are not. if we talk about diffusion, we can think that there are one or more people who see things that are not real.

Fabricated fairytales

this is a breaking point for me because up to this point the money interpretation (as i call it hehe) made sense but for me this lyric breaks with that. in the money interpretation, i imagined that Louis was talking about his situation with people who are higher up than him in terms of power. Louis could have been saying that there are people in the media who are trying to hide and escape of a situation (which we don't know, but we can intuit that it has to do with him, obviously), but this lyric makes me believe that he's not talking about people with more power, but with less. if the song is from Louis’ point of view, that means that louis SEES and IS AWARE of lies that are spread. it is hyper-ultra-super-mega cool that he said FAIRYTALES !!!! fairytales have a purpose and that is ✨pleasing young people✨ as know as ✨ Louis’ target audience✨

so far Louis is telling us that there are fabricated fairytales that are being diffusing to generate money, and that the square eyes consume them and on that basis hide what they don't want to see, and then find things where there aren't any. gotcha.

Bring a new world to life

discarding the money interpretation, we can say that this lyric means that someone or something is able to change the situation and bring a new world into reality.

Sit down, sit down in the space and time

this lyric is very abstract and complex to me. for me it speaks of a protest in a specific space and time where Louis is not going to leave until he is heard.

Chorus

She is beauty

and here comes the question… who the hell is “she”? she is the lies, dear. lies are beautiful, who are we going to fool? if most people would rather believe things they know deep down are false and deny reality than accept it. (note that it's not “they” it's “she” so it's a particular lie).

And we are world class (woah-oh-oh)

okay, but who the hell is “we”? the world, sweetheart. the whole world (generalising) prefers to live in lies.

Forever

this is something that has always been repeated (its a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy baby).

We'll let the feeling last

the world is going to let that feeling last as long as it can, until the lie is unsustainable.

Verse 2

Escape the inevitable

as i said, lies are a ticking time bomb as they all, sooner or later, come to light. so people will always try to escape the “bomb” but it's impossible.

Fade into light

here he talks about how dark lies can be as they fade into the light (truth).

Soak up the empathy

here Louis is asking one or more people to fucking empathise with him. to put themselves in his fucking shoes or imagine what he is going through.

'Cause I'm with you tonight

it doesn't matter if you fell for the lie, i'm with you

Are we one, or are we two?

do we think the same or do we think differently?

Are we me, or are we you?

are we looking at the situation from my point of view or from yours?

Has it been all this before?

Ii you have already seen this happen, why do you still not realise it?

Do you see what I see?

do you understand now?

Bridge

Surrounded by lights (X6)

Surrounded, surrounded

Surrounded, surrounded by-

this means two things to me: 1) he is surrounded by the truth because it's his fucking life and 2) Louis is always surrounded by cameras, tv studio lights, radios, interviews, etc. but more importantly, he's surrounded by our lights because the moment he sees the most lights is at the shows, thousands of phones with their torches on him.

special mention to Louis who put rainbow lights HIMSELF in his show during sibwawc since otb is not in the setlist (which is when he was literally surrounded by rainbow lights thanks to the fan project of the fans).

To conclude

the song talks, in MY opinion about closeting and its relationship with the general public and the fans. i'm not saying that Louis dedicated a song to antis saying that they fell for the lie because they are shit, no. i'm saying that the media induces these lies in our society and that the target audiences of the lie buy into them because they are innocent.

if you have finished reading this, i thank you for your time and hope you found my attempt at explanation helpful. i would like to read other analyses so if you have personal interpretations or know of other posts: send me an ask <3

[meraki-yao]

RWRB Musical Ramble Part 1: Motifs

Ok as someone whose love for acting and performing started with musicals, I’m obsessed with this idea of an RWRB musical from @pippin-katz and can’t stop thinking about it, to the point where I already wrote three parts in the span of two hours and I actually have work to do, this is part one of God knows how many

I’m not well-versed enough in music to know if this is workable, but something I really enjoy in musical theatre or film music is motifs, and Alex and Henry can have different musical motifs for different parts of their trajectory:

(For those who don’t know, a motif is a recurring idea in a piece of artwork, and in musical theatre, it’s a repeating melody with a specific idea that is either sung or played or a repeating lyric. Think the melody of “He told me that the Life of my dreams” from We Don’t Talk about Bruno in Encanto, or “I am not throwing away my shot” from Hamilton. The Youtube channels Sideways and Howard Ho do amazing video essays on the subject matter, and Jorge Herrans, who is currently writing Epic the Musical, shares a lot of how he works these repeating themes into his music. It’s fascinating.)

They both have a love motif that when put together is one harmony but stands on its own as a melody, maybe even in different instruments. Henry’s would definitely be a piano but I’m not sure about Alex. A guitar maybe? The combined harmony can be the song they dance to in the V&A, and the “History, huh?” moment. It’d be beautiful.

Alex’s political ambitions maybe can be represented by somehow a cross between American marching band music and Latin music (I’m not sure if that would work though but, huh), maybe the Marching band more when he wants to do things but isn’t allowed (so the argument with Ellen) and the Latin music more present when he’s doing the work like on the campaign trail, maybe an almost lullaby version when he talks to Henry about wanting to help people after their Paris Love Making

Henry’s responsibilities from the crown could be strings and brass, something heavy and traditional

We can have bits of Henry’s love motif sprinkled in the beginning since Henry’s already halfway in love, but be very present in the New Years Kiss scene

So when Alex leaves Paris, basically the scene of him on the plane in the movie, his love motif plays lightly because (at least from my understanding) that’s when he’s falling in love

And when Alex tries to confess to Henry, so the lake scene, Alex’s love motif plays louder and louder, and then it stops when Henry jumps into the lake (however that can be translated on stage), and then when we switch to Henry’s perspective after he comes out of the lake, we heard a slowly, quieter version of his love motif, but it’s cut off by the crown motif

But when they confront the king, it’s the reverse: the crown motif is heard, maybe even what the king is singing to, but then gets drowned out by the sounds/ singing of the protestors, and then their love harmony is on full blast and they’re singing the pre-chorus of it to each other (the kiss at the window), then the chorus when they walk out to the balcony to greet the crowd

There’s probably more that can be expressed like this but this is all I can think of at the moment

Part 2 / Part 3

[annonniiiiieeeee]

Hey, I’ve actually got a few questions to ask you as you’re a writer, so if you’re alright with answering them? But it’s alright if you aren’t, I’m just curious! ^w^

What inspired you to write a Rise!Leosagi fic?

What was your favorite scene to especially write for A World of Samurais and Ninjas?

And -

Do you listen to music when you write? If so, is it the songs from the playlist you put together for the story, or is it songs that get you into a certain mood for writing?

It’s not a problem at all.

I fell in love with rottmnt. I saw people talking about the movie and I’ve always loved animation so I figured I’d watch it and I got hooked. I love all the characters and their relationships. I love how much it focuses on familia love.

Leo was (obviously) my favorite.

As I went down the rabbit whole that is joking a fandom I saw Usagi’s name popped up and I love doing deep dives and research. This lead to me watching tmnt 2003 episodes for context and deep diving into the Usagi comics lore. I really love the relationship they had in 2003 and wanted more of it but in a universe I was more familiar with. So I went out to find it.

And while there are great leosagi stories in the community both of 2003 variety and of Leo x Yuichi, nothing really hit exactly what I was looking for.

Mind you we would not be here with out “The Rabbit Has Always Loved The Turtle” by HailSam (if someone has their tumblr let me know) and the “The Tortoise and the Hare” series by @bluepeachstudios their stories really had me falling in love with this ship.

I had read and seen plenty what if Leo was thrown into cuz dimension instead of escaping the prison dimension and was like what if. I watching Inuyasha and played Pokémon legends of arceus and something about putting a modern day person in feudal Japan has always been fun for me. So I took inspiration and I wrote.

I have experience helping my friend set up dnd coma pins and making mini intro coma pins for kids who are just learning how to play. And I love world building so it was a fun exercise in my skills. I got to learn more about feudal Japan, the turtles and Usagi. It’s was really fun for me.

I write kinda like how a movie is filmed. I would write what ever scene was in my head at that moment and then figure out how to build up to it. At first I was just playing around. I wrote the flower crown scene first followed by Leo revealing his powers and then the confession and I realized I was to far in not to make it a story. I started laying out all the prices and planing it all out. I knew the ending I wanted right away and now it was just putting the prices together. I also knew I wanted to honor rise and focus on the beautiful family relationships they gave us and build them which is why you get so many chapters with the rise family.

My favorite scenes are probably Usagi seeing leo under the tree (AWoSaN 8) as it is what started this madness. But I also love their confession (AWoSaN 12) and gift exchange (AWoSaN14)

I am also very proud of some of my horror scenes the Krang’s almost escape in (AWoSaN 9) Shingen’s death (TWoFFaF 1) and I am very proud of Hikiji’s backstory as I already have it written but you will have to wait for that.

I actually don’t listen to music while writing. I can do it when I’m sorry boarding or imagine the scenes but not when I’m actually writing. My brain hooks on the the noise around me and then I can’t write or I’m writing the song lyrics. I will listen to instrumental music when editing as long as I don’t know the words to the song. My brain will start sing along to the instrumental and then we’re back to the original problem. So normally it’s me, my thoughts, and my dog who is not happy that I’m writing and instead of petting him

I listen to the playlist I made when I need ideas or need to get into the mood to write/story board. That and to pick out chapter titles.

In conclusion I have the worst case of brain rot and you all get to benefit from my torture.

[n0quart3r]

1) Top 5 Zep songs

2) Top 5 most underrated Zep songs

3) Top 5 Jimmy eras

With explanations! Hey, you said you were bored 😝

hello!! im gonna do my best on the explanations because i suck at explaining everything 😂

1) no quarter, when the levee breaks, the song remains the same, heartbreaker, the rover

no quarter: the song in its entirety is an absolute fucking masterpiece, but a few of my favorite things about it is THE riff, organ solo, guitar solo, and robert’s vocals towards the end. it is such a powerful song in my opinion and it’s my favorite hehe

when the levee breaks: i remember when i first listened to this song, and i was just amazed. the drums are so catchy like??? AH it’s what makes the song so special y’know? and the harmonica parts, the guitar.. THE GUITAR! just fucking beautiful. i also love how it ends haha

the song remains the same: literally a song i can just dance to, it’s so happy and upbeat and my favorite lyric is “california sunlight, sweet calcutta rain, honolulu starbright, the song remains the same…” lol it’s great. this song is a 10283727289/10 😊

heartbreaker: once again, THE riff, that swinging bass, so fucking groovy i love it. and of course the iconic guitar solo in this song, no other instruments, just the guitar.. robert’s vocals are so sexy too HAHA

the rover: one of my favorites off of PG, i love how bonzo’s drums start off the song in the beginning and then jimmy’s guitar just comes in.. fucking magical. the guitar throughout the song is like my favorite thing ever, it sounds so good. i love this song so so so so much 😍

2) white summer/black mountain side, traveling riverside blues, sugar mama, for your life, the crunge

white summer/black mountain side: the danelectro. the fucking danelectro. when jimmy performed this song live at RAH 1970 he just seemed so into it, like he was in some sort of trance almost (i mean he seemed like that for every song he performed LMAO) he put his whole heart and soul into this song, it’s so beautiful like.. the vibes i get from it as well.. it’s very mellow but happy. it’s hard to explain i just really enjoy listening to it

traveling riverside blues: squeeze my lemon till the juice runs down my leg.. squeeze it so hard i fall right out of bed 😂 lol but this is my favorite off of coda, the slide guitar is very catchy and the music video for this song is great haha.. didn’t know it even existed till a while ago, i always have to go back and watch it because of something (not jimmy, not him at all..)

sugar mama: i first heard this song on here actually, someone posted it (forgot who😅) and i remember i couldn’t stop listening to it for a little while, i was obsessed. i haven’t listened to it lately but i should i miss it haha. it’s on coda (deluxe edition) and if you haven’t heard it yet, please give it a listen it’s soooo good and for what? my favorite thing is the drums and guitar, how they just work together, y’know.. it’s great

for your life: is this song even underrated? not sure lol but i like it. i don’t know why, but i love robert’s voice in this.. and jimmy’s lil guitar riff haha

the crunge: gonna be appreciating jonesy a lot in this one.. cause SYNTHS, BASS, HELLO?? perfection. he ate this song up😍 it’s definitely different from any other song they wrote, but that’s why i love it.. it’s so fun to listen to. i cannot get enough of the synths. cannot get enough of bbg’s talented, sexy ass😏 also the ending is funny, “where’s that confounded bridge?” so iconic

3) i apologize this post is so goddamn long but i really wanted to answer this ask lol. but i think im gonna put pictures of my fav jimmy eras in this part

hot damn.. long haired, princess pagey era. isn’t this everyone’s favorite jimmy era? cause like i cannot with how pretty he looks. he’s got such a sweet, soft face 🥺 ugh my top favorite for sure

BEARD. BEARD. BEARD.

he looked so sexy with the beard, but also still looked absolutely adorable too at times. i need him LMAO he’s perfect

erm.. THIS! his hair, jesus christ help me.. he looks so good i could cry 😩 also his face started to mature a bit during this time as well, which made him look EVEN MORE handsome (also.. ass in the last gif)

75.

do i even need to explain myself here?

long hair is back.. beautiful face.. 🤭

yardbean jimmy! he’s such a baby i love him i love him i love him i love him 🫶 i wanna just kiss him, n hug him, n hold him ☹️ sweet boy

whew! this was probably the longest post i’ve made ever, especially for an ask.. it’s been an hour LMAO but i hope my explanations were.. understandable, and made sense LOL. thank you @lzep for the ask! love ya❤️

[because-she-goes]

sentimental shit

I was 15 when self titled came out. A girl in my high school was a massive ‘75 fan and would talk about them at our lunch table. I don’t really remember hearing this album for the first time, but just knew I loved it. Kinda like it was programmed into my brain from some other being.

I was 18 when ILIWYS came out and that album I do have clear memories of. Waking up at 6am, driving to school and listening to A Change of Heart for the first time and having my whole world change around me. Then, Love Me, UGH!, Somebody Else and The Sound being all on the radio here in America. I remember NYC pride that year and Loving Someone being played seemingly 24/7. I remember She Lays Down and Nana making me cry on the first listen. Then listening to the instrumentals to help me feel a bit better. I remember being in awe of Matty’s writing ability, George’s production, Ross and Adam just as humans and how their work stood out so clearly among the bright, 80s synths.

For ABIIOR, I was now 20. A college student fully invested in this band, their wellbeing as individuals, their friendship, their romantic relationships the whole 9. I remember reading the preview articles from NME and Pitchfork saying how Matty was clean and sober. I remember watching their first shows back on youtube and seeing Matty cry during Robbers because it was the first time in 5 years he heard the crowd yelling the words back to him properly and while sober. I remember hearing How To Draw / Petrichor and losing my mind over them taking an iliwys song that wasn’t really released and now revamping it. I remember the treadmill dance, the music videos, the easter eggs, the day Give Yourself a Try dropped and the youtube comments saying how in-love everyone was w/ the new sound. I remember listening to TOOTIME as I wrote my final essays.

For Notes, I was 22. It came out the year I graduated college and I can recall preordering the neon green vinyl for myself as a birthday present/graduation gift. I studied environmental politics at school so to see this band I’ve loved now take steps at their live shows to educate the masses about the climate (before everything went to shit) and also use all cardboard packaging for the shipping of the vinyl so it could be recycled later was incredible I remember being on vacation and then coming home to see it in the mail, unwrapping it like I was unearthing an ancient jewel. I remember solely listening to Notes that whole summer snd thinking about George and how he should’ve been nominated for a Grammy or Brit for Producer of the Year for that album. I remember being so happy that it was an album of mostly instrumentals as they are almost always my favorites. Even now, I will put it on during chores or studying or writing. It is by a mile, my favorite of theirs so far.

As for BFIAFL, my clearest memory from the roll-out was hearing that it was going to be released within a week of a Taylor Swift and an Arctic Monkeys album. I remember listening to the Taylor album fir the first few days until BFIAFL and then it was like no other music existed. I listened to the new opening track in a half-shock, half amazement. I loved the old one, but could see how it was out of date a bit and how fucking beautiful the new one was (it still makes me cry whenever I listen to it). I loved how honest Matty was about everything, how direct he was and how he respected us enough as fans to address things head-on. I remember those VEVO videos and watching the Oh Caroline one on a loop. I remember crying when I heard the last line of Part of the Band about Matty’s sobriety. I remember watching the video for Happiness like it was a presidential address, eyes glued to my laptop in a trance. I listened to Wintering on Christmas morning and the whole 2 weeks surrounding it daily.

All in all, this band has been with me for a fucking decade of my life and I am so thankful to have these albums as bookends and markers to each period of my life. As Matty said in an interview once, “theres nothing else like this for me in my life” and for that special connection to their music, I will never be able to thank them enough. I love them.

[burins]

20 Questions for fic writers!

@froizetta tagged me ages ago and i've been picking away at this as my arm allows! thank you :D

putting these below a cut because this ended up quite long.

How many works do you have on AO3?

67... not including some older stuff I orphaned. total (including the orphans and 2 fics i put on an alt) is 78! i've been on ao3 for 12 years, which is a frightening number to contend with.

What’s your total A03 word count? 304,059 (half of which was written last year....)

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently mostly DCU and subfandoms, but once a year I do Secret Samol for Friends at the Table my beloved.

What are your top five fics by kudos?

unfurl - DC, Superbat with bonus Timkon, 7.4k

Everyone loves a sex comedy (including me– there's another in my top 5 fics.) This one came about bc I wanted to come up with a shape for Clark's junk that wasn't your standard tentacle.

2. mission parameters - DC, Superbat, 33k

Alien fake dating! This was the first fic I ever intentionally posted chapter by chapter instead of all at once and I had so much fun seeing people's responses come in week to week. Also, this fic started as an excuse to write them fighting about Clark getting evicted and.... REALLY spiraled from there.

3. talk about all the good things (and the bad things) - MDZS/CQL, Wangxian, 6.3k

The second sex comedy! I just really think that "every day is every day" is a beautiful sentiment and not perhaps a feasible production if you are having Wangxian levels of sex on the regular. Plus a porn coda because, out of spite, I wanted to write Lan Wangji as a sub.

4. can I look the other way - MDZS/CQL, Wangxian, 2.7k

DEEPLY tropey Wangxian misunderstandings. The title for this one came from Westerman's "Think I'll Stay," which never ceases to give me post-canon Wei Wuxian emotions. This is the much much much lighter version of the story I'll never write about Wei Wuxian's probable mental state after the end of CQL.

5. everybody says - DC, Superbat, 2.8k

This was for Bruce Wayne Week using the prompts "inconvenient soulmate reveal" and "Bruce gets kidnapped," which I had great fun shoehorning into under three thousand words.

What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

lololol. i've written two separate fics where one member of the pairing kills the other onscreen! so probably one of those. whetstone (the edeleth major character death) i think wins out because the murder, while deeply romantic in my opinion, doesn't actually happen in canon. (while samot doesn't directly stab samothes in fatt canon he sure is instrumental in it happening!)

What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

this is the harder question! i write a lot of fic tagged "hopeful ending" and "ambiguous/open ending." i struggle with an unequivocal HEA! for a long time i struggled to write endings at all, and so i wrote mostly vignettes that just sort of faded out. i tell myself this is because life doesn't tie up neatly, and so neither do my stories, but also i am just bad at writing endings. probably one of my wangxian fics, tbh... i think give it all for a taste (sex pollen) or my remix fic (all the singing in the tops of the trees) have really sweet, happy endings.

Do you get hate on your fic?

I've never gotten actual hate directed at me! I got a kind of shitty comment on everything is new from someone who really hated that i had written a knightfall fic in which bruce pushed people away, but i think i've come out pretty lucky!

Do you write smut?

yes.

Do you write crossovers?

i've never written a crossover in which characters from different universes interact, but i did write a very long locked tomb/mdzs fusion!

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not to my knowledge! i don't think my stuff is popular or long enough for most people to bother lol. like, love and light, idk if my 30k fake dating fic that was also a trojan horse for me to talk about class and oppression and the sometime futility of individual action in the face of systemic injustice is going to do numbers on wattpad? maybe i'm underestimating wattpad.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! itsuki_minatsu did an amazing mandarin translation of take a pic, strike a pose. i wish i read enough (any) mandarin to be able to see how they did the group chats bc i love seeing how puns and jokes get translated! shoutout to translators.

Have you ever co-written a fic?

only for OCs! but god did we write a lot of fic about RP OCs, most of which never made it onto the ol' ao3. i miss them :')

What‘s your all-time favourite ship?

oh god. this is like asking a favorite child and also DEEPLY subject to recency bias. we've been rewatching nine's season of doctor who and i've been getting smacked in the face by the absolute nightmare energies of nine/rose recently. nine treats every man rose looks at like a stray dog she brought home that's pissed on the carpet. for their first date he takes her to watch the destruction of everything she's ever known!! she completely abandons her entire life to be with him! every other episode they are tearfully trying to die for each other and also nine is the most heinous bitch you've ever met <3

What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

hm... i'm not sure! i'm trying not to say "anything long" right now. my arm is doing better than it was at the beginning of the month but it's not up to longfic or really writing for more than about 25 minutes at a time. so it goes!

What’s your writing strengths?

individual scenes and character studies, imo! i am quite good at setting a scene and creating an atmosphere. also (i think) dialogue. i'd better be good at dialogue, since i've been doing the "rehearse scenes in the mirror with your characters" thing since i was about 12.

What’s your writing weakness?

plot! absolutely absolutely plot. i really struggle to plan out What Happens Next and how to get from point A to point B. this is almost entirely due to lack of practice; before 2020 i'd never written anything longer than about 6k, and never finished anything with an extended plot. also this is just something that writing endless amounts of fic is not actually the best tool to learn, because i'll always have the existing plot scaffolding of canon instead of really having to flex my plot-building muscles.

also action scenes, but is there anyone who doesn't struggle with those? sounds fake.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

I wouldn't personally do it because I do not actually speak any other languages besides some pretty slipshod German! and nothing is more jarring than reading something and being like "that is NOT right." I don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as the dialogue is actually correct both linguistically and character-wise, but I'd need a very strong plot/character reason to do it, and also an assist from someone who did speak the language!

i also think English-language fandom has a tendency to toss in other languages to like, prove a character's either exoticism (as in a Latine character randomly dropping in Spanish) or skill (as in a white character suddenly sprinkling Thai in an otherwise English sentence) and I think that can be pretty shitty depending on context. but both of those are writing pitfalls that you can fall into without ever using the language!

First fandom you wrote for?

Warrior Cats! I read some of it out on Staircast :) It was honestly pretty good for being written by a 10- or 11-year old.

Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

I couldn't answer this question the last time I got asked and I'm struggling again! I think this one really suffers from recency bias. right now, for instance, i'm deeply enamored of my secret samol which will go up next week! but that feels like cheating. i think i shouted out a lot of my faves already, though.

tagging: anyone who wants to do this, but especially @try-set-me-on-fire and @timetoboldlygo!

[avengers-rule103]

Rating the songs from RUSH! because everyone's doing it, it looks like fun, and i'm a sheep 🤷‍♀️

OWN MY MIND: 10/10 starting off with an absolute banger!!! something i love about måneskin is that sooo many of their songs have such amazing and strong energy and feeling behind them that you just want to scream them out and this is one of those!!

GOSSIP: 7/10 I do really like this song, the chorus has been stuck in my head since i first heard it which is always a great sign, but now that we have the rest of the album it's definitely a tad lower on my list.

TIMEZONE: 10/10 okay here's the thing, i fully understand that this song is talking about his girlfriend and being back in italy with her... i get it. buuut i live in australia soo the whole "the only thing that keeps us apart is a diffeent timezone" really struck cause like... it's true... kind of lol.

BLA BLA BLA: 5/10 i'm sorryyyyy!! i get this song is supposed to be funny, i get it, i swear, buut it's just not for me. i'm gonna keep listening to it in the hopes it'll grow on me but for right now... yeah.

BABY SAID: 9/10 i love this song, i love what it's about, i love that it's so clear he's trying to get to know her better and she is just not having it because they do not want the same thing, it's really well done and a very relatable experience!

GASOLINE: 10/10 i listened to this song many many many times through live performances and the entire time i've been so curious and excited for what the studio version was gonna sound like and i was so not disappointed at all. this is another song that you just want to scream and put your entire chest into it. love it!

FEEL: 9/10 this song is sexy af to me, it makes me want to... do.... things *cough cough* blue jeans and leather look great on people, but there really are some people where that shit just looks better on the floor, ya know?

DON'T WANNA SLEEP: 10/10 because I RELATE TO THIS SO FUCKING HARD OH MY GOD. another absolute banger!

KOOL KIDS: 4/10 how many of y'all absolutely hate me right now? this song just isn't for me, like with bla bla bla i'm gonna keep listening to it in the hopes it'll grow on me but if i'm being honest... i don't think it is.

IF NOT FOR YOU: 10/10 i'm a ballad hoe my guys, and this song is beautiful. it's so fucking beautiful. if someone wrote a song like this about me i would cry and melt and just never ever be the same again.

READ YOUR DIARY: 6/10: it's fun, it's a bop, but it's not a fave, i don't have much else to say about it tbh.

MARK CHAPMAN: 7/10 i can't reeally rate this one or any of the songs in italian fairly because i don't speak a word of italian, i know it's about a celebrity and a stalker from the little "storyline" at the bottom of spotify and that's it, the instruments were fun, it was a bop, damiano sounds great even though i have no idea what he's saying. yeah.

LA FINE: 8/10 it's so much fun, i did read the translated lyrics back when it was first released and since then i've forgotten and i can't be bothered to look them up again for this but it's great, i love it.

IL DONO DELLA VITA: 7/10 this song made me feel really emotional even though again, gotta look up the translated lyrics. but of course it's great.

MAMMA MIA: 9/10 this song hits in the right spot and if i could explain to you why this one hits but bla bla bla doesn't, i would... but i don't know, so i can't. it's fun, it's partially about self expression and only trying to be yourself and having other people look down on you for it and partially about eating someone out and ya know...why not?

SUPERMODEL: 9/10 another really fun one, i think with songs like this and mamma mia, gasoline, ect, seeing it performed live (for me it was *live* through youtube, i'm sure seeing them in person would hit waayy different) just adds another level. also the lyric "she'll never love you, you just look a bit like her dad" absolutely brutal and i love it.

THE LONELIEST: 10/10 yet another one that you just want to put on full blast and scream away the feelings and the pain and everything until your chest hurts. this song is heartbreaking and beautiful and i relate to it a lot. i did also see the performance they did of this not too long after damiano's grandfather passed away, and my grandfather's passing is the reason i relate to it so seeing him just kind of breakdown in the middle... i understood and just really wanted to give him a hug.

and just a little parting note, did anyone else notice juuust how much cocaine was mentioned since what happened at eurovision? i just thought it was funny. he's really holding a grudge over that, which is understandable but still funny. 😅

[trans-xianxian]

sage! also orchid and mahonia. btw do you have a chenqing keychain charm or am I thinking of someone else?

sage ⇢ what ‘medium’ of art (poetry, music, fiction, paintings, statues etc.) is the most touching to you? why do you think that is?:

I think that music is the kind of art that touches my soul the most, tho visual art is probably what inspires my Own visual art the most and writing like poetry and stories in any form can have profound lasting affects myself as a person (like there's characters that I will just always take with me forever and who helped me through times in my life as silly as that sounds) and writing is one of the ways I am most easily able to get things out of me and express specific emotions and experiences but there's nothing that makes me feel quite like music does and there's nothing that connects me to other ppl like music does. music is one of the things that connects me most to one of my best friends and is such a special cornerstone of our relationship. there is nothing in the world like creating music w other ppl even if you are just singing in the kitchen with your best friend. there's that one quote abt humans always making music and how in the bad times we will be singing about the bad times and like yeah. Yeah. my mom always played a lot of music growing up and my dad used to play the guitar w me and my sister sang me to sleep when I was little so I just think it's always been a big part of my life and I think choir is one of the only reasons I got through middle school lmao. anyway there's just nothing like hearing a song and it filling your whole body hope this helps

orchid ⇢ what’s a song you consider to be perfect?:

CANDY BY THE BLASTING COMPANY it is such a beautiful song both lyrically, instrumentally, and melody wise. I still get chills every time I listen to it and everyone I've ever shown it to regardless of their usual music taste has thought it was beautiful. the ending especially makes me akshmcuakshyaijsj. its also really fun and lovely to sing! their other song old summer reckoning is very beautiful as well (it reminds me of wei wuxian and wen qing lmao). they're the band that did the music for over the garden wall if you ever watched it!

mahonia ⇢ what place, thing, activity inspires you most and how do you express yourself when it does?:

well obviously stories inspire me to make things.. I make my little drawings and I write my little posts about my favorite little guys. but one of the driving forces for me to make art Not related to media is just experiencing a strong emotion esp about a specific experience or person and I like to express it w poetry and visual art and combining those two things when I can. I made this piece after one of my rats died (I was having an already terrible week but I don't remember why lmao) and after coming to the vet with me my best friend came back to my apartment and helped me clean my disgusting room and washed all of my dishes for me and it was just such a profound act of love I had to get it out of my body. I have another poem I wrote that I haven't made art for yet after my dad took care of me after top surgery. I guess rlly what inspires me most is love for other ppl and things as cheesy as that sounds

also yes I do have a chenqing keychain!! it's a tiny replica of the flute and then I got a Different keychain that was the little charm on it and put them together hehe