#made it after spirit tracks because machines n stuff

[shadowlinktheshadow]

What if

What if steampunk post spirit tracks?

[tommodirection]

Five Minutes

Niall Horan x Reader

Warnings: Swearing, angst, jealousy

Word count: 1.5k

Masterlist:

A/N: Heylo! This was requested! I don’t know if they want me to say their username, so I won’t, but yeah! I hope you enjoy!

—

“No, Niall! This isn’t fucking okay!” You hissed, annoyed with your boyfriend of three years.

“I’m not going to fucking enjoy either! I don’t have any fucking control over this!” He said, raising his voice as he paced.

“Yes, you fucking do! You can call them, and tell them you aren’t going to do it!” You yelled back, slamming your hand on the table.

“And lose my fucking job? You’re being unreasonable!” He collapsed on the couch, grumbling in frustration.

“Unreasonable?” You questioned, scoffin, “I’m sorry if I’m pissed that this is the fifth PR relationship they’ve wanted you to be in since we started dating! Sorry if I’m sick and tired of having to watch you go around a kiss other girls for months at a time and pretend to be in love with them! I hate having to have you come home smelling like their perfume! So don’t fucking start with unreasonable!” You had snapped.

You had never gotten into an argument over his career, and you had never gotten into an argument where both of you had yelled. This was a first.

You were just tired. You had been in a relationship for three fucking years now. At first, you had agreed to keep it a secret, wanting to live out the honeymoon phase in peace, but the first year passed, and Niall still wanted to keep it a secret. Then two, and now three. It had made you feel as though he was ashamed of you.

His management had started having him start public relationships, trying to avoid suspicion of him seeing someone. The first two, you hadn’t minded, both being in the first year of you dating, but the other two pushed you closer to the edge, this one shoved you off.

His face softened at your confession, he looked as though he was about to speak, but your ringtone cut him off. You grabbed it out of your purse, swearing under your breath. It was your boss. You let it continue ringing, and she had texted you immediately after.

Joana: Need you to come in today. Gina called in sick.

You let out a huff, feeling Niall’s eyes on you. You pinched the bridge of your nose, composing yourself quickly. You were already dressed, planning on going out with Niall, but that crashed and burned. You slipped on your tennis shoes, not caring about the dress code at the moment.

“Work needs me,” you grumbled, grabbing your purse before rushing out the shared apartment door, not letting Niall say anything.

You sped walked to your car, slamming the door when you got in.

As you drove, the previous relationships Niall had to be in, crossed through your head. First was Florence Pugh, a darling girl, but her management required obsessive amounts of PDA. Then, a girl that Niall had known since they were young, something that bugged you just because of jealousy, it was your deadly sin. After her, was an ex of his, his management wanted to stir up drama. You had protested, but Niall talked you down as he explained why it was necessary, but she still was too touchy. You hadn’t meant to be that possessive and jealous, you definitely didn’t let Niall know about that. The last one hurt you the most though. She was a girl you had grown up with, a toxic friendship that ended after five years. Madison Beer. She didn’t want to be in the relationship as much as Niall did, she had a boyfriend as well, but she had the strongest perfume. Niall’s clothes smelled like her for weeks after the relationship ended.

The one they wanted him to be in was insane to you. It didn’t make any sense logically, although there isn’t much logic in the fame game. They wanted him to start dating Bella Hadid.

You supposed it had something to do with Zayn just having a baby with her sister, but she was a fucking model. You couldn’t compare to her. It was the final straw for you. That’s when you snapped.

As you pulled into your work’s parking garage, you pulled down your mirror, noticing you had started crying on the drive over.

You reached into your console, searching for your makeup wipes, but there was nothing. You swore and reached over to look in the glove compartment, same results.

You bit your lip, and began smacking your hands against the steering wheel, swearing the whole time. Just fucking great.

Taking a deep breath, you tried a grounding exercise your therapist had taught you years ago. Five things four things three things two things one thing. You completed the exercise and let out a shaky breath. You kicked your thumb and began furiously scrubbing at the mascara marks running down your face.

After deciding you looked presentable, you made your way to your desk, hoping to see Max, a friend of yours from work, she gave the best hugs.

You plopped down in your chair, logging into your computer to start on your work for the day. You only had a little bit, so you’d finish your stuff, and stay for the duration of Gina’s shift, then you’d be done.

As you computer loaded, you decided to go make yourself some coffee, try and get caffeine to boost your spirit.

You stepped into the lunch room, making your way over to the machine. You grabbed a mug and went to press the start button. But a bright yellow sticky note was glaring back at you. Out of order.

You let out a frustrated sigh, placing the mug back and storming back to your desk. You flipped through a few of your files, trying to immerse yourself in work, but Niall kept popping up in your head. You had never seen him that angry. You had done that.

Your thoughts were interrupted when Joana slapped a large stack of files on your desk. Easily three times the size of your pile. “Thanks for coming in, Gina has some work she was going to catch up on today, but she’s sick, so you’re going to have to do it for her,” she walked off before you even got to protest. You let out a low groan, dragging the files over to you.

This day couldn’t have been going worse.

Kendra, the bitch who sat next to you, informed you that Max wasn’t here today, she had taken the day off. On top of that, your computer crashed and you had to redo six of your files.

You finished about three hours later than expected. You got stuck in traffic on the way back, frustrating you even more, almost to the point of crying.

The second you parked, you rushed into the building, a tear slipping past when the elevator took too long. You don’t know what had gotten into you, you normally weren’t this emotional.

You finally found your way into the apartment, stopping in your tracks when you saw Niall standing several feet in front of you, looking like he was about to speak.

“Niall, I’ve just had the shittiest day of my life, so can we please just put the fight on hold for five fucking minutes? Just so my boyfriend can hold me?” You asked, your voice cracking at the end.

Niall opened his arms, and you collapsed into him, clutching onto his shoulders with everything in you. He picked you up and brought you to the couch, sitting down with you in his lap. You buried your head in his neck, tears falling down your face and onto his shirt.

“I told them no,” he whispered.

You pulled away, furrowing your eyebrows, “What?” You asked, sniffling as he placed his hand on your waist.

“I told my management no, I wasn’t going to do another PR stunt. I even told them I was going to go public with my actual girlfriend,” he said softly.

You placed your hands on both sides of his face, “Niall, you didn’t have to…” you began.

He wrapped his hand around your wrist. “Yes, I did. My girlfriend was upset, and frustrated, and it was all because of me. I wasn’t about to have that. I care more about you than them,” he said, bringing your hand to his face and placing a gentle kiss to the back of it.

You pressed a soft kiss on his lips, “I love you, so much,” you mumbled against his lips.

“I love you too, more than you’ll ever know,” he whispered, and you processed what he had said earlier.

“Did you say you wanted to go public? With us?” You asked gently, and he nodded.

“Course, I want the world to know that I’m in love with the most beautiful woman in the world,” he reached into his breast pocket, fumbling for a bit before pulling out a ring. “I have the perfect way to let them know too.”

You gasped, placing your hand over your mouth, “Niall…” you breathed out, looking between him and the ring. He looked at you expectantly, biting his lip lightly.

“So?” He asked.

“Of course! Of course Niall!” You exclaimed and he chuckled, placing the ring on your finger. You admired it for a moment, turning to look at your fiancé. You kissed him again, pulling away and giving him a hug.

“I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you,” he mumbled into your shoulder.

“I can’t either.”

(If you want to be added just send in an ask!) Permanent Taglist: @everything-is-alrightt @kaiaduke @franchesca-791

[kyber-kisses]

Hymn (Part 4)

Winchester Brothers x Sister!reader

Wanna start from the beginning? Here is the Masterlist!

Warnings: a good amount of feels and angst. . but there is fluff!

Summary: Y/N Winchester has wrestled with demons ever since her mother died, but when her younger brothers lives are in danger it’s their souls she fights to save, because isn’t that what a big sister should do? (Based on the song Hymn by Joel Porter) 

A/n: *Throws chapter at you and runs away* Have fun! (gif created by the lovely ellen-reincarnated1967)

“What do you think your doing?” Your voice slightly raising as you stepped back into the motel room, shutting the door softly behind you with a loud click.

“Definitely . . . Not jumping on the bed?” Dean tried, both him and Sam staring down at you from their perch on the nearest bed.

“Wow. I’m convinced.”

“It was Deans idea!” Sam quickly pointed, his little hand lightly smacking against Deans face as he did.

“I leave for three minutes and you guys go crazy? Now I know I can never leave you guys again, which is disappointing-“ you sighed. “Seeing as I was gonna give you guys this extra bag of funyuns.” You slowly pulled the bag out of your hoodie pocket, instantly making Dean freeze.

“Okay, wait we’re sorry.”

“Oh are you? I said no funny business while I was gone.”

“Yes! I’m sorry! Can we have them?” Dean was practically vibrating at this point, teetering on the edge of the mattress.

Narrowing your eyes, you let a silence fall between you before giving in and toss the bag onto the other bed. “Fine, go to town. No crumbs on the bed.” It didn't even take a second before the middle child was vaulting over the space between the beds and ripping the bag open.

Sam grimaced, not making a move from his spot at all. “Funyuns are gross.”

“Yeah, well that’s why I got you this-“ being a subtle as you could, you passed Sam the candy bar you had grabbed from the vending machine with a quick wink, his eyes lighting up as he grabbed it.

“Thanks, Y/N.”

“Yeah, don’t tell Dean.”

“I won’t.”

“Pinkie promise?”

He linked his small finger with yours. “I pinkie promise.”

*. *. *. *. *. *.

“Sam? . . . Sam!”

Suddenly snapping back into reality, Sam whipped his head around took at his brother. “What?”

“I’ve been talkin to you for the past five minutes, have you even heard a word that I’ve said?”

“. . .yes?”

“Wow, you are a terrible liar. What the hell were you even thinking about?”

Pressing his lips together the younger Winchester contemplated whether or not to say anything. You were always a risky topic . . . Especially to Dean, and seeing as his brother had been in a decent mood most of the drive he really didn’t want to take that away.

“Dude, seriously. Tell me what’s going on in that weird head of yours.” Flexing his hands on the steering wheel, Deans eyes bounced back between the road and Sam.

“Y/N. . . What else do you think I would be thinking about right now?”

Dean sucked in a breath before he nodded his head in understanding. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Not really. She’s gone. What’s it matter?”

He expected Dean to snap, lash out- like he did when they were younger and the wound still fresh, but instead he was silent. . . Only because he was trying to remember everything he could about his sister, both good and bad. He needed something to keep him grounded. For instance, You had been good at making people laugh, you’d take things in directions people wouldn’t expect- lewder, darker, more absurd— then ambush them into responding. Some of Deans humor stemmed from your own, he liked to think it was his way of keeping you close. Along with a love for old western movies and a passion for classic rock.

Happy thoughts. Just keep thinking happy thoughts, Dean. Just because Sam brought up Y/N does not mean you need to get bitter.

Turning his attention towards the radio, the hunter played with the volume until it was a soft hum that could easily be spoken over.

“You remember when Y/N used to play music in the mornings while Dad was gone on hunts?”

Sam let out a soft chuckle as confirmation. “You mean with that dinky old radio she got at a yard sale for like three bucks?”

“Yes! That’s the one!” Dean snapped his fingers, a grin tugging on his lips. “And it wasn’t even the good music we usually listened to in the car. . . It’s was like shitty upbeat soul and R&B.”

“You know she would probably smack you on top of the head if she heard you say that, right?”

“Yeah, probably-“ Dean chuckled, flicking on the turn signal as he turned onto a narrow two lane street. “Anyways you know how’d she dance around to it too? For like the soul purpose of embarrassing is even though there was no one else around?”

“Yeah, and she couldn’t dance worth a shit.” Sam added, smiling as he slowly began to remember.You were always doing stuff to get them to smile or laugh because you knew that in a lifestyle as dark as your families, you needed to keep something lit.

The rest of the drive felt lighter. . . Easier after that small conversation. Even after decades of absence you somehow still managed to put smiles on their faces.Still working hard even in death.

And then Dean pulled into the cemetery and that light and happy feeling he had had moments ago flickered and faded like a dying candle and he could feel his insides slowly beginning to twist as his face dropped. He turned off the engine and barely got two steps from the car before the feeling was too much and it felt like he was being crushed.

“Dean?”

“You know what? On second though this was a terrible idea. Why did we do this? We shouldn’t have done this. Why the fuck did I suggest this?” He quickly rambled, backing towards the car and reaching for the keys again. “Let’s- lets just go home and forget I ever suggested visiting this place-“

The older Winchester didn’t get very far before his brother was letting out a sigh and pushing him forward again. “We drove all this way. You’re not backing out now.”

“Sam-“

“Dude, we both agreed we would do this. Let’s start with just a minute and go from there.”

There was silence for a moment before Dean huffed and stopped resisting his brothers pushing. He felt like a kid again coming back here. Hell the last time he had been here he still was one. Even though they never found a body, their dad was decent enough to pay for a headstone, a place to come back to.

And then they never did.

The cemetery was cool, dew still on the grass as the morning sun began to peak through the trees and light haze. The place was empty except for them. . . Because who visits a cemetery at 6:30 in the morning? Dean sucked in another breath of fresh air, jamming his hands into his pockets despite it growing warmer out as the sun began to rise.

“You know, we probably should have brought mom with us. It’s kinda a dick move on our part to do this and not tell her.” Dean grumbled, eyes already glued on the headstone ahead.

“She’s still on that hunt with Jody. I didn’t really want to bother her.”

“Oh yeah, you’re totally right.” Dean snarked. “Would hate to remind good ol’ mom that her first born has a headstone right next to hers.”

“Why are you being such a dick? You suggested we visit.”

“It’s nothing, Sam. Just drop it.”

Gripping his brothers shoulder suddenly, Sam halted Dean in his tracks. “Nice try. Tell me what’s going on. You were fine ten minutes ago.”

Dean gnawed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before letting another sigh sleep through his lips. “Do you remember that case we worked a few weeks ago with the psycho spirit that caught us?”

“You mean reverend Johnson? Yeah, why?”

“I keep thinking about what he said-“

“Dean, he was a vengeful spirit. He was crazy.” Sam shook his head, dropping his hand from his shoulder. But Dean squeezes his eyes shut as if trying to forget. The words from the reverend still banging around inside his skull. Bad guys really needed to stop it with their monologues.

“What I’ve seen is that the lord provides for those who need it. If you don’t have something, that generally means you don’t need it, or you don’t deserve it.”

At first it had made perfect sense and Dean had just gone with it. He didn’t have his sister because he didn’t deserve to have one.

But then again, by that logic, they didn’t deserve a home when they were younger, and they didn’t deserve to love their sister and be safe. Y/N didn’t deserve her life.

“You’re right.” Dean nodded, in hopes of getting Sam to back off. “You’re right. Dude was crazy. Just hard to get those fuckin words out of my head.” He mumbled, the two of them somehow turning in unison to look at your headstone a few yards away.

It was like the granite slab was staring them both down. The two brothers both afraid to get closer. . . Because to Dean it was like having to face the truth all over again. You were gone. Here reality was set in stone (Pun intended). But then his legs were moving before his brain was and he was kneeling down the wipe the dirt and dust away from your name, calloused fingers smoothing over the engraved letters.

“Why’d you have to go be a hero, huh?” He whispered under his breath, feeling the sudden and familiar sting of on oncoming tears.

He could remember it all so clearly still, how you had thrust your rifle into his hands and quickly tugged on your oversized canvas jacket. How the wind had whipped at your partially pulled up hair when you swung the door to the motel room open. How you told them you’d be back and then never were. Dean wondered if you would still be the same now. Back then he was still too small for his flannels and still wasn’t sure how to aim a gun properly. If you were still alive what would you have looked like now? Would you be taller? Would your hair be longer? . . . And would you have recognized what he and Sam had become?

Would you recognize them at all?

“We shoulda brought flowers or something.” He mumbled, picking the few stray weeds that had grown around the base of the stone. He was fidgeting. He did that when he was uncomfortable.

“We can always go get some. We ain’t too far outside of town.”

Dean mumbled a soft I guess as he rested his chin on his knee, arms looping tightly around his leg as if trying to mimic a hug.

“I think I’m gonna call mom. She would want to be with us for the next stop we make. . . We can always come back here too if she really wants.” Sam spoke up, extending a hand to help pull his brother up.

“Do what you think is right or whatever. I’ll be in the car.” rising to his feet, Dean wiped the dirt from his hands onto the front of his jeans. If he stayed here another minute he was bound to start crying. As He began the trek back through the maze of headstones, his fingers absentmindedly tugged on the piece of fabric on his wrist. The bit of flannel gave him a sense of comfort, because sometimes a bit of cloth could feel like love, and that was all he really wanted right now. It was one of those moments in which he realized how many things he had lost that mattered. Dad. Bobby. Y/N. Sure he had lost mom, but she was back. The rest were still gone.

All he wanted was the chance to see Y/N again, to hear her say I missed you, and I've come home.

SPN Taglist:

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[hockeylvr59]

Not the Only Option Part 3 || Tyson Barrie

Requested: [ ] yes [x] no

Authors Note: Thanks to the wonderful group of ladies that helped me kind of sort this part out a few months back. I finally got around to writing it and while I’m sure I changed it quite a bit, I think there are still some elements we talked about. There’s probably only going to be maybe one more part to this if people are interested...but for the record, the executive decision had been made that Tyson will not be traded for purposes of this story. 

Warnings: none

Word Count: 2,477 

~~~~

Shortly after your surprise to tell Tyson you were pregnant, Gabe and Mel had revealed that they were also expecting. The Avs were going to have two hockey babies right around the same time and it had spirits bright as the team focused on the race to the playoffs. 

Sadly, the season ended once again without the cup. As summer began, the four of you had been out for dinner together, chatting about life in general and the babies. You were right at 20 weeks pregnant now, your bump on full display and Tyson had mentioned you having an ultrasound to find out the baby’s sex in just a few days. 

“Wait...you’re not doing a gender reveal?” Gabe inquired and you sent him a look like ‘why is that even necessary.’ 

“No...we’re just going to find out. We don’t need to do a big reveal.” You insisted, Tyson nodding in agreement from beside you. The two of you had talked about it at length but it just felt right that it was something for the two of you to share together without anyone else. 

“But...but no.” Gabe insisted. “You have to do a reveal.” He seemed so offended at the thought of the whole thing being downplayed and you just shook your head, looking at Mel to tone her husband back just a bit. Out of the group of you, Gabe was definitely the most rambunctious one, Tyson could be, but at the same time lately, he seemed to enjoy just keeping things simple and taking every moment as it came. 

“Oh come on!” Gabe insisted. “You know a reveal would be more fun. Plus…” He trailed off his voice becoming slightly whiny. “Everyone is going their separate ways for the summer and this would be a great way to kick that off.” 

Glancing at Tyson, you sighed. You really didn’t want this to be a big thing...the announcement itself had been that, but you didn’t think Gabe was going to let it go until you had agreed to let him plan something. 

The look on Gabe’s face when you finally agreed to let him plan something for that weekend told you that there was no way this was going to be anything but big. 

_____

Two days later you found yourself back at your doctor’s office for another appointment and ultrasound. You’d told the doctor that Gabe had insisted that you not be told the sex of the baby and since you and Mel had the same doctor she just laughed knowing that was very much like Gabriel Landeskog. 

After the doctor took all of your measurements, assuring you that everything seemed to be on track, she pulled out the ultrasound machine and instructed you to lift up your shirt so that she could spread the cold gel onto your bump. With Tyson sitting beside you, you felt yourself already tearing up at the thought of seeing your child. 

The moment the image flickered onto the screen, the tears fell from your eyes because the baby looked absolutely perfect. As she did her examination, the doctor pointed out the baby’s head, feet, and hands. Seeing your baby’s nose, it’s tiny fingers moving around on the screen was incredible and you were falling more and more in love by the second. 

“Let’s see if we can get baby to give Mr. Landeskog its sex…” Your doctor declared and as she moved the wand she started to turn the screen away from you and Tyson. However, in the same moment, the baby shifted inside of you and before the screen was fully pointed away you were able to get just enough of a glance and even with that one glance it was obvious. 

“Tys...it’s a boy.” You found yourself murmuring and the smile on your doctor’s face immediately assured you that you were right. Turning the screen back to you she chuckled.

“I guess Gabe didn’t count on your son being a showoff now did he.” She joked and though you heard her, you were focused on the expression on Tyson’s face as he now saw for himself the ultrasound that showed that your assessment of it being a boy was very much supported by a certain physical attribute. 

“A boy…” Tyson breathed and suddenly he was crying as well. “We’re having a son!” 

This was exactly what you had wanted the moment to be from the start and mentally you praised your little boy for one-upping his uncle Gabe already. As the doctor finished up the ultrasound, Tyson kissed you and you couldn’t help but brush your thumb over his cheek, wiping away the tear tracks. 

“Are you excited?” You asked him and he nodded, his forehead pressed to yours gently in an intimate gesture. 

“I would have been excited either way...but a little boy y/n...I almost can’t believe it. I thought it was a girl for sure.” That was the first time Tyson had admitted to you what he had thought the baby was and you couldn’t help but chuckle. 

“I had a feeling it was a boy.” You admitted. 

Your moment was broken as the doctor handed you paper towels to clean the excess gel off of your stomach. She handed you the envelope with the baby’s sex ‘for Gabe’ and declared that your pictures would be printed up at the front desk and to schedule your next appointment for in a month. You’d already decided that you would be coming to and from Denver throughout the summer so that you didn’t have to find another doctor so you made a mental note to schedule the appointment around the plans you and Tyson already had. 

As you left the office hand in hand with Tyson, you couldn’t help the smile that was on your face. 

“Guess we have to work on our surprise looks.” You teased, knowing that you couldn’t just come out and tell Gabe that you knew. Not when Mel had constantly been texting you with all of the things Gabe had been putting together for this party. Leaning against the side of his car, Tyson kissed you, his hand falling to rest over your bump. 

“I guess so.” He murmured. “I’m glad we found out this way for real though.” He admitted and you nodded. Now you could bask in the knowledge secretly for a few days just the two of you before the whole world found out. 

“Best of both worlds for sure.” You agreed. 

___

The sun was shining in Denver as you made your way up the driveway of Gabe and Mel’s house for your baby reveal party. The moment you stepped through the door, you could tell that half of the team was already here, the sounds of boisterous boys spilling in from the backyard. 

As Tyson made his way through to join them, you found Mel and some of the other better halves in the kitchen. 

“What can I do to help?” You asked, leaning against the counter, the bottle of non-alcoholic wine Tyson had found you now resting there. At the sound of your voice, Mel immediately looked up, moving to hug you, both of your baby bumps meeting in the middle causing you to laugh. 

“There she is!” She exclaimed. “You can do nothing because today is all about you.” She immediately declared garnering the support of everyone else. “Well and this beautiful boy or girl of course.” She added, sending you a wink. The house was covered in a mix of blue and pink decorations and it certainly looked like a party store had exploded. 

“Fine...at least hand me a few glasses and a corkscrew so I can open our little treat.” You insisted, showing her the bottle. “Just as good as the real stuff but no one can yell at us.” You declared smiling. 

“Okay fine...ooo wine.” Mel agreed and upon pouring her a glass you quickly handed it over to her. 

“It’s not quite as good as real wine, but...it’s close enough.” You declared, sipping from your own glass. It was enough to give you the taste of it and was certainly better than the stuff you usually found in the grocery store. Within moments, you were being handed a plate of food by EJ’s girl and you thanked her before popping a cherry tomato into your mouth. 

“How are you feeling, are you ready to find out?” Ryan Graves’s girlfriend asked as she bustled about the kitchen with whatever task Mel had given her. 

“Feeling good. Little one is becoming more and more active by the day. I’m thinking it will only be a few more weeks before Tys can feel the kicks.” Even after just a day or so it was already hard to censor yourself from alluding to the fact that you knew it was a boy. You were well aware that if you slipped you could just play it off but still, it was better safe than sorry. You hadn’t realized that you hadn’t answered the second part of the question until Mel was looking over at you with an eagle eye. Double-checking to ensure that her husband wasn’t lurking nearby she whispered softly. 

“You already know don’t you?” The look on your face immediately gave away that you did and you blushed softly as she teasingly scolded you. 

“It’s not my fault he takes after Tyson…” You threw back, before slapping a hand over your mouth. All of the ladies in earshot let out a gasp before busting out into a round of laughter. “Doctor tried to hide it but he shifted at the same time and it was just there. I’m not stupid.” You defended. 

“A boy,” Mel whispered to you excitedly and when you nodded she squealed before wrapping you into another tight hug. “I hope you’re planning to play along for my husband’s sake but I’m so happy for you two. I’m glad you got what you wanted.” Mel truly was the sweetest and you were so grateful to have someone going through this with you. Already you knew that your babies were going to be best friends. Especially because when you were belly to belly like this, you could feel even more movement from your son. 

“We fully plan on playing along but Tyson may be out there extorting some money from your men.” You teased. “Also. If I haven’t said this before...our babies are going to be best friends because this little one is going crazy right now.” Mel laughed insisting that Tyson had every right to extort some money from Gabe and that she was absolutely down for our kids to be just as close as their dads are. 

Soon after you were directed outside because it was a beautiful day and so topped off glass in hand you headed out to find your boyfriend, moving to perch on his lap as he chatted with his teammates. The second you joined him, Tyson’s hand fell to your bump rubbing gently. This was truly the life, being surrounded by good friends, the man you loved and with your son growing big and strong inside you. 

When EJ sat down to your left he sent you a critical look before speaking. 

“So Tys here says he thinks it’s a girl but he’ll only bet on it being a boy because that’s what you think it is….” He trailed off, his tone almost accusatory. 

“That’s because he’s a smart man EJ.” You responded. “Trusts the woman that’s actually, you know, carrying the baby.” After a moment EJ let out a huff before getting up and moving across the porch to chat with the rookie Cale Makar who looked a little bit out of place. 

A few more guys came over to make conversation about the baby and your summer plans before Gabe finally called everyone’s attention declaring that it was time to find out what the baby was. Immediately everyone started to make last-minute bets and you smirked as you kissed Tyson before plastering an unknowing and anxious face on. 

Taking your hands, Gabe tugged you out into the middle of the yard. Posted at one end was a net with five discs, one at each of the corners and one in the middle. Gabe handed you and Tyson each a stick before dumping a bucket of pucks at your feet. As he did so he explained that one of the discs was filled with a colored power based on the envelope you’d given him after the appointment and you’d find out the sex of the baby when you hit the right disc. 

“That’s fair.” You declared shrugging. “Though I’m not sure why I have a stick…” You added. 

“Because you have to participate too,” Gabe stated, his tone slightly annoyed like it was obvious. 

“Um...you realize if it’s up to me, the baby will be here before I hit any of the discs.” The yard filled with laughter at your statement, mostly because everyone knew you were 100% right. You were a writer, not an athlete and there was no way you were going to be able to hit a single thing. “And so I don’t hurt the baby...maybe we just let Tys do it.” You insisted. 

“Fine,” Gabe muttered and you moved to kiss his cheek and hug him causing his smile to return. Hand on your bump you motioned for Tyson to go for it. 

“Come on. I’ve waited long enough.” You insisted, Mel sending you a wink as Tyson took the first shot, hitting the disc dead center to watch it merely break and fall to the ground. After a few more shots he had hit both discs on the right side also to no result. The top left was also the same and though you already knew you found yourself bouncing, waiting for blue powder to finally come flying through the air. 

Tyson missed the next three shots and you yelled at him to just hurry it up already. Finally, finally, he clipped just the edge of the last remaining target and the faintest puff of blue spilled out causing Mel to scream that it was a boy! As everyone around you started to cheer you watched Tyson take one more shot to actually destroy the disc before he turned to swoop you into his arms, kissing you thoroughly. 

This was a crazy group, with the craziest being Uncle Gabe, but it was a group you were so looking forward to bringing your son into the world surrounded by. 

And if Uncle Gabe never found out that his reveal was truly only for the members of the team and not mom and dad...well...that was a secret people were willing to keep. 

[bltngames]

SAGE 2020: Indie Games

SAGE may closed more than a day ago, but thankfully, the website remains up for those who still want to download its games. So even though this article is technically very late, nothing listed here is out of date. The event may be over, but the games live on! Which is honestly a relief, because I think doing ten games per article is taking its toll on me. Normally, when I’d write for TSSZ, I’d do somewhere in the realm of 5-7 games per article, and even that would eventually burn me out. After writing about 20 games this year, I was clearly starting to feel like I was running out of steam. Oh well. We live and learn. Here’s another ten games!

There’s one more article left after this, a sort of “honorable mentions” round-up that will feature much shorter blurbs as I blow through way more games way faster. If I didn’t talk about your game here in these three articles, now’s your chance to let me know so I can say something about it in the final article.

Anyway, onwards to our ten indie games.

Victory Heat Rally

I’m all for any game channeling the spirit of Sega’s old SuperScaler arcade technology, and Victory Heat Rally is all about that. Everything about this game seems so MY AESTHETIC that my only complaint is that I’m hungry for more. A lot more. This demo is a simple time trial on one race track and I’m itching to sink my teeth into literally anything else this game has to offer. There is an older demo from back in April with more content, but it’s running on a different version of the code base -- this newest demo is significantly improved both in terms of visuals and control. I really don’t have anything else to say about it. There’s not much here, but what’s here is charmingly retro in the style of Sega’s Power Drift, but cuter and even more colorful.

  Sondro Gomez: A Sunova Story

I had been interested to revisit Sondro Gomez after playing the first demo last year, but I don’t know if I just wasn’t in the right mood for it this year or what, but I kind of bounced off the game this time. To my memory, Sondro Gomez is a kinda-sorta side game in the Kyle & Lucy universe. You may remember Kyle & Lucy as one of a growing number of games coming out of the Sonic fan gaming community trying to break out as an original title. A while ago, the developers announced a partnership with Stealth to use the Headcannon engine to make the game with, something that extended to Sondro Gomez here. The problem is, it feels kind of weird now, and I can’t quite put my finger on why. I think it’s the little stuff -- you don’t get a lot of positive feedback when attacking using your whip (the sound is a bit quiet), and the difficulty balancing errs on the side of caution. I died a couple times in my time playing this newest demo, but I wouldn’t characterize Sondro Gomez as a game that feels challenging. Some of that probably has to do with the fact this is still just a demo, which means you spend a long time fighting the same four enemy types in every single level. There’s a lot of charm to the story and the characters it involves, but that only takes you so far when it feels like you’re doing the same things over and over in the actual levels, you know? Either way, the touched up visuals and the new boss fights are welcome. Interested in seeing what the full release looks like next year.

  Delta Gal

In retrospect, a Mega Man Legends fan game seems like a no-brainer, doesn’t it? Where Delta Gal has a leg up is in controls. Even considering the era Mega Man Legends was released in, it had very awkward controls. Delta Gal’s response is to embrace standard third person action game controls with a mouse and a keyboard. Now, there is controller support, but even once you get it set up, you have button layout presets like “Bad” and “Almost Good.” Honestly, if you can, just play it with a keyboard and mouse. The demo offers about 30-40 minutes of gameplay, with a bit of the town, a forest section, a cave, and one whole dungeon. Visuals nail the best parts of the Mega Man Legends low-fi aesthetic, colors are vibrant, and the pixel art textures look very good. The town is full of characters with lots of personality, too. A particular favorite being the guy who runs the junkyard who likes to show off by flexing his muscles but then ultimately chickens out when it comes to exploring the cave he discovers. The only downside I’d say is the sound design. The game sounds okay, but some of the music is a little bland, and certain sound effects lack the right kind of punch. Granted, this style of sound design isn’t easy, so I can empathize with the developers in that respect. Honestly, it doesn’t really detract from anything at all, so maybe it’s not even worth bringing up. Either way, good stuff, and I’m looking forward to the full release.

  Bun n’ Gun

Here’s a cute little game about a bunny in the old west. I’m absolutely in love with the visuals and the music here, but the gameplay is… interesting. Bun isn’t a typical shooter or platformer, thanks to the fact that he appears to only have one arm, which is occupied by his gun. Now you wouldn’t think this would matter, as it’s pretty easy to design a game around only having to jump and shoot, and that’s fair enough. But there’s a strange heft to this character. It takes them a little bit to pick up speed, and it takes them a bit to slow down, and there’s an unmistakable, split-second delay between pushing the jump button and actually jumping. I know enough about this kind of game development that a delay between pushing a button and actually jumping has to be a deliberate design decision, and I split on whether or not I like it. I don’t think I hate it, because it’s pretty easy to get used to the way it feels, but it does mean you’re working with a handicap when it comes to split-second movements. Given the bunny seems to only have one arm, though, perhaps that’s the point. Either way, it’s cute. Give it a look.

  Shield Cat

I feel like I’ve been over-using the word “charming” to describe games at SAGE this year, but you know what? Shield Cat is charming as heck. People also tend to think it’s reductive to describe things by comparing them to something that already exists, but I say nuts to that, too. Saying “It’s like…” is an easy shorthand, and besides, if somebody is saying your project is like one of their favorite games, it just means they’re giving you praise and might lack the words to accurately describe that praise. Thing is, that’s actually kind of hard to do with Shield Cat. The nearest relative to this game would be The Legend of Zelda, but Shield Cat honestly plays very little like Zelda, beyond having a top-down perspective. Secret of Mana, maybe, with the stamina meters? I don’t know. Regardless, this is a charming (!!!) top down action game where you roam around exploring an overworld and solve light puzzles. It controls well and the aesthetics are nice. Can’t really get much better than that, though I do have to wonder what it is you’re supposed to be doing in this game. It took me about 30 minutes to see everything available in this demo, but there’s no story setup and only the smallest pieces of what could be considered a dungeon. What’s on offer here is interesting enough that I find myself wanting to know more about this world. For example, it’s called Shield Cat, but clearly you’re some kind of ferret. What’s that about? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.

  Prototype N

I’ve sat here staring into the void wondering what to write about for this game for a long time, because it’s one of those demos that’s just… a solid and fun game that nails exactly what it’s going for. I would say that Prototype N leans a little too far towards the easy side of things, but the third level provided in the demo ramps the challenge up enough to be just about perfect. And, really, that’s it. That’s the game. You get two softer introductory levels to get you acclimated to the controls (which are similar to Mega Man, but different enough not to be a direct clone) and one “real” level to actually give you a bit of a work out. There’s nothing else to really say. This has the vibe of a 1993 or 1994 Capcom game, or maybe something from Data East. Every single part of this game’s presentation is laser-focused on that aesthetic, and it pulls it off flawlessly. Sound design, music, visuals, it’s a bullseye. This game fell out of a time machine in the best way possible. Definitely give it a look.

  Yan’s World

From a game that nails the SNES aesthetic to this, a game which pays tribute to the Virtual Boy… but not really? I actually became aware of Yan’s World many years ago through a mutual Discord, and it always looked interesting, but simultaneously a little confusing, something that still mostly holds true to this day. Per the game’s own Kickstarter sales pitch, Yan’s World is “stylized as a lost title for Nintendo's Virtual Boy.” I can get down with that, but the game almost instantly breaks its own rule because Yan’s primary method of attack is to shoot a missile from his head that can only be aimed using the mouse. As such, Yan’s World doesn’t have controller support, even though one of the stretch goals currently listed on their Kickstarter page is to make a version that can be played on real Virtual Boy hardware. And, honestly, what’s the deal with this game’s whole… everything else? Why is this kid an onion? Why are the platforms made out of clocks? Why does all of Yan’s dialog make him seem like he’s sort of pissed off when he’s got such a big happy smile? There’s a bit of a hand-wave to suggest the entire game takes place inside of a dream, and for once that actually means throwing logic out the window, I guess. Oh, the missile is a pillow? Fine, whatever. Use it to blast this demonic apple, and then threaten to kill an innocent NPC. It’s a dream! Despite how little sense that makes, it… kind of works? The sprites are big and lovely, the game controls well, and the level design is plenty creative. I can’t fault the game for that, it’s just trying to figure out everything wrapped around the game that feels so bizarre.

  Cosmic Boll

I don’t know if I really understand what’s going on in Cosmic Boll, but I love to play it just the same. This plays like if Treasure made Dragon Ball Advance Adventure while strung out on cocaine. The end result is pure hyperactive chaos. There is a whole complicated combat system at play here, and a very lengthy in-depth tutorial when you first start the game, but you can figure out a lot of it by just skipping the tutorial and playing the game for real. You can get by pretty easily by just mashing buttons and seeing what happens, and that’s not a complaint, because a lot happens in this game. Like, constantly. It never stops, it never really slows down. You’re always zipping around, spinning and flipping and punching soldiers, explosions everywhere, collectibles everywhere, just utter madness. It’s Sonic the Hedgehog plus Devil May Cry plus Gunstar Heroes and all of it is mixed up in ways you probably don’t expect. All of this is to say that Cosmic Boll is messy and cool and fun and you should probably play it.

  Brock Crocodile

This is a game I’ve seen a lot of around social media, and it’s nice to finally be able to try it. Weirdly enough, this is the first game all SAGE that has flat out refused to see my controller. For the last few years at SAGE, I’ve been using a Playstation DualShock 4, which typically causes me all kinds of headaches with games expecting an Xbox controller. This year, I’ve been using an 8bitdo SN30+. These things are designed primarily to be used on the Switch, but using a controller macro, you can change it to Xbox or Playstation modes. The “Xbox” mode has served me well so far, but Brock here fails to let me use the controller at all. Fortunately, with only three buttons, Brock manages to be mostly playable on a keyboard. That being said, a lot of this game feels a little bit off. The camera is kind of swimmy, as it's almost constantly in motion trying to get a better angle on what's around you. Brock himself doesn't have a smooth acceleration curve either -- it's more like shifting gears in a car, where you reach one top speed and then click up into the next highest speed. That can work, but Brock changes gears much too quickly and without much feedback, making it look like one jerky acceleration curve instead of two. And then there’s the visuals. Level art looks great, character portraits look great, but I’ve never been the biggest fan of the sprites I’ve seen in this game. Take Brock himself, for example: he’s got insanely thick thighs for some reason but the rest of his body looks thin and wispy, and he stands with kind of weird posture. The good news is, despite these complaints, Brock Crocodile is actually really fun to play. You eventually get used to the game’s control quirks, and the level design and included boss fight are excellent, striking that perfect balance where they aren’t too easy but don’t feel unfairly difficult, either. Plus, even though the cutscenes aren’t skippable (annoying as I was dealing with controller issues), the writing is snappy and the dialog is funny. It may not be perfect, but there’s still a lot to like here.

  Marble Launcher

Here’s one of those games where you can tell the creator is just starting out making games. And that’s great! These sorts of endlessly complex, winding mazes are exactly the kind of levels I started making when I first got into game development when I was 16 or 17 years old. One could spend hours searching every nook and cranny in these levels, which is simultaneously awesome and exhausting. Thankfully, near as I can tell, nothing FORCES you to go exploring, so if you’d rather just finish the game, it’s easy enough to head straight for the goal. Gameplay is extremely simple, otherwise. You’re a marble, you can attack enemies by bouncing off of their heads, and you have a slam move. That’s it. You might think that with this being a marble game, you’d get real rolling ball physics, but all you get is simple platformer controls. They’re good enough, especially considering how esoteric the shape of the levels can get, but it’s hard not to be a little disappointed. Still, it’s not a bad little game for what it is. Controls a bit better than some of my earliest attempts at game development, too.

Thirty games total! That’s a lot of games to talk about. And there’s still more to come, so stay tuned for that.

[adz]

hi here is my albums of the year list for 2019. i will also put it below under the break. happy nu year friends

ALBUMS I LOVED

Big Thief - U.F.O.F. & Two Hands This band has something so special. It's almost as enjoyable to hear Lenker, the primary songwriter, talk about her philosophy and her connection to her bandmates as it is to listen to their consistently wonderful and gently boundary-pushing music. I've combined these two albums into one list item because they're flip sides of the same coin: spirit and earth, ethereal and corporeal, unknown and known. If you've heard their earlier two albums, you might be put off a little: there aren't any smash hits like Masterpiece on here, nor any doomed ballads like Shark Smile. These albums are a little blurrier, shadows and gleaming bits of light floating past. At times the songs sound less like early Big Thief than they do Adrianne's solo releases: lyric focused, strange sprawling structures, a bit rougher around the edges. At these records' cores, though, the soul is the same true soul. On U.F.O.F., there are sadness-tinged love songs like Orange and an ode to a dead relationship or dead loved one, Terminal Paradise, recut from Adrienne's solo discography. On Two Hands, rollicking rockers like Forgotten Eyes and the titular track nestle up against the tender and painful Wolf and a live staple for the band, Not, a song that builds momentum and tumbles towards its conclusion like a meteor. Whether you're a devoted fan (and I don't know anyone who listens to Big Thief but doesn't consider themselves one) or a newcomer, it's worthwhile to spend some time close to these records. Let them, and they'll grow on you.

Kim Petras - TURN OFF THE LIGHT Easily the best collection of club pop songs this year began as a Halloween-themed mixtape, which I think gives it a willingness to experiment that I sometimes miss in Petras's more standard stuff. The hooks on tracks like There Will Be Blood, Close Your Eyes, and Tell Me It's a Nightmare are as good as anything in her discography, and the most adventurous moments, like the interlude o m e n and the German verse in In the Next Life, not only pay off but fuck harder than basically anything I've ever heard. I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Dr. Luke was one of this record's producers. The fact that he gets a cut of every stream and sale is a terrible blemish on what would otherwise be a huge favorite of mine.

Sufjan Stevens & Timo Andres - The Decalogue A forceful, sometimes opaque album. Delicate and opinionated piano music for ballet. One moment of particular transcendent beauty: the track V.

Weyes Blood - Titanic Rising A 10/10, perfect, totally wonderful album. A ton of variety and not a single bad song. By turns upbeat, dreamy, contemplative, creepy, explosive. One of the most beautiful and evocative album covers of the year to boot.

Andrew Bird - My Finest Work Yet I appreciate Andrew Bird's esoteric trips and darkly introspective weirdness, so it surprised me how much I enjoyed this: a bouncy, ascerbic, and delightful return to form packed with ironic turns of phrase and endlessly engrossing little musical details. Bloodless is a legit political statement, a State of the Union address that is somehow equal parts ominous and encouraging. Sisyphus is freewheeling and also political, a common thread here. My favorite is Manifest, a disco-inflected ode to fossil fuels. You could blast it and joyfully sing along without ever realizing how apocalyptic it is.

Nivhek - After its own death / Walking in a spiral towards the house Moody, spacious, and minimalist. Lovely and meditative.

M83 - DSVII A world all of its own. Cinematic, strange, and cheesy. I really appreciate M83's willingness to do absolutely whatever they want when they could easily have made a career pandering to fans of Midnight City and selling songs to car companies. DSVII is spacious and upbeat, steeped in the memory of 70s space western epics. Flutes, pianos, and shimmering picked guitars float over crashing post-rock drums and synths ranging from contemplative sweeps (Mirage) and buzzing pads (Colonies) to swelling vox (Taifun Glory) and precise, retro little bleeps (Oh Yes You're There, Everyday). It's wonderful background music, and the choice tracks (Temple of Sorrow, Mirage, Hell Riders) are great fun and even occasionally thrilling. This album is easy to love.

Thom Yorke - Anima Detuned synths lying motionless in a cold desert fading in and out of life

Foxes in Fiction - Trillium Killer A swirling dream-pop masterpiece. I had the privilege of seeing Warren perform some of these songs earlier this year, and I felt totally transported, like I was physically present in the green holographic world of his back-stage projections. These songs are complex and really special, crafted with care and an ear highly attuned to odd harmonies and little additive details. I love the way stories and thoughts weave together across the album. The catchy, gently swelling music is a brilliant compliment for the lyrics, which are often dark and intense, blurring the political and personal on songs like Say Yes to Violence and Antibody. Aesthetically, this album is a delight, but there's so much depth beneath its glimmering surface. What a wonderful addition to Foxes in Fiction's powerful and lovely discography.

Xiu Xiu - Girl with Basket of Fruit Xiu Xiu always makes me smile. This album is dense and abrasive and very lyrics-forward. Jamie Stewart sounds fucking pissed and I love it. The beats are quick and unrelenting: samples of Haitian drummers led by musician Daniel Brevil. I also can't get over the fact that Angela Seo published her favorite and least favorite lyrics from each song. Jamie wrote this about the record's title, which references Caravaggio's painting Boy with a Basket of Fruit: "When this title is a boy it is fey and lovely. When it is a girl is worrisome and rife with danger. Male martyrs are almost always surrounded by nurses, their mothers, adoring angels and other loving disciples wrapping their crushed and holy bodies in strips of herb soaked cloth and weeping rapturously. Female martyrs are almost always depicted having their skin flayed, breasts branded or ripped off with tongs or being stabbed and they are always, always alone save for her murderers. There is never anyone by their sides celebrating their spiritual life, only fiendishly reveling in their torture of her. It is perilous to be a 'girl.'"

Bats - Alter Nature I was shocked to find out these guys have been around for 10 years. This sounds like an album by a young band, which I mean as a compliment: it's energetic and rough and a little uneven in parts in ways that I enjoy. The sound is either especially intense but poppy post-punk or kind of gentle hardcore. I think there's a lot of crossover potential between those two fan bases here. Their attitude is what I love more than anything else. I don't know how to describe it exactly. It feels like the band are willing to go to weird, sarcastic places and then quickly snap back to sincerity and brutality, often multiple times in one song. I'm not much of a hardcore fan, but I almost wish they'd spent a little more time with that sound: my favorite parts on this record are the heavier bits like the end of Current Affairs.

Olivia Neutron-John - Olivia Neutron-John This album sounds like if you trapped a musique concrete artist in a timeless hell with a couple drum machines and synths for a millenium and then poked a hole in the wall and recorded what came out. Really fun and uncomfortable. I do still think the best format to experience ONJ is in her like 20-minute rambling dance tracks, like 2017's Injury Train.

Liturgy - H.A.Q.Q. A lot of people really despise Liturgy, and if that's the case for you, this album probably won't change your mind, but for what it's worth, it's a little more accessible than their synth-horn-heavy black metal midi extravaganza of a previous album The Ark Work. H.A.Q.Q. does contain weird, tonally distinct interludes (the EXACO trio of tracks) between its transcendental metal pillars, but they're the rare interludes that go beyond merely cleansing the palette and setting the mood for whatever follows. EXACT III especially is a bright and emotionally complete unit. What we're really here for is the metal, though, and this album delivers like nothing Liturgy has released before. Composer/singer/guitarist Hendrix's melodies are unique and beautiful, the riffs and blastbeats are tight, and the stuttering glitches that break up dense passages are welcome even when they're really surprising. HAJJ, PASAQALIA, GOD OF LOVE, and HAQQ are all monster tracks, but the whole album is well worth your time. The lead single, GOD OF LOVE, is a great place to start. This is definitely, easily my favorite black metal album of all time, and probably my favorite metal album full stop.

Blood Orange - Angel's Pulse Dev Hynes' mixtape is by turns propulsive and relaxing, softspoken and hardheaded. It's brilliant and beautiful and although it's not too long, each song is given ample room to breathe. I wish other artists were as effective at utilizing guest artists (some tracks here have three guests, and Hynes is able to manage their time well enough that there's no feeling of bloatedness or a lack of cohesion). I love this album. It might be my favorite thing Hynes has ever done. Listen to: Take It Back, Berlin, Dark & Handsome

Toro y Moi - Outer Peace Chaz's album Boo Boo was one of my favorite albums of 2017, but because it wasn't chillwave enough or whatever, people didn't seem to give it a fair shake. That seems to be the case with Outer Peace, too: it's less of a single unit than Boo Boo and contains more danceable content, but it's a little too moody and eccentric to win over fans of Anything In Return, Chaz's basically perfect 2013 opus. (As a side note, his mixtape Soul Trash, which also came out this year, is good fun too.) Anyway, Outer Peace feels kind of like a more accessible extension of Boo Boo. Parts of it still feel like a deranged early-morning exercise program on college radio, which I like. Try some of the lighter stuff first: Fading, Ordinary Pleasure, and Freelance.

Opium Lord - Vore No genre has better subgenre descriptors than metal. This is a black sludge album, and that's pretty much all you need to know.

Mid-Air Thief - Crumbling Okay so this album technically came out in 2018, but it had a wide release this year on Topshelf Records with like four different wax colors, and also I only found out about it early this year, and I need to spread the word about one of the most delightful, fun, and beautiful albums I've ever heard. On Crumbling, organic strums and synthetic trills form a deeply engaging tapestry. I love every second of it. Combining sounds in this way totally qualifies as left-field experimental shit just because It Seems Like Nobody Else Is Doing It For Some Reason (except I guess Floating Points, see SOTY), but the music itself is actually really accessible. This is what pop music should sound like! We have the technology!! Please listen to this album. Dirt and Gameun Deut are my favorites at the moment, but you honestly can't go wrong.

Angel Olsen - All Mirrors Olsen's gotten grander. Her ballads are longer and involve strings and synthesizers and beat machines. The soul feels the same to me, though. Songs like the title track are powerful and emotive and showcase not just her vocal range but a new range of sonic experimentation that I think complements her songwriting really well. For those who aren't on board with the 7-minute ballads, there are also more lighthearted tracks like Too Easy and Spring. I knew that Chance reminded me of a specific song, but I couldn’t think of the name until I read something by a person named Grimelords about how it’s like her version of Sinatra's My Way. That’s exactly what it’s like.

Girl Band - The Talkies Shoulderblades is an ugly, mammoth, multi-part story. Brilliant genreless repetition like in album opener Prolix and at the end of Couch Combover. Amygdela sounds like if early Preoccupations was fronted by someone undergoing torture whilst also muttering at their withdrawal hallucinations. The vibe here is complex. It's a very consistent album, but the collection of sounds and attitudes is really unusual. Caveat is a great example: a simple beat and twitching synth line turns into a lumbering mess of distortion-and back again, whenever it decides to-at will.

0 Stars - Blowing on a Marshmallow in Perpetuity Timid singing, odd titles, and every-instrument-in-the-room textures on this album belie depth and a very warm heart. "even though my dog barked at a baby, i won't tell her 'no' cause that's just the way she deals with being scared and sometimes i get scared too, and it's bad enough without the shame when i mess things up and you don't come over, i go to the kitchen and eat leftovers just because i'm sad doesn't mean it is fair to depend on you when you're sad too"

(Sandy) Alex G - House of Sugar With Gretel—the best song of the year—as its lead single, House of Sugar set an impossibly high expectation. Although Gretel is certainly a high point on the album, there are many more: Hope is inconspicuous but beautiful, honest, and cathartic, SugarHouse is a devastating jam, and Southern Sky whirls comfortingly from a rose-tinted verse into a chorus supposedly inspired by a dream and tinged with sadness. All but one of these songs are under 4 minutes long, but they're packed with conflict between abstract and concrete lyrics, beauty and strangeness. It's Alex G, so don't be surprised by the unexpected and often outright weird electronic flourishes and transitions throughout the record, but if you can handle its irregularities, this is easily one of the most fresh-sounding and enjoyable albums of the year.

Emily Reo - Only You Can See It A bright, fun, and beautiful album full of bouyant vocals and strange twists and turns. Although I deeply love the poppy stuff here (like the anthemic single Strawberry), my faves are the slower, darker, vaguely occultish songs: Ghosting, Counterspell (a shimmering sequel to 2016's Spell, one of the best songs of the year), and In Theaters, which is one of those songs that builds and builds and then has the most satisfying payoff. It might be my favorite ending of any album this year. I hope you check this one out. Emily is the coolest and this album rocks.

Chromatics - Closer To Grey Of course this came out in October. Chromatics is the only band that is allowed to use canned vinyl hiss. The first song on this record is a Sound of Silence cover and it is amazing.

Mizmor - Cairn I try to approach new music without giving too much thought to the circumstances of its creation, but something about the idea of a mythical lone individual painstakingly crafting beautiful layered music appeals to me, whether it's Phil Elverum of Mt. Eerie, Sufjan Stevens, or this: Mizmor, some dude from Portland, OR making sick, dense black metal. Cairn is a slow, doomy, cinematic album, and maybe these qualities make it easier to notice the incredible attention to detail on individual riffs or little instrumental passages. My favorites were Cairn to God and The Narrowing Way

Laura Agnusdei - Laurisilva Lounge music from hell. Twin Peaks-y saxophone glides over squishy synthetic beats. Lungs Dance sounds like a block of jello having a nightmare. In all seriousness, this is an ingenious and very unique album and I enjoy it a lot. A lot of music I listened to this year attempted to merge organic and synthetic sound in a way that emphasises their similarities. Here, synthetic sounds and recognizable voices/samples/sax & flute riffs are juxtaposed, and the rift is never bridged. And it's weirdly comfortable. This is the most acidic of acid jazz. And honestly, I just really like how wet the synths sound.

~~~~~

SONGS I LOVED (singles for albums that i think outshone the album OR songs that were released not as part of an album OR just songs i heard and enjoyed. this will hopefully prevent me from including an album i don't actually love just because i really dug one song on it)

Arthur Russell - You Did It Yourself Iowa Dream is a great collection of Russell's more accessible unreleased work. You Did It Yourself in particular is such a perfectly weird, groovy almost-pop song, a reminder that Russell was as talented a writer of hooks as he was a mastermind of electroacoustic experimentation. To explore his other side, check out another of his posthumous releases from this year, Not Checking Up.

MGMT - In The Afternoon A gothic post-punk masterpiece that sort of follows from their excellent 2018 album Little Dark Age. This is MGMT's best era ever. My most-anticipated-2020 list is basically MGMT and Owen Pallett's Island. And probably one or two more Big Thief records.

Floating Points - Falaise Floating Points' 2019 album Crush consists mostly of Aphex-Twin-y glitch-beat tracks that occasionally push towards something really interesting and unique. It's a great album, but the organic instruments on opener Falaise set you up brilliantly for an organosynthetic payoff that never arrives.

Honey by Drugdealer/Weyes Blood okay, Lonely on the same album is fun, if a little silly. Lost In My Dream is also totally decent, and Fools is kind of a bop... actually, this whole album, while not totally my cup of tea, is great. If you like 70's-disco-inflected (like, Bee Gees) retro rock, sweet vocal harmonies and guitar licks, and a few indulgences (like saxophone), you'll totally dig this record. I'm gonna spend some more time with it. Honey fucks especially though imo

Everything All at Once - G Jones Something about this song just scratches an itch in my brain. The rest of this album is basically dubstep, and it all sandwiches this one beautiful little song. Better not to question life's gifts.

Perfume Genius - Eye in the Wall Sandunes & Landslands - Eleven Eleven James Blake - Barefoot In The Dark new grimes unfortunately Deafheaven - Black Brick

~~~~~

Honorable Mentions/stuff i like but other people would probably love

Kim Gordon - No Home Record An experimental (but comfortably modern) record by the 66-yr-old Gordon, best known as a multi-instrumentalist/vocalist in Sonic Youth, a band I occasionally appreciate but can't say I love. Parts of No Home Record are noise rock-y, like Murdered Out, and others totally defy comprehension: Paprika Pony seems to have the most buzz surrounding it, which makes sense since it features both a kalimba and a trap beat. Really not a resting-on-laurels type of album. I wish more iconic older musicians made shit like this.

Pharmakon - Devour The rare album that makes me forget about my tinnitus. A dense cloud of distortion and sharply biting microscopic needle creatures that settle around your shoulders and block out all light. Fucking awesome. Listen if you enjoy oppressive painfully pulsing sound textures of industrial noise blanketing completely incoherent screaming.

clipping. - There Existed an Addiction to Blood This is a tough one for me because there are things about this album I can't stand, but many more things I absolutely love. The inventiveness of the production on Run for Your Life, Daveed's absurdly skilled delivery on Blood of the Fang, the harsh noise and musique concrete combining delightfully with rap on songs like La Mala Ordina; all of this is extremely exciting. I really love the last track Piano Burning, an 18-minute recording of, yes, a piano burning. The thing is, clipping.'s lyrical content is more or less the same here as on 2013's Midcity mixtape. It's ultra-violent, filled with graphic descriptions of gang violence and torture, which is fine, but just not something I'm that interested in listening to more than once or twice. They've branched out elsewhere (on their previous album, Splendor & Misery, and on the recent EP The Deep), but to me, it's unfortunate that this super cool and thoughtful album is lyrically (at least, on the surface) just a collection of descriptions of people being murdered. I don't really have any interest in reading more into it than that, because I regret pretty much every time I try to pay close attention, either because it's gross and boring or because it's embarrassing (The Show, for example). I want to emphasize that as horrorcore goes, the writing here is mostly very good. The rhyme patterns like at the beginning of Story 7 are genius. It's just not for me, I guess. I'm gonna keep listening to a few songs, though: Nothing is Safe, La Mala Ordina, Run for Your Life, and Blood of the Fang are excellent.

Field Whispers - Fire-Toolz The Warm-Body is a great song. Hyphen- (and parenthesis-) heavy vapor/pc music/new age/ambient jazzy synth stuff. really nice.

Caroline Polachek - Pang every r/indieheads dude: i like slide guitar now probably the best vocal performance of any album I heard this year, Polachek is just ludicrously good. listen to Insomnia

Danny Brown - uknowhatimsayin¿ When most artists release an album of outsized acclaim, you can with some certainty expect them to mimic its acclaimed qualities later on in an attempt to reach the same level of success. Danny Brown is not most artists, though, and no one who knows him would count on a retreading of the ground covered in Atrocity Exhibition, Danny's nearly perfect 2016 album. uknowhatimsayin¿ is more lighthearted and, I think, a little less ambitious (it's 13 minutes shorter, with more consistent track lengths; there's no "Really Doe"), but not to its detriment. The features are less head-turning than AE (up-and-comers JPEGMAFIA and Obongjayer, the understated genius Blood Orange, and Run the Jewels, the most overrated act in hip hop), but they all fit in neatly. Tracks like Belly of The Beast and Negro Spiritual prove Danny could still rap over a washing machine or musique concrete or fucking whatever. The lyrics are less dense, the beats less experimental and strange, but the lighter energy is kind of nice. Atrocity Exhibition could've lost three or four tracks, but this album feels juuuust right.

HTRK - Over the Rainbow Soft, ambient, moody. Reminds me of William Basinski's Watermusic II, but this album is less repetitive and a little less weird. It's background music for people who hate background music. It's delightful and ignorable. Very nice.

Blarf - Cease & Desist Shockingly decent plunderphonics/noise album from Eric Andre, who it must be pointed out attended one of the most prestigious music colleges in the world.

Ryan Lott - Pentaptych Beautiful, prickly modernist string compositions.

Cereal Killer - The Beginning & End of Cereal Killer Empath - Active Listening: Night on Earth Ithaca - The Language of Injury Mannequin Pussy - Patience Swan's Chamber - Swan's Chamber Avey Tare - Cows on Hourglass Pond Men I Trust - Oncle Jazz Charli XCX - Charli Black Midi - Schlagenheim Michael Kiwanuka - Kiwanuka Methyl Ethyl - Triage Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a Sheepskin Vest Better Oblivion Community Center - Better Oblivion Community Center Twin Peaks - Lookout Low Holly Herndon - Proto Laurel Halo - DJ-Kicks Earl Sweatshirt - Feet of Clay Nihiloxica - Biiri Wet Fruit - Wet Fruit

Best mix: Night Bus 4: Memory of Night Bus by CFCF When Hyperballad hits, you will understand. http://www.gorillavsbear.net/cfcf-drops-night-bus-4-memory-of-night-bus

Best album name:

Gross Net - Gross Net Means Gross Net.

Answers my foremost question immediately.~~~~~

A halfhearted AOTD list, in order this time

1-The Age of Adz

2-Heartland

3-Entrañas

4-The Money Store

5-Channel Orange

6-Planetarium

7-Ontario Gothic

8-Konoyo+Anoyo (this is cheating but whatever)

9-Carrie & Lowell + Greatest Gift (also cheating idc)

10-My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

thanks for reading. the world is abundant.

[grimelords]

Hello and god bless, I have finally finished my November playlist a week and a half into december. Disco, Guns N’ Roses, an entire doom metal album and everything in between. Please enjoy.

​Extraball - Yuksek: Aside from the extremely nice electro bass I think what I appreciate most about this song is that the chorus seems like the sort of thing you could sing in a round, or as some kind of children’s clapping game.

Mirror Reaper - Bell Witch: Let me be the first to apologise for putting an 80 minute doom metal album as the second song on this playlist. I’m sorry. It was selfish and it won’t happen again. That said, please listen to this because it is transformative. I’ve listened this a lot this month and it’s really affected my mood I think. Doom metal is one of the only genres that takes itself seriously enough to release an album that’s just one 80 minute track but I really can’t fault them for doing it. This is a piece of music that demands to be listened to in full, and while it does naturally divide into movements like anything else this long would, it would be weaker overall if it were split into individual tracks or listened to individually. A lot of the playing on here, which is very sparse in long sections feels like ritual music of some kind - a feeling that’s compounded by the length when you’re absolutely lost within it. It makes electric bass and drums feel like modern ritual instruments and this album feels like an invocation of the spirit of loss itself.

Sixteen Tons - Merle Travis: For some reason I keep thinking about and listening to different versions of Sixteen Tons. This is Merle Travis, the orginal songwriter, but this is a new recording he did in 1989. Notably I love the very plaintive solo in the middle of this, but I especially love that he changed the lyric at the end to say “I owe my soul to Tennessee Ernie Ford” which feels like an agressive rebuke or a solemn nod but I can’t tell which.

Looking Up - Michael Smith: My girlfriend sent me this song because she heard it on the podcast Good Christian Fun which as I understand it is an exploration of the bizzare world of american evangelical christian media. Anyway this song rocks. It sounds like Todd Terje remixed the theme to some lost 80s sitcom and I really can’t get enough of it.

Wild - Beach House: This is such a beautiful song. I love the tinny drum machine and the live drums that sound programmed constrasting against the huge wall of guitar and synths. I used to listen to this album a lot a few years ago when I worked night shift and it reminds me of standing on top of wine tanks in the cool night air at 2am texting my now girlfriend as she went to bed. Sorry.

Piano Concerto No. 3 In D Minor, Op.30: 1. Allegro ma non tanto - Sergei Rachmaninoff: I had a friend in school who did his licentiate degree in piano in year 12 and was obsessed with this piece. One day he took me through the whole first movement and showed me how the theme is established and comes back in different forms over and over again throughout and basically taught me how to listen to classical music which was very kind of him because it’s something I’m only really appreciating now.

Verklärte Nacht, Op.4: String Sextett for 2 Violins, 2 Violas and 2 Cellos - Arnold Schoenberg: This is an early Schoenberg piece before he got into that good good atonal serialism, but it does still have moments that presage what was to come. I don’t really have much to say about this other than it’s a very good place to start with Schoenberg because it’s like proof that he was a human man at one point.

Day-O (The Banana Boat Song) - Harry Belafonte: I’ve really been thinking about how work songs like this and like Sixteen Tons become international hits. This one especially, in the 50s, was it because it was a really good song (which it is) that a lot of people related to or was it a sort of exoticism about funny banana song (which to be fair, it also is).

Boogie Wonderland (12" Version) - Earth, Wind And Fire: This is the song you hear playing from the other side of the door when you get to heaven.

Apollo’s Mood - The Olympians: This album is basically a collection of Daptone All-Stars under the name The Olympians just doing their thing and it’s really amazing. I especially love the harpsichord in this, an instrument that doesn’t get nearly enough of a workout in soul music. Also, I don’t really know how to describe it but I really love the way the snare roll that starts it off and comes back a few times sounds - buzzy and busy without rushing anyone.

Saturn - The Olympians: This is the song you use for your montage at the end of a James Bond movie that’s just four minutes of him relaxing and drinking different cocktails by himself that the critics called ‘wholly unneccesary’. In the drums and bongo break he does a little dance and falls over.

November Rain - Guns N’ Roses: As far as overblown classic rock epics go, I really wish November Rain had the cultural place of bad song Bohemian Rhapsody or Stairway To Heaven because underneath the 9 minutes of stings and bullshit it’s actually a very beautiful and sad song written by an idiot.

Sisters Of The Moon - Fleetwood Mac: With the current wytchy cult that Stevie Nicks has around her it’s easy to forget that she wrote songs like Sisters Of The Moon, a song explicitly about a witch converting other women to witchery. I love the big extended phrase of guitar chords in the chorus and I’m very mad about how this song fades out just as it’s absolutely going off.

When The Levee Breaks - Led Zeppelin: Rounding out this unexpected classic rock trio is When The Levee Breaks which I was thinking about because I was thinking about The Big Short. This song sounds so good and there’s been so much written about the famous drum sound and the production but what I only learned this month is that it was apparently recorded at a faster tempo and then slowed down afterwards, which explains a lot about a lot of the sounds in here.

Bad Liar - Selena Gomez: This is maybe the pop song of the year honestly. It’s so good in every single aspect, especially the when she says’ oh baby lets make reality, actuality, reality’ which is a very weird lyric. So is 'you’re taking up a fraction of my mind, every time I watch you serpentine(?)’. Great stuff all around.

Hello Miss Lonesome - Marlon Williams: I saw Marlon Williams a year or so ago and it was one of the best gigs I’ve been to because things just kept going wrong. Broken strings and misunderstandings and all that sort of thing, and the highlight for me was in this song the drummer got overconfident and started pushing the tempo near the end and eventually tripped over himself so badly they had to stop and start again.

The Voice Of Q - Q: Here’s how you can tell a song is good: you can only find it on Spotify on a compilation album called 'Cocaine Boogie: 24 Kilos Of Underground 80s Dance’. This song seems like a classic case of 'somebody bought a vocoder’ and it’s very very good, another fantastic entry in the canon of interplanetary disco. I also love the children sadly pleading with Q to come back at the end, because the song hasn’t really given you any understanding of who or what Q is other than a being with a voice who is from space.

Take A Trip - Rev. Utah Smith: If I were, hypothetically, to start, for example, a UFO cult, I would definitely have my congregation sing this song. I love it so much. Outside of the fun premise it does what good gospel music should do and completely uplifts my spirit by promising a better life after this one, and if I get to go there by rocket ship, well that’s all the better.

Normal Person - Arcade Fire: I love the little 'do you like rock and roll music? 'cause I don’t know if I do.’ he sings at the start because it sounds like they’re into their 13th hour of recording or something. I love the lead guitar that sounds like it’s severely undernourished but trying its best and I love how strangely heavy the bass and rhythm guitar is compared to a lot of their other songs. A good song to sing along to while you’re driving.

Top Of The World - Kimbra: I don’t know exactly how or why but Kimbra made a Kanye song. Playing the dual roles of Kanye and Featured Artist she does a great job and once again defies whatever I thought she was going to do next. I can’t wait for the album, I hope it has even more Raps.

Eric’s Trip - Sonic Youth: I’ve never gotten much into Sonic Youth because they seemed way too New York Cool for me, so imagine my heartbreak when I found out the lyrics to my favourite song of theirs are wholesale lifted from an Andy Warhol film. I still have a lot of love for 'my head’s on straight, my girlfriend’s beautiful, it looks pretty good to me’ though.

I Hope I Sleep Tonight - DJ Seinfeld: God I’d be embarrassed if I blew up on soundcloud with the name 'DJ Seinfeld’ and then had to keep it when I put my album out. This album varies pretty wildly in quality but I really love this track, the synth melody that just careens around wildly while the rest of the song happens nearby is what does it for me I think.

Problem With The Sun - Nicolas Jaar: “In an interview with Self-Titled Magazine, Jaar said “I was watching a documentary about bugs. It said that if they looked at the sun, they’d die. I thought ‘Oh, that’s funny; that’s cute’ and I wrote a track about it (…). If you find something really special in a tiny story about bugs, it could have a much bigger meaning than that. I like the idea of turning life into this miniature thing”.” He’s used this particular voice modulation on a couple of song and it really cracks me up because it so thick and textured and just plain silly but somehow it suits the song perfectly.

Long Strong Diamond - Baggsmen: This is a song I remember seeing on Rage late at night years and years ago. The guy was dressed up as a werewolf and kidnapping some girl but he gets so distracted by his song about being a werewolf that she ends up escaping. Extremely mad to find out that the guy in this song from years ago that I love is none other than personal enemy of mine Jake Stone from Bluejuice.

XO/The Host/Initiation - The Weeknd: Trilogy could well be the best album of the decade. Remember when The Weeknd was this mysterious anonymous guy who was firmly a character and not an actual guy who seems to actually believe what he’s singing? I love Trilogy because the progression across the three discs from like 'cool indifferent party guy’ in House Of Balloons to extremely deranged cult leader in Echoes Of Silence is very satisfying. Initiation especially is great because it’s like a cool fun song about a party mixed with some extremely dark shit about the clocks not working so you can’t tell the time and the blinds not working so you can’t see outside in a scary pitch shifting voice. “And all I wanna do is leave 'cause I’ve been zoning for a week and I ain’t left this little room, trying to concentrate to breathe” but you absolutely MUST meet my boys.

This Guy’s In Love With You - Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass: Anyway here’s a change of pace. A very peaceful song about just fucking dying if she won’t be your girl. I love how dramatic this song gets before completely stopping and starting again into a very relaxed trumpet line.

Jasmine (demo) - Jai Paul: I’m obsessed with the cult that develops around guys like Jai Paul and Jay Electronica, who put out two songs that are so good that it drives people insane when they don’t put out any more. There’s apparently a bunch of stuff happening with Jai Paul currently that I haven’t been keeping track of but The Fader had a really good article earlier this year about how the Jai Paul leaks and how insane it made everyone. Aside from all that, the song is pure magic - just listen to it and you can understand why everyone was obsessed as they were.

Freaking Out The Neighbourhood - Mac Demarco: I remember I saw an interview with Mac Demarco talking about this song and he described the riff as just some dumb little thing he made up which is shocking to me because I am totally obsessed with how good it sounds. It’s perfect!

Bob - “Weird Al” Yankovic: Yes baby it’s Weird Al’s all-palindrome Bob Dylan parody! I was telling my girfriend about how this is actually really good songwriting because even though it’s essentially gibberish it has enough good imagery and fun sounds that it works anyway and really how different is 'may a moody baby doom a yam’ to 'transient jet lagged ecto-mimed bison’ from the Mars Volta which also appears on this list? Anyway she hated it, and rightly so.

I Have Good News To Bring - Sister Rosetta Tharpe: Live from the basement church of my UFO cult, a beautiful version of Take A Trip that sounds like it was recorded on the organ of an empty baseball stadium at night.

Julia - Jungle: I have been desperately waiting for three years now for another Jungle album and they finally posted about new songs the other day and I got very very excited. This is an amazing song, every sound in it is so perfectly placed and the vocals are very beautiful and have such a rich bass for such a high tenor. I love the way the drums subtly get very busy in the last few choruses, I could listen to this song for hours.

Ray Gun (feat. DOOM) -BadBadNotGood & Ghostface Killah: I love that this song is maybe 20bmp faster than Ghostface or Doom are expecting. Doom especially sounds far more excited than he has in years and they both do really well with it. Also, I was certain the melody it breaks into in the last third was some Lalo Schifrin bit I’ve heard before but I can’t seem to find any info corroborating that. If it’s familiar to you or you know where it’s from, please reply to this post because it’s been driving me crazy.

Confessions Pt. III - BadBadNotGood & Colin Stetson: Any song where Colin Stetson has to play with others is funny to me. He’s such a self contained ball of power that him joining a traditional group like it just wouldn’t work. Sure, this song does sort of sound like him doing his own thing for seven minutes while the band sort of reacts to him but it is absolutely fantastic anyway.

Everyone Nose (All The Girls Standing In The Line For The Bathroom) - N.E.R.D: Remember when Pharrell was crazy? This song is total chaos. The pitched down sample in the hook, the two note bassline, the sax that just hoots once a bar. And I absolutely love the contrast of the beautiful bridge, especially the 'achooo’ backing vocals.

Parties - Shlohmo: Bad Vibes was such a moment. It is such a beautiful album, and a very easy album to fall asleep to and then wake up 20 minutes later terrified and choked by your headphones because Trapped In A Burning House, the song that sounds exactly like its title and nothing like the rest of the album, came on. I have such a strong emotional reaction I really can’t explain to the cutoff samples of people laughing near the end of this song.

Bering/Human Till Born -Talkdemonic: I have no idea how I came across this album but I’ve been listening to it constantly for ten years now and I still find new things to appreciate in it. The drums especially in Human Till Born are a source of obsession for me.

Don Caballero 3 - Don Caballero: For a long time I never 'got’ Don Caballero or Hella or any of these supposedly legendary math bands, despite loving so many bands obvously influenced by them. But then one day this album, and this song especially just clicked for me. It also happened to coincide with one of the most surreal weeks of my life when I was on a cruise ship and all I listened to was this and a field recording album that seems to have completely deleted itself from my computer since then. The best advice I’ve heard for listening to this is, and bands like it is that it’s backward. The drums are the lead instrument and everything else works around that, if that helps. This song has a twisted sort of morose quality that’s really hard to pin down. Some days it is absolutely heartbreaking, which sounds silly but it’s true.

B.Y.O.B. - System Of A Down: There’s a few reasons I was thinking of this song. First and most importantly it’s because of that dog vine but the other reason is I was thinking about how there hasn’t been a good anti-trump song yet outside of YG’s FDT, and that came out before the election. This and American Idiot came out in 2004/5, and I suppose it’s only been a year since the election so we’ve got a few years yet until the real hits come out I guess. Or I suppose he’d have to actually properly declare war, which, you know.

4D/MTI - Koreless: These songs are so intertwined in my head I feel like you can’t have one without this other. 4D is such a simple, beautiful piece of music. The synth that sounds like glass and the chopped vocals getting more and more contorted as the song goes on contrasted with the propulsion of the drums is so great. Both of these songs have a meticulousness and restraint to their sound, every single piece is perfectly where it should be and nothing else is allowed. Even MTI using so much white noise feels incredibly controlled and when it totally drops out it feels like coming up from underwater.

New Lands - Justice: Remember when Justice took 4 years to write a follow up to their album that lit the world on fire and instead of doing the same thing again they made a classic rock album? Everyone was so mad. Luckily this song is incredible and everyone was wrong once more.

You Discovered The Secret And Juiced It For All Its Majesty - Venetian Snares: This is from an EP called Cubist Reggae which I think a lot about in concept alone. This is probably the song that illustrates the idea worst but I love it a lot. My incredibly unpopular opinion is that Venetian Snares is miles better of Aphex Twin and whoever but everyone’s written him off as the Rossz Csillag guy so he doesn’t get no respect. I love how detailed his music is, how every one of the million sounds seems to be perfectly placed. I think he’s in a similar position to Autechre where he’s been making and listening to only his own music for so long now that he’s forgotten how normal music sounds, which is good.

Blues Run The Game - Jackson C. Frank: I made a playlist a couple of years ago of all the songs I sing to myself when I’m just walking around or whatever and it turned out about 6/10 had 'blues’ or 'hard times’ in the title, which is tough but it’s ok, and this was one of them. If you want to read a wiki article that’ll make you cry, read Jackson C. Frank’s, but mostly you should just listen to this, his only album.

Thermal Treasure - Polvo: I played this song for my girlfriend and during the intro she said 'you have such a wide variety of tense, off kilter music seeminly designed just to put people on edge’. I’m a huge fan of this very defensive sentence in Polvo’s wiki article 'Their sound was so unpredictable and angular that the band’s guitarists were often accused of failing to play with correctly tuned guitars’.

FML - Kanye West: This is such a strangely affecting song and it’s hard to be sympathetic to Kanye as a narrator sometimes (especially when he insists on doubling down on dogshit lines like “'I'mma have the last laugh indian cause I’m from the tribe called chekaho’”) but against all odds you can identify and relate to his struggle to hold onto the woman he loves and not be undone by his own worst instincts. Musically this is the best The Weeknd has ever sounded and I already love him a lot, and the way the drums lead into the sample at the end is just perfect.

Roulette Dares (The Haunt Of) - The Mars Volta: This is the album I’ve probably listened to the most in my life. As a teenager I would listen to this album every night for easily a year and somehow there’s still something new to hear in it. It’s almost hard to listen to it now because I have so much Teenage Feeling attached to it but it’s still an incredible piece of work. Jon Theodore deserves a statue for his drumming on this album, and this song especially, in my humble opinion.

Life’s A Beach! - Studio: God I love Studio. I think if you tried to describe them on paper you could never make it sound like good music. “It’s sort of, balearic , reggae, guitar-led dance music and the songs go for about 15 minutes most of the time.” But it is good music! I absolutely promise it’s incredible music!

The Number Song (Cut Chemist Remix) - DJ Shadow: I love this remix because it feels like theseus’ ship as demonstrated via remix. How many parts can you swap out for similar but not identical parts before it’s a completely different song. The drums are almost the same beat, but a totally different sample.The Jackson 5 horns in the original that signal the transition to the second half are still here with the same function, but it’s an entirely different horn sample, and an entirely different second half save for 'the party’s already started, and it’s about to end’. 

listen here

[im-abanana]

“Meant to Belong” [1/3]

Wanted to write a fanfiction about BATIM (Bendy and the Ink Machine), and especially about my new ship Bendalice (Bendy x Alice). I just put it on AO3 too, but whatever, I’ll post it here too! :P 

This first chapter is Angst, but the next two will be Angst, Fluff and Smut, so be careful with the next ones and, if you don’t like it, don’t read it. Said so, I hope you’ll enjoy!

Summary: Hidden very deep inside his soul for many years, there was a shocking emotion that made the little devil realize that the fallen angel wasn't just a simple co-worker, or a friend, or a rival, or a family member to him; but more, so much more. Their peculiar bond was a little more... complex, unique, maybe genuine. In other words, somehow they were meant to be together, drawn and designed to truly belong to each other. But all the pranks, all the fights and all the teasing sometimes made everything difficult, especially after that particular night.

The thick door of Alice's private dressing room slammed loudly behind her back as the fallen angel walked towards the huge mirror on the wall, sitting in front of it and sinking her aching head in her gloved hands, sighing out deeply and trying to calm the raging thoughts that were invading her mind. “Why can't Bendy just understand that he isn't the only one working on this show? Why can't he be friendly, or at least kind to me and Boris? Why can't people and kids realize how much of an arrogant, spoiled brat that demon is? Why do they...” a wheeze escaped the girl's black lips as the last part of the question carved its way inside her brain, forcing her to feel a sort of guilt, even shame, in the core of her chest. “... why do they love him more than me?”.

She shouldn't have been jealous of Bendy, Alice was aware of that, and somehow the realization that she envied her co-worker made her feel sick in the stomach. Yes, that perfect little angel, the character supposed to be a perfect and gentle creature, envied a stupid, mischievous little devil; she envied the joyful sparks of light in the children's tiny eyes when he would walk on stage with that smug grin of his, she envied the praises Joey and the parents would give him after every single set, while she and Boris would just stay silently behind the curtain and compliment each other, she envied the larger quantity of “Bendy Merchandise” the creators sold every month, she envied... everything.

She envied his whole fucking existence and, very deep inside her heart, no matter how much she desired to become a star and shine at least half as bright as him, Alice knew she would have never reached Bendy's popularity. “Especially after tonight... how could I be so careless?”.

Tripping over Bendy's stupid tail, right in front of dozens of yelling kids while she was singing and dancing on stage side by side with the devil in question and the poor naive Boris, had been mortifying enough, definitely... those brats' ruthless laughter still echoed in Alice's offended mind, and the worst thing was that even the previously calm and uninterested parents completely lost it when the angel made that single mistake! And all because of that stupid step, that one slip! Com'on, it wasn't her fault if that idiotic demon cut her off all of the sudden; he always wanted to be the center of attention no matter what, and Joey knew it very well! But despite everything she said or her sincere apologies about her rash actions (“You could have injured Bendy as well!”, they carelessly said.), she was the one who got severely scolded backstage by the whole crew, except the sweet and generous Boris, of course. “And in an hour I'll have to perform once again in front of those people. Just great, fantastic, exactly what I need to feel better... I'm sure that “The Butcher Gang” would entertain those children way more than me, maybe I should ask them to cover for me. Ugh, but Joey would be furious, I have no choice it seems.”.

The only reasonable thing to do was sucking it up and walking tall and proud on that stage, not caring about the stinging criticism or amused gazes. As long as she didn't have to bear Bendy's wiseacre grin, everything would be fine.

At that exact moment, the wooden door behind the angel squeaked, sign that it had been opened by someone, without any warning, and then discreetly closed again with a silent thud. Alice's muscles tensed for an instant, and when she slowly turned around to see the mysterious visitor's face, she had to hold back an irritated groan and a few insults that came to her mind incredibly fast. “Aww! Don't give me that sneer, toots! I came here to check on you!”.

“Get lost, Bendy. I'm not in the mood to put up with you and your childish games.” the young woman replied with pure hatred, staring at the tiny demon standing right in front of her, as usual not scared or intimidated by her enraged expression; the devil's black jacket, the one he was elegantly wearing during their performance, was rapidly tossed away as Bendy made himself comfortable, sitting on a chair and relaxing, as if everything was his private property. And he still had that idiotic, conceited smile on his face... “I said get lost! I did not invite you inside!” Alice repeated with a snarl when she realized she had been completely ignored, getting up and clenching her fists. “Did you hear me, you stupid devil!? This is my dressing room! These are my things! That is my chair! And I want you out of here right now, you understand!?”.

“Woah, calm down Angel Cake, no need to be so snarky! I just came here to congratulate with you... for the perfect landing on the stage, especially on your butt! Seriously sweetie, after tonight the creators should change your slogan in -She sings! She dances! And she falls on her huge ass!-!” Bendy simply replied with a small shrug and then with a coarse laugh, smirking in response and turning in “his” chair, his pitch black eyes blinking joyfully as Alice got even angrier and grayer on her smooth cheeks. Oh, how he loved to tease that angel! “Uhh, someone's mad, toots? Eheh... ehy, com'on Angel Face, put that hairdryer down! I'm just playing aroun-! Alice... please, put that thing down. N-no, don't! Boris, Joey! BORIS AND JOEY, HELP ME! Alice wants to hurt me! AHH!”.

The black haired girl threw at the short demon the hairdryer, a spray can, a shoe, a thick book, a desk lamp and even a small table she found in a corner, managing to predict his erratic movements and scoring at least three perfect hits in the face with the last objects. “Golly toots, calm down! Don't ruffle any feathers, and just sit do-! Umh... ops, right, I'm very sorry! That was way out of line, I admit it! Forget what I just said and... no, stop with that stuff!” Bendy hid behind the nearby couch and bit his pale lower lip as he immediately recalled that Alice, in fact, didn't have wings. Sometimes the spiteful devil would call his graceful co-worker dumb names, like “Angel Cake”, “Angel Face” or “Toots” when he simply wanted to flirt, but the most hated of them all was definitely “No Wings”; being a horned fallen angel, an imperfect creation that represented pride and betrayal by nature, had always made that talented woman feel uncomfortable on stage, almost under constant pressure: after all, that kind and good-hearted angel was supposed to be a perfect and beautiful artist, but it was clear to see that, when all eyes were locked on her, she felt worse or maybe in danger, despite she tried to hide those nasty feelings with sweet smiles and a strong character. “I swear, this time I didn't mean it! I shouldn't have said that and I apologize for that, ok?”.

“Get. The. Living. Hell...” Alice hissed and lifted a pretty big wooden nightstand with both arms, her dark and shiny irises glowing red for a moment as she literally shouted the last part of the phrase and hurled that piece of furniture to him at the same time, not caring about destroying her refined sofa or anything else, really. She just wanted that intolerable cartoon out of her sight, once for all. “OUT! I've heard enough from you, Bendy! Go away!”.

Dodging the violent hit with a nimble leap, the tiny demon raced towards the dressing room's exit at full speed, his pointy tail tightly pressed between his shaking legs in defeat and pure terror. “You got that toots, leaving now, goodbye, see you in one hour, get ready and beautiful and prepared for the big show, babe!!!” Bendy nodded with great vigour, desperately crawling outside and closing the white door behind his narrow shoulders, giving up and choosing to live. Damn, what a jerk, he was just having fun!“Phew... That was too close indeed... jeez, what's wrong with Alice tonight? I was just kiddin', she is too overly-sensitive! Bah girls, I'll never understand them!”.

But that's when Bendy heard a quiet noise, an easily recognisable sound that filled his careful ears and made him freeze in his shady track when he realized what he had just done: his usually joyful and positive co-worker was silently sobbing behind the layer of wood that separated the duo, her slim face buried deeply in her tapered fingers. He, with his unintentionally cruel and selfish words, had made Alice cry and had probably hurt her already damaged spirit. Sadness, nervousness, humiliation, insecurity, fear, incomprehension and rage merged all together, causing a painful weep to escape from the angel's wet lips and a couple of heavy, inky tears to stream down her soft and marked cheeks.

Well, damn crap. Good fucking job, you made Alice cry, you stupid little dancing moron. You... you made your co-worker upset right after an important performance, very well done.

“She never cried before... or did she?” Bendy asked with a gentle huff, mostly to himself, dropping down and pressing the left side of his artificial skull against the thin drywall, guilt and sorrow filling his short limbs and spreading quickly along with an empty hole, consuming the energies of the middle, throbbing spot of his incredibly gaunt chest. “Did I ever... even notice?”.

Of course you didn't notice her feelings or Boris' ones, you idiot. You're just a egotistical little shit, you only care about yourself and your popularity, and no one else. Right?

No, wrong, so wrong. Of course he cared about that kind angel and about Boris, they were his best friends. Well, his only friends, to be fair... and making Alice suffer or breaking her heart was the last thing Bendy wanted to do, despite how much he loved to tease her, underline his own attitude or sometimes fight with her, verbally and physically. That little demon thought that everyone knew that he was just kidding, that all he liked to do was playing around and having fun, not only with the kids, his little beloved fans. But now he evidently took a bad step...“You fucked up Bendy, you hurt one of your own friends.”.

You shouldn't lie to yourself like that, you know?

Yeah, he shouldn't have indeed. Hidden very deep inside his soul for many years, there was a shocking emotion that made the little devil realize that the fallen angel wasn't just a simple co-worker, or a friend, or a rival, or a family member to him; but more, so much more. Their peculiar bond was a little more... complex, unique, maybe genuine. In other words, somehow they were meant to be together, drawn and designed to truly belong to each other.

No matter if they were living and thinking creatures, capable of taking their personal decisions and freely express their temperament, the innate attraction they shared was still there, impossible to remove or ignore. Was it because of his purpose, for the audience, was it just a trait he couldn't erase from his artificial DNA? Or was it because after all, it was a real feeling, spontaneous? “No. She is my rival, that's what we truly are, that's what we both chose to be. Joey might tell me that Alice Angel is my official love interest, but we both know this won't happen. I am the number one, I must be on top of this whole show, I won't give up the place I've earned just for love!”.

So, you're even admitting that you're in love with her, uh? Nice move, you idiot!

That wasn't good, oh no, that wasn't good at all! He had to fix the situation as soon as possible, no matter what, even if the idea of facing her again in a few seconds was rather scary and intimidating, so much that Bendy had to rub his throbbing temples with his white gloves. “Grow a pair Bendy, you're the boss here! Yeah, you're the big star! Now walk into that room and deal with Alice!”.

Damn right he was! And besides, he still needed to get his black jacket back.

[eggoreviews]

My Top 25 Games Advent Day 15 - Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (#11)

​​“On that day, when the sky fell away, our world came to an end.”

​​​​It would be an understatement to say I was late to the party when it comes to Smash and even fighting games in general, after my first experience being stumbling upon a copy of Brawl amongst my boyfriend’s old Wii games, before picking up the 3DS one for myself. There in front of me was some of the most fun I’ve ever had playing a game, especially with other people, and a roster full of characters I’d barely heard of. I found myself drawn into the Smash hype circle, getting to know each and every character, their movesets and what characters/stages could turn up in the future. This meant I was in the perfect spot to be blisteringly excited for the game’s latest installment and, for me at least, it is by far the best fighting game ever made, as well as most ambitious and well-executed crossover event conceived.

​​Smash at its base level embodies fun, both for casual players (like me) and those who prefer the competitive side of things. The controls are intuitive, but take time to master, and it’s so accessible I genuinely feel as if I might be competent at it. To make matters even better, Ultimate is the most refined and fast-paced in the series, blending perfectly responsive controls, moment-to-moment fighting and revamped movesets to accommodate these changes, this truly is my definitive Smash title. I can’t tell you how many hours I’ve whittled away just playing the CPUs (actually, yes I can, because my Switch tells me), because I genuinely just have that much fun with it.

​​As I mentioned before, I was pretty much immediately sucked into the hype cycle that came with Ultimate and I was unbelievably excited for each and every character that came in. That’s the great thing about Smash; the fact that the lead-up is arguably better than its release, purely due to the giddy speculation of what characters from our favourite franchises could make the cut this time around, even if most of the characters that came in I’d purely heard through other people.

​​In March of 2018, Nintendo dropped a sneaky trailer showing off the inclusion of the Inklings before the game was even announced at the end of the trailer; Inklings are fun and cool and I was into it. Skip to E3 and oh god I’ve never been this excited in my entire life. Fucking everyone is coming back from every previous game, along with highly requested big boi Ridley and slightly less requested Daisy (who I still main sometimes) and that’s when I sort of lost it. Following that up with the likes of the Belmonts, K. Rool, Ken, that beautiful plant, my bois from Persona 5 AND DQ11? And some 90s twunk in a baseball cap? This roster couldn’t get any better if it tried (except it can, because there’s more coming). Each and every stage that accompanies these characters is perfectly realised, with the whole game brilliantly utilising its bright, consistent art style, which is especially impressive when you consider the fact they needed to balance the aesthetics of the likes of Solid Snake and Isabelle. Everything in this game is just brimming with Sakurai and the Smash team’s dizzying attention to detail that packs as many references and callbacks to specific characters and franchises as possible. The vast majority of stages maintain the overall visual design of its home franchise, as well as including camoes from other NPCs from those games. And the S O U N D T R A C K. Basically a thousand tracks worth at this point, peppered with remixes for every franchise, even ones that wouldn’t have been necessary but are just a testament to the amount of time and effort put into making this game the ultimate crossover. Even putting aside the massive amount of original tracks and older remixes, newer ones like Termina Field, Guile Stage, Beneath the Mask, literally everything from Mega Man and Castlevania. It’s all just so GOOD. 

​​However, by the time release was starting to inch closer, one gripe remained. What, if anything, were they going to do about single player content? Because Smash is not famed for its myriad of stuff you can do alone and Smash is basically half the fun without someone to play it with. In Melee, you had Adventure Mode, which was just kind of there. In Brawl, a grandiose campaign complete with unique bosses and wonky platforming, Subspace Emissary. And I’ll be honest, while I loved the cutscenes, I eventually couldn’t finish it due to the sheer length of time I spent competing with the slightly off platforming sections. And famously, Smash 4 was almost completely devoid of any single player content, with the exception being the inevitable classic mode. But all my concerns melted away when they unveiled the opening cutscene of their cool new story mode, World of Light. I know this had mixed reception, but I personally loved it, because it focused on what you’re actually meant to be doing in Smash; fighting things. Add on top of this a vague story about killing eldritch beings and collecting over a thousand shiny JPEGs and yeah I’m hooked on this. It’s still wild to me that so fucking many of my absolute favourite characters are collectible in one place, from Mipha to Makoto Niijima, my DQ11 lads to Ricky the kangaroo. World of Light was an absolute blast and I loved playing it and discovering all of its secrets.

​​And now, prepare for the smallest paragraph in the world as I take you through my two (2) tiny gripes with this game:

​​1. They kinda fucked with All-Star mode. I preferred the sort of gauntlet thing from the previous game, though that is just nitpicking at this point.

​​2. Two tracks and no spirits was apparently all they could find for Final Fantasy. I suppose we can’t blame them, I bet they looked. Probably buried underneath all that Squeenix royalty money. Maybe they’ll dig up some more content one day.

​​There’s my gushing review on my absolute favourite fighting game I’ve played. Maybe I’m biased considering this is packed with my favourite series and full of characters I’ve come to now through the game, but I consider this to be the definitive Smash. And there’s still more coming! I’m going to explode!​​

​​Standout Moment Award: Today’s standout moment is the only one on this list that’s going to something that occured pre-release; that is every Nintendo Direct that gave us a brand new character. That build-up, that giddy excitement of knowing you’re about to find out who’s next to join, is something little else in gaming can match.

Standout Character Award: Joker. Nothing can really top the excitement I felt at my perfect boi dropping into the Game Awards.

​​Tomorrow: No. 10; Space captain and all-around sex machine goes on a universe-spanning, pest control adventure.

[airadam]

Episode 102 : Play With Joy

"Give me a minute, I'll give you my spirit."

- Konny Kon

Another month, another mix to keep your ears nourished! Listen out for Juice Crew appearances and connections throughout the selection, after Manchester witnessed them tear up the stage this month. We've got some soulful numbers, turntable wizardry, and quotables for days. Let's get it started...

Twitter : @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Cesar Comanche : A-Game

With the intro and all that, this is a track that needs to be at the start of a mix, and as such I've been saving it for quite a long time. One of my favourites from the original days of the Justus League, this track is from Cesar's second album "Paper Gods", and is a great ode to working hard in music and not being a hanger-on or a daydreamer; as the title suggests, bring your A-game. 9th Wonder is on the beat, slapping that snare as always!

Kev Brown : The Beat Tape (Instro)

One of the instrumentals from the "Selective Hearing" LP; nothing super complex, just a good example of doing something funky with a handful of elements. The insertion of that "yeah" sample is worth the price of admission!

Kool G Rap & DJ Polo : Letters

Another one I've had in the "to play" list for ages, it's a straight mic workout for G Rap taken from his final album in collaboration with DJ Polo, "Live and Let Die". As an aside, I didn't realise that the album was shelved some time after initial release because of the controversial cover art! Luckily, it got a re-release so you should be able to find it - there are some excellent tracks on there. As with most of the rest of the album, Sir Jinx, best known for his work with Ice Cube, handles the production; a nice funky soul sample forms the basis of the track.

Wordsworth : Feel Me

Hadn't given "The Picture Album" a listen in a long time and had totally forgotten about this Ill Poetic-produced track - I was looking to include something featuring Masta Ace but this got the nod instead, as it were. "Feel me internally"? Hold that thought, we're coming back to it later in the show...

Bumpy Knuckles : Lazy

One of those tunes you can drop on a mixtape or in a club night full of real heads. DJ Premier on the beat with a meat-and-potatoes drum pattern underpinning a disjointed string sample, and Bumpy going in on the mic straight line style. Bonus points for him impression of crying MCs in the intro :) We will definitely return to the "Konexion" album again!

Big Daddy Kane, Jay-Z, ODB : Show & Prove

The full version of this tune from the 1994 "Daddy's Home" album is long! Coming off a loop of the DJ Premier beat, I actually missed off the first three verses (Scoob, Sauce Money, and Shyheim) and jumped in at Kane's appearance. A then mostly-unknown Jay-Z can be heard here with his old style, and ODB shuts it down on the final verse, overwhelming the track with sheer force of personality! Three Brooklyn kings, no question. The sharp-eared amongst you will find the last word on the tune very familiar...

[Pete Rock] All City : Priceless (Instrumental)

I played the vocal version of this many moons ago on episode 12, and Pete Rock's beat fits brilliantly here - a bridge between the explosion that ends the previous cut, and the tempo of the one that follows...

Top Rawmen : Symphony 3000

I'm amongst friends here, so I can admit it - at least partly due to cultural differences, I didn't realise for years that this turntablist crew's name is a pun! Yeroc, Nando, Nomad, Mike c, and Jay Slim brilliantly execute the concept of a turntable version of the Juice Crew classic "The Symphony" on this selection from "Return of the DJ, Volume IV". The beats are sampled/cut/reworked from that 1988 record, and several quotes from the track get sliced and diced here too.

Camp Lo : Cookers

This Ski-produced B-side (you know the deal) from the "Trouble Man" single bangs hard in a specific way that often makes it tough to fit into mixes, but I think this is a good spot for it! There's a detail worth noting on this one - check how Sonny and Geechi start each two-bar phrase of the first verse with their syllables landing dead on each hit of the kick drum. 

Diamond D ft. Kurupt and The Alkaholiks : We Are The People Of The World

Diamond just keeps on going - with a record collection and a mind like his, the beats will hopefully keep on coming for a long time yet! His 2014 album "The Diam Piece" is a producer-centred project where he brings in a star-studded roster of guests to bless his beats; on this cut, we get veteran West Coast lyricism from the 'Liks and Kurupt, keeping it positive. I do need to stop giving myself these awkward bar counts to mix with though...

J-Zone ft. Has-Lo : Caddy Coupe

I love seeing people win, so this track works on two levels; firstly, it comes from "Fish 'n' Grits", an excellent album from the latter phase of J-Zone's musical career, and secondly because of the story. I can totally get behind a real-life tale of a man treating himself to a bit of luxury after a hard working life; it's just a genuinely nice story. Philadephia's Has-Lo takes the second verse to expand the theme a little more, and Zone's production (in all senses of the word) is excellent and inventive as always.

Trifeckta : First Time (Janet Jackson Flip)

I wanted to bridge here with something having a bit of 80s style and also some soul, and finally found the right beat on the Producers I Know compilation "The 80s Beat Tape" - which I'm sure we'll visit again. St.Louis'/NYC's Trifeckta dices up some Janet Jackson and tops it off with some skilled drum machine work.

John Legend and The Roots : Hang On In There

Somehow the "Wake Up!" collaborative project slipped by me until recently, despite being years old! It's mostly made up of covers of old soul records, and they're done well. Here's one example, their take on the low-key 1972 classic "Hang On In There" by Mike James Kirkland, with a beautiful groove and a solid message.

Children of Zeus : Rock You Internally

Yet another great cut from Konny Kon and Tyler Daly, both of whom are in fine rhyming style right here - classic tag team vocal styles. No slouches on the boards either, they cook up a quality beat from a classic soul sample. "The Story So Far..." is an essential purchase...and that's just a collection of their past work. The album, when it comes, is really going to be something.

Ill Camille : Take A Ride

Ill Camille is an artist coming out of Los Angeles who gets much respect from those in the know. While her latest LP "Heirloom" is getting rave reviews, here we go all the way back to 2011's "The Pre-Write" for a track which I think features the sadly late Alori Joh ; they collaborated on a version of this track I've seen titled as "Take That Ride". Camille handles her business here lyrically, and the hook is very nicely done as a bonus. I've not got any credits indicating who produced it, but I do like the beat - incidentally, all that EQ/filtering going on towards the end is part of the track itself!

KING : The Greatest

I don't know how many times I've played this track this year, but it's a lot. Paris Strother kills it on this production (as she does on the whole "We Are KING" album), and on the mic along with the other two members for this ethereal and grooving tribute to the great Muhammad Ali. If you're hearing it for the first time, it deserves an immediate rewind - alternatively, watch the excellent 8-bit-styled video :)

Tall Black Guy : Sade's Taboo (Sweetest Taboo Blap-Up)

The brother from another mother (and father) once again shows you how he flips well-known samples into his own head-nodding, shoulder-slumping style!

Craig G : W.F.W.T (What's Fuckin With That)

Ending things on an up note, we take a track from the amazingly titled "I Rap and Go Home" album. The Juice Crew veteran gives you a small window into his life as a live performer..and he loves it! Again, I like to see people win and so it's nice to know that Craig's working life is pretty awesome. Vaporworldz isn't an artist I've heard of before, but this beat is on-point; a light, cheerful head-nodder with a little reggae seasoning in there. I hope Craig G and the rest of the crew left Manchester with happy memories - although we couldn't help much with the weather, sadly.

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!

[flarebossmalva]

just for future reference and in case anyone was curious i’m going to explain what the hell i was on about re: some stuff in my writing tag

skipping things that are obvious or self-explanatory but if you’re puzzled by something i wrote and i didn’t explain it here then feel free to ask i guess

disgust - i thought of vomit immediately and then wrote about the last experience i had with a friend who was sick. i don’t actually remember which friend this was anymore. “you’re never going to die ever again” i’m not sure about but i think this may have been referring to how awful stomach sicknesses are and how they can literally be so bad they make you feel like you’re dying? that’s a guess

aether - thought of “ether” instead which is very volatile so that’s how i got onto the theme about exploding. i think the rest was just vague associations

pincushion - human pincushion. i guess someone who has bled out completely

aura - you know how they talk about people having colored auras? i just picked a color and went from there. don’t know what “i can taste it under my fingernails” means even remotely but if this is from when i worked in produce/floral i constantly had plant matter under my fingernails so maybe that. am reading “you look lovely, by the way. very fresh.” in GLaDOS’ voice for some reason and not sure if that was what i had in mind when i wrote it

mint leaves - catnip is in the mint family and some people says humans can get a mild high off smoking it

indie - this was about seeing mother mother live. the “he” is ryan

wind - probably masturbation but trying to explain the trip from point a to point b that i made here would get really complicated if i’m even recalling it correctly

lamp oil - amnesia: the dark descent. lamp oil is a resource in that game. player character hallucinates bugs and grinds his teeth when he spends too long in the dark

bombs - boss fight wheatley. the track that plays during that battle is called “bombs for throwing at you”

cucumber - i was thinking of items you could buy together at a supermarket that would disturb the cashier. a single cucumber, rope, and a paperback romance novel sends some interesting implications i think

columbia - no idea but one of my friends told me this is essentially the plot of bioshock infinite

kevin james - one of those paul blart mall cop memes involved the phrase “distant egg song!” and that’s what i was going off of

marigold - flowey

25-27 - since this looked like it was referring to three sequential questions on an askmeme i acted as though that’s what i was answering here. i don’t know why i chose the colors blue and orange; portals from the portal games are those colors but what with the other two responses in this post being undertale related i’m thinking maybe blue = sans and orange = papyrus

🙌 - reference to a (nsfw, i won’t link it) fanfic about sans smoking. i have a massive smoking kink so i think you can see why i’d find that emoji appropriate

syringe - this is a reference to a short story i wrote in high school. the association is that i think syringes were used to administer drugs to the protagonist

wine - almost positive there’s an audio log in the first bioshock game that’s a bit like this. even if there isn’t, there’s an area where a party has clearly gone down (lots of alcohol, splicers are dressed fancy) and that’s what it made me think of

glow - no idea

can of soda - i was thinking of a sprite can

amsterdam by imagine dragons - a song i don’t know; i used to be friends with this kid who was weirdly snobby about music and would condescend to me if i admitted to not knowing of a song or artist, so i wrote about that, kind of

apartments - “apartments are like cages” is a phrase that either i or someone else has used and i thought of that phrase and then i thought about cages and then i thought about johanna from sweeney todd and her one musical number

gold - this is about my paternal grandfather moving west as an adult. he didn’t move as part of the gold rush but that’s what i thought of first and then i thought about his moving to california so this was kind of a mix of the two concepts

sting - musical artist sting has got an album called brand new day and this was written thinking about the album art

lunar theatre - i’ve explained this one before but i wrote this while really sick around the time i first got diagnosed with lyme disease. i was sleeping most of the time and tired whenever i was awake. at the time i was also taking ativan (among other medications) and it made me very sleepy and out of it. the title comes from an art installation i saw once which basically looked like an artificial shoreline, which is where the ocean/water imagery comes from

tessellation - obvious maybe but repetition is part of the definition of the word

roses - james from team rocket, often carrying a rose

paris - this was a joke about egg hatching in pokemon x/y (the most efficient way to do it is to bike in circles repeatedly around the game’s version of the eiffel tower)

n - i feel like this is obvious too but it’s a joke about n harmonia from the 5th gen pokemon games

nature - i’m not sure how i got to talking about gelatin molds but have you seen some of the ones from the fifties and sixties? truly horrifying

berry - early on in x/y you’re put in charge of a berry field and then later you become champion (the league is at the top of a mountain). there are curtains in the champion’s room. idk i just thought about becoming champ and then abandoning the berry field since that’s basically what i did in-game

dogs - pretty literal, this is just my experience with pet dogs

q - this is a reference to a song from goddamn sesame street

teacup - malva has a butler, who presumably serves her tea sometimes. he battles you on her behalf once and his team is pretty powerful, but of course she’s elite four and would have him beat

guitar - at the time there were a lot of “wonderwall” memes that’s what i thought of

pine - pine trees, christmas trees, their lives are cut short but they get to dress up fancy for a few weeks, i don’t know

touch-me-not - fanfic i plotted out once but never actually finished writing. in it, bryony and celosia are using one of those remote-control vibrators (celosia was the one wearing it, and bryony had the remote, iirc) but if you remember team flare also used a remote to control the ultimate weapon and i loved the idea of getting the two remotes mixed up. all the higher-ups (save bryony and celosia, of course) are playing with the remote thinking it’s broken and trying to get it to work. meanwhile poor celosia is dying and the only one who notices is malva, who is the “she” in this piece, who deliberately starts messing with the remote to get a reaction out of bry + cel. i don’t remember how this fanfic was going to end but i think probably celosia would excuse herself to go to the bathroom (to, ahem, take care of herself) and malva would follow her in and then idk they’d fuck. listen i’ve had worse ideas

nightshade - i’m not sure how i got from the prompt to my fill but the fill is definitely about another fic i was working on involving a trainer who experiments on eevee trying to discover new eeveelutions

knives - my abuser had a “suicide attempt” (not really, he didn’t do anything except think about it, but that’s how he classed it iirc) where he planned on using a knife. also he wrote (bad) poetry once comparing me to a knife because idk i was mean for not wanting to fuck him probably

cake - it’s 2007 bro. memes bro. this was about portal bro

gameboy - self-explanatory i think but this was specifically a goof on ben drowned even though a lot of video game creepypasta start out this way

ruby - as in the pokemon game. this was about being a team magma grunt

cicada - i think this one is straightforward but in case it’s not, in my area you find dead cicadas all over the place in june

notebook - this was about harriet the spy

tree - based off of something that happened with me and my best friend when i was eleven or twelve

big ben - well, english clock towers... there’s a scene in a christmas carol where scrooge wakes up and hears the clock strike an hour it’s already struck and gets freaked and worries about the spirits coming to haunt him

cookie - i got a baby doll for christmas when i was a little kid and gave it to my younger sister bc she liked baby dolls and i didn’t. she named that doll cookie. this was general feels about being the Bad Child who Wasn’t Feminine

paint - straightforward again but this is about my parents’ house, the one we moved into when i was a young teen and where they still live with my little sister (and, currently, me). it was initially painted white and we repainted yellow a few years ago (i think after i had moved out to go to college). also that house still doesn’t feel like home to me in the same way our old house did

boots - god this is gonna take a lot of explaining but in the underland chronicles, second book, gregor (protagonist) is separated from his baby sister (nicknamed boots) after, iirc, the boat they’re in capsizes and they get washed into the nearby catacombs by the waves. he assumes she’s drowned since she’s a toddler and can’t swim. it’s basically his blue screen of death moment and he spends the next part of the book feeling totally dead inside, like a machine, no emotion no empathy. this scene fucked me up bad when i first read it aged about nine

freckles - i think this is obvious but just in case, this is about me (formerly) hating my freckles

egg - aforementioned fic about eevee experimentation was maybe going to involve unethical forced hatching of eevee eggs by cracking them open before they’re ready. i was basically thinking of every sick thing you could do to a pokemon to try and force an evolution

fairy - same fic. the protagonist has a shiny eevee that she gives special treatment and thinks is going to evolve into something special bc no evolution method she’s tried has worked on it. it was to be revealed later that her “special” eevee had actually just swallowed an everstone, and, immediately upon operating to remove said everstone, eevee evolved into sylveon

orange - as a small child i was allergic to oranges. the only memory i have of having an allergic reaction was breaking out in hives and going down our creaky old staircase, which felt big and intimidating to me as a little kid, to tell my parents about it

yuri - i thought of a favorite f/f pairing of mine, bryony/celosia, and in particular the scene that got me to ship it. in that scene, you battle celosia (who acts very woe-is-me upon being defeated) and bryony immediately springs to her (girl)friend’s defense

mitochondria - i learned the word from the sequel to a wrinkle in time, in which charles wallace gets really sick with some sort of mitochondrial disease and his older sister meg tries to save him by like astral projecting inside his mitochondria or something. god that book was weird

a gigantic rubber duck - when she was a baby someone gave my sister a gigantic rubber duck (which she adored, i think we still have it somewhere) and so this was about how i felt about having a new sibling

electricity - eevee fic again. rival character in the fic was an electric-type trainer. this was about the convention of trainers locking eyes and then battling

feverish - fevers as sex metaphor somehow??? i guess because fevers, like sex, often leave you sweaty. eleven was when i had my first wet dream and eighteen was when i listened to that “naegi with a fever” audio and got real gay

anger - metaphor again. i really did make a glass paperweight one time, on a class trip to a glass museum. my abuser and i were off-again with our friendship at the beginning of that trip and on-again by the end of it but there was still, i think, unresolved anger on both sides. that’s the association. i don’t know how to explain what i was thinking here beyond that

mosquitos - “petty annoyances” is just what i think of mosquitos and then i guess i just went from there. “bigger than i am but you know when to kneel” might have been my abuser again. he was, indeed, bigger than me but he got down on his knees begging me to be his friend again right at the end of things between us lol. honestly it was the most compelling thing he ever did

laundry basket - i thought about dirty laundry and then about worrying my clothes smelled dirty or that i smelled dirty and like, obsessively bathing because someone wanted to come over and have sex with me and i was just barely not a virgin at that point and had no idea what i was doing and was freaked out over the whole thing

cow - i took a year of spanish and for some reason the only thing i actually learned was how to say “where is the cow” and “the cow is here” which are not actually useful phrases in most contexts

[airadam]

Episode 96 : A City United

"It's not the world, it's the people in it..."

- LaPeace

What a month it has ended up being. Manchester suffered a terrible blow, and the figurative reverberations will be felt for a long time to come. It has been something to see how people have come together in the wake of the attack, and hopefully that spirit is something that can be carried forward.

While I wasn't able to completely re-do this month's show, I hope it's a pleasant listen for anyone who has the time to give it an ear. Amongst this episode's tracks we have a couple of Manchester tunes, some beautiful instrumentals, and an uplifting ending. Enjoy.

Twitter: @airadam13

Playlist/Notes

Kendrick Lamar : DNA

"I got loyalty, got royalty inside my DNA". Absolute fire. The Mike Will Made-It beat is dark and banging and from the very first line, Kendrick is on point. A beast of a track from the new, appropriately-titled album "DAMN." Definitely worth checking the video starring Don Cheadle too!

[Lex Luger] Kid Ink : Blackout (Instrumental)

I was struggling to find an instrumental in my library to fit in here but then thought about which producers might have something to fit, and Lex Luger, Mr."Hard In Da Paint", was my first idea. To be honest, I went to go and have a listen to the Kid Ink track and...I didn't rate it. All about the beat here, thanks to a mixtape of instrumentals on Datpiff!

Devin The Dude : Acoustic Levitation

Devin is a bit of a southern legend, starting off with Odd Squad and Facemob before commencing a long solo career. He's noted for bringing his sense of humour to his music, but that's not the vibe on this cut, the title track from his ninth solo LP. It's a fairly serious number with Devin in reflective mood about the world over a beat produced by his old Odd Squad running mate Rob Quest, who cooks up a solid 808 groove.

Children of Zeus : I Want You

The first time I heard this, I stomped over to DJ Chris E and demanded (ok, not like that ;) ) he tell me what it was immediately! It had only just been released on the CoZ Soundcloud account, and I got my download as soon as I got back home. This is a bodywork-rattling, baby-making slow jam out of Manchester that deserves all the listens. Vocally, it's a Tyler Daly solo, and as much as I love the lead vocal I think his backing styles on the hook put this one over the top. 

Dr Dre ft. Jill Scott, Jon Connor, and Anderson .Paak : For The Love Of Money

One of my highlights from Dr Dre's "Compton" LP, a piece inspired by "Foe Tha Love Of Money" by Bone Thugs-N-Harmony. This has some of the foremost soul vocalists of recent-ish times taking a starring role, with Jill Scott bringing the gentleness and Anderson contributing a rougher tone. The origins of the track are that it was the first beat made by New Jersey native Cardiak when he moved to Los Angeles, and Jon Connor heard it and wrote his lyrics to it - it was only after that that it found its way to Dre for it to become what you hear now. 

MC Eiht : Just Lean

This Compton veteran has carved out a long career, and it's amazing to think that "Affiliated" is his eleventh solo album. Add that to the Compton's Most Wanted LPs, and you have someone who deserves a ton of respect. He's not talking about anything super complex on this weed anthem, but he does definitely slip in some clever references - Ice Cube and UGK, to name but two. The longtime CMW producer Tha Chill collaborates with the D&B producer DJ Subflo for an eerie, creeping track with those echoing snares adding to the dissociative feel.

UNKLE : 24 Frames (Redux)

I can't remember how I exactly found this one - I hadn't been up-to-date with UNKLE's output after the "Psyence Fiction" album, but heard this orchestral killer on Spotify and have been dying to find a place to slot it into the show for months!

Count Bass D : Subwoofer (Dumile)

Somewhere right now, Count Bass D is making a beat. Crafting. Refining. He's sixteen solo albums in, not to mention EPs and compilations, but right here were back to his third, 2002's "Dwight Spitz", now available via Bandcamp. A tribute to the fallen DJ Subroc of KMD and also paying homage to Hip-Hop luminaries of times past, this is almost certainly my favourite tune on the LP. For a little listening detail, check how the drum pattern changes up on the approach to the hook, doubling up on the kicks and snares - very nicely done.

Mothership Connection : Space Junkin'

Manchester's Mothership Connection have been doing a stack of live appearances over the past few years, but as they're a collective of solo artists and member of other groups, it's taken a while for them to release their own product. we finally have their debut EP, "This Train Goes To Junkleberry Junction". All tracks are produced by Mankub, and this one is on a bit of an Apollo 13 vibe while the crew of MCs spill lyrics all over the equipment!

Ilajide ft. Propaine : In The House

The man behind the beats for Clear Soul Forces stays producing quality material. This particular piece is on the "Five Week Heet III" Bandcamp release, and after the quiet intro groove (hard to hear on the mix in/out, actually) it just thumps along. I definitely need to hear this man doing extra work outside the camp. Actually, how about Ilajide and Camp Lo...?

J Dilla ft. LaPeace, Moe Dirdee, & Seven The General : Say My Name

One of those songs that pops into my head fairly regularly but which I don't play even for myself as much as it deserves. Nothing esoteric here, just dope rhymes over an old Dilla beat - that's enough. Catch this on the "Rebirth Of Detroit" album.

The ARE : Midnight (Instrumental)

It's been a while since our last visit, but we return to The ARE's reworking of samples used by A Tribe Called Quest on the "Midnight Marauders" LP. This one is a re-imagining of one of my favourites, but crashing along with a vibe of its own :)

Ka : Up Against Goliath

I was having a listen to Ka's brilliant "Grief Pedigree" this month and found myself rewinding this track. It may at one level be a song about the street game, it could be an anthem for anyone up against the odds. DJs, for full thematic effect you could follow this with UGK's "Pocket Full Of Stones", which is also pretty close speed wise too. #yourewelcome

Damian Marley & Nas : Friends

It's been a while since "Distant Relatives" was released, and every so often a song gets shortlisted for the podcast before getting dropped at the last minute. This time though, it makes the cut. It's not often that Nas doesn't put in the best lyrical performance of all the vocalists on a track he appears on, but I think Damian's performance is superior here! Damian also handles the production, which is well-done, except that the periodic sloppiness on the two and four beats makes it sound like yours truly is making mixing mistakes :)

Yusef Rumperfield : Sparklin

From the Tall Black Guy Productions label come the instrumental stylings of Yusef Rumperfield on his "Jazz In Motion" album. I picked this chilled-out number because sometimes, there's no room for words.

Portishead : It Could Be Sweet

An old favourite from Portishead's debut "Dummy". Beth Gibbons' heartfelt scratchy-throated vocals go nicely on top of the drum machine beat and some subtle keyboards.

Air : High Point

The B-side to the "Once Upon A Time" single, and once again proving Chuck D right about the flip side, this is a beautiful instrumental.

Thundercat ft. Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald : Show You The Way

A great song to end on, and one I've been playing over and over since I bought Thundercat's "Drunk" album. This bassist, producer, and singer is a really unique gem, and as is somehow befitting of a man who's worked with artists as different as Suicidal Tendencies and Kendrick Lamar, he's a lover of the R&B-infused jazz fusion styles of the 70s and 80s. When Kenny Loggins called him up to say that he and Michael McDonald would be interested in collaborating, he rightly flipped out! The combination on this uplifting cut is a straight classic to me, and I think with the pain of the last month, this is a fitting place to close the episode.

Please remember to support the artists you like! The purpose of putting the podcast out and providing the full tracklist is to try and give some light, so do use the songs on each episode as a starting point to search out more material. If you have Spotify in your country it's a great way to explore, but otherwise there's always Youtube and the like. Seeing your favourite artists live is the best way to put money in their pockets, and buy the vinyl/CDs/downloads of the stuff you like the most!

Check out this episode!