#records are the same to me as cassette tapes and cds. they were just around. i know how they work and how to use them.

[bluebellhairpin]

Omg people seriously don't know how vinyl records work im on the floor crying wheezing rn.

[girlboyzone]

some sunship chr physical media hcs :3 this is a long one Sorry

can you tell i'm like super autistic abt both of these things . can you tell is it obvious

c!aimsey would have a walkman w some old cassettes, some mixtapes and some audio logs from blooms own travels, maybe some audio diaries she could listen to in the future to reflect on past feelings and see how much they'd change. a few of these had them talking about sola and seeing her before everything soured and bloom lost her. i think especially during the daisy hollow era she listened to these ones a lot. i think in the future (around endless sunset) they wouldn't record as many of them, maybe just before big events because bloom's quite stationary now. she probably keeps a box of the old tapes in a box somewhere, not entirely hidden but still out of the way so they don't always reach for them.

arg!sunshipduo would have had an old timey record player in the cabin, like the ones with the kind of horn thing at the top you only really see in animated movies. most of the records they would have had would be old albums with love songs they would've danced to. i like to think hera played these often during experiments.

au!aimsey in s1 absolutely would've had a cd collection. like ABSOLUTELY in my mind no doubt abt this. i've gone on about my au!aimsey cd headcanon here but i think au!aims made a mixtape for au!guq when they were both crushing on eachother with a couple lovey dovey emo songs and then made an especially romantic one (like i will follow you into the dark, the world is ugly, summertime, teenage dirtbag, the only exception etc etc etc) after everything went down with hera for the first time as a way to show that he still loves her all the same.

a!guqqie i feel like would've made a!aimsey a mixtape but a cassette mixtape, old school cassette mixtape with a bunch of songs. maybe this was something she did in the universes that lasted the longest, where they got the most involved with eachother and the most attached. but they never got to give them to a!aimsey i think, like something always got in the way of it.

con!aimsey came from royalty so i Know growing up they had the craziest dvd and cd collection, and they had a hello kitty cd player that got stolen by their sibling all the time. also emo con!aimsey Thank U.

on the other hand i think con!guqqie would also have cassettes but they would just be a couple albums she really liked and she'd listen to them on their walkman which i think would be painted with little designs :D

p!sunship would also write little letters to eachother and sneakily get them to one another . to me but thats not a physical media hc

[fallenasleepyetagain]

Competing - Blue/Nightmare Fic

Media: UTMV/UTAU

Genres: Human AU, normal multiverse, homoerotic chess game, flirting or threats? who knows!

Characters: King Nightmare, Blue, Dream (mentioned), Ink (mentioned)

Pairing(s): Nightmare/Blue

CW/TW: Threats, Nightmare vaguely taking about his Evil Plans™️

Word Count: 1434

Read it on ao3!

"Have a seat."

Nightmare sat on the opposite side of the large living room from the main entrance. The room was large, and if Blue was there for any other reason, it would've felt homey.

The living room contained a multitude of different activities scattered around the place. There was a large fireplace on the far wall, large and ornate, no fire burning in it at the moment. The floor was a dark wood, but there was a variety of teal and black carpets around the room, specifically around the couches and chairs.

The walls were filled to the brim with tall, wooden bookshelves. On most of them, there were rows and rows of books, as to be expected. Large books with damaged spines and withering covers were located at the top, out of reach, and out of danger. On the lower shelves were magazines and books clearly deemed less important by Nightmare.

On others were rows and rows of video game cartridges, as well as music CDs and cassettes. If Blue had to guess, there were also VHS tapes and recordings of TV shows and movies, but he wasn't close enough to see the exact filmography Nightmare had.

Wherever there weren't book shelves, there were small tables with unfinished projects and board games on them. There were some whittling projects scattered about, as well as a board game with an obvious loser who wasn't willing to throw in the towel.

All of that pales in comparison to, truly, what was the star of the show. On the left side of the room was a beautiful and ornate chess table, built from a dark marble with silver accents.

The pieces were likely hand carved, no two pawns looked the same despite the similar shaping to them. One side was made from a dark metal of some kind, decorated with teal and blue gemstones, the other set being a light silver with orange and white gems.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Nightmare said as Blue stared down at the chess set.

For a moment, Blue forgot where he was, what the stakes were. He nodded, fidgeting with his scarf.

"Shall we play, then?"

"What?"

Nightmare gestured for Blue to sit on the opposing side of the chess table: the side with the silver pieces. He obliged, although his body tensing as he sits down, the bottom half of his face hidden in his scarf.

"Have you ever played chess before, Blue?"

There was some hesitation; Blue's eyes darted to the board, the beautiful chess pieces, before back up at Nightmare. "...Yes. Not recently, but I have. I know the rules."

"Oh wonderful, I was worried that I'd have to teach you. That'd be a lot less fun," Nightmare hummed as he ran his thumb across his nails. "I get to skip to why you're here, which is preferable."

"I'm here to negotiate Dream and Ink's freedom." Blue said, his teeth grinding together. He knew a diplomatic conversation was the only way to succeed. Fighting Nightmare and his gang on his own was out of the question, and he couldn't rely on stealth to free his friends.

Not when Nightmare could hear the quickening of his heartbeat.

"But that's so boring, don't you think?" Nightmare fidgeted with the rook on the far left of the chess board. "We could have an intellectual back and forth, and with you I always do adore it, but this will just be a whole lot more fun."

"I- I mean...I guess so."

"So glad we're on the same page. Now, let me tell you about the stakes of the little game we are about to play."

Fidgeting with his rook, Nightmare allowed the suspense to build for a moment. "It's simple, really. We're playing for Dream and Ink's freedom.

"You win, and you all get to go home! No fights, no stakes, you just get to leave this castle untouched." He sat back in his chair, a sly smile on his face. "We end in a draw, and you take their place. Dream and Ink will be forced out of this universe, and you stay with me."

Nightmare leaned against the table, getting as close to Blue as physics allowed him. "If I win, on the other hand, then you'll never see them again."

"What? What do you mean?" Blue's hand gripped the arms of the chair, his fingers twitching, ready to summon his sword. "You'll kill me?"

"Oh, no no no, you misunderstand. I have uses, for the both of them, you see. And they cannot fulfill those roles until I've got all of you in the palm of my hand."

"And what about me?"

"What about you?"

"They have..." Blue ground his teeth, "uses. I don't?"

"No." Nightmare answered simply, smiling at him. "You're incredibly handsome though and that alone makes me want to keep you."

A shiver of discomfort shot through Blue's spine.

"So, shall we play then? I'll let you make the first move."

"Okay."

Blue looked down at the pieces, there were only a few options for what he could choose as a first move. All of the pawns; he could start with a queen's gambit, and the two knights.

What was Nightmare expecting him to do? Do something classic? Something unexpected? Was something truly unexpected if someone was expecting that was what you're going to do?

"Take as much time as you need."

The knight on the left side of the board reached his hand and he placed it down in front of his pawns.

"Oh, I knew you would make this fun."

Each and every turn was agony. Barely any actual words were spoken, just small hums and the occasional curse word. Blue's heart was pounding the entire time, trying desperately to get into Nightmare's head, and to play unpredictable enough that Nightmare couldn't get into his.

Nightmare's poker face never changed, even as Blue would capture his pieces. Just the softest, saccharine smile on his lips.

"Checkmate."

With ringing in his ears and his heart threatening to leap right out of his chest, Blue glanced down at the board. His throat was dry and he gripped down on his thighs.

"What?" Nightmare looked genuinely shocked. His eyes widened slightly as he scanned the chess board, working through each and every possible move with the remaining pieces on the board. "...Would you look at that. It appears that you've mated me. Congratulations."

Suddenly, Blue felt like his life was on the line. Nightmare stood up, slowly walking to the other side of the board. His nails tapping against the edge of the board.

A shutter left Blue's body as Nightmare got closer, his eyes squeezing shut. He was expecting pain, a fight, something, but it never came. Instead, Nightmare placed a small, shiny key in his hands, his lips close to Blue's ear.

"This was fun. We should do it again sometime." Nightmare said softly, his hand gently caressing Blue's reddening cheeks. He paused after taking a few steps. "Go get your friends. No one will stop you."

"Wait-!" Blue staggered to his feet, clutching the key to his chest. "You were going easy on me, weren't you?"

"Was I?" Nightmare glanced back, a smirk on his face. "Come to me again some time. We'll play again, and maybe you'll know."

Blue watched as Nightmare sauntered away, heart fluttering in his chest. As terrifying as it was, knowing Dream and Ink, and his own livelihood were on the line, it was thrilling.

Thrilling. Exhilarating. No one had ever looked at him the way Nightmare had during their game. Even though Nightmare often referred to him as "mortal," Blue felt as if they were on equal footing.

Is this what Sherlock felt like when he came across foes who could keep up with him?

Nightmare's thought process was a mystery to him, and something deep within Blue's mind wanted to solve it. Nightmare had such power, such control over his magic, his abilities. Blue was almost jealous.

To know Nightmare's mind, every square inch of how his brain works, every part of Nightmare's body-

With a shake of his head, Blue turned on his heel and sprinted to the dungeon. He couldn't be thinking about Nightmare, not when Dream was his best friend.

But...perhaps...in the middle of the night, when Ink and Dream were fast asleep, he could escape to the castle, and play once more. Challenge Nightmare's wits with his own.

As his hands placed the key into the lock of the cell, he knew that he had to come back.

Shit.

[idiotmaggot]

so i went into the storage room, in my house, right. which is basically just full of a bunch of my parents old stuff. (every so often i just go in there to look around, its so fun) but anyway. today, my find was a keyboard. i only have a laptop, so just the laptop keyboard is all i usually use. but this keyboard is big and it clicks very loud.

my point is, i might make some more text posts in the coming days, just because i like typing on it. my other point is uhh if you are bored you should go look through your storage room. there is probably something fun in there.

i don't even know why there were so many keyboards in there, there is just like 4 or 5 of them, so i got to choose which one was my favourite hehe. but apparently my dad likes buying new keyboards. because he is the only one in my family who uses a keyboard, other than now me.

i also found some cassette tapes, but i have found out i think there is a problem with the thing i use to play them, because they sound all slow and weird. and it wasn't the cassettes problem because they all had the exact same problem. so i will probably have to get a new player.

and i should get into collecting cassette tapes because i already collect vinyl records and CDs. so why not. they are pretty cool. also just a silly thing, my school has banned phones this year, so imagine how silly it would be if i just got like a sony walkman and just used it at school so i can listen to music without my phone.

anyway. that was a lot of yapping. but I'm probably going to do it again tomorrow or something. because you know what? this is my blog and i can yap all i want. well i could not yap 251 times in one day. tumblr doesn't allow it. but i digress.

soon, I'm going to have this sort of stuff on my website. I'm gonna make a blog on there, once i get the layout figured out. (once my website has a bit more actually on it i shall link it in my pinned post so it is more available. i believe i posted about it before but that is buried somewhere, idk)

anyway yeah that's what i am thinking about today hope you enjoyed reading it

[omegaremix]

Mr. Cheapo’s (Commack) shopping list, 2018.

If there was one store that started it all for me, it was Mr. Cheapo’s. It was the first in a long line of mom-and-pop record stores that sold used titles. Brentwood’s Pine Hollow Video was the first store I went for all my hip-hop and rap CDs and cassettes, but realizing that my interest in music was growing, Mr. Cheapo’s showed me what potential was about. The first year of earning a paycheck was the same year I discovered this store. It was where I bought my first stack of used CDs notably from Pearl Jam, Marilyn Manson, and Filter, whose “Dose” promotional single would be the first-ever I’d buy. It’s been around for decades and hasn’t been renovated as long. It’s also the only record store on Long Island to have two locations: Commack and Mineola.

Cheapo’s is just like Talking Heads: same as it ever was. Nothing has changed except for its’ overall stock. New releases behind the counter, near-endless bins of new and used vinyl and CDs with a cassette wall nearing the back. What used to be shelves upon shelves of VHS tapes now have the most extensive used DVD and Blu-ray library of any store. Vintage and classic vinyl 12″ and 45′s were pinned up on the back walls. Boxsets, posters, other 45′s, music-related books, DVDs, and more rows of obvious titles on vinyl and CD made up the rest of the store’s real estate. And plenty of shelves of used pop CDs for $3 each. No. Thank. You.

I didn’t scan the entire store as I was uninterested in all those used pop CDs, so I go right to the jazz / fusion section as I always do. About seven to eight columns wide with another three for soul, funk, and R&B, they didn’t let me down. One, two, three Bob James albums; the stuff of samplists. Blackbyrds, George Benson, and Deodato were mine and so was Jon Lucien whose “A Sunny Day” stood as one of my most-played tracks of all time. Tough that wasn’t found on his Columbia’s Best Of… The Hubert Laws that I passed up a while ago? It’s back in the bin and I wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. What I also picked up was The Rolling StonesUndercover. Once in my possession, I decided to give it away to friend and collector Tommy when he found a dump of 500 records one of his customers threw out on the sidewalk. 

A category I haven’t thumbed through in a minute was the hip-hop section, we’re not talking vinyl. For the first time in a while I scored some good titles on disc.Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth and Naughty By Nature were titles that’d be in my collection starting out in the Brentwood days. Jedi Mind Tricks because Vinnie Paz is real underground hip-hop. Got to have M.I.A. in my collection, too. Then I come across P.O.S. whose truly-innovative packaging with interchangeable transparent and solid panels with CMYK theme caught my eye. It harkened back to the pre-internet days of discovering certain artists you never knew existed by purchasing blind. An inquiry for anything Suicide led me to search through the punk bins where I found The Unseen. Watching The Blank Generation made me seeRichard Hell & The VoidoidsBlank Generation disc with bonus tracks in the bins but at first passed it up. Then I find the vinyl re-issue of the same album with live and alternatve versions for double the asking price. In that case, I ended up going for the disc version.

I rounded out my two-hour visit with other odds and ends. Other titles I bought for $2.00 and less were The Jerky Boys, Katt Williams, and Last Stop Standing, a record-shopping documentary. How fitting! Finally, I got a Paula Abdul cassette, one I used to have in my collection until my bro- misplaced it on me. Like I have to answer to any of you.

Blackbyrds, The Action

Deodato 2

Jon Lucien The Best Of…

Bob James 2

Hubert Laws Romeo & Juliet

Deodato Love Island

Rolling Stones Undercover (stickered)

Bob James 3

Deodato Whirlwinds

George Benson White Rabbit

Bob James 4

Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth Mecca & The Soul Brother

Jedi Mind Tricks Legacy Of Blood

Naughty By Nature self-titled

M.I.A. Arular

P.O.S. Never Better special edition disc

Unseen, The Explode

Richard Hell & The Voidoids Blank Generation

M.I.A. Kala

All Dogs 7”

Last Shop Standing DVD

Katt Williams The Pimp Chronicles Vol. 1 DVD

Jerky Boys, The Stop Staring At Me cassette

Paula AbdulForever Your Girl cassette

[heroinejinx]

‘One Fine Day’ - Songbird, part 1 of 6 (Seraphine x Jinx AU)

So, um... I have a new rarepair hyperfixation. Definitely didn’t write this when I should’ve been focusing on uni work due in less than 2 weeks, what’re you talking about? 

Anyway, Seraphine is an aspiring popstar working full time in her father’s music store, Songbird. Life is good but kinda lonely, and then Jinx comes along...

Chapter title, ‘One Fine Day,’ is based on the song by The Carpenters.

Also, big shout out, love and kisses to my handsome wife Babs (@lesbian-batman)who beta’d for me <3 love youuuuu

TW: extreme cuteness and fluff. That is all. 

(1,181 words)

AO3 link

Enjoy!

Dreamy vintage pop drifted through the music store’s speakers, bringing life to the rainy Zaun afternoon outside. The takings from the morning were low, especially for a Friday, and the bout of bad weather had driven away any hope of more sales. Might as well have closed up for the day, there and then.

Seraphine idled behind the counter, passing the time by singing along to each song, adding her own trills and high notes where she felt like it. While she belted out tune after tune, she doodled flowers and love hearts on the notepad allocated for ‘work purposes only.’

Her father would’ve flipped his lid if he found out how Seraphine spent her downtime at the store. Songbird was his pride and joy, in part because he’d named it in honour of his daughter, his only child. He’d called her Songbird ever since she was born; said even her crying sounded like an aria.

She took great care of the store for him, of course, but he wouldn’t have approved of her methods. There’s always something to do around here, he’d say. Make yourself useful instead of daydreaming. As a former rockstar and current sound technician for one of Runeterra’s most famous bands, he was hardly one to talk; he dreamed of success back then, just like she did now. Whilst he had the freedom to make his dreams come true, he’d also seen how the music industry corrupted people. He didn’t want the same for her, no matter how much she protested. Since he’d left to join K/DA on tour, she found herself shackled to the store with almost no time to pursue what she loved most.

Music...

Seraphine strived for the spotlight. Over the past couple of years, she had played dozens of open mic nights and gigs at small venues and clubs. Her reach and popularity grew every day. In the last month alone, she’d gained over five thousand new followers on social media and music streaming platforms. It was only a matter of time before a scout from a record company realised her potential and scooped her up.

Until then, life ticked by. Eight ‘til late at Songbird six days a week; studio recordings in the evenings, or at the weekend if she could find someone to mind the store; writing sessions crammed in wherever and whenever she found the time and inspiration. It was hard work, but anything regarding music barely felt like work at all. Music occupied all of her time, mind, and heart. It informed every aspect of her life, even her relationships.

To Seraphine, people were like songs. She’d never tried to explain it to anyone else – had met no one who would’ve understood – but everyone had a melody to them. Strangers gave off waves, impressions. At first, most people sounded like white noise or a continuous low-fi beat. She had to know someone on a deeper level to really hear them; for them to feel open enough to let her listen. It was a long time since she’d gotten close like that.

Between running the store and cultivating her fledgling pop career, she had no social life. Most of the people she’d met through music were acquaintances, transactional connections. In a crowd of fair-weather friends, voices blurred and distorted in the din. Everyone sounded the same.

Seraphine gazed out upon the shop floor filled with CDs, vinyls, and cassette tapes, with no one around to take them home and play them loud like they deserved. A cold loneliness seeped into her soul. She hated days like those, nothing to do but entertain herself and ignore the boredom itching beneath her skin. Music was a lovely companion, but sometimes she needed more than it could give.

With a wistful sigh, she tore off the decorated page of the notepad. Tacked it onto her father’s cork board of concert leaflets, old photographs, music lesson advertisements, and Janna knew what else. The cheerful rumblings of a new song played overhead, as she picked up her favourite bubble-gum pink gel pen, the same colour as her hair, and started on a new page. She drew a dainty love heart so cute she couldn’t help but beam with joy.

Admiring her creation, she didn’t look up when the bell chimed for a new customer. No one had come in for at least two hours; she was out of work mode, in her own little world. Chances were, they wouldn’t need her help, anyway. They were probably stepping out of the downpour, grabbing shelter where they could. It happened a lot around that time of year, heading into fall. So, she ignored the customer’s presence. Even kept singing, albeit under her breath.

‘Hey, do you have any other Bikini Kill records in store?’

Wow, that voice...

Seraphine met the customer’s eye immediately, desperate to find the owner of such an instrument. A petite young woman glared back at her with quizzical impatience, waving a copy of the band’s 1993 album, Pussy Whipped. A navy boiler suit dwarfed her frame, while ocean blue braids swung around her booted feet, frayed and scruffy like they’d been under a hat all day. She had the most distinctive eye colour Seraphine had ever seen. They weren’t quite purple or pink, but some inscrutable shade between the two. Under the store’s artificial light, the colours seemed to switch and swirl.

The music of Bikini Kill seemed to suit her aesthetic, raw and full of rage at the world in that feminist punk rock way, but there was more to her than that. Something unreadable lurked behind those ever-changing irises. Rather than the white noise of a typical stranger, she was a mess of pitch and frequency; a cluster of songs overlapping and battling each other.

What an enchanting cacophony of a person...

Seraphine yearned to hear more, to know everything about this captivating woman. What was her name, her story, her purpose? What were her fears and dreams and fondest memories? Did she have family in Zaun, or was she from out of town? What did she do for work and in her spare time? Did she have a lover? What was her type? Did she like girls...?

‘Well? Do you?’ She spoke again, raspy and sweet. A smoker’s rasp, no doubt.

The image of her posed with a cigarette between her plump, open lips, danced across Seraphine’s mind before she could stop it.

Blushing and hot all over, Seraphine shyly shook her head in reply and returned to the comfort of the notepad.

Janna, it was all so surreal. She had never felt so compelled by a person, and from such a tiny interaction, no less. She couldn’t follow this woman’s song at all, and she... well, she loved it.

‘Okay... I’ll be back.’

With that, the new object of Seraphine’s fascination turned heel and left.

She thumped her head onto the counter and groaned. All she could do was hope that she wouldn’t miss the next visit. And, if the woman bought something, maybe Seraphine might catch her name?

[valeriestahl]

5, 18, 29

5. What’s a fic idea you’ve had that you will never write?

oh, i'm sure there are tons. there were lots of fics i started, there's very little that i won't at least attempt. if i have an idea and it keeps with me enough, chances are i'll try to write it, whether or not i actually succeed at it.

18. What’s one of your favorite lines you’ve written in a fic?

oh no, this one's impossible.

weirdly, i'm going to pick this line from one of my first reddie fics, where eddie is looking through everything richie has in his guest room.

The next shelf is jam-packed with vinyl records and cassette tapes, and then there’s a series of CDs that look dinged up around the edges. Some of the vinyl are in pristine condition, folded into perfect plastic cases. It’s mostly movie soundtracks, but they vary wildly. Richie owns some musicals - The Sound of Music stands out, looking so cracked and faded; maybe it’s the one Richie’s parents had when he was a kid, maybe fifty years old at this point. Eddie remembers that even though Richie had a CD player, he liked to use his dad’s turntable, said records just sounded better.

29. Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic. (If you don’t have either, just share a random fic idea you have that you don’t plan on getting to.)

i try to never say never but i have a lot of wips i started months or years ago that i'll probably never finish.

here's a couple hundred words from the kratos/freya i apparently nearly wrote 2k of.

Freya was not like Faye.

Kratos bit down on his tongue and glared at Freya. Then, as decisively as he had swung up, he rappelled down the cliffside. Freya took a step back to accommodate him hitting the ground, but her gaze stayed upon him. Kratos grunted again - on purpose, this time, because there was something enticing about watching Freya roll her eyes, her assumptions about his maturity in question - and approached the Mjolnir chest, studying the cliffs around them for any signs of the puzzle. “Not like you to forget loot, eh, brother?” Mimir said from his hip. Kratos tensed, infinitesimally. He had, admittedly, forgotten that Mimir was there. Kratos did not experience humiliation - or rather, it took more than something like this to embarrass him - but he still felt his chest tighten all the same. He did not prefer the way these grown Gods observed him. Freya’s tension, her frayed nerves, only exemplified her ability to read him, and it didn’t seem that Kratos was going to have any luck getting her off his back.

and here's a bit of harry/kim fic that i couldn't get a handle on

Kim bit his lip. “The self-flagellation is one thing. I don’t want to be caught up in whatever methods you’d like to get others involved in.” He turned his head, embarrassed, suddenly, by the thought that caught on the rim on his mouth. “Talk to Jean if you want someone to punish you, I’m sure he’d be pleased.” Harry laughed, hard and loud enough that Kim startled and sat up, cursing under his breath. “Harry,” he snapped, fumbling for the lamp and flicking the switch back on, “what are you talking about?”

and finally, a post-series mirror visitor fic that went too melodramatic but that i wrote 13k of.

Face it! she shouted to herself. She forced her eyes open and sunk into the mirror further. It ate her arm, like a wild animal. She felt her entire body starting to distort as she was absorbed by it. This was it - she could feel it truly, now. She reached in with her other hand - the stumps of her fingers and her wrist disappeared into the glazed surface. She swallowed, hard. Ophelia needed to accept all that she had done, all of the ways in which she was imperfect and undeserving. But she was not, she decided, with fierce certainty, undeserving of being the one to save Thorn.

There are people that love him, and want him back, she told herself. She repeated it in her head. Those who love Thorn and those who love me. They need us both. I must come back with him. 

The mirror soaked her up like water on a sponge. She kept her eyes wide as she let the mirror eat her, and the world, miraculously, inverted as she dove inside. It was not unlike diving into a lake, except it was blazing hot inside the mirror. Her scarf wrapped protectively around her. This was dangerous, and it knew it. Her heart continued to beat hard, thudding in her chest, and then silence overcame her and she disappeared into the mirror.

[caltropspress]

RAPS + CRAFTS #13: Algernon Cornelius

1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?

I’m Algernon Cornelius, producer/rapper based in Manchester (UK). A lot of my early work consists of instrumental beat-tapes (which can be found on my bandcamp), along with collaborative works like Mortal Deck, as well as some side-projects like Philip K. Dickhead. I wrote my first rap in 1993 (co-written with my Dad tbf), but didn’t start writing properly until 2003. Around the same time I started producing by making pause tapes in a little cassette recorder and then by the same process but with cheap CD turntables into an Archos Gmini 402 mp4 player. I started using Cubase in 2005 and then moved on to Ableton in 2014. 

Somewhere along this path I briefly let go of rapping to focus more on beat-making, that is until about 2016 when I made the song “Zero Hour Contract” (the vocals were recorded on a dictaphone). That return to writing was most likely sparked by hearing ELUCID’s Valley Of Grace record. I followed that up with another single: “Witchita”.

There are multiple stories you can choose to follow when you explore my discography. Perhaps the easiest route is through the rap time-line, which is as follows…

Neither Gloaming Nor Argent: Both Before And After The Dark (2020)

The Miraculous Weapons of Clarkus_Dark (2021)

Me No Sen You No Come (2022)

SEGUNDO (2023) NGNA is a compilation of singles I recorded before, during and after the making of MWxxCD (think 13 Songs by Fugazi or The Sagas Of… by Klashnekoff). MWxxCD is my debut album. MNSYNC is an EP, and SEGUNDO is my 2nd album.

2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?

I wish I did write on a daily basis, but most of the time I just ponder about living my life being busy or procrastinating, until something hits me. Usually it’s one line that sounds interesting or funny to me. There have been times when I’ve tried to be more disciplined and write something every day. These bursts typically happen in the new year and then eventually fade away, in that respect being undisciplined is my discipline. But when it comes to it I can be anywhere. For this album specifically I went back home to the house I grew up in while my parents were away and just wrote for 10 days straight (probably helped that I got covid and couldn’t leave). I set everything up in the dining room and had the mic in one hand to record demos as I wrote with the other. I’ve never really written in that way before, but it was definitely good for me. Being alone, and having a mission, and knowing exactly how my voice would sound as I was writing. I can’t do that in my current living situation because I live with other people and I’m very self-conscious. I think being in a space I knew well and felt comfortable in really helped too.

I don’t write everyday, but ideas are usually always kicking around. I like to leave room for experiences to write about.

3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?

It used to be a pen and sheets of A4 white paper. Then it became lined notebooks. Then it was my laptop. In the past five years or so it has been in the notes app on my phone, and then typed up in a Google doc where it can be edited and refined. I can’t keep new lyrics in my head for long because they tend to metamorphosise into something else very quickly, so they have to be preserved outside the brain. I’ll then rehearse over and over until I know it off-top and it becomes muscle memory, because I would rather not be reading off something in the booth (that isn’t always possible with last minute rewrites). The best way is if I can play it live a few times because then I really get a feel for it and know what the energy is like and I have more confidence behind the flow, I know what the pockets should feel like.

4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?

Oh it’s very disorganised. But then again that can depend on the beat. Some songs encourage more free-form structure.

5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?

I think when I feel uncomfortable or cringe is when I know it’s not working. I know you have to kill the part of you that cringes but that’s 100 gecs' job. You really have to feel genuine with what you’re saying, and that’s an integrity that keeps you grounded in who you are as an artist. That gets a lot easier as you get older and you don’t have to put on a voice or adopt certain language.

My line of thinking is that it begins with a jump-off, so the first line is the provocateur. The attention grabber. Often this may not have anything to do with the rest of the verse, but it’s integral to getting to the rest of it. The big bang. In this way my verses probably tend to make more sense towards the end.

I try to keep everything, and this is why I would like to move back to writing on paper. I kept everything on paper. In a Google Doc it’s very easy to erase history. With SEGUNDO I tried to not be scared of the rewrite. I can be very precious about my work, but I had to give the mic to the voice that says “you can do better”.

6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?

I have loved writing since forever. I was always writing stories as a kid and got a lot of encouragement from my English teachers at school. I still somewhat regret not taking English Literature at 6th Form (age 16-18 in the UK). I’ve been writing a lot more poetry recently and have sketched out some ideas for short sci-fi stories, and at some point want to go into script writing and learn to make films. I used to write about music a lot, for a few blogs and some larger platforms that shall remain nameless. I don’t know if that’s influenced my songwriting because rap is what got me into playing with language, so that informs everything else.

7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?

I am trying to edit more. That was a key thing in the making of these last two records. I take ages to start things but once I get going it’s very quick, so it’s more like a stream of consciousness ting. You can end up trying to cram in too many ideas that way, and with SEGUNDO specifically I wanted to introduce more space in my rhymes, so I would cut some things to make that happen. Songs like “...AND THE LIVING” happened very quickly, but with “WHERE WE ARE” and “PLAGUES” there were several different versions I made until it sounded right. When something happens quickly I often have no memory of how it happened, it feels like it comes from another place (manic brain memory loss).

8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?

I go through different waves. When I’m not writing for a project I just stream a load of bars out and have them all in a document. Most of the time these can’t fit to any of the music that I write, but I can nick certain lines that fit. “I Am Not The Moon” from Miraculous Weapons used a lot of lyrics from a couple of verses I wrote over a loop of The Wanton Song by Led Zeppelin when I was 18. I carry several verses around in my head that can’t really squish into a typical song format. I keep them there in case there was ever a situation where I got into a cypher and needed to prove something. As yet this has never happened, and may never will, perhaps this only happens in movies. I will just keep reciting them in the shower until that day comes. But when it’s for a project the beats always come first, so I’m gonna sit down and go through in sequential order and write like that. Doing it that way you’re carving out a route so the listener can follow your path (that is of course if they listen to albums front to back in one sitting and not on shuffle).

9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?

The music, first and foremost. That’s always the mood setter. That’s why the stuff I write without music tends to be more random and glitchy. In fact I have a load of stuff like this which I’m planning to release as a poetry book later this year called The Glitch and the Goof. But when I’m working on a record I make all the beats first and then sequence the album because it has to make sense musically, the instrumentals dictate the journey you’re gonna go on. Also whatever I name the instrumental when I export it, that usually informs the direction. I should probably be more careful with that. Although “Stress” was originally called “Night Goat” (after the Melvins song) and there was no mention of goats in that. There aren’t many of my songs that stick to one subject (Kool Moe Dee definitely would’ve scored me low for sticking to themes). On “DUNKEL” I do and that’s because of the sample, which is literally saying “dark” so that was the direction I gave Val and myself. “DECEMBER 25” is obviously one of the most focused theme-wise because I’m trying to tell a very specific story and it’s perhaps the most clear and personal I’ve been on a track. Funnily enough that song came about because I was working a temp job at a University and my fellow temp comrade (the only other black guy who worked there, it’s actually incredible they allowed 2 of us to work on the front desk at the same time now that I think about it), anyway we were chatting about white English reactions to diaspora foods, like having rice with your Sunday roast and how kids in school thought that was weird, but it was normal for us. We laughed about it and then I thought about it for a minute and wrote down “rice in my roast, what the whites will never know”. That’s the jump-off line right there. And as I already had the loop I wanted to sample for it in my head on rotation (it had been stuck in my head for almost 2 years), by the time I was on the bus home I just continued writing on my phone. The mood was already set and I just started thinking about this story I wanted to tell. I got home and immediately looped that shit up and then worked more lyrics around it, following the bassline. 

In terms of being constrained by the rhymes, I think yes this can happen, but then it’s all about vocab and finding ways back home if you go too far out. The patterns you weave doing that can be beautiful. That’s like looking at a brain-scan create an Etch-a-Sketch. Having that constraint can pull out some wild juxtapositions and create a really interesting image.

10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?

Absolutely. I always think about Method Man, especially on his earlier records, where he basically switches up the flow almost every line. That’s the stuff that got me so excited as a kid. As a rapper you are just an instrument, so as you would with drums or a bassline or a keyboard, you can switch it up to take the song somewhere. It’s always about what’s best for the song for me. I don’t like to get too self-indulgent as an emcee. I am no better than the beat really, I’m part of an ensemble cast, and we’re all working for the song. I don’t tend to think about my rhyme schemes as methodically as I used to, perhaps because it comes more naturally to me now, but I remember for a while I was experimenting with reverse compound structures where the 2nd line would be close enough to a  phonetic reverse of the previous line. I have a crude example from an unreleased song where I say: “High-hitting hats when I relapse into narcosis / Whenever I’m focused you can tell where I have been at with my hidden eye” Maybe I will go back to getting more scientific with ideas like this.

11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?

On SEGUNDO I think “DECEMBER 25” obviously because it took a lot for me to get there. I mean really that’s one of the reasons why it’s the last track on the album. I don’t think there’s been a time where I’ve listened back to that song and I haven’t cried, so it did what it was supposed to do. That was a similar case with “Adieu” from NGNA. “CLOY ROYSTER” because that’s probably the closest I’ll ever get to a true freestyle (I can’t freestyle for shit). The 2nd verse of “Tentative”, which originally I left open for a guest but then I ended up surpassing my own expectations (I originally gave the beat to R.A.P. Ferreira but then ended up using it on my album, then he came back with “No Word For Wack” which ended up on the Ruby Yacht album). ”Lightning Bolt” as well, that was a real one. I wrote the lyrics, made the beat, recorded it  and then posted it on bandcamp maybe all within 2 hours. Extremely raw shit. (It’s called "Lightning Bolt" because that’s who I was going to see play a gig that night). That’s actually an example of where I wrote it all out on a piece of paper first and then made it fit to the beat, and I mean it helps that the beat doesn’t have any drums, it’s just six pads of noise. “Notes On A Native Sound” was written from a dream I had the same night I made the beat and I feel that’s maybe one of the most synergetic songs in terms of the music and lyrics. It all came out of two sides of the same trip.

12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?

“Flexi disc under the x-ray / Mexican death day / Haters wanna flex I slip their disc and press play (…AND THE LIVING)

Like I don’t care if anyone rates that or not, for me it always makes me feel like this and that’s all I ever wanna do for myself. I had that line in my head for time, just a silly little boast innit? But with some very niche deep Wikipedia level references. Also me and my peers have very serious concerns about back pain. “Become a man before the onus is on the shoulders of the taurus / And the horns begin to grow again, blow through them / The tone of brass bones does not atone for intonation" (The Flood)

Men go a bit weird in their late 20’s, you ever notice that? This was sort of a way of saying check yourself before you wreck yourself. I used 3 zodiac signs for Miraculous Weapons; the Bull (Taurus), Snake and Crab (Cancer), and they all work as points of reference across the album. A lot of it is to do with ideas of fate, determinism and essentialism and trying to escape that (which actually I've just realised that’s at the core of most of my work). The titular Clarkus_Dark is basically the bad character (as Lord Quas might say). My dad used to have this Shofar in the house which I used to play with (he was a religious studies teacher) so that’s probably where I got that imagery. I also used to play trombone so there’s your brass bones, and you can hear some trombone at the end of “How Good’s The Funeral?”. It’s all tied together. Now that I think of it this was also one where I wrote the lyrics before the music and then made it fit afterwards too. Cat, who is the first person you hear whisper “SEGUNDO” at the start of the album, I wrote that in her living room in the middle of a crisis.

13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?

Punching-in I have no qualms about. Like I said before it’s about what’s best for the song. There are cases when a punch-in can fuck up the flow, there are cases where cutting out a breath can make it sound too clinical. Just depends on what you want out of the recording. I’m getting better at editing stuff down in the writing so it’s about clarity and rhythm. I’ll preface this with the fact that I’m old enough where I’m going to use Big Daddy Kane as an example…but you know when you’re starting out you just wanna show off and fit as many syllables in a line as possible (yeah, like Big Daddy Kane)? Well when you play live you come to the compromise, because I have so much energy I need to get off I can’t be running about and do all that, especially as I get older. No matter how much I push I have to understand my body has limits, so then it becomes a choice of what you’re trying to give. Is it lyrical-miracle virtuosity? Or clarity? What is going to connect with your audience? Because at the end of the day that’s what you’re trying to do, you have to make a connection otherwise there’s no point.

14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?

Definitely films. For SEGUNDO there were things about Spike Lee joints that informed the feeling in songs like “PLAGUES” and “CURRY MILE”, in particular his use of the double dolly technique. I wanted to do that with music. When I was writing I rinsed seasons 3 and 4 of Top Boy, the Andy Warhol documentary on Netflix, The Power of the Dog, Call My Agent! and Fast & the Furious 9. Obviously I’m not sure how that last one had any effect on me, but the hook in SEGUNDO was inspired by Basquiat in the Warhol doc. 

I’d never really dipped that heavily into the work of David Lynch before, and I had wondered if it was just too late for me. Like is all the weirdo shit I already like just jacked from Uncle DL? But I saw Mulholland Drive for the first time and it shook me pretty deep, like really got right inside me in a very particular way that I don’t know how to put into words, and there’s not that many films that have done that. That kind of made me think differently about the structure of SEGUNDO and what it meant, because to be honest the meaning was missing for me for a long time and it felt like the process of making this album was almost in search of that, and then towards the end it started to make sense, but as if the answer had always been there. The lyrics to “SLOW WOUND” are mostly inspired by Mulholland Drive if you look closely enough. 

I’m always inspired by food, I’m always thinking about that. It’s so tied to memory. Sometimes I can’t remember the details of a certain trip somewhere but I can tell you exactly what I ate and what it tasted like and how it made me feel.

A lot of SEGUNDO was inspired by nature. Again it’s about space but in many forms. The pandemic is what set that off, everything became still and empty, internally and externally. I was locked down in Manchester so I ended up taking huge walks out to anything that remotely resembled a bit of countryside, a park or a bit of woodland surrounded by a highway. I grew up right in the middle of the North Yorkshire Dales and Moors, there was so much expansive space there, your mind could just wander off into the distance. Can’t see shit for terrace houses here in Old Trafford, it’s like being trapped on the set of Coronation Street (I wrote this and then afterwards took a walk to the shop for some caraway seeds and the sun was beaming and the red bricks look so gorgeous in the light, so it’s not always so gloomy to be fair)

When some of the lockdown restrictions were lifted, me and my girlfriend’s first trip was to a remote converted farmhouse on the side of a mountain in North Wales. Some days you’d be trapped indoors because a huge rain cloud had engulfed everything, but on sunny days you could see as far as the Lake District and the Isle of Man. You’d set off on a walk and you’d maybe meet 1 or 2 people all day, unless you walked 5 miles to the nearest village pub. There were more wild ponies and sheep than people. That was a really important time for me where I could have the space to think while the music of SEGUNDO circled in my head.

Another trip like that was when we went up to the Scottish highlands (to stay with my girlfriend’s friend (Sarah Bernstein who is also a writer), again very remote. You’d wake up one morning and see a pod of dolphins making their way across the bay. It was in September so all the purple heather was in bloom. I was getting high just looking at all that purple, it looked like them Richard Mosse photographs of The Congo. That’s what inspired the autotuned part in CURRY MILE. It may have been born in south Manchester, and then settled in Snowdonia, but it grew wings in the highlands. I think there’s more of a nature sound on this record, it’s like halfway between the concrete streets and nature. Like there’s earth, air, ice, water, moss and a small fire trying to stay alight under it all.

15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?

I constantly have self-doubt. I’d argue that’s what keeps me in check, but if there’s too much of it it becomes a real hindrance. I love my own shit but I have had to work for it. I always think of myself as someone to whom rapping does not come naturally. First off I’m from this cursed island of britain, and not even the happening part. There was no culture where I grew up, you had to get it all from television and radio, or movies and magazines. I was the only person I knew who wrote raps or was even into Hip-Hop (apart from Joanne from school who also liked Dizzee Rascal). If I ever came across another rapper it’d be the white kids who were into spitting over Makina and New Monkey type beats. So what I'm saying is I’ve taken many years to find my voice, and being quite isolated from any sort of rap scene has been both a good thing and a bad thing. Maybe my sword would be sharper if I was dueling on the daily. Maybe it’s ok to be a quirked-up country boy curry goated with the sauce busting it down Supreme Clientele style (we’ll get to that later). Either way I've put myself out there on the line and learnt a lot. 

When I was 15 I sent my first demo to DJ Excalibah who was doing the late night slot for underground and UK rap on BBC radio 1Xtra (he’s now an acclaimed theatre director), he gave me very honest constructive feedback. Something to the effect of the recording quality was bad (which it was) and I needed to work on my flow and my voice (tell me about it), but that my writing was up there with the best of them. That last part was enough for me to keep going. Meeting people like Moor Mother who was one of the first people to tell me she liked my voice really gave me encouragement to not doubt myself. I try to remember moments like this and do the same for others when they’re out here. 

It’s also having good honest mates around you, like Claudia (featured on the final reprise of MAKE THE SUN tagged on the end of CLOY ROYSTER), she suffers from a rare disease where she cannot lie to people, so that’s helpful in knowing what’s good. When James from the band Yard Act started demoing stuff with me for Miraculous Weapons he made a few suggestions to change a couple of lyrics because they were too on the nose, and usually I’m really stubborn and defensive about stuff like that but I trusted his opinion and he was right to be fair. Trust the people that know you.

16. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?

Ghostface is my anchor. My all time favourite rapper. He gave me the blueprint for my style of free-association. I even did an art project in school based on his verse on "Daytona 500." Him and DOOM (and probably Pos from De La Soul) basically show up in my life when I’m 14/15 and show me how beautiful and fun language can be. So while I may not imitate them per se, they gave me a key to unlock something in myself to put my own spin on how I see the world. Another key rapper I would say is Danny Brown, and that’s mainly because he’s such an anglophile. He bridges the gap between Grime and American rap. He could do a whole album spitting over 140 bpm beats (I mean he does this so effortlessly over Benga’s "26 Basslines"). You can hear that influence on “WHERE WE ARE” for sure. I love Mos Def so much and that’s probably why I gravitated towards Mach-Hommy, it’s the tone and melody they bring. I’m one of those rappers who secretly wishes they were a singer. I’ve always been really big on Dancehall emcees with really gruff voices too. I started doing this growl which I mostly do live, which is partly inspired by more doomy sludgey bands, but you listen to BackRoad Gee and he’s doing something really interesting with it. I played with Sons of Kemet one time and while I was backstage I could hear Shabaka practicing his horn coming through the vent in the next room, and he was listening to drill music and playing along to it. That’s what it is, the voice is an instrument and he shows you that through his music, he’s playing certain lines and I’m immediately thrown back to my living room after school watching emcees on Channel U, he makes very specific references to certain grime flows.

I’d like to think that I have so many influences that they all get mangled together to form something different, or that my bad impressions become a new voice altogether, at least I hope.

17. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?

At the most basic level I just need something to rap over. I feel something and I wanna say something, so I make something, and then I try to make you feel what I felt. Now with that comes connection, but also unintended misinterpretation. And really the latter is what keeps this whole ting spinning. Evolution is just endless mistakes. Failure upon failure until it works for the moment and then until it doesn’t again. Hip-Hop is all about the flip, not just in terms of flipping samples but shifting perspective, I hope I can do that in my own way to some degree. I also want to just show people how connected they are, bring people together that wouldn’t be able to otherwise. It’s mad when I think of all the people I know and how most of them don’t know each other. You just gotta be a node and keep vibrating higher innit.

RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.

[omegaplus]

# 4,330

PERSONAL CASSETTE DUB ARCHIVE.

Erasing my dad’s Saturday Night Fever cassette on a now extremely-rare Conion V-121F was the very first tape memory I had. I didn’t know better. I don’t know where my dad got the Conion or why, but I remember it sitting on our dining room table. It had to be a Saturday or Sunday evening during summer recess where my dad invited his friends over to show off the family fire truck: a 1949 American LaFrance. That Conion would stay with us for a long time. The moment I hit that record button was the one my life-long relationship with cassettes and recorded media began. As an Eighties kid, I spent more time downstairs playing Atari, Nintendo, and watching WWF on weekend afternoons more than anything. Down there, I discovered another smaller, cheaper radio with a blank tape inside of it. It was one of those radios where it’d record off the FM while also recording natural sound via its built-in mic- at the same time.

The Christmas after starting middle-school, ma’ got me my own small red boombox from a petty electronics corner-store she worked at and three cassette tapes not worth mentioning. That boombox’s playback speed ran a little too fast and I knew something didn’t feel right. So she exchanged it for one that worked properly: a Sony CFS-213. Much better. I also received four matching Sony HF90 blanks and found whatever strays lying around in the house. It was that exact point in time I started getting into archiving and recording. My first-ever keeps didn’t happen until the following Summer when I moved on from Z100 to WBLS, a hip-hop / rap station found at the end of the dial. I caught that frequency when they had T-Money, Ed Lover, Dr. Dre, and King Saul on their line-up. The CFS would begin a years-long habit of creating a music diary of sorts; a timeline of who my friends were, where I was, and when - all written by the record button and onto tape.

I was young and immature once. I found every piece of low-brow humor funny and everything fascinated me. I was huge into In Living Color, Howard Stern and The Diceman. Guilty as charged. So I asked ma’ if she had some Walkmans. She’d given me a couple out-of-closet, and one happened to have a built-in mic-. The only way I could record favorite one-liners from cartoons, comedies, one-time only interviews, and late-night specials was to place it near the TV speaker, press ‘record’, and let it run. For years that was the only way I could capture NES and Genesis game soundtracks. Back then there wasn’t as much permanence as we have now. I felt every day was now or never. Occasionally the CFS would have a bad day and decide to eat one of my tapes. One-of-a-kind moments were just that, and they hung in the balance. Some tapes crinkled, and some even snapped. It was analog media, so I knew nothing was beyond repair. All I needed was a few inches of Scotch Tape to re-join the snapped ends and a boxcutter to trim it to width and I was back in business.

The CFS eventually went and ended its two-year run. Both ma’ and my dad upgraded my Sony to a CDF-50 for Christmas after middle school. With that came a ten-pack of Recoton XR90’s and Ice Cube’s The Predator, my first CD. Now I had another source to dub from and I could make better mixtapes out of them. Ma’ had a few more Walkmans lying around in the house which would play a memorable part of my life. Gramma’ was ailing with kidney failure, so every week ma’ and I drove out to visit her in Bensonhurst which was off Bay Parkway’s Exit 5. I couldn’t stand ma’s music, which was why I packed a tote with her Walkmans and already-made Recotons to stay occupied during those long hot Summer drives with an Arizona and a bag of cheddar-pretzel Combos by my side. Rides out to Staten Island became a thing when my uncle fully recovered from a terribly nasty drug addiction, allowing my family to become closer with him, my aunt, and their four hoodlum kids. Even better, my my bro- and I sat in the backseat as ma’ and dad drove to Harrah’s in Atlantic City, and once took the Orient Point ferry to Foxwoods up in Mashantucket. We were left behind at the video arcade while ma’ and dad gambled their salaries and disability checks away. Those Walkmans and Recotons were there with me the entire time.

I was still very much into hip-hop / rap, way before we now call it The Golden Era. WBLS had a format change so I switched to Hot 97 and their competitor Kiss FM. The boombox as we knew it was symbolic of hip-hop culture and made millions of us. From then until the end of the Brentwood era I would still compile that history. My friends usually failed me, but my Sony didn’t; always there faithfully waiting for me to come home. Every day, every night, every weekend when I struck out with plans I’d sit home to hit that record button once again. When my stock of Recotons finally ran out, I’d bike to the music store in the mall to purchase four- or five-packs of TDK D Series and Maxell UR tapes. Those two brands were a godsend to me as they continued to solidify my identity for years to come. Everything - the Walkmans and tapes - came with me to countless bus rides to-and-from Brentwood when my wrestling and volleyball teams traveled to rival schools, or even sitting in the rafters during all-day tournaments. Even I shared the wealth with my friends to borrow my tapes for the ride when they had nothing to listen to. I’m forever thanksful that they never pocketed them on me, not even once.

It wasn’t long until gramma’ died of kidney failure. It would be our very last ride to Bensonhurst my ma’ and I would take. Both of us had one final shot to take as much of gramma’ and poppy’s possessions with us. They didn’t have much of a music collection, if any at all. Pop- only had a small cache of old cassettes he kept over the decades - opaque amber shells with white labels and gold print. I took them all along with a few of his old gambling books and a pair of heavy binoculars. I got home and curiously listened to what were on his tapes, sacrificing them only if I happened to run out of blanks to record. The rest would stay untouched for years. Meanwhile, ma’ took gramma’s Lafayette LR-810 receiver. Lafayettes were common on the island as they originated there. She already had one tied up with the living room CD player, so she gave me it. Now we had two of them back home.

**********

The CDF only lasted through three-and-a-half years of high-school before I trashed it after senior year. I inherited one of dad’s Akais, this time a full tape deck rescued from the basement. He loved Akais. We had another receiver of theirs and an eight-track player he built into the kitchen wall connected with in-ceiling speakers (!). They were never used and we never owned one single eight-track at the old Brentwood home. Go figure. That Akai cassette deck was a literal octopus sound system for me. My Lafayette, (either) a Super Nintendo or a Playstation, and two pairs of speakers - one disconnected from the Conion - were all tied to it. It connected what my Panasonic system couldn’t but that was still reserved for radio dubs only. At this point, I shifted from radio hip-hop and bounced back and forth between Q104.3, K-Rock, and back to Z100. Again, the record button ran from end to end, letting the chips fall as they may. The tapes kept on accumulating and never gave up their mission as being reference points of my life.

Every now and then there’s a new piece of antiquity to be found in the basement. I don’t know where my ma’ and dad finds them or why they magically materialize. This time it was a small turntable and it opened up a new world for me to preserve. I started buying vinyl records through mail-order catalogues, public libraries, and even hardcore shows. The brunt of my 7” library came from Centereach’s None Of The Above, Long Island’s hardcore and punk haven. The basement turntable couldn’t play for its life, so for my birthday, my best friend gave me his father’s 1972 Panasonic and a limited-edition Autechre 12”. I was at first nervous about vinyl’s fragility and adversion to physical damage. That Panasonic connected to and played through my Akai which recorded my most essential 12” records and were used for playback until I got used to handling my records on a regular basis.

When the final Akai broke, I replaced it with something else. I don’t remember the manufacturer. Was it Sony, Aiwa, or Philips? Chances are it was a black Aiwa, another Christmas present. That was my first micro-system featuring an FM/AM radio, a three-CD changer, a five-band equalizer, and dual tape decks - a first for me. That meant I could fill up my remaining blanks (save one) with dubs, take my favorite songs, and consolidate them to one. It also had removable speakers which replaced the Conion’s when they finally went. Aiwa’s dual tape decks would play an all-important role in my life that would change the way I did things forever.

I was over Manzana’s house one Friday night. She was an Italian-Jewish girl I saw briefly in high-school. My best friend was now dating her and she had her other friends over. We were all joking around and acting like immature fools throwing couch cushions at each other. Right then and there in my mind I came up with the idea of ‘seasonal’ mixtapes. I already had a generous collection of tapes and numerous purchases of CD’s in my possession. Why not make a compilation to remind me of everything that happened in a calender season based on songs I found during that time? So I took everything I listened to from March, April, and May and put them all together on one Maxell UR120 using the Aiwa dual-tape deck. A new concept was born: the seasonal personal mixtape! I can write and keep a new personal diary every three months without using pen, paper, or words - only sounds! It’s a quarterly ritual which I’d made sure of myself to do religiously because it fit perfectly with my perception of time and would forever be the basis for my projects.

By then I was on a roll. I not only made mixtapes for my own personal satisfaction but for friends in good standing as well. I gave my friend The Greek Tragedy 120 minutes of Henry Rollins’ spoken work because he asked and I had them. On the other hand, I had plenty of friends who gave me theirs as well. I still have most of them. Those gifts were a great way of seeing what my friends were made of. I had two fellow writers from the Suffolk Compass who tossed me a couple themselves. One, a true Boston punk who turned me on to R.L. Burnside, Crass, AxCx, and Rudimentary Peni. Another writer was part of a local synthpop band who felt his (and only his) favorite artists were better than everyone else’s, so he gave me a synthpop mixtape of Yaz, Erasure, New Order, and more. I gave him credit for sticking with a genre of music that many people at that time deemed tacky.

Perhaps the most special and sentimental mix-cassettes I ever received from anyone was from a Polish girl from Ocean City whom I found online, before Facebook and Myspace even existed. We clicked almost instantly and progressed to where months later she’d send me a package of three mixtapes and some poems she written for me. Her purple tapes came in white slide-out cases which she scrawled personal messages on with black marker. It was a sweet, personal touch from a girl who was caring, charming, out-going, and was interested in meeting me…or so I thought.

She canceled our plans at the last moment. No reason given. It was only a matter of time before she bought herself a few moments before ghosting me. The hits kept on coming as I abandoned my job and my synthpop ‘friend’ who hired me from the pool supply store, all by the end of that June. My summer was all almost over before it started and I had nothing going on except for a Playstation, my bike and stereo system. I had no choice but to stay home and wait it out until community college started next Autumn.

All hope was lost at that point, but the turn of the millennium would give me an Ace card in the best way possible. By then I gave up all commercial radio and drew towards Stony Brook University’s station WUSB where they played everything the corporate or Top 40 stations wouldn’t. My recording game was constant and I did it every night for a few hours just to try and take the focus off of my latest losses. It was more than enough that I caught one of their resident hip-hop dee-jays play Lonnie Liston Smith (& The Cosmic Echoes) “Expansions” followed by a sampling set on their ones-and-twos. It was so out-of-this-world and not of this time. That’s when I started reaching back and re-connected with myself, and to think that the cassette would create another addiction for me for years to come: sample-searching. As if my life would change once already, there would be a second time before my stint at community-college era was finally over.

Our sober uncle gifted my family a new desktop computer for Christmas. That was a total surprise to me. But why did we get one? Because my dad wanted free music. Napster exploded into a worldwide phenomenom. My ma’ and dad spent countless nights for hours on end grabbing country, hippie rock, and the golden oldies left and right. So did I, staying up until 4AM in the morning finding every B-side, rarity, compilation, Japan-only and unreleased tracks from my favorite artists I could think of. Did I abandon my tapes for downloading? No way. I was still making radio dubs all night and every night without fail during my downloading free-for-all. Again: industrial, underground hip-hop, pop-punk, indie…and what they called “electronica” at the time. Sure.

**********

I never gave up on dubbing and cassettes. It continued on during my time off from study, my relationship with Yenny, three jobs, and into Stony Brook. What first started as a listener of WUSB now continued on as a selector and then program-director. I still have my old demos- and auditions on Maxell UR120’s from when I first joined, forever capturing a few cold Winter and nicer Spring days inside a dilapidated studio which was built in their AM days (the Sixties) and had never been renovated before being torn down for good. I was still doing double-duty downloading and dubbing, even after a former music-director who worked for Apple offered me to purchase my very first iPod Classic (30GB) which now took over my Walkman as the preferred player for all future night drives and train rides to New York City. That still wasn’t enough to replace my cassettes, and why would it? I still needed something to record and I still wasn’t over spending lots of time making them.

Eventually, all things had come to an end. Literally. I had enough of being stuck behind the register with no one to back me up, because those same people abandoned their post. So out of nowhere I decided to burn my bridges and walk out of my job. I didn’t wake up one morning to plan on having it happen but it did. I felt the entire weight on my shoulders collapse immediately, enough for me to break down. I stressed like no tomorrow to salvage whatever bank account I had left to avoid moving to The Carolinas. I was bustling and jumping from one job to another until I found something that was only enough for me to survive. I had no idea what I was getting into and turned out to be the worst mistake of my life. The toxic co-workers, asshole managers, and older down-on-their-luck has-beens who apexed in high-school were enough to wear me down even further. By then I became a former shell of myself. I had almost nothing that I once did that used to keep me alive. No radio show, no computer, no blogging…nothing. I was too busy learning to survive and stay mouth above water. Recording and archiving were the last things on my mind. But, I still had my Aiwa micro-system.

Those tapes my poppy had? I finally got around to hear them all. Literal relics from a long-gone classic and golden era that no longer exists. I never knew his music tastes up until that point: Barbara Streisand, Sammy Davis Jr., Neil Sadaka, Tom Jones, Wayne Newton. Late Sixties classics and early Seventies American standards - things I’d never be caught dead or alive listening to. His tapes had a mucky, distorted quality to them. They were in a severe state of tape rot and natural degradation imperative to being case-less and exposed to the elements for decades. Then I found a few more random discoveries from his small stash. There’s a thirty-second recording of him reciting Torah verses; the only artifact that will keep his voice alive for decades. And another tape…I can’t explain it, nor there’s any information about it, either. I called it the “rape tape”: vintage recordings and radio pornography of men fucking women and using explicit triple X-rated language. I don’t know when those recordings were made, where he got it from, when in his life he acquired it, or why he even had them. An unusual and peculiar swerve if I had to think of one.

By the Summer of ‘08, I dubbed the final radio session on tape, again a Maxell UR120. WCBS-FM just enlisted Joe Causi to replace Cousin Brucie for the legendary Saturday night slot (Brucie went to satellite radio), playing gold and platinum-selling hits of the Seventies. I still had a kick for the radio hits of that decade. Anne Murray’s “You Needed Me”, Alan O’Day’s “Undercover Angel”, and Minnie Riperton’s “Loving You” became three of the songs on that final radio recording I’d ever make.

I still made one more physical seasonal mixtape before the decade was done. I visited Amityville’s High Fidelity for the first time and purchased my usual Seventies jazz, fusion, and pop vinyl records. Roberta Flack, John Tropea, Les McCann, Roy Ayers Ubiquity, Karla Bonoff, Marvin Gaye, Parliament, Phil Upchurch; it goes on. I also bought some best-of compilations from the Mercury label. Like everything else, I piece-mealed it all together. With that, Autumn ‘09 became my final physical mixtape I’d ever make.

And that was it. The end of an era for me. It was the very last time I ever hit record.

There was no real reason for me to stop other than it being too cumbersome and time-consuming. I didn’t miss it, either. Graduating university meant the end of an almost two-decade hobby. Final count? At least 400+ tapes recorded from the beginning of the Brentwood era all the way to the end of Stony Brook. I saved enough money and two months later I eventually bought a Gateway NV laptop to return to downloading and burning discs - as my entire personal cassette archive sat to suffer in draws and shelves for another number of years.

***********

I decided it be fun to revisit the Nineties and the Oughts, one tape at a time.

Last year I wanted to do something about the cassette archive. I thought of digitizing it all. I knew it would be a huge undertaking and time-consuming. I didn’t do it during the nine months of in-home recovery from shoulder surgery, and I didn’t do it during the two months I was ordered to stay home on furlough during the pandemic. Why? Because I had other ongoing projects on the steady. But I finally had the chance to at least chop away at the hundreds of tapes I have stacked.

They say cassette media lasts for thirty years, give or take the thickness of the tape, the type of metal used, how often they’ve been played and how they’re stored properly. Even though my archive was still in great condition and I could put it off for another few years, I wanted to do it now than never. Either digitize and duplicate my memories and timeline into one huge time machine or have them disappear forever. No second chances.

My first attempt at digitizing the library was connecting a Jensen Walkman to my computer. Pop the tape in, hit record on the app-, and let it run its course. I played them back as soon as the recordings were completely converted to MP3 but noticed that the Jensen raised the pitch by 5%. No dice. So I went to the thrift store in Centereach and found a Yamaha KX-400U tape deck for $35.00 that perfectly matched the $85.00 Yamaha A-1000 stereo amplifier I got at High Fidelity during the pandemic summer. I wired the KX- to my desktop with a Roxio VHS-to DVD converter, set up Audacity to record, and hit play.

It all came back to me. One tape at a time.

Cassettes in bubble packaging hanging off the pharmacy’s peghooks. Limited-edition shells my bro- and I got from Happy Meals that I erased over. Anticipating that one song on the radio that’s about to play. Vinardo’s after school for Street Fighter. Chasing the blue-eyed blonde-haired Irish girl at the Eighth-grade picnic. A dance tape my sis- had that I recorded Kiss FM on. Abandoned tapes thrown out of passenger-side windows, encrusted in dirt and found on dirty sidewalks. Spending Thanksgiving weekend at home sick. Winter days and nights with a Super Nintendo. That Spanish girl with the glasses who wanted me to take her home from my friend’s backyard party. Early morning bike-rides to Brentwood. Sagat’s “Funk Dat” and Tucka Da’ Hunterman in the back of the bus. Reggie across the street dubbing me The Notorious B.I.G.’s and Wu-Tang Clan’s debut albums. My Rasta- friend attempting to run me over and apologized to me by giving me M. Doc & Stevio’s and Eazy-E as a peace offering. That D90 I left at my cousin Dorona’s house which she recorded her R&B favorites over my hip-hop. Cute girls from rival volleyball teams approaching me to sweeten the deal. My first time meeting Jewish girls in Plainview. Diamond and I sitting on the curb. Donna and I at Adventureland. Her friend Julie who erased over the Nine Inch Nails’ Broken and Fixed mixtape I made for her. Christmas with my cousin Dorona and the rest of the Staten Island family. My alternative circle of friends walking the snowy neighborhood streets at one in the morning. My brother and his hood friends from high-school recording themselves and acting like the animals that they were. Compilations from friends taped over with surviving track-listings. Endless downloading sessions. Making my dad a Shirelles mix. Indie hits playing while driving home through miserable snowstorms. J-Ro’s Antique Road Show while coding. The over-nighter I pulled creating blog-sites for cinema class. Cath- and I on our first date sitting across each other over Thursday dinner. Found answering messages from my Hampton uncle’s 50 year-old junkie girlfriend. Hopeless Summer days wondering in an era wondering where I would go in my life. Hand-made art and tracklists scribbled in blue pen on the back of J-cards. Every pop, fade out, snap, abrupt cut, distortion, XDR tone-burst, and Dolby calibration tone. It’s there. All of it, there.

It wasn’t as exhausting as I thought it’d be. I manage to digitize about 75 tapes for every two weeks off. They go by quick. They’re all saved in 128 KBPS MP3 quality and files are named after the brand and type of tape with any discerning aesthetic qualities on them. Then the auditing process. That was the hardest part. Keeping track of each and every tape that has and has yet been once-overed, and playing them again just to be sure nothing has been overlooked.

At the time of posting, 100% of my personal tape archive has now been digitized. I’ve taken care of my entire library to know they’ll survive at least another ten to twenty years more before noticeable fading of quality. Further backup and duplication means a good portion of my life will be salvaged way after I’ve said good-bye for all eternity. When that happens, my nephews will get it all. They can only imagine how I experienced the golden-era, the Nineties, and independent radio. They were born into the digital age and though physical media is still very much alive, the industry has and will push streaming and convenience over everything else. They won’t really grasp what it was like to salvage things themselves, to properly insert physical objects or press play. They won’t know what it’s like to slide a tape into a 25-pound boombox and hit the play button as they’re working on their car. They won’t experience coming over to a friend’s house to see Redman, Juliana Hatfield, The Cure, Stone Temple Pilots, and cracked Matthew Sweet tapes scattered all around someone’s disorganized bedroom as they’re playing video games through Summer nights, or to even discover a box of their mom’s old tapes somewhere hidden in a basement. She has no such thing. Sure, the vinyl resurgence is still taking place, but will it and physical media matter to them in the next twenty-five to thirty years? Highly unlikely as they face a world of here-today gone-tomorrow TV shows, movies, and hottest pop playlists at the mercy of steaming content providers and contractual obligations.

There’s still lots of work to be done. The CD- and DVD-R archive is the next massive undertaking followed by digitizing my entire VHS dub library, the largest-than-life behemoth of them all. That’s another battle for another year.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs: The Kids Are Alright

Photo by Sarah Trott

BY JORDAN MAINZER

The first albums that Greg Gardner made, cassettes and CDs with friends when he was a child, had a pretty small audience: his mom. Decades later, Gardner's prediction for the size of the audience for his first album made in a professional recording studio? "A few moms." He's joking, but even with the name recognition of his main collaborator--none other than Bay Area psychedelic folk luminary Cass McCombs--the intended audience for this album is not your usual indie rock or folk crowd. Gardner's a preschool teacher in San Francisco, McCombs his lifelong friend, and the two have come together to put to music Gardner's already penned children's tunes. Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs - Sing and Play New Folk Songs for Children is out now on none other than Smithsonian Folkways, a full circle moment for Gardner, and a fitting home for these tunes that are simple but infinitely wonderful.

Gardner and McCombs grew up hanging out and making music together, influenced by Bob Dylan and Dylan's heroes, Folkways recording artists like Woody Guthrie and Elizabeth Cotten. Gardner's applied his love of music to his career, not only introducing his students to these same artists but writing songs for his students about what they're studying at the time, from the life of Harvey Milk to the human body and the animal life cycle. And in the past, Gardner ran Secret Seven Records, releasing music from other Folkways artists like Michael Hurley. Simply put, Smithsonian Folkways is Gardner's favorite label, which he told me without pause during our phone conversation earlier this month. When the opportunity came, through some mutual connections (including McCombs' former manager Kirby Lee) to apply for a grant from the label to record his children's songs, Gardner didn't pass it up. He was in the middle of recording some other songs for fun with McCombs and casually asked whether McCombs would want to put to tape the likes of "Little Wilma Wiggly Worm" and "Things that Go in the Recycling Bin", too. McCombs obliged, and the rest is, now, quite literally, folk history.

The songs on Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs were written for children but exist in multiple realms. McCombs has stated that he doesn't see much of a difference between the direct simplicity of folk music and children's music, and during our conversation, Gardner cited how much certain folk classics, written in totally different contexts, have been sung by and for children, both his students and throughout history. You can hear the flipside in their record: how songs written for children are ultimately universal. "Requiem for Ruth Bader Ginsburg" and "Wave a Flag for Harvey Milk" offer biographies of fierce activists of their time. "Each One of Us" revolves around the ideal that "each one of us is different but we're friends just the same," a song that rejects the feigning of similarity that well-meaning but misguided (and often white liberal) educators practice, the antidote to "I don't see color." And "Friends from All Around the World", with a "Hello Version" and "Goodbye Version", consists of people giving salutations in their respective languages, guests including everyone from Hurley and Peggy Seeger to Gardner's own former coworkers and grandmother and grandfather. Full circle, indeed.

Not to mention, the instrumentation on Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs is not of the grating, maximalist type of usual music marketed towards children that parents are used to. For one, a lot of the songs sound like they could be on a McCombs record, as he rips a guitar solo during "Little Wilma Wiggly Worm" and playfully harmonizes with the vocals on "What's Your Favorite Kind?" "My Skull Is Made Out of Bone" is a gorgeous and wistful concoction of guitar, cello, and keyboards. Hand percussion and claps pervade "J-O-B" and "A Builder's Got a Hammer and Nails", a drum machine the blues stomp of "Roll Around Downtown" that, no matter your religious affiliation, delightfully invites you "to the church of 8 wheels." And when I first listened to the scratchy cello, echoing percussion, and light singing of "The Sounds that the Letters Make", I had to make sure I hadn't accidentally triggered the music I was using to prepare for my recent Arthur Russell review.

Mr. Greg & Cass McCombs is also, in the grand tradition of Folkways, instructional, not just in lyrics. The LP got the full treatment. "Something that I love about Folkways is the packaging and the aesthetic of their old records, how they're really thick carboard with the pasted over sleeves and minimalist artwork that's striking and clean and beautiful looking," Gardner said. "All the records come with booklets and liner notes and photographs...This record is issued like an old Folkways record, with the paste-on cover and booklet with liner notes and suggested activities that go with each song. The LP version is meant to be colored in by kids if they're so inclined." Best, in tribute to a Cotten record Gardner and McCombs loved as kids, Folkways was able to release a few copies on yellow vinyl. The record, like the best folk music, is now a living, timeless document, one that can be enjoyed by all, regardless of age.

Below, read my conversation with Gardner, edited for length and clarity. We talk about his experience in the studio, the politics of children's music, and approaching difficult subjects with kids.

Since I Left You: How did you decide to do this project with Cass?

Greg Gardner: Since we were teenagers, we've made music together. I'm not really a musician, but I like to write songs and sing. I would go to my friends and say, "What about this?" and they'd make it sound better. I've been making strange and silly songs with Cass that weren't meant for the general public. We made a lot of cassettes in our youth. Since I became a teacher, I've been writing songs to amuse myself while I take the BART train to and from work, and also with the hopes the kids would appreciate them as well. The songs are always about stuff the kids have been talking about in class or studying. "Little Wilma Wiggly Worm" is about a worm we found in our classroom garden, and all the kids were so excited about holding this worm, and we all named it together. I wrote the song about it, and it became a way to connect and create community over a fun shared experience. I usually create some visuals that go with the song. I made a book of Wilma Wiggly Worm, and Cameron Burr animated that book into a music video.

So I had been writing songs for many years, and Cass and I recorded some non-kids songs, not for the public, just for fun, and I asked him, "Would you like to record some kids songs with me?" He said, "Yeah!" I had demos of most of them--some of them a capella, some demos with instruments. For the record, we used some of those demos, the skeletons of them, and added instruments and backing stuff. A lot of those songs were rerecorded specifically for the record. There are a lot more that didn't go on. We may have put too many on this record, too, but there they are.

SILY: I was fascinated by Cass saying, "A lot of what’s called children's music is just folk music...I don't see a big difference between children's music and adult music." What's the history of your relationship with traditional or contemporary folk music?

GG: Around when I was a teenager, hanging out with Cass and other friends, we'd listen to Bob Dylan, and then into the people that influenced Bob Dylan, blues artists like Jesse Fuller and Lead Belly, or Woody Guthrie. Cass then introduced me to Elizabeth Cotten, who is on Folkways. Her records were not intended for children, but the songs are definitely beloved by children and adults alike. "Freight Train" and "Shake Sugaree", on which her granddaughter sings. Those are so beautiful. And there are so many folk songs about animals that, even if not written for children, sure work for the child and the adult. Children go through the same gamut of emotions that adults do, so folk music is for all. While these songs were intended for the 3-5-year-old children in my class, I enjoy singing them and hope people older than 5 enjoy singing them as well.

SILY: You sing about "kids' stuff," but "Requiem for Ruth Bader Ginsburg" and "Wave a Flag for Harvey Milk" are relevant to everybody, and sadly so, considering the climate. Do you view any of these songs as political in the same way folk music might be?

GG: My intention wasn't to be political when I made them, but to hold up people that were brave and good role models for the students in my class and school. I'm lucky to work at a school that has similar values to my own. My preschool class has led the Harvey Milk assembly we have every year on his birthday week. At the time I wrote ["Wave a Flag for Harvey Milk"], there wasn't an age appropriate book about Harvey Milk--now there is--but at the time, I thought it would be an easy way to introduce 3-5-year-old kids to what Harvey Milk did for the local community and community beyond. I ended up turning it into a singalong coloring book, so the kids could see images of Harvey and what he had done and so the kids could break down the song verse by verse or line by line. After a while, the kids got into the melody and learned the words themselves, and they became interested in the song. It's kind of a political thing, but more so about holding up the voices of people that are advocates for others. That's what we try to instill in the preschool classroom anyway: Be kind to one another, accept one another, advocate for one another, and be brave. Harvey Milk and Ruth Bader Ginsburg are really great examples of that.

Of course, Folkways has so many protest and topical songs in their catalog. Whenever I make a song, I have all of those songs mushed into my brain, and I'm making up songs that are unintentional rip-offs of what I've heard.

SILY: I was thinking about "If I Had A Hammer" when I heard "A Builder's Got a Hammer and Nails". The former was sung at Communist rallies, which isn't exactly the case with your song, but it still speaks to the connection between seemingly divergent genres of music that are one and the same. In this day and age, the school is such a contentious place in many parts of the country, whether that's school board curriculum fights or repressive laws. It almost does seem like a similar fight, children's music and folk music, a la "This machine kills fascists."

GG: It's true. I live in a little bubble at my school. I don't know if I'm lucky because of that, but the kinds of things we're talking about in songs and that the other teachers at my school believe, are what I believe and I think Cass believes. I know if you walk outside the bubble of San Francisco, it's different. I'm glad that these songs [exist], and that there are other groups of people writing songs and books and having rallies and marches that are in line.

SILY: Had you listened to a lot of other music made for children before writing these songs?

GG: Not really. Mostly just older music, and a lot of that was on Folkways. Not when I was a kid. I remember listening to Woody Guthrie songs and learning "This Land Is Your Land". Maybe "Riding In My Car" when I was a young kid. As a teacher and as a parent, I've collected the old Folkways records and have a collection in the classroom that we often play. It's become the oral landscape of the classroom. As far as contemporary kids music, I don't really know it. I'm sure there would be a lot that I like. I do know that Elizabeth Mitchell has some beautiful records out. I only know a little bit of Raffi, but every time I hear him, I think, "That guy's good."

When we were getting ready to release this record, Folkways asked whether Cass and I could make a playlist of Folkways songs from their back catalog that they could put online and that I could write about. I said, "How about we choose the songs, but instead of me reviewing them, the kids in my class can say some words about them?" A lot of the songs I chose were ones we already listened to in class. Whatever the kids would say would be more interesting than what I would say, and they have a lot more non-sequiturs that are more fun to read. The kids reviewed all the songs and ended up re-drawing classic Folkways album covers, so we took pictures of that, too. That's how we bring other children's music into the classroom. We learn about Elizabeth Cotten and Woody Guthrie and Ella Jenkins, who is one of our very favorites.

SILY: The record has recordings of your students throughout the years. How far back are some of those?

GG: The majority are not very far back. All of the students on there are from the first COVID year. I recorded those in the classroom on my phone, and we snuck them into the record when in the studio later. I would have used kids from previous years on the record and had so many recordings of them singing, but you have to get the rights from all the parents, which was too hard, so I figured I'd just find all the parents from one year.

SILY: A song like "Each One Of Us" is consistent with the spirit of many songs on the album in that it's essentially about diversity and equality. When I grew up, equality was taught very blindly, in an, "I don't see color" type of way. The idea behind this song is more, "Everyone is different, which we should embrace." Can you talk about that idea as it pertains to writing songs?

GG: I think that was one of the first songs I wrote for the class. At the beginning of the year, with preschoolers, we learn about the classroom and each other. We invite families into the classroom to share things they like to do, holidays they celebrate, food they enjoy. That song was building off of that creation of a classroom community and learning that we have so many similarities but also a lot of differences that we can learn from. We become stronger and safer when we get to know each other better. That was a songbook as well. It had some illustrations that kids could color in, and they got to say, "I have brown eyes, too, just like my grandma," or, "I have two moms as well, and Chelsea, she has two dads, and Brian only has one mom and nobody else, and this person lives with their grandma, and I live in an apartment, too." They were able to make so many connections with the verses in the songs.

SILY: The song "I'm A Nocturnal Animal" is very funny, with rhyme schemes involving regurgitation and owl pellets, but it's also about the cycle of life and death. How do you approach a subject like that with young kids?

GG: Through books and songs, and they understand it themselves. When we're learning about Harvey Milk or Martin Luther King, Jr., there are always one or two kids who have already heard about them, and one of the first things they know is that they died or were killed. Death comes up a lot. Kids' grandparents pass away, or their animals pass away, so there's a lot of talk in the class. Some books are helpful to read with the students. It sounds kind of silly, but we do have puppets just like Mr. Rogers did. The puppets sometimes come out and talk about these things that are more difficult to talk about. We'll act out a scenario where the puppet has a pet that passed away recently and the other puppet will show compassion and ask them how they're feeling. The kids will watch it and talk about how they'd feel in such a situation, or talk about people in their lives who passed away, and open up an organic conversation that may not have happened if it was just me talking about the subject as an adult. When you introduce puppets or a song, there's some sort of layer that's removed, and the kids are sometimes more willing to be vulnerable in that kind of situation.

In our classroom, we also celebrate The Day of the Dead, let by another teacher whose family celebrates it, and that opens up a lot of discussions.

And a song like "Deciduous Tree" is about the seasonal cycle of a tree but also about butterflies and caterpillars. We talk about animal and human life cycles in the class, and there's inevitably death. We talk about it as a scientific thing.

SILY: It's unique to hear death in a song that's primarily meant for children.

GG: I've also noticed that when we're learning about these specific historical figures or discussing the death of an animal in the family, in the playground, I'll find a child lying down, and when I ask what's going on, they say, "I'm just playing dead." They work it into their pretend play, which helps them work through their feelings and emotions about subjects that are difficult. It's like a rehearsal for what could happen as an adult.

SILY: "My Skull Is Made Out of Bone" is a fascinating self-reflexive exercise. By the end of it, you're breaking the fourth wall, asking, "How did this song start? Well, it's because of my brain, which is protected by my skull, which is made out of bone." It's pretty layered!

GG: I like how it's a loop. It begins as it starts as it begins. The kids in my class will sing the last part, "My skull is made out of bone," and then start the song all over again. [laughs] We made that song because we were learning about the human body. The kids chose that study themselves.

SILY: Have you done live performances of these songs for parents?

GG: We do it for parents every year. We do the Harvey Milk song for assembly. My school goes up to 8th grade, so there are a lot of people in the assemblies, and a different group leads them each Friday. We usually have another assembly where we sing about something we've been learning about. This year, I made up a song about rocket ships, because the kids were learning about space and built mini rocket ships out of cardboard. We learned about the planets and talked about what we would do if we were visiting each planet and what we would find. Other times, throughout the year, we invite the parents in to come hear their kids sing. We had one performance outside of school, at an opening for the children's magazine Illustoria. We performed "My Skull Is Made Out of Bone".

I don't really like performing myself. It's the scariest thing for me. But I love singing the songs with the kids in the classroom every day.

SILY: Do you think Cass will work any of these songs into his setlists?

GG: [laughs] Probably not, though he told me he's done "Wave a Flag for Harvey Milk" before with Phil Lesh at Lesh's [now closed] restaurant Terrapin Crossroads. They did it during Pride Week. I wish I was there. Maybe he'll work something in. It's kind of its own separate thing.

I was also a little bit afraid that his fans would see this record and say, "Oh no, a kid's record, it doesn't sound like Cass's music."

SILY: It kind of does though! You can immediately tell it's him, and he has the perfect voice for these songs. It's gentle and expressive at the same time.

GG: He does have a very gentle voice.

SILY: And a lot of the instrumentation on here has that same folk background, a little rougher around the edges in terms of arrangements, especially with the strings and percussion.

GG: I like that we were able to put some strange things in there, some discordant sounds. I like that we got to play actual tools on "Hammer and Nails". Folkways has the tradition of releasing sound effects records, like Sounds of the Junk Yard. At the end of "Hammer and Nails", you hear these smashing sounds. There was construction going on upstairs, so initially, we had to keep stopping our recording, but we decided to just record them banging away and use that in the song.

SILY: There are sound effects at the end of "What's Your Favorite Kind?" and "Paper Airplane" too.

GG: I got to do a "whoop" with some tool I found in the classroom. I went in to look for woodworking tools but found the slide whistle. And "What's Your Favorite Kind?" has Tommy [McMahon], who I've been friends with since I was 10, playing Moog on there. He made it sound like a 1970s Sesame Street song, which is what I'd been hoping for. He goes by Controller 7.

SILY: How did you find the overall process of making the album? Are you planning on recording more songs?

GG: I think we'd like to do more. I'm going to keep making them myself. Cass said he'd be interested. He lives in New York now.

This was my first time going to a real studio, though it was during COVID, so a lot of it was piecemeal, where I'd have some demo stuff, and we wanted guests on there but couldn't get them into the studio, so we did a lot of cutting and pasting. It was cool how it all came together in the end. It would be fun to go in there now and lay it all down in a more live way. That's also hard to do with kids. I'm glad I got to use the voices of the kids in my class on this record. They're the biggest part of these songs. They're why they exist.

[owltypical]

assorted musical memories from my youth

for a little while during my childhood we were poor and like the only music we owned were cassette tapes of some random eric clapton album, i think a rod stewart best of, and the original broadway cast recording for cats

the first cd i ever got was the beatles white album, along with a cassette tape/cd/radio combo player, as a birthday gift

it wasn't until my late teens/early twenties that i actually got to properly listen to and dig deep into queen, david bowie, elton john, et cetera, because the instant any of their music ever came on the radio my dad would shut if off or switch to a different station. "i just don't like them". didn't take me too long to figure out why (spoilers: homophobia)

i tried listening to 3 doors down's kryptonite on the radio once and my family talked over it and made fun of me and complained for the entire length of the song

so many car trips were spent listening to the same allman brothers, lynyrd skynyrd, bon jovi and the eagles tapes/cds over and over. god.

concerts i have been to: neil diamond (in utero, but close to go time), bruce springsteen & the e street band (when clarence clemons was still alive), tom petty & the heartbreakers/bob dylan combo concert (george harrison had died some months before so they did a couple songs in tribute to him, my parents made us leave a few minutes into bob dylan's half, i was so mad), robert plant (he was an opener) and the who (multiple times)

i'd wanted to see the who in concert for years and we couldn't manage it, not even the time they were playing nearby on my literal birthday, but finally i got gifted tickets as a high school graduation present. john entwistle did his dumb rock star party death a few months later, so, welp. i did see several concerts though in the long run, and pete townshend went by me in his car real close once.

my dad is one of those obnoxious King Of The Remote dads, so it was hard getting even basic cultural osmosis from TV because the second anything he didn't like came on, he'd completely mute it, or switch around to other channels back and forth for a bit, even if it was a movie, no matter what anyone else wanted. or he'd just loudly complain over it until it stopped

this is the same man that assured me that nothing but trouble is a good funny movie, except for that bit with digital underground that ruined it

oh yeah, i have a christmas card from pete townshend. back when he was being accused of sex pest stuff in operation ore (he was found 100% innocent in the end), i wrote him a letter saying i supported him. now, if it was the current day, i'd be a lot more cautious and wait to see how things went first. but i sent it, and some months later was very confused to receive an envelope from england. and lo and behold, it was a christmas card that had "thank you for believing in me. pete townshend" handwritten inside. neat.

[arabellaflynn]

Advent Calendar 12: The Shiny Frisbee

Greetings, and welcome to Advent Calendar 2022! This year we're being self-indulgent and rambling about video games.

As usual, the Advent Calendar is also a pledge drive. Subscribe to my writing Patreon here by December 15th for at least $5/mo and get an e-card for Ratmas; subscribe for $20/mo (and drop me a mailing address) and you'll get a real paper one!

I hope you're all having a happy winter holiday season. Let the nerd rambling commence!

Picture it: Phoenix, Arizona. 199... uh, 3, ish? It's been a while. As mentioned, my father did a lot of CAD design and sometimes worked at home, back in the days when the brontosaurus stampedes sometimes interfered with his morning commute, so we always had at least one up-to-date PC in the house. 

The big purchase that year was a tricked-out '486. For those of you who were not buying desktop PCs when you had to know and care what all the parts were, the CPU (and the motherboard it went on) was usually the single most costly piece, so you figured out your price range and picked that out first. Next up were the RAM and the hard drive. These days you don't need to worry too much about either unless you're building a server or a gaming computer, but back in the day it legitimately mattered. Less in my house, perhaps -- my father taught me how to field strip an ATX case when I was in grade school, followed by the long tedious process of whacking the OS with a hammer until it understood what you'd just done to the hardware, but a lot of people didn't upgrade their PC for funsies. 

The most exciting part of this new PC, however, was the "multimedia package". It came with a 17" SVGA monitor that displayed a whopping 1024 x 768 pixels, a resolution today achieved by my dirt cheap LG Rebel 4 phone. It came with a SoundBlaster 16, a sound card with wavetable and FM synthesis playback using a Yamaha YMF262, a chip which can now be purchased for under $2. And, most importantly, it came with a CD-ROM drive.

The idea of using audio media for data storage was not crazy. Computers made the jump from physical recordings like Jacquard loom punch cards and paper tapes to rearranging ferrous particles with magnets at about the same time as the music industry did, in the 1950s and '60s. Home microcomputers used cassette tapes for storage in the '80s. Floppies and hard drives are pretty much the same thing, except the signal is stored in concentric circles on a platter instead of in one long line down a strip of tape. The concept of CD-ROM was first demonstrated in 1984, and drives were on the market by 1986.

No, the crazy part was the idea that any normal person would ever need access to the sheer amount of random crap a CD-ROM could hold. The first drives were expensive bastards sold to the same kinds of educational institutions who bought LaserDiscs full of science to cram into the heads of impressionable children, and the first killer app for it was Microsoft Bookshelf. It was conceived of as a way to not just store millions of pages of text, but to augment that text with explanatory pictures, sounds, and video clips, and to make all of those things accessible at the click of a button, or at least a brief keyword search.

This is obviously not what happened. This is never what happens. Every time we invent something meant to advance the state of our species, the first thing we actually do with it is fuck around. We invented writing to keep accounting ledgers, and immediately used it for graffiti. We invented the printing press to spread spiritual enlightenment, and we used it to print pornography and bawdy shit like Chaucer. So obviously when we created a data format designed to collect and maintain the bulk of human knowledge in an easily-referenced format, somebody looked at it and went, "Holy shit -- do you know how many games we could fit on that?"

Up to this, video games had stayed small out of necessity. Cartridge games were constrained by the size of the ROM chips, which were relatively expensive. Atari 2600 games were around 2-4K; the largest SNES cart that I know of was the 1995 release Tales of Phantasia, which clocked in at 48 megabits (= 6 megabytes). A Commodore Datasette stored about 100K per 30 minutes of tape. Computer games could span several disks, but a single 3.5" diskette held at most 2.88Mb, and that format was relatively rare -- most were half that. A CD-ROM could hold 650 megabytes of (almost) whatever you wanted, and it would just be right there, ready for access, sitting in the drive like it lived there.

The bottleneck at this point was the machine reading the disc. Just because your media can hold 650Mb doesn't mean the computer can choke down all 650Mb at once. The transfer rate for a basic CD-ROM is 150Kb/s, which not coincidentally is also the throughput needed for MPEG-1 video; you can stream MPEG-1 video straight from a CD (which is what a VideoCD is), but you can't get anything else off the disc while you're doing that, and there's a limit to what you can stash in RAM. So most of the very early games for CD-ROM used the space for a few short video clips, and eighty bazillion "high-resolution" pictures instead.

Behold, the most famous of famous CD-ROM games, MYST. Originally released for the Mac in 1993, MYST almost single-handedly drove consumer adoption of the CD-ROM format. To hell with having a reference library in your desk drawer -- people wanted pretty pictures that you could click on until you got a reward, like a rat hammering on the food lever in a behavioral lab! Except instead of something useful like a food pellet, your reward was a new picture to click on. If the game was really pleased with you, you might get a short grainy video clip. The basic setup is one still used for a lot of mobile games today. So if you've ever mysteriously lost eight hours of your life playing June's Journey, you can thank Brøderbund for reminding everyone that point-and-click adventures existed.

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[hoonhrt]

MUSIC SHOP 

: pairing — idol! heeseung x music store worker! reader 

: genre — fluff 

: album recc. — case study 01 by daniel caesar and any of the albums i mentioned throughout the story! 

: a/n — this is a little more on the lengthier side so please know that before reading! (i couldn’t help myself i luv hee too much) 

it was a slow day at the shop. the dim fairy lights hung around lowly, making the atmosphere feel even slower. you walked around the store pushing a small grey cart that held all the albums, records, and cassette tapes one could ever imagine of, placing everything in their correct spots for future consumers to find. 

the sound of a faint bell was heard from the back of the store. where you were, indicating that someone had came in. you flatten out the front of your sweater and rush to greet the costumer. you are met with a tall man dressed in all black from head to toe, water droplets fell off the shoulder of his jacket and you make a mental note to mop the floor later. 

“hello! welcome to moonshines music. please let me know if you need help with anything, i’ll be happy to assist!” you cheerfully exclaim. you welcome costumers with a joyful energy that even cheers them up, it was your thing. the costumer pulled down the black mask from his face and waited for you to react. he was a slightly astonished when a reaction never came. no gasps, no eyes widening, no realization of who he was. just you with a firm smile on your face waiting for him to walk away and start shopping. he eyes you for a little before nodding his head and makes his way to the direction of the CD albums.

he pondered this feeling for a little. he wasn’t used to not being recognized. i mean, everyone knows him. he was on ever magazine cover and topped all the charts with his music. his face was plastered on every product poster that covered the walls of the busy city. so how could you not? he thinks that maybe you didn’t want to scare him off or bother him with pictures and autographs,  inflating his ego a little bit. but still, why did you not say anything? 

“excuse me! do you mind helping me out?” you could hear his voice from across the store as he shouted for you. jogging from your previous to his still figure. 

“how can i help you?” continuing on your energetic personality. he didn’t have a real reason to ask for help, he was just too intrigued by you and needed a reason to converse with you. he looks around the store frantically for a minuet before looking back behind him to the CD’s he initially walked towards. “can you choose an album for me?” he blurts in your face loudly. 

this wasn’t the first time someone asked for music recommendations but he walked in with confidence so you assumed he was a man who knew his music. “uhh yes um— do you perhaps have favourite genre that you maybe like?” you question him. he just stares at you, his lips folded in with a blank expression on his face. he shakes his head no. you politely nod again, now even more conflicted with what to recommend. you trail your eyes around the store till you see through the window next to the door. the sky is crying, whilst gray clouds surround it. the streetlight emitting an orange hue that reflect the fallen rain drops on the glass and you suddenly remember the small drops of water that trickled down his jacket sleeve when he first entered the store. 

walking behind him you scan for the letter D section and begin to search for the album. letting out a soft ‘hmm’ before pulling out the album and handing it to him. “Case Study 01 by Daniel Caesar. perfect for rainy days when you aren’t lost in your thoughts.” you end with a smile on your face. ‘so they really have no idea to who I am, huh’ he thinks to himself. he looks down at the album in his hands than looking back up at you. a gentle smile reaching his lips. he follows you to the cashier register and pushes the album towards you. “that’ll be $10.15! card or cash?” he whips out his wallet and takes out a credit card. you can’t help but notice it was a black card, a card only the richest of people have. you wonder how this man can be so rich and why he is buying from a tiny music store in the middle of a unknown area. 

you’re pulled away from your thoughts when the sound of the machine goes off,  indicating the purchase has gone through. you delicately place the album into a tiny bag and hand it over to him with glee. “enjoy the album sir! if you ever do comeback, let me know what you thought about it!” you say in a courteous manner. the young man now looks at you with a toothy grin on display for you to awe at. he nods in affirmation before exiting. the atmosphere becoming quiet again. you hoped to see that man again. 

another week has rolled around. you hum under your breath a silly little tune from a song on one of your many playlists, sending another customer off a new record they seemed to be extremely excited about. your job wasn’t much but seeing people share the same love for music as you was something that never failed to make you love life. wiping down the cashier, you hear the door chime and see the same handsome man from last week. you catch a glimpse of the clear sky and the natural light of the sun from out the door as he enters. 

“i LOVED that album! you described it literally perfectly, it fit the vibes of the weather sooo much but didn’t leave me agonizing about life like how the rain usually makes me feel.” it made you so happy and almost accomplished to have someone come back and praise you for your music choice. you were about to start telling him it was no big deal before he proposes, again, to choose another album for him. you look at him a little unsure, you honestly didn’t know what to give him this time and you were scared he wouldn’t like it this time. he can see the anxiety flush over your face but lets you know he is looking for something this time. “give me your childhood favourite album. like, you know every single lyric for every song on this album.” your eyes go wide as you practically jump towards the shelf. he giggles quietly, thinking how cute you looked. 

you prance towards the shelf knowing exactly where it was. in your hands was the Up All Night by One Direction, you shove the album into his hands with a passionate smile. he looks at you and tries to hide his judgment from you, which doesn’t work as you can see his eyebrow arch up and study the album in slight disgust. “hey! i danced to this album every night before i went to sleep for 3 years as a kid okay? it’s my favourite album!” your bottom lip pushes out, gazing at him with eyes the resemble a cute puppy. he throws his head back lets out a laugh that you think you could listen to for hours on end. 

just as the prior week, he passes you the album to scan through and pulls out his card to pay. he was about to make his way out before you stop him. “can I have your name?” you requested. you took a liking to the kind guy, he had a pretty face and laugh that you particularly enjoyed. he checks his phone and swiftly swipes through the millions of notifications he has, then gazing back up at you. a genuine look plastered on your face. a look that feigned innocence, kept promises, and truly enjoyed life for what it was. “heeseung. my name is heeseung.” 

you tug the key out of the door lock with a little force. the moon created a source of light and comfort as you made your way away from the shop and towards the subway station. you worked longer than usual and fatigue was the only thing felt within your weak bones. a car pulled up next to you, the window rolled down and revealed the person that has been occupying your thoughts recently, heeseung. 

“on your way home?” you nod. “hop in, i’ll drive you home, we can listen to some music while we’re at it.” now you usually don’t just get into random peoples car, but you trusted him. who else would listen One Direction because someone asked them to? 

his car was black from top to bottom, mirroring his outfits that he always wore. the windows were tinted and it looked intimidating from the outside, but on the inside sat a doe-eyed boy with the prettiest smile to exist. heeseung’s hand reaches out to turn up the volume of the car sound system. the sound of Frank Ocean’s voice fills up the empty sound within his car. it was song you were unfamiliar with. you ask what song this was and he lets out a dramatic gasp, almost looking offended. “you DON’T know this song? I guess pretty people can have flaws huh,” he turns his head to watch you flush a pink shade that can still be seen despite the darkness. a sight he thinks is quiet lovable. 

the car ride to your home lasted much shorter than you wished it did. you two talked about everything under the moon. favourite songs, old childhood friends, past lovers. heeseung enjoyed the fact that you didn’t know his career identity. to the world he was Lee Heeseung, world renowned singer and model, but to you he was just, heeseung. a young boy who loved music and loved the world involved around it. you made him feel like a regular person again. 

as you open the car door to make way into the glass doors of your apartment complex, heeseung grabs your wrist and pulls you back into the car. “how about... i lend you my favourite album this time, and next week on—” he checks the schedule his manager sent him, “saturday at 6 pm, i pick you up and we can talk more about it hm?” he holds his phone towards you with a cheeky smile on his face. you shake your head in disbelief as you bit back a smile of your own that is creeping on to your face. “I’ll see you then, hee.” your heart skipping beats as you walk away from the running vehicle. 

unbeknownst to you, an excited heeseung punches the air rapidly with excitement. he silently screams into the night like a kid. feeling as if he was on cloud 9 to have scored a date with someone who’s a) the most beautiful person he’s ever seen and b) someone who likes him for his truest self. 

[thetragicallynerdy]

fungi anon again (sorry this is the last one i promise) wondering about your opinions on CDs/vinyl compared to digitally downloaded music

Fungi anon you are welcome to ask as many questions as your heart desires <3

Hmmmm okay okay. I'm actually going to go by each item, for funsies

CDs - so, I grew up with cassettes and CDs, and part of me deeply loves the hard copy aspect of CDs. I still have a massive binder of CDs that used to live in my car (I can no longer drive with music on for disability related reasons, so now it lives in my apartment), and I really value having certain albums on CD. And I also appreciate that it was a one time purchase, and my money (or at least a bit of it) actually went to the artist - especially with smaller artists and indie CDs, which I have a lot of. Or at least, more of my purchase went to the artist than it does with Spotify. I'm also a huge fan of CD booklets. I love reading lyrics as I listen to music, and love the physicality of it.

However - CDs also scratch *really* easily. They're so easy to mess up, and then you're kind of shit out of luck - you either buy a new one, or you deal with the terrible skipping CD. And they can be bulky to keep and carry around.

Cassettes - I adore cassettes. They take up a lot of space, and are an obsolete technology, but there's something so beautifully nostalgic about them. And something beautiful about not being able to skip songs, and having to just listen. As a bonus you can get them hella cheap at thrift stores (same with CDs actually). I have a cassette player still and a drawer of cassettes, some of which were mixed tapes made for me by friends and family. Love them.

Vinyl - love it in theory, but I have 0 space for a record player, and vinyl takes up even more space than cassettes. Which, if you have limited space, is not ideal. Also they're often expensive! And I am poor! So!

Digital - Honestly digital is just so convenient. There's a reason that mp3 players became so massively popular - because you went from having a bulk portable cassette or CD player that you had to carry around (and extra tapes or CDs if you wanted to listen to more than one album) to having a device that fit in your pocket that could fit many albums. My first tiny mp3 player fit like 4 albums, and it was a game changer.

Realistically, 99% of what I listen to is digital music. It's much easier to get (either through streaming, sites like youtube and bandcamp, purchasing albums, or illegal downloads), much easier to keep backups of, and much much more convenient. Also as someone with some sensory auditory needs, it's easier to listen to things on my phone speaker than my stereo. I find that I rarely listen to a full album all the way through these days, and I love the ease with which I can make only playlists etc.

And Streaming services made it much, much easier to listen to a variety of music. I can find things that I would never have listened to if I stuck to only hard copy music.

So my feels are kind of complicated! Because I really adore hardcopy, and really value having physical copies of things - but also it's a lot cheaper for me to spend $10/month on Spotify than it is to even buy one $20 CD a month. (I have no idea what albums cost now, but that was around how much they cost when I was a teen and buying CDs a lot.) And that doesn't even take into consideration the space needed to store things. Digital is more convenient, in many many ways. And convenience isn't always the point of things - but I'm not going to pretend it's not a factor.

Thanks for the ask anon, sorry this was a bit rambley <3

[3wisellamas]

Giant Sweet Cap’n Cakes Headcanon Masterpost!

(Fun fact, I thought most of these up while on one REALLY long hike.  ^^;  You can tell I fell for these three pretty hard.)

Music:

-I like the idea that, while the three all share a love of hip hop, glitch hop, electronic music in general, and a little lo-fi for chill times, they all have different tastes outside of those.  (Meaning if you pass them the aux cord, they WILL argue!)

-Sweet's actually the biggest audiophile of the group, with by far the most eclectic tastes; he will literally put together playlists that go from dubstep to heavy metal to classical to rap to vaporwave to even country.  The others don't really get it, but they're cool with whatever he puts on, and learn a lot of new music from him!

-He also owns an electric guitar, which he just plugs into himself to use as an amp and plays early in the morning to wake the others up if needed (he's the early riser and the other two are night owls...)

-Cap'n's definitely got a more narrow focus than the other two; he likes rap and also R&B, jazz, and even a little swing/electro swing.  He's also been caught more than once listening to cheesy romantic pop songs, claiming he's just into them for their potential madamoizel-attracting uses but really he's just a sappy romantic.

-He can also rap, very well in fact, and gets Sweet to beatbox while he freestyles. 

-Heck, he's just got a good singing voice in general, helped by having a built-in autotune, and dominates at karaoke!

-K_K also has a really broad range, but stays more towards the electronic end of the spectrum -- melodic dubstep, synthpop, disco, trance, chiptune, DnB, even occasionally puts on straight-up ambient spa music to chill out to (the only genre the other two will NOT tolerate.)

-K_K has also, in the past, set up entire mini-raves just by themselves, complete with glowsticks and everything, while Cap'n and Sweet were out doing whatever.  They were...not pleased, when they got back, mostly because they weren't invited.  All three got to have one together eventually though.  

-Physical media is king in their shop; if it's not on a CD, cassette tape, or a vinyl record (or an 8-track, though they have to dig out their old player for it), they will refuse to play it, and might even ask you to leave.  "MP3" is an extremely dirty word to them.

-(In fact, they don't get along too well with the MP3 player-headed robots elsewhere in the city.)

-They are indeed always listening to music on physical media as well -- K_K and Cap'n are their own CD players (though Cap'n's one of those models that's also got a built-in FM radio), while Sweet has a straight-up Walkman.    

-(He's also the group's cassette champion, claiming his media of choice is superior to CDs because you can record music on BOTH sides of the tape!  The other two just don't have the heart to point out that each side only holds half as much music as a CD, and you don't even have to rewind those...)

-Jury's still out on Hit Clips.  Cap'n and Sweet think they're just toys, but K_K genuinely collects and appreciates them and treats them like actual music (it helps that they are only around four seconds long!)

-Believe it or not, the headphones are only decoration, all three actually just...listen to their music entirely within their own heads, though they can also switch to playing it externally on their speakers as well.  Perks of being robots!  Though, sometimes K_K has his internal volume up too high, and misses things that other people say because of it.

-Sweet also has an input port, and connects himself to his turntable to act as the speakers!  The other two are WAY too embarrassed to ask if they can use it as well.

-Sweet can play almost any instrument you throw at him, as long as it's not a woodwind (Surprisingly, he can do brass, since those work on vibration rather than air!).  He prefers his guitar or violin when he isn't spinning records on his turntable.  Where the other two just enjoy music, he's the actual trained musician.

Voice headcanons:

-Sweet:  Kind of deep, bass-y, lots of reverb, a slight tinny audio distortion to it like a low-quality recording that becomes much more pronounced when he gets upset or starts shouting.  And since he's a speaker, you can literally feel the vibrations he makes when he's speaking!

-Cap'n:  Scout from TF2.  I am sorry, but I absolutely cannot get that out of my head for him.  XD  However, he's actually putting that voice on as an "accent" of sorts, his real voice is actually super autotune-y like K_K's, and it comes out whenever he gets flustered, his pitch only getting higher and higher as it gets worse...

-K_K:  Pure autotune, he can just do whatever the hell he wants with his voice -- pitch, tone, whatever, and while he tends to keep it a little higher he can and does change it to fit his mood!  He often has a completely different voice every day, but the others are used to it.  He also just straight-up vocalizes sound effects (like, the kind that make you go "How did you just make that sound with your mouth?!") and can mimic other people perfectly (though the slight mechanical distortion does give it away).  There are absolutely no rules when it comes to K_K's voice.

-They harmonize perfectly whenever they sing together! 

Sweet:

-I like to think Sweet's actually the brains of the group; like, not SMART, he just holds their one collective braincell most often.  He does any technical work when they're building stuff, like soldering circuits or the occasional programming, and even handles a lot of the actual business operations and pays the bills.  The other two also like to follow his lead when it comes to rebellion plans, even if he’s not the official leader.

-That said, though?  It's balanced out by him being rather hotheaded and having the shortest temper by a lot.  There are REASONS why he's not usually out selling bagels with the others -- he's unfortunately prone to some more "extreme" sales tactics, like hurling half their stock at random passersby until they finally agree to buy some.  On the plus side, he's always the first to step up to defend the gang from anything that dares to harm them, and is always on guard.

-He can also hold a heck of a grudge -- don't ever get on his bad side!  Cap'n and K_K are mostly immune to this though, if he gets upset with them he works through it by the end of the day.  It helps that they can all hug it out.

-He's a bit of a perfectionist, often working overtime to try and get everything they build exactly right.  He can get really frustrated when things don't work out the way he plans, or when he can't make sense of a problem, or when Cap'n and K_K are goofing off instead of doing their part, and needs to go blast some loud music and blow off steam.

-He does have a really tough time keeping his balance, since his head is a bit heavier than the rest of his body, but he takes tripping over his own feet constantly in stride.  The biggest problem he has is with dancing -- while he'll join in with the others on occasion, he can't match their more acrobatic moves and sticks more to actually PLAYING the music they're dancing to.

-He's also really, really unlucky, just in general.  He actually considers the other two his good luck charms, since they help him out whenever he trips or gets into a bad spot!

-He's the fashionista of the group, surprisingly.  It's difficult for him to find clothes that fit his body, so he tends to get a little creative with it and has a whole closet full of different stuff!  And since Cap'n is roughly the same size they'll occasionally swap jackets.

Cap’n:

-Cap'n actually has managed to score a handful of dates with girls in the past!  However, NONE of them went well, and only one actually made it to the second date (only to break up right in the middle of it), so he always ends up returning home heartbroken and in tears.  Sweet and K_K, by this point just ready for it whenever they hear that he's going out that night, always dry him off before he shorts himself out, take him to bed and cuddle with him (platonically, I don't see them as brothers but I also don't see them as having that conversation until Cap'n's ready, which he clearly is NOT), remind him that it doesn't hurt forever and he isn't unlovable and that he'll find someone eventually, etc.

-They have sat him down multiple times to try and gently suggest to Cap'n that he might just not be into women?  And that he’s actually turning them off by trying so hard?  To which he's always just like "No, of course not.  I'm straight.  Love the ladies.  Totally.  Oh no they didn't catch me checkin' out that one dude earlier did they?  Is that what this is about?!"

-(Basically, Cap'n is just a hopeless romantic in love with the idea of being in love, but is absolutely clueless as to how it works or what he actually wants, and his best buds are always there to catch him when he falls.  ;v; )

-The glasses are prescription -- he's SUPER nearsighted, a hardware glitch he refuses to fix.  Sometimes when he's working on something close up he'll take them off, panicking when he can't find them afterwards, only to have the others point out that they're just on his head.  He’s also got non-tinted glasses, but you will not catch him DEAD wearing those unless it’s an absolute emergency.

-This dude is SUPREMELY insecure with himself.  Like, his rather questionable fixation on romance aside, he basically runs off of others' validation, the "cool" persona he's spent much of his life building up being how he hides the fact that he isn't really sure who he is, or what he wants to do with his life, or what he's even good for -- the others have learned to check on him now and then whenever he hides away in the back of the shop, since he can slip into some pretty dark places when left alone to sulk.  It took a long time for him to open up even to them to share his feelings, and sometimes still has doubts about whether they or anyone else really care about him as more than just The Smooth One...

-He's the only one of the three to actually enjoy the occasional silence, especially when he's trying to think, or whenever he's upset.  So, his headphones also serve a dual purpose -- they're noise-cancelling!

-He's the video guy, carrying around a small camcorder and constantly trying to record the group's activities, to put together into music videos!  He also just likes to record himself doing stupid stunts for posterity, though K_K just takes these and makes (affectionate) blooper reels.

-Cap'n is not his real name, similar to K_K.  However, unlike K_K, he refuses to say what it is, just that it's embarrassing.

K_K:

-K_K has a bad habit of just completely zoning out when he gets into his music, getting completely lost in the groove and needing to be pulled back to reality.  It's not a bad thing during jam sessions, but at work, or in the middle of a battle...not so much.

-He kind of needs to have some kind of music going at all times -- silence drives him absolutely CRAZY!  Though, because he gets distracted by his own music, he then misses out on entire conversations, only tuning back in towards the end.  Sometimes the other two have to repeat or summarize what they just said for him.

-He knows sign language, and taught the others to use it.  They're able to communicate reasonably well no matter how loud their shop gets, or on days when K_K isn't able to form words properly (he's just shy, and even when he isn't he gets tongue-tied a LOT).

-He's easily the best dancer of the three, and uses his extendable body to get really creative with his moves!  He even knows a little ballroom, somehow, which he'll pull out sometimes to make the others laugh.

-(Seriously, K_K CANNOT stand to see Sweet or Cap'n not smiling.  He'll do anything to keep the group's spirits up, usually cracking jokes during a scrap project or doing little favors, and they appreciate all his efforts!)

-K_K has the WORST sleep cycle, ever.  If you let him, he will stay up all night working or partying, finally going to bed at 6AM, and will then sleep until 6PM if the others don't wake him up at some point.  If they know he was up really late they'll let him sleep in a little, but he's often pretty sleep-deprived and running solely on sugar and caffeine, which doesn't help his natural loopiness.  

-He is a VERY physical guy.  Seriously, he will just scoop up and hold Sweet or Cap'n like a cat every five minutes; at first they were just like "Oh.  Okay.  We're hugging now I guess," but after a while they got more used to it and even anticipate when K_K is going to do it.  And he also initiates tons of snuggles and gives piggyback rides whenever one of his bandmates (usually Sweet) requests.  

-K_K actually scrapbooks, collecting pictures and little mementos of places he and the others have gone and things they've done.  After the library fountain is sealed, he pulls them out to show everyone else from Cyber City and reminisce about home.

-It's very hard to make K_K angry, since he tends to stay super chill and brushes off almost everything.  But, on those very, very rare occasions when something does get under his metal outer casing, he'll go full-on silent treatment, not speaking to anyone for up to a week as he sulks and stomps around the junk shop, and even refuses to play any music!  And no amount of sweets or hugs or cheering up will bring him out of it, either; the other two have learned to just wait him out and let him have his space, letting him come to them when he's finally ready to talk about it.

Misc:

-Though all three love everything sweet, K_K's the only one who really goes overboard with it, making whole meals out of candy.  Sweet, ironically enough, actually prefers more salty/savory snacks, while the less is said about Cap'n's hot sauce addiction, the better.

-Okay, actually, I will say more about it.  Cap'n loves spicy food in general, and literally drinks tabasco sauce right from the bottle.  However, he's got a bad habit of daring himself to eat hotter and hotter stuff, ESPECIALLY if someone is watching, and can easily get in WAY over his head before begging for milk.

-They also all totally drink battery acid like Queen.

-Heck, being both Darkners and robots, they can really eat literally anything.  Normal food, milk, oil, batteries, gallons of pure sugar, toothpaste, moss, glitter (NEVER let K_K get hold of any though, he gets lost in the sauce), broken glass, etc, and of course their own deep-fried CDs.  Only thing they can't do is water, since, you know, robots.

-With a lot of the aesthetics of Cyber City being close to turn-of-the millennium and early 2000s (CDs and boomboxes, popup ads, wired mice, Queen theorized to be one of those see-through iMacs, EVERYTHING about Spamton), I like the idea that the boys DO NOT have smartphones, and if you handed them one they'd have no clue how to use it or what to do with it.  But they do have cell phones:  Sweet's got an old flip phone covered in stickers (courtesy of K_K), Cap'n splurged for one of those that slide open and with a camera (he set his background to a tiny, grainy photo of the three of them!), and K_K has one of those indestructible Nokia bricks, that Sweet got him after he kept breaking all his other ones.  They can all text, but that's about as high-tech as they get.

-Same with tablets or newer computers in general, they might share one tiny netbook at most.  Cap’n never remembers to log out of his Dark World dating profile, so the others will snoop or post embarrassing things to it.

-They're really, really durable, even without milk -- they're made of 90s plastic and electronics, so it takes a LOT to take one of them down!  Plus, they regularly repair each other back at the shop (it took a LONG time for them to gain enough trust to physically open and work on each other), so as long as at least one's left to drag the other two to safety they'll be just fine.

-However, if they get splashed with water, caught in the rain, or worse, drowned, they will short out, or shut down on the spot to prevent damage.  Once they completely dry out, though, they'll start right back up, no worse for wear.  When only one of them gets waterlogged the other two will break out the hair dryers to dry them out faster, or even pop them into the oven in a pan of rice like an iPod that got dropped in the toilet...

Finally, backstory?

-Cap'n and K_K met first -- maybe both as new recruits to another, much less savory gang of music equipment robots, and bonded as a result of being put upon by the more established members (Cap'n probably even had to defend K_K more than once when his inattentiveness got him into trouble!)  But, they both had enough one day, and decided to break off and form their own thing, making music and selling CD bagels to support themselves.

-Sweet, meanwhile, has the complete opposite background, coming from a rich and important family of musicians in Cyber City who regularly entertained Queen in her mansion (hence why he always used to get sweets from her!)  But, he was kind of the black sheep, preferring his own style of music, and decided to strike out on his own as a street musician instead.

-They met when Cap'n and K_K accidentally set up to sell bagels on Sweet's usual corner, and he battled them to reclaim his turf.  But, they were evenly-matched (even two-to-one; Sweet's definitely the strongest of the trio!), and impressed each other with both their fighting and musical skills, so Sweet decided to join their tiny group, and thus Sweet Cap'n Cakes was formed.  

-After the whole situation with Queen is resolved, SCC turns their rebellion into an anti-DRM kind of thing?  Nobody can hold back the music, man!

[ryuu-to-sobakasu-hime]

Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime (Belle) Novel | English Translation | Chapter 3

**This is a machine translation. I put it together by extracting text page-by-page from a .pdf version of the Japanese novel, and running it through Google translate. I have only minorly edited some of the more confusing lines to make it more read-able. It is still a very rough translation, but it’s good enough to understand what’s going on. If there is anyone out there who wants to properly translate the novel, I am more than happy to edit it, if you’ll contact me.**

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Chapter 3: Memory

"Mother."

"What is it, Suzu?"

When I called, my mother turned around and replied.

Eleven years ago. The house was still new. There was no garage yet, and potted flowers were lined up all over the garden. "Do not cut my hair."

I told her that and ran down the slope in front of my house. Mom walked down the stairs opposite her, resting her hand on her waist and waiting. I ran away in the opposite direction, bouncing, saying that I would never let my hair be cut. But I was taken back without a hitch. She was seated on a bench in the garden and dressed in a haircut cape. “I’m going to make you look cute, Suzu.” After cutting my hair, I don't like the tingling of my hair. She shook her legs and sharpened her lips. But when she held the scissors without hesitation, she cut my hair all at once. "Because you’re going to be an elementary school student," I hope the hair on both sides doesn't stick to my shoulders. The bangs were far above the eyebrows. Even when I went to school, my neck was tingling for a while.

I played a lot with my mother. I took a sumo wrestling on the lawn of the riverbed in the evening. I pushed her by force and my mother rolled on the grass. I won, I laughed happily. Mother also laughed. I asked why? Won’t she cry if she loses? Mom shook her head. “I'm glad that the weak Suzu has become stronger.” Dad was laughing while lying on the grass. My mother often made salted seared meat. She lightly sprinkles salt and roasts the bonito stabbed on a gold skewer from her lenticel over an open flame on the stove. I was staring from the top of the chair. Since the fat drips, the microwave oven will not get dirty if you bake it while sucking it with cooking paper. When it gets burnt, dip it in ice water to cool it, and then drain it. It was a style. So as a kid, I had a hard time holding a thick piece of salted meat with chopsticks, and I had a hard time putting it in my mouth. Mom was waiting for dad's return, holding a mug and watching my struggle.

My dad was a salaryman at that time, and he wore a tie and went out to the city every day. Perhaps because of that, we had some money in our house in the old days. Mother bought a state-of-the-art smartphone at the time. I decided to try out the performance of the on-board camera, and on dad's lap, I pointed my smartphone at my mom. I asked dad to help put mom in the frame and pressed the shutter. She is dressed in white.

The smiling mother, she was beautiful. The photo of her was printed on paper and is still at the house. I was a cheerful child running around, unlike now. I definitely liked playing outside rather than inside the house. If there were trees, I climbed, if there were leaves, I tore them, and if there were insects, I chased them. But it didn't burn in the sun. I must have been such a constitution. Instead, my face is freckled.

I was often injured. My knee was also full of scratches. In the woods, on the riverbed, on the slope in front of my house, I often stumbled and fell. My mother ran up in a hurry and she hugged me tightly, crying in pain. Mysteriously, it hurts somewhere. That's when I was happy. I don't know how many times I fell because I ran around vigorously and wanted mother to hug me. Every time mother rushed in as if it was a big deal for her daughter and worried. Every day was like summer vacation. I clung to mother doing the laundry and cleaning and played. After lunch, she opened the tatami mat, laid a summer futon on the tatami mats, and we took a nap together. The smoke of the mosquito coil was rising slowly. When I woke up, most of the time, I couldn't see my mother sleeping next to me, and she was busy doing housework. In retrospect, she never been told me that she is busy. She was always with me when I asked for it. Since my house was in the mountains, I rarely went out to eat somewhere, and instead my mother cooked any kind of food. One day she saw it in a picture book, and she said she wanted to eat yakitori. She had never eaten it before. My mother made yakitori by sticking chicken on skewers one by one. For the first time in my life, I saw yakitori with the naked eye. I didn't know how to eat it, so I couldn't do well by chewing the meat and removing it from the skewers. Dad and mom were staring at me. Never missing what her daughter experiences for the first time in her life. The place where we, who live in the mountains, go out to play is not an amusement park or a shopping mall, but a campsite further in the mountains from our house.

On a sunny summer day, my mom and I wore a wide-brimmed hat and crossed the subsidence bridge. Dad was carrying a lot of camping equipment. The water crystal pool in the depths of the Yasui Valley was a breathtaking blue color even for us living in the area. The water is so transparent that you can clearly see your shadow on the bottom of the river. I feel a little scared as if I were floating in the air. My mother was an advanced swimmer. She boasted that her mother, who was once a local kid, swam like a kappa every day in the summer. She knew all about the fun of the river. At the same time, she never let her swim in dangerous places on dangerous days. Mom wraps around me, floating. She dived into the water to show her off her skills. Still picked up by her, I became anxious and called out. “Mom, don't go.” But mom, she swam in the blue water, as if she couldn't hear me.

One evening, I was playing with my mother's smartphone and saw a strange app. I put it on. When you launch the app, you'll see white and black horizontal stripes lined up. I pointed to what this was and asked my dad who was next to me. Dad looked it and twisted his neck, calling mother, who was preparing dinner. After dinner, mother's hand fixed the smartphone I was holding vertically. I laid it down and found it to be a piano keyboard. As prompted, I pressed one of the keys. There was a "do" sound. I looked at my mother's face. My mother also saw my face, saying that she had come out. It's mom’s music production app. Only then did I look around my mother's room and notice. Old records, cassette tapes, and CDs are lined up on the shelves to the end. And if you set them on a record player or cassette deck and pass them through an amplifier, music will be played from the left and right speakers. The collection was a brilliant one that accurately captured the main points of the history of classical, jazz and rock. I didn’t know at the time, the value and meaning of such a lineup being packed in a room at the end of the world.

In that room, I pressed the keys of the app one after another and recorded. When played, each sound sounds in the order in which they are arranged. Even if you enter an insane scale, it will play back in a lawful manner. I was so happy that I bounced on my chair. My mother was laughing too. Warm incandescent light was illuminating us. After that, I was crazy about this app. I had my mother lend me a smartphone and I was playing around with it day, night and morning. The operation was intuitive and easy to use. There were words that I couldn’t read because it wasn’t a children's app. And there were many functions I didn't understand. But I was absorbed in that kind of thing. I was completely absorbed in the exciting new experience of writing songs. I composed a number of songs and previewed them in front of my mother. The mother who finished listening gave me advice in short words each time. If you do xxx, it will be better, or the trick is to do xxx. She sometimes took out some of the records in the collection and listened to them for reference. My mother is neither a musician nor a composer.

I think each piece of advice is accurate even if I look back on it now. Over and over again, she listened to my melody, and she said she noticed something, and she sang herself to make sure it was. When I asked, she said it wasn't bad. She said she was smirking at me as she said. I put the sound in a place that I wouldn't normally put it. I'm sure this song was a failure, and all the work I've done so far will be ruined. But as it gradually takes shape, it seems strangely cohesive, she said. I felt as happy as I wanted to. I'm sure it's my parents' favor, but even if my mother added, I was happy. For me, I'm not making it with the intention of letting someone else listen to it. It would have been nice if only my mother could listen to it. My mother sings along with the song I typed in. Take the tempo with her right hand and sing gently. The voice of mother, who was also a member of the chorus made by her friends, echoed and was transparent.

She listened to my weird songs many times. I was happy and sang along with it. Anyway, it’s a song that is as nice as my mother.

I couldn't. Happy memories of me and mother suddenly end here. And that August has come. After this, all I have is a painful, painful memory. The voice of a little girl crying and crying echoed in the riverbank. A girl was left alone on a sandbar. Is she 4 or 5 years old? She looked smaller than I was. It was so sunny just a while ago, but I noticed it wasn't a blue sky, and it was covered with overcast clouds. The beautiful and calm river was cloudy, flooded, driftwood-filled, and surprisingly fast. I can imagine that it is raining heavily upstream. Before this happened, there were people happily making noise on the opposite bank when the flow was still transparent. They are now staring at the girl on this shore. She wore colorful outdoor clothing that made it easy to see that she probably came from the city, not a local. The girls' clothes were also bright colors that I had never seen. Why did people from the city overlook the girls' flashy colored clothes? Why did she forget her existence and she came back to this shore? What to do with friends, their families, and those who enjoyed fishing and canoeing on the riverbanks.

It seemed that she couldn't do anything, and she had no choice but to stand and look like a stick. It's no wonder you're standing. The violent flow of the river separated the girl from the people. Everyone realized that it couldn't be helped. One of the adults was talking to someone on his cell phone. However, everyone can see that where the girl is, is gradually narrowing. Everyone is aware that it is very unlikely that the rescue team will arrive in time. Therefore, I have no choice but to stand up without being able to do anything. Is it just listening to the girl's crying as it is? At that time, someone picked up the red life jacket beside the canoe.

I went forward while staring at the girl. She was a mother. Mommy, and I hurriedly clung to the hem of her mother's clothes. She realized that what her mother was trying to do was too dangerous. She wouldn't have been anxious. She screamed and pulled hard, trying not to let her go. Mom crouched down and squeezed my hand, and she told me something. At that time I can't remember what mother said. Maybe I was screaming and not ready to hear the words. Mom stood up to shake off my chasing and ran, locking the buckle on her life jacket. I fell down on a stone in the riverbank trying to chase her. Still, I got up and shouted at mother's back. Don't go. I think mom didn’t hear my words. While checking the girl's whereabouts, I went around the river, went into the water, and got in the stream to help. It started to rain.

How long has it passed since then? Suddenly the surroundings became noisy. The girl was rescued from the river. Adults are pulling the soaked and tired girl out of the river. I was staring at while getting wet in the rain. People running up. A mixture of joyful voices and crying voices. Are you okay? Open your eyes. I'm glad I was saved ... The girl was wearing the same red life jacket that her mother wore. At that moment, I understood at once what was happening. Mom isn’t here.

"Mother ..... Mother .....!"

I looked left and right, searching for her.

Not anywhere.

"Mother ...!"

In the distance, I heard an ambulance siren. The girl was wrapped in a blanket.

Carried by many adults, she leaves the riverbank. Everyone is crazy about it and realizes that my mom isn't there.

She isn't.

"Mom!" Only I raised my voice and kept calling. Many times. Many times. Many times. I don't remember much after that. When I heard that my mother was found all the way down the river, it seemed like a lie. It wasn't long before I realized that the mug that mother was using was missing. Dad put a picture of mother, which he took someday, in a picture frame and put it in a corner of the kitchen. He had to add flowers every day next to it. Neighbors bothered to talk to me every time I met them on the road, listened to me in a friendly way, and encouraged me with tears. Meanwhile, the Internet was flooded with anonymous posts about the accident.

"It's a suicide act to jump into a river flooded by rain"

"It seems that she was confident in swimming, but it's different from the pool."

《It is irresponsible for my child to help someone else's child and die》

《If there is an accident, playing in the river will be a nuisance and annoying》

《Because helping people is a good person, this is what happens》

The person who wrote it probably didn't know anything about the actual situation, and the day after he wrote it, he probably forgot what he wrote. However, the person who wrote it keeps sticking in my chest forever. Immediately after the accident, an acquaintance told me with resentment that it was terrible when I saw this. In front of these words, I was too young to understand all the meanings. However, as I grew up and became able to understand the meaning of the words accurately, I continued to suffer from the unconscious malice contained in them. Losing mother.

How should I pass on these writings as a bereaved family, even though I still can't accept them, as if the mother who helped me was all bad?

Aside from me, my mother just smiled in the picture frame in the kitchen. From that accident, I think something has changed decisively from what I used to be. One evening, in mother's room, where dust began to build up, I stood on her chair, hoping to return to her happy memories. And I sang the song I sang with mother. But when I started singing, I realized I couldn't sing at all. My voice became stuck in the back of my throat and couldn't get out of my mouth. I was confused. Something in my heart was suppressing me from singing. Why can't I sing? Tears came out.

Hey mom. Why can't I sing?

It was clear that the reason why singing was so fun and necessary was because my mother listened to it.

However, just because you can't sing... You don't have to worry about anything. Even if you can't sing, no one will blame you. Life just goes on. I went to a local junior high school. The jumper skirt uniform was stuffy. Many of the elementary school classmates went to the town as they went on to school, and there were not half of the students remaining in the local area, so even in junior high school, it became a compound class. Therefore, the chorus practice was accompanied by the vice-principal teacher, and it was decided to sing in all grades. There were three people in all grades. Because there were only three people, I quickly realized that I was just lip-synching without singing. I was asked why I didn't sing, but I didn't say anything. I thought they would get angry, but they didn't get angry. It means that only I can visit from the next practice.

I sat alone in a corner of the music class and watched everyone practice. I may have looked like a lethargic girl who was just silent. But inside that, there are things that can't be translated into words.

I think it was swirling. When I left school and returned home, I irresistibly entered mother's room in the twilight. The twilight light was shining through the window. Cardboard boxes containing tableware and seasonal home appliances that are no longer in use are piled up on the table. It was completely turned into a storeroom. It's been many years since then. It has passed. I listened to the large number of records there, one by one from the edge of the shelf. Days, days, days. By listening earnestly, I managed to calm my rough feelings. But one day, there was a moment when I thought I couldn't bear it anymore. Upon returning, I entered my mother's room, sat down in front of the keyboard, quickly opened the report sheet, and began to write fiercely with a pen to spit out the incomprehensible feelings in my chest. I was almost suffocating if I didn't spit it out. I turned over the paper and continued to write forever. -Why did mother leave me in the river? Why did she choose to help the child who she didn't even know her name rather than live with me? Why am I alone? Why, why, why – I added paper, supplemented with post-it notes, and wrote long, long lyrics. The scale that springs up is notated long and long. Those that were neither were spit out as pictures. It was a swirl of many kinds. It was like a whirlpool floating on the surface, like a black hole that swallowed everything, and like a hole in the top of my head. The floor of the room was filled with pieces of paper with a mixture of lyrics, pictures and sheet music. But suddenly..... I returned to myself and stopped writing. Right now, I've noticed the worthlessness, meaninglessness, ugliness, and helplessness of the words, pictures, and scales I wrote.

What are you doing? I broke the paper. Everything I've written so far.

I threw it in the trash can without hesitation. The bundle of paper looked like a vomit that I had just spit out. Then I became a high school student.

I finally found myself worthless. The uniform tie was stuffy. I crossed the subsidence bridge while looking down and went to school. I took an exam and passed the exam at a junior and senior high school in the center of the city, and transferred from high school. There, I met my childhood friend Shinobu-kun again.

"Shizu.."

"Shinobu-kun ..."

Now that I was in high school, Shinobu-kun looked tall and shining, all different. On the other hand, I didn't seem to have grown at all since then, and I was irresistibly embarrassed and couldn't even talk. What have I been doing so far? I started a new life going to the city from the mountains, but I couldn't get into studying. Even though I had a hard time taking the exam, I just looked out the window during class. Knowing that this shouldn't be the case. Club activities didn't go anywhere. There were very few such students. On the way home, you can see the students devoting themselves to club activities. The track and field club is jumping the training hurdle in a line in the courtyard. The volleyball club is running on the ground. A percussionist in the brass band with a metronome in his ear is striking a stick in the hallway. The Naginata club sits upright in the martial arts hall with a good posture, and thank you for your cooperation, saying before the practice. The first-year students of the baseball club, who have not yet been numbered, stand side by side and watch as if they are digging into the practice of their seniors. I didn't belong anywhere, so I left school quickly. It was already winter. There is a river called Kagami River that flows from east to west in the center of the city. Since the flow is often gentle, the TV tower and buildings on the opposite bank are reflected like a mirror. When I returned to the station through the road beside it, the girls of the light music club carrying the "Chahahaha" musical instrument case overtook me with a light step while laughing. A cute cat-shaped stuffed animal attached to the school bag is shaking. Attached to my school bag was a cheesy plastic plate of "Gutto Koremaru". "Gutto Koremaru" is an egg-shaped character who can poke his hand against the wall and endure the pain. I have a crack in my head, probably because I endured it too much. Of course, it's not cute.

In a dark and narrow corridor.

I resisted, "I can't do it! Hey!", But I was pulled into the room, saying "OK." The soundproof door slammed behind me. Shinboku "Ah!" There was a flashy room in a karaoke box, and the pink and purple lights were spinning mysteriously. It smells of incense. Only for girls in the class.

I heard that it was a social gathering, but when I saw the frenzy of the girls standing on the sofa and shaking their heads, I thought that I could not get into this tension very much.

"Peggie Sue is cute"

"This is the one that is popular in" U ", isn't it?" On the monitor screen on the wall, the popular Az of "U", Peggy Sue, was seen singing in a black rubber dress. Purple lipstick that shakes silver hair. An eccentric beauty with red eyes. Peggy Sue? "U"? Az? Is it popular? I don't know anything. It's like an event in a different world from me. Then, Hitomi suddenly offered a microphone, "Yes." Sing, and so on. "Huh?" Puzzled. Neither the coat nor the muffler is taken off. But "yes" the microphone was pointed again. Why for a child like me who is at the end of a class?

"Sing together?"

"Hey, sing."

The shadows of the girls press the microphones. What do you mean?

"Are you not going to sing alone?"

"Isn't it a lie that you can't sing?"

I see, so it’s this situation.

Dozens of microphones are forced against my face one after another. "Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu"

"Sing"

"Hey, sing?"

"Sing"

Those voices sound like a threat.

"You're telling me to sing."

"Sing!"

"Sing!"

Ahh!

Immediately, the microphone popped off and fell to the floor.

The girls dancing on the sofa suddenly saw me. It's calming down as if I was taken aback.

"What happened? Suzu-chan"

The mic and the shadows of the girls disappeared like a phantom.

"No, nothing. I'm sorry. Hey ..."

Without saying anything, I pushed the door of the karaoke box open by force and went out like crawling. Someone might have heard and told everyone that I couldn't sing.

When I got off the bus, powder snow was flying. I almost slipped down the slope from the bus stop. Even in Kochi, it usually snows in the mountains, aside from the city. When I crossed the subsidence bridge, I heard a crackling sound of thin ice. The surface of the concrete bridge is frozen.

Cold. It's not dexterous enough to get used to everyone, and it's not divisible. On the other hand, I’m not strong enough to be alone, not prepared, and have no idea.

I don't do anything selfish. Rumors that you can't sing, that's a lie. I'm just not confident in myself for a while. I want to get along with everyone. Really. I know. Of course I know. So "Ah ... Ah ..."

In the middle of the bridge, I impulsively exhaled my voice.

"Ah ... ah ... ah ah"

As I breathed in, cold air sank into my throat. Still, I sang towards the river. "Ah..”

Did I sing? It didn't match a song. It's just a growl. The bag slipped off my shoulder. Will you forgive me if I sing? Can I get along with everyone if I sing? It doesn't help to sing alone in such a place. It's like a scream of a dead end before being crushed. Still, I sang that song with my mother with a squeezed voice. I was happy back then. It's different now. Powder snow was swirling in the flow of the river. Suddenly, in front of me it became pitch black. Nausea swelled from the back of my stomach, and I held my mouth with both hands.

"Uuuuu!"

I crouched on my knees. However, I couldn't stand the momentum of the backflowing gastric juice. I pushed my body forward and vomited towards the clear stream under the bridge. The vomit that was about to kneel and vomit fell to the surface of the water, creating a number of ripples. I spit out everything in my stomach and fell on the bridge. My hair is messed up and my mouth is smeared with gastric juice and smells. It's already spicy. I want to get rid of everything. Shivering and crying as if groaning. Drops of tears ooze on my cold cheeks and tingle. I wish I were gone.

I could hear the slight sound of powder snow folding and piled up right next to me. A notification came to the smartphone that slipped off my bag. It was a message from Hiro-chan.

<< Look at this, Suzu. It’s so amazing that I’m seriously laughing. >>

There is a link to somewhere.

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Dcx2NedPVBEdbfQaU-WC0pJMRmn20ASn7HSC0KY9R7E/edit?usp=sharing ~ Google Doc of the English-translated novel.

ryuutosobakasuhime.wordpress.com ~ English fan-site for Ryuu to Sobakasu no Hime where translations, scans, and other content is posted.