#series: the ephemeral radio

[solreblogs]

☆⋆｡𖦹°‧ Hazbin hotel ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧ ——> ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧ masterlist ☆⋆｡𖦹°‧

deer dolly series| iv. Dolly v. Dolly vi. Dolly vii. Dolly viii.Dolly

My Darling, My Honey series| pt.4 pt.7 pt.10 pt.11 pt.12 pt.13 pt.14

My angel baby| pt.2 pt.4 Summary: alastor joins charlie and vaggie in heaven to convince them about the hazbin hotel. angel reader physically resembles a fawn

𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘 𝐌𝐄 𝐀 𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐆, 𝐑𝐀𝐃𝐈𝐎 𝐌𝐀𝐍| pt.2 pt.3 pt.4 pt.5

Darkest Confession| pt.2 Summary: reader is a serial killer enthusiast and alastor is intrigued a little too much

Hissy kitty pt.4 Summary: reader is Huskers sibling which alastor is using as a way to annoy him more than he does already but wait feelings are developing?

Alastor having a gomez and morticia-esque dynamic with his fem overlord s/o hcs

Till Death Do Us Part pt. 2 (Alastor x Mad Scientist!Reader)

Husk & Alastor finding their wife from the living world after many years come to the hazbin hotel

Alastor with a female reader wife who’s like Beetlejuice

Creepy But Romantic Things Alastor Does for You

Alastor swooning over his wife being murderous

Lucifer hanging out with Alastor’s little girl

Alastor with a partner who’s like a puppet

human!Alastor x wife!reader

Alastor with Coyote Reader

Alastor x m!reader

Adopted Dad! Husk

Being Alastor's wife

Hunted

The Raven’s Deer summary: zestial sibling was broken hearted when alastor disappeared only for him to come back. Will they forgive him?

Alastor X Reader Headcanons summary: Alastor has a wifey

The Dog And The Deer summary: reader resemblance to a canine brings horrible memories to alastor but also strange feelings

A Good Thing, Indeed Summary: Alastor thinks his wife is just the most perfect, angelic being he’s ever met, so he’s downright shocked to fight out she also ended up in hell

𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 𝐀𝐍𝐃 𝐁𝐋𝐎𝐎𝐃. summary: The fourteenth of February was always the same for Alastor, always staying inside on his own, creating new ideas for his radio show. But this year is different, now he’s spending the day with his lover. And he’ll make sure by any means that no one ruins this day.

𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇,, Summary: [Name] met Alastor in high school, in high school people would call them the ‘high school sweetheart’. Their relationship was healthy, sweet and easy. It leads them to an early marriage in their 20s.

The radio star lost Summary: Your husband was the feared serial criminal in New Orleans, Louisiana, and you where his dearly beloved wife, his right hand. So.. Oh what a despair was awaiting you soon..

new awlins library summary: Alastor having feelings for a deaf librarian

Ephemeral Voices Summary: Alastor chuckled softly, his eyes never leaving hers "I do not know, my dear." he replied, extending a gloved hand towards her. “Care to find out?”

His sweet melody Summary: reader is a singer who performed on Alastor’s show occasionally when alive and they became close friends borderline dating but one day she disappeared only for alastor to find her in hell

Mourning Dove Summary: wife! Reader x Alastor and Charlie finds out they had a kid when they were alive.

Alastor x Reader Summary: the gang at the hotel sees alastor with a pretty new thing around his arm and think how did he get such a gal?? Little do they know they are similar to each other more than they think

Alastor X Reader Summary: reader loves their murderous husband <3

Picking Favorites Summary: Alastors shadow seems to have grabbed his wife’s attention which he is not very happy about

Unwanted soul pt.2 Summary: As a last resort reader sent Alastor off to help the hazbin hotel in hopes that he would stop his lovey dovey behavior

The Love Summary: Alastor is drunk and Charlie asks him if he has ever been in love.

Dolly Summary: Reader being a trad wife and cooking alastor some fresh meat ( yummy )

Momma’s Baby Boy, Daddy’s Little Lady Summary: pregnant S/O asking if they can name their daughter after his mother

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Monday....

SpaceTime 20231030 Series 26 Episode 130

The most distant fast radio burst ever

Astronomers have identified the most distant Fast Radio Burst ever detected. The ephemeral cosmic blast which has been catalogued as FRB 20220610A occurred some eight billion light years away.

The Moon is 40 million years older than previously thought

A new study of lunar rocks brought back by the Apollo 17 astronauts shows that the Moon is some 40 million years older than previously thought. The findings reported in the journal Geochemical Perspectives Letters suggest the Moon accreted from ejecta debris some 4.46 billion years ago – 40 million years earlier than the 4.425 billion years previously thought.

Curiosity rover finds new evidence of ancient Mars rivers, a key signal for life

New analysis of data from NASA’s Mars Curiosity rover suggests that many of the craters on Mars today could once have hosted habitable rivers. The findings reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters are based on numerical models which simulate erosion on Mars over millennia.

The Science Report

The world is heading toward six global warming tipping points past which the planet’s systems will no longer be able to cope.

A new study looking at why people like fatty foods so much suggests it might be the texture.

Discovery of a new species of coral reef fish in the southern waters of the Great Barrier Reef.

Skeptics guide to the spirit of vaccination.

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. Later, Gary became part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and was one of its first presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Hed Kandi: Disco Kandi 2000 House / Garage House / Nu-Disco

Good God, what a terrific pair of discs here from the ever-consistent dance comp label Hed Kandi. With this first ever installment in their Disco Kandi series, the UK outfit supplies a steady stream of ephemeral house bangers from the late 90s and 2000, with a lot of the selections sounding contemporary, but also managing to channel an invigorating old-school disco spirit too. And many of these glitz-glammy, high-quality productions also collectively continue to progress from the sonic tradition that first started in famed New York DJ Larry Levan's Paradise Garage nightclub in the late 70s, where he nurtured a more vocally soulful and R&B-rooted house sound into the late 80s that would come to be known simply as 'garage.' And after the Paradise Garage's closure, that garage sound would find popularity at a club in New Jersey called Zanzibar too, where Tony Humphries would continue to spin it.

Now, despite a few of these tracks having somewhat remarkably high YouTube play counts, all of them were and still are definitely underground; that is, except for one. And this particular tune that I'm referring to wasn't just mainstream, but it really managed to lace the hell out of a lot of US contemporary hit radio stations back in the late 90s, even though it only ended up peaking at #52 on the Billboard Hot 100, overall. Basically, if you tuned into your local pop or more dance-oriented station on anything close to a regular basis back then, there's almost no way that you could've avoided one-off supertrio Stars on 54's cover of Gordon Lightfoot's 1970 soft folk-rock classic, "If You Could Read My Mind," which saw Amber, Jocelyn Enriquez, and Ultra Naté teaming up to record a song for the soundtrack to the disco period flick, 54. Really classic radio gold right there that a lot of people probably haven't thought about in a long while.

And then just as you're finished reminiscing on whatever fond memories you might hold that are associated with that particular song, quite possibly the most impressive track of all within this two-disc set ends up directly following it: the Matthew Roberts and Richard Fite remix of Eclipse's "Makes Me Love You." This one has a big, sun-shining pool party vibe to it, as it combines lustrous disco strings, funkily plucked guitar, a fuzzy-thick corrugated bassline, and piano keys, all while employing a lovely filter technique, which is that really popular thing that house musicians got to doing around this time period, in which certain elements sound distant and submerged, and as they continuously loop, keep sounding closer and clearer, until they satisfyingly breach the surface and hit their glorious peak. And that's maybe my favorite type of house music in the whole world 😊.

So, a really enjoyable way to spend over two and a half hours here, with a hefty dose of  super sleek house tunes, a lot of which are on a nu-disco and garage tip. And it was collected by the always seemingly on point Hed Kandi label too, which has never steered me wrong before!

Highlights:

CD1:

Cunnie Williams - "A World Celebration (Mousse T's Party Lick)" Lovestation - "Teardrops (Joey Negro 12" mix)" Bini + Martini -" Happiness (B+M's new re-edit)" Paul Johnson - "Get Get Down (Dancefloor dub)" Fire Island - "There but for the Grace of God (Joey Negro mix)" Soulsearcher - "Can't Get Enough (vocal club mix)" Stars on 54 - "If You Could Read My Mind (original club mix)" Eclipse - "Makes Me Love You (Morning Star mix)" Darryl Pandy meets Nerio's Dubwork - "Sunshine & Happiness (Nerio's Dubwork mix)" Glaubitz & Roc - "Sunshine Day (extended mix)" Jaydee vs. Bo Horne - "Spank (Exit EEE's alternative mix)"

CD2:

The Lab Rats presents The Experiment feat. Lisa Millett - "Music Is My Way of Life (Lab Rats Main Experiment)" Choo Choo Project - "Hazin' & Phazin' (Lab Rat's Funkin' With Choo Choo)" Sun Kids feat. Chance - "Rescue Me (Bini + Martini 999 Funk mix)" Phunkie Souls - "The Music (Richard F "Defected" re-edit)" Z-Factor - "Make a Move on Me (extended 12" mix)" Michael Moog - "That Sound (Full Intention mix)" Novy vs. Eniac - "Superstar (Full Intention mix)" Duke - "So in Love With You (Full Intention mix)"

[denimbex1986]

'Bad Wolf, Torchwood, Saxon... now "The One Who Waits" appears to be joining the ranks of Doctor Who story arcs teased by writer/showrunner Russell T Davies.

The Giggle – the third and last of the show's 60th anniversary specials – saw the Doctor (David Tennant) once again face off with old foe The Toymaker (now played by Neil Patrick Harris).

The events of previous episode Wild Blue Yonder saw the Doctor unwittingly allow the Toymaker – an elemental force who exists beyond the rules of the universe – entry into our universe.

In The Giggle, the cruel Toymaker was able to provoke the Doctor into challenging him to a game – as the two prepared to match wits, the villain taunted the Time Lord with tales of his accomplishments.

"I came to this universe with such delight," he said. "I played them all, Doctor – I toyed with supernovas, turned galaxies into spinning tops, I gambled with God and made him a jack-in-the-box."

We even discover that The Master – last played by Sacha Dhawan in last year's The Power of the Doctor – fell foul of the Toymaker, losing a game to the villain and ending up trapped, apparently for all eternity.

But then, the Toymaker makes a confession: "There's only one player I didn't dare face – The One Who Waits.

"I saw it, hiding, and I ran."

The Doctor attempts to question the Toymaker further, but he shrugs off his earlier comments, telling his nemesis: "That's someone else's game."

So who is The One Who Waits?

The Toymaker is established as having power almost without limit, able to manipulate the atoms of the universe and conjure up his own magical domain – in The Giggle, we saw a shaken Doctor uncertain if he'll be able to best his enemy once again.

The fact then that, whoever or whatever they are, The One Who Waits is capable of striking fear into the heart of the Toymaker is pretty terrifying. Could an even more powerful being exist in the Whoniverse?

Interestingly, in a social media post made in October, the official Doctor Who account appeared to refer to the Toymaker himself as "the one who waits" – but it's made clear in The Giggle that he's referring not to himself but to some other figure.

Of course, the Toymaker isn't the only all-powerful, ever-living being to exist in the worlds of Doctor Who...

Making their debut in the 1983 story Enlightenment, the Eternals are a race of elemental beings of immense power, capable of manipulating matter and creating objects out of thin air.

These amoral creatures act purely for their own amusement, manipulating "Ephemerals" (read: mortal beings) for fun.

Then there are the Guardians, who first appeared in Doctor Who's 16th season in 1978, a series of interlinked stories which saw the Fourth Doctor (Tom Baker) on a quest to find the legendary Key to Time.

Transcendental beings who embodied aspects of the universe, immortal and indestructible, we met the White Guardian (Cyril Luckham) – who represented light, order and structure – and his eternal opponent the Black Guardian (Valentine Dyall) – the personification of darkness, entropy and chaos.

Most recently, 2020 episode Can You Hear Me? saw the Doctor (Jodie Whittaker) and friends lured into a trap by Zellin (Ian Gelder), an immortal "god" who was haunting the dreams of humans, all to feed his beloved Rakaya (Clare-Hope Ashitey).

Could one of these creatures, or something like them, be "The One Who Waits"?

It's also possible, of course, that Russell T Davies has invented an entirely new menace. In the episode The Star Beast, The Meep (voiced by Miriam Margolyes) revealed itself to be in the employ of a figure it referred to as "the boss".

David Tennant later admitted that he remains oblivious to the identity of "the boss", which suggested that this reveal would be held back until Ncuti Gatwa's time in the TARDIS.

The Meep's admission and the Toymaker's confession in The Giggle could be the start of something much larger and entirely unexpected...'

[twistedtummies2]

Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes - Number 4

Welcome to A Gathering of the Greatest Gumshoes! During this month-long event, I’ve been counting down my Top 31 Favorite Fictional Detectives, from movies, television, literature, video games, and more!

We're nearing the end of this event, my friends.

SLEUTH-OF-THE-DAY’S QUOTE: “The Weed of Crime Bears Bitter Fruit.”

Number 4 is…The Shadow.

I’ve talked about the Shadow at least a few times in the past (more frequently than that with those closest to me), but for those who are unfamiliar with the character and his world, here’s the basics: the Shadow is a character many consider to be the father of the modern superhero. Several famous “super detectives” take inspiration from the character, either directly or indirectly: most famously, the Shadow was a major inspiration for none other than the Dark Knight himself, Batman. However, his influence can also be seen in characters like the Punisher, Daredevil, various Alan Moore creations (such as Rorschach and V from V for Vendetta), and even freaking Darkwing Duck!

The Shadow was originally created as the narrator/host for a series of crime and horror radio dramas sponsored by a company called Street & Smith. The character became so popular, the company decided to expand on the concept, and began to publish a pulp magazine focused on the character and his adventures. Writer and illusionist expert Walter B. Gibson – working under the pseudonym “Maxwell Grant” – developed the character accordingly. Gibson decided he wanted to create "a hero who had some of the villain's appeal," citing that villains were usually more interesting than typical heroic protagonists. Taking inspiration from his knowledge of stagecraft and the occult, as well as various pieces of classic literature - including Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Phantom of the Opera, and The Scarlet Pimpernel - Gibson turned the ephemeral narrator figure into a "weird avenger of evil," arguably just as scary as the crooks he fought.

Such was effectively the birth of the Shadow as a fully-formed character. This version got his start in the pulp magazines, most of which were written by Gibson. He was later reimagined for a new radio program, and since then has appeared in a few movies (the most well-known being the 1994 feature starring Alec Baldwin). However, the character – originally created in the 1930s – has survived most prominently via comics. The current company with the rights to the character in comic format is Dynamite Entertainment, but the Shadow has also belonged to DC, Marvel, and Dark Horse at different points in his long career.

The Shadow’s true identity is “wealthy young man-about-town” Lamont Cranston (at least in the radio shows and all the film treatments; the comics and pulps are more complicated). By day, Cranston is a laid-back member of New York City’s elite. However, this demeanor hides a dark side, created by an even darker past: once upon a time, the man who would become the Shadow was a fighter pilot in WWI. His plane crashed in Tibet during a mission, and he was presumed killed in action. Different interpretations of his origins change up what happened next, but one thing is consistent: for the next seven years, he lived in Tibet, and during that time he experienced “all the evil that lurks in the hearts of men.” He eventually met a mystic known as the Tulku, who not only taught him martial-arts, but also gave him the ability to “Cloud Men’s Minds.” With his newfound skills, he returned to New York and became the Shadow: forever bound to an immortal quest to destroy evil.

The Shadow's power to “Cloud Men’s Minds” is less pretentiously described as him having various psychic abilities. He can project illusions, hypnotize people, control their minds, and make himself seem invisible (or, appropriately, like a living shadow), just to name a few examples of his talents. However, while these abilities are certainly useful ones, the Shadow is also skilled in other, more traditional fields: he is a fine marksman, as skilled with his dual-wielding silver-plated pistols as he is with a rifle or machine gun. His learning of the martial arts makes him a skilled melee warrior, and he has at least some knowledge of various sciences (how much varies from version to version) and forensic techniques. The Shadow is also aided by a veritable army of Agents: people he has saved in the past who now do his bidding, acting as his eyes and ears. Probably the most noteworthy are Margot Lane (a glamorous young lady who is his love interest), Harry Vincent (the Shadow’s chief spy, who really only shows up in printed material), and Moe “Shrevvy” Shrevnitz (a cabby who is essentially the Shadow’s chauffeur).

The most interesting point about the Shadow, and where his character’s development shines most intriguingly, is his morality: the Shadow is an objectivist character, who acts as an agent of vengeance against all wrongdoers, no matter the mitigating circumstances. Some would say this is inaccurate, but I would say the Shadow best counts as an anti-hero. He sees the world often in black and white, and obsessively and downright SADISTICALLY faces his opponents. He delights in taunting them with purple prose, laughing as he leads them to destruction, and is often just as frightening as the villains he defeats. Under the surface, there is a soft side to his soul…but if you’re a supervillain, a gangster, or anyone else who might cross his path, start praying.

“For who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow Knows! HA HA HA!”

Tomorrow, the countdown enters the Top 3!

CLUE: “It is the brain, the little grey cells, on which one must rely.”

[talenlee]

A Cursed JPG

A Cursed JPG

I am a millenial of a particular age. One of the habits I have is that I am prone to trying to save things. I used to save IRC logs when I was a kid, and it took me a long time to get around to putting that habit behind me when I realised I was saving redundant logs that other computer programs were saving. Discord is a resource I search regularly, checking back on when I brought up other topics with my friends, that kind of thing.

I am circling around the way this story makes me selfconscious.

This is also why I’m not sharing any visual examples.

Anyway, so I grew up with a habit of saving files. These days I try not to bookmark everything but there was a time when my bookmark folder was immensely overfilled, and then a lot of services I got used to would ask me to add likes or saves or hearts to things so I could find them later, which I did not like. I actually really liked usenet for this reason because you could go to a newsgroup, download a giant pile of posts, and make your responses to them while offline, then upload them all at once. On one level, I was familiar with an internet where every file is eight letters then a dot then three letters.

I like email.

Anyway, uh, yeah, so anyway, watermarks are great! I like when images have watermarks on them so I can find where they came from. That’s great for archiving because then the thing I’m archiving has the source for them when I want to go back and find them anew. And so I save things and they go in my download directory and then I come back and work out where they go and ultimately, I eventually delete them. I mean there’s nothing in that folder that’s too old —

Well, today there’s nothing in the folder that’s old, for reasons we’ll get into.

Anyway, have you ever looked at how instagram looks under the hood? Streaming media really battered this desire to save local copies of things, where a youtube series is largely going to be ephemeral and I can’t play local copies, ever. That makes them a lot more like leaving the radio on while I work than necessarily something I habitually archive. I save links, I make sure I point people to the history I have with it when I find a channel, but I mean, we all bathe in a shower of content that’s basically constantly marinating our brains. Showers? Marinating? Beaugh, you know what I mean.

Point is that instagram is a source of a lot of interesting kinds of things I want to look at. Sometimes it’s maps, sometimes it’s high quality photographs of toys I don’t want to buy, sometimes it’s landscapes, sometimes it’s game asset art, sometimes it’s game layouts, all sorts of stuff. It is also, if you’re not aware, a website where people can post pictures of themselves, and network with people who want to see those pictures of themselves.

If you’ve ever looked at instagram, not the things the site presents, but the structure of the site’s code, you might be surprised how much of instagram is containers to put every other part of instagram in, which is, itself, mostly containers. Like you may look at any given page and go ‘well, there’s a picture here, buttons to go to the next picture here and here, and a comment section here,’ and think that means the site is broadly, three sections and you can bounce between them but no, the site is hundreds of subdivided sections into sections into sections into sections and they’re all being generated by the finest of computer touchers, and they’re not made for humans to look at. They’re made for a computer to look at, and that shows up in the files and variable names.

Did you know that Youtube tries to make sure the codes for any given video doesn’t form a word? Yeah, It’s made up of letters and numbers and they block a bunch of things that could be words. It’s a good practice, I get it, so you don’t get companies rerolling videos trying to make it so they get a really good tag for a thing, instead of just making each instance of a video name completely garbled. The filenames, the signifiers, aren’t used for people to handle. And that means they don’t have to be recognisable. Why should they be?

If you want to save a file off instagram, you open up the dev tools, pop open the div div div div div div tree all the way down to get to the image you’re looking for, pop that open into a new tab, then save that file. They’re usually watermarked so you can find them again, too, so it isn’t something I think about when I save the file. Bring it into the incoming directory, then sort them out later.

And this is how I found my cursed file.

I had an image in my incoming recently, where the file name was over 200 characters long. Do you know what this does to a windows 7 machine? Because somehow, my browser could create this file, somehow my explorer could find this file and open this file, but at that point the ability to interact with the file ends. I can’t edit it. I can’t save over it. I can’t rename it. I can copy the visual information from the image while it’s open and put it into another file, the image is totally standard visual information, but the file itself presented itself as being somehow wrong.

I wound up exploring some really weird avenues to get rid of this file. Delete. Ctrl-delete. Delete in a command prompt. Delete in a powershell. Delete everything in the directory, and see that left alone. Delete it in blocks. Delete it in a group.

Nope.

Nope, this file is wrong.

This file that you somehow made is refusing to be deleted. The eye of the operating system slides off it, when it’s required to interact with it in the wrong ways.

BE NOT AFRAID.

Anyway, what I wound up doing was clearing out the entire directory, making a copy of it, then with nothing in it but this one image, deleting that directory, then re-creating the directory and moving everything back into it, and praying the system didn’t react badly to it. That seems to have gotten rid of it.

This is a nothing story! It’s not remarkable beyond ‘I encountered a weird file,’ and I’m not used to being defied by windows explorer! But the way I wound up telling the story to Fox as I tried to work out what to do all kept circling around the picture and me being awkward and finding tangents.

‘cos the image, if you’re curious, was a picture of a pretty lady’s boobs.

Check it out on PRESS.exe to see it with images and links!

#Diary

[concubuck]

tinnitus 2

"How long have you had ringing in your ears?" the doctor asked.

"Since Wednesday morning," Alastor said. "And it's been consistent since then."

In June, Alastor caught a stomach bug and spent the entire month sick. He didn't go to the doctor.

In early July, he realized he'd developed an acute aversion to salt, and had to change most of his diet to accommodate it. He's subsisted almost entirely on nearly raw meat and coffee since then. He didn't go to the doctor.

In mid-July, Alastor developed sharp, shooting abdominal pain while on a job on Earth. The moment he got home, they disappeared—so he didn't go to the doctor. A month later, the pain still only appeared whenever he was on Earth—and that meant he understood the problem.

He was so used to being one of the damned dead, an inalterable soul, every illness ephemeral. Doctors were optional when almost all conditions could be waited out.

But three days ago, Alastor developed a ringing in his ears. The Radio Demon's hearing was flawless. It had always been flawless. It had to be flawless

And so he went to the doctor.

The doctor gave Alastor a dubious look. "Only since Wednesday? You look..."

"Exhausted?" Alastor offered. "Malnourished?"

"Yeah. Half-dead."

Alastor opened his mouth.

"Do not make any dead sinner jokes."

Alastor shut his mouth. He shrugged. "I've had a rough couple of months." He laughed humorlessly. "Can poor sleep and poor diet cause tinnitus?"

The doctor screwed up his mouth. "Tinnitus can be caused by high blood pressure or tense facial muscles, which all kinds of stressors contribute to—poor diet, insufficient sleep... excessive drinking..." He gave Alastor a pointed look that Alastor pretended not to notice. Alastor had been visiting the same doctor since his first few months as a succubus, and Alastor had long since made it abundantly clear that his drinking habits were not on the table for discussion during appointments.

"So it could be stress. Is there a test for that?"

"Moving certain ways will change the tension of those muscles; if the sound changes, that'll give us a pretty good idea..."

And so the doctor led Alastor through a series of exercises, standing on a stool to help guide him better: stretching his jaw open, clenching it shut; tilting and twisting his head, rolling his shoulders, raising and lowering his arms; bending over, lying down, sitting up.

None of it affected his tinnitus.

So they moved on.

The doctor asked about various potentially relevant aspects of his health—did his family have a history of hearing loss or tinnitus? (Alastor answered, honestly, that he couldn't remember. The doctor didn't press; he knew about Alastor's pre-succubus partial amnesia.) Did Alastor have any recent ear infections or head injuries? (He honestly answered no ear infections, but he thought he must have hit his head on Wednesday—"You think you hit your head?" "I was impressively drunk at the time, I don't remember the details." "That might be the cause. We'll run some other tests, though.")

The doctor examined the inside of Alastor's ears—and reported, with some awe, "these are the cleanest ears I've ever seen."

The doctor gave Alastor a hearing test. This involved sitting him at a table with headphones on as a machine played beeps of various pitch and volume into each ear, and asking Alastor to indicate when he heard a sound. He had to ask Alastor to stop indicating he'd heard a sound by playing it in the doctor's ear.

The results were both flattering and discouraging.

"One of the most common causes of tinnitus is hearing loss," the doctor said, "but frankly, you've got the best hearing I've ever encountered. You're hearing pitches way outside the natural demon or human range."

"Delighted to hear it," Alastor said. "But that doesn't exactly narrow down the source of the problem, does it?"

"No," the doctor admitted. "Honestly, I'm surprised that your tinnitus didn't actually drown out any of the quieter sounds."

"I don't know why it should have. The tinnitus is on a different plane from the sounds in the machine."

The doctor blinked. "A diff—a what—a different what?"

"A different plane. Now, if you'd asked me to tell you whether or not a wifi router was on, that might have gotten drowned out, but..."

The doctor stared.

"I hear on multiple planes," Alastor explained patiently. "There's the plane of natural sounds—like speech—and then there's the plane of electrical sounds. Signals, frequencies—"

"Radio broadcasts?" the doctor asked dubiously.

"Radio broadcasts, yes. Amongst other sounds."

The doctor opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again, and sighed. "You have radio tinnitus?"

"It's completely drowning out weaker station signals," Alastor confirmed, nodding. "Does it make a difference? I assume it's still got to be some problem with my ears, hasn't it?"

The doctor cupped his mouth with his hand in what was no doubt supposed to be a thoughtful gesture, except that his grip was so tight it looked faintly like he was trying to rip his own jaw off. "... What does it sound like?"

"A sort of melodic, grating sound. Usually the same note, but sometimes it slowly drifts up and down. Sometimes several notes at once. With this undercurrent of shrill buzzing..." Alastor trailed off. "You know what, I could just—I think I'll just play it for you."

He played it. The doctor immediately slammed his hands over the sides of his head, wincing in pain.

"Like that."

"That sounds like microphone feedback!"

"With a broken microphone, yes."

"Tinnitus does not sound like microphone feedback!"

Alastor abruptly cut the sound off. "Doesn't it?"

"No!"

Alastor tried to process that. "Well," he said, "apparently it does, because that's what I'm hearing."

"Then it's not tinnitus!"

"Then what the devil is it?"

The doctor flung his hands up. "How should I know?!"

"You're the doctor, here. If anyone should know it's you."

He flung his hands up again. Alastor resisted the urge to make the same gesture in return. 

"I'm giving you a referral," the doctor said, pulling out a paper pad and starting to scribble. "To a sinner doctor."

"Don't tell me you're giving up on me." He tried very hard not to sound genuinely insulted. (Or worried.)

"No. No. It's because sinners have so much more... weird biology than the average demon. There's too much variation. If you've got... radio powers acting up, a sinner doctor will know more about it than me."

"Are you sure it's a radio powers problem? Not an ear problem presenting as a radio problem?"

"You have speakers where your lungs are supposed to be. If you came in with the common cold I'd send you to a sinner doctor." The doctor tore off a note and held it out to Alastor. "Just to explore all the possible options."

Alastor sighed quietly and took the note. From past experience, he had a sneaking suspicion that getting a referral meant that this was going to be a problem he solved himself or not at all.

"Right," the doctor said tiredly. "Is that all you wanted to talk about today?"

Alastor ran over his recent health troubles—his prolonged sickness, his new allergies—his lethargy, his erratic sleep—how he'd tossed out his mattress because it was too filthy for even a dog sleep on, and gone weeks without one because he just didn't have the energy to get a new one. "That's all." He didn't have any problems a doctor could fix.

"Well. Thanks for bringing me something simple this time."

Alastor laughed humorlessly.

[c-40]

A-T-3 228 Project Future - Ray-Gun-Omics

Ray-Gun-Omics by Project Future is probably best known in the UK for its appearance on Electro 1 the beloved Street Sounds compilation series

It was written and produced by the team behind George Clinton's Atomic Dog and Loopzilla, namely David Spradley, Ted Currier, and Rahni Harris, along with David and Debbie Sandridge of the Dayton funk group Dayton. Rahni Harris and Ted Currier had worked on Dayton's Hot Fun and Feel The Music albums and before Atomic Dog the Xavier project (Work That Sucker To Death) with Bootsy Collins and George Clinton

Sadly Ted Currier passed away the other day. Before was a writer, arranger, and producer Ted Currier had been an influential radio DJ in New York. His innovative mixes were the inspiration for Shep Pettibone's Mastermixes

Ray-Gun-Omics is a riff on Reaganomics, Ronald Reagan's disastrous economic policies of increased defence spending and reduced government spending as preached by Milton Friedman. Grand Master Flash And The Furious Five's global hit The Message had come out the year before, it wasn't the first conscious rap record but it was the first to sell well. From Gill Scott-Heron to The Last Poets overtly political tracks like Ray-Gun-Omics were well established

The other week I read Robert Lekachman's Capitalism For Beginners comic book, I've read the series since I was a kid and I was surprised I'd not read Capitalism, what interested me was it had been published in 1981 (and it only cost 50p) which was Margret Thatchers first term and the year Reagan becomes 40th president of the United States

Before I get into why I believe Capitalism For Beginners is still relevant (for beginners) I want to mention another book, albeit an unfinished one. In the 1920s and throughout the 30s at roughly the same time Fredrick Hayek is writing papers that will influence monetarism, the economic policy of Thatcher and Reagan, Walter Benjamin is working on his Arcades Project. Benjamin saw the Paris arcades, the city's first shopping malls built not long after the French Revolution in the early nineteenth century to serve the burgeoning middle-class and upper-class, as the origin of and a way of seeing the present (Benjamin was influential in the work of John Berger.) Benjamin identifies the heyday of the Paris arcades as birthplace of consumerism and ephemerality, the arcades sold fashions to service our dreams and seduce our momentary desires. What the people who walked the Paris arcades in the early nineteenth century wouldn't have known at the time was that most of the arcades would be demolished within fifty years, 24 of over 150 remain, this was just a fleeting moment necessary for capitalism, fashions become passé, the once highly fashionable arcades that were left soon became old fashioned. Historical enquiry can reveal something about ourselves. In the last two or three decades property developers have realised the two hundred year old Paris arcades can achieve premium rents. Nostalgia, uniqueness, and 19th century grandeur are all assets to tourism in an age of irresponsibly cheap flights and weekend get aways, when most cities look remarkably like each other (the arcades are featured in magazines and newspapers around the world.) The tarting up of the façades of the Paris arcades are also the result of financialisation that begun in the 1980s and the consequential deindustrialization of many European cities (especially France and the UK)

I write a blog about music from 40-years-ago I do this because I want to understand the present. The same can be said for why I enjoyed reading a super simple comic book on capitalism written over 42-years-ago. As I've mentioned Capitalism For Beginners was written as Thatcher was implementing monetarism in the UK to deal with stagflation, like today inflation was high, it had been rarely below 10% for a few years and was at 15% when Thatcher got in. The book tries to address the future of capitalism and it predicts what happened while Thatcher was PM pretty well, privatisation, corporate government partnerships, increased profits to investors, offshoring and exploitation of tax loopholes, new private monopolies, tax benefits and securities for corporations, the destruction of unions, rising unemployment, the bare minimum of welfare if you're not already rich or a corporation, redistribution of income away from labour towards property leading to abundant supply and inadequate purchasing power, the myth of trickle-down economics. Blair's reforms are also predicted as a hybrid form of monetarism and even Brexit and Trump and the immigrant shaped scapegoat. Lekachman didn't foresee the full damage of monetarism though, over a decade of austerity, short term planning and long term defunding; revolving doors between government, financial institutions, and the media; precarious job security, zero hours contracts, fire and rehire, and the gig economy; abandonment of unprofitable infrastructure maintenance; risks and costs paid for by the public and profits funnelled board members, shareholders, corporations and consortiums; a sluggish often hostile response to climate uncertainty. As a final caveat the writer comments that when capitalism can no longer satisfy the interests of working people they will become more politically engaged and demand for better. But Lekachman didn't count on news reporting becoming entertainment, serious mainstream journalism disappearing, and the public becoming increasingly politically illiterate. Monetarism is commonly associated with neoliberalism. It's astonishing to think we've had almost fifty years of neoliberalism, despite regular crises. Capitalism's golden era after WW2 didn't last much more than twenty years

Project Future

With a general election sometime in the next 17 months and inflation still high both the UK's main political parties are laying out economic visions for the country. These visions are weak and uncreative. It sounds to my ears that the leaders of our political parties are saying there is no alternative than make everyone poorer and the rich richer. There is an alternative though, tax the rich. Why has this been thrown out by both Sir Keir and billionheir Sunak? Talk of a wage-price spiral is convenient for a government faced with angry doctors, nurses, teachers and all the other professions who are now demanding wage increases inline with inflation after years of seeing their wages fall to the point where they are not covering the cost of living. The reality is the vicious circle is between prices and profits, to say that we are in a cost of living crisis is as helpful as Sunak saying the credit card has been maxed out, we are in a profit crisis, where's the fiscal responsibility in that Sir Keir?

Like the monetarists Sunak believes in market freedom (which isn't really free if you take in all the tax breaks and lobbying, offshoring, second jobs by members of parliament etc) he's not about to intervene and do the sensible thing by introducing price controls and enforcing regulatory action to curb monopoly power and financial speculation. I've heard people say maybe Labour will do this in their second term but that sounds suspicious

The City says we need to squeeze more out of the public. After thirteen years of austerity is there anything more to squeeze? Jeremy Hunt has admitted a recession is an acceptable price to pay to to bring inflation down and both the government and Bank of England have no qualms about deliberately putting peoples livelihoods at risk... that Sunak's approach to the economy is called Market Moralism is a sick joke

[erasmusic]

Aug 6th through Sep 3rd

Nathaniel Eras will be the featured artist in residency at NettNett Space Pasaje Rodríguez, Av Constitución 720, Zona Centro, 22000 Tijuana, B.C. https://nettnettradio.com/

The artist will construct an installation within the space titled "The Embrace Of The Infinite Here & Now" as the first installment of his "Ephemeral Memory" Series.

The intention for this work is to activate a symbolic container designed to encompass and encourage the viewer to become living ephemeral art within and around the piece.

The viewer is free to engage with the installation as they like and are not required to perform any specific actions, however the artist requests that upon entering the general area, that the viewer consider that he/she/they/them is/are living art.

Throughout the month of August until the beginning of September there will be a few special  happenings that will occur in and around the art installation.

Saturday, August 6th | 6pm - Midnight. Join Al Límite in a collective physical exploration of Eras' exhibition. Wear something...comfortable. Participants who activate themselves will be offered suggestions and demonstrations punctuated by aural, tactile and light based cues. This series of guided exercises, collectively called Futuro Yo, are physical and vocal and based on the work of The Living Theatre, as well as paratheatrical experiments devised by Al Límite.   As the physio-social dialogue within the art develops, the event will move and morph in physical, sonic, and visual directions of its own. Accented with a live sensorial biofeedback performance by MDAP using brainwaves, heart beats and movement + a DJ set and light show.

Sunday, August 7th | 2pm - 5pm. Sonic Playground session "two" sharing sounds and disrupting borders with community through Radio with Marco Gomez Perez & Christian Gonzalez. Homegrown presents: Recreo Sónico// Sonic Playground. A three-part series of cross-border workshops where learners will explore the science of sound and audio production as a means of telling, owning, and exploring their own stories within our multidimensional borderlands. We will create a community and a space for folks from both sides of the border to learn, create and express themselves while listening to the sounds of their surroundings, sharing sounds through radio waves via community radio, and learning how to use cheap and readily available tools and materials to create new sonic landscapes. By offering both practical audio-production skills along with a platform to listen and learn how to share, Sonic Playground // Recreo Sónico will provide a space to play around with the possibilities of sound, under the mentorship of local audio makers, so we might listen more closely to our shared yet separate audio waves. https://airtable.com/shr3dg9UE4QeWhmn1 

[darkling-er]

martin henry northwest. we are proud of our town's detective. his morals never sway in the face of corruption, he's always so true and fair. it's almost unbelievable how nice that northwest is. unlike his family, of course, who are known throughout the town as the base of corruption and cruelty. so the detective is a nice change.

tag: @seldomabsent

[acchonorsstudentorg]

My Journey Learning German

Despite growing up in a monolingual household or perhaps because of it, I knew from a young age that I wanted to speak more than just English. To this day, I find myself in awe of the multilingual who, seemingly by magic, wanders in and out of different tongues as if scanning the radio. What new worlds are conveyed on those frequencies, what cultures? As soon as I could hold a pencil upright, I was spending my youth forever inventing new alphabets and my own infinitive phrases; yet it took me nearly two decades to not already abandon my linguistic passions by dinnertime.

I picked up German 11 years ago while failing out of college at 20 years old. Although I had never stopped being fascinated with communication (at that time I was a music major—music is its own language after all), I had indeed stopped attending class. I didn’t know it then, but I was in the throes of a Major Life Transition: caught between childhood doubt and adulthood self-discovery, I began to challenge what I thought I was capable of and, in particular, what language meant to me.

I was a college dropout with no plan when I purchased “Rosetta Stone: German” on a whim...

Now, I promise I’m not advertising for a product when I say that Rosetta Stone’s lessons immediately made me feel like a kid again. This was back before we had a plethora of convenient (and in some cases, free) alternatives like Duo Lingo on our smartphones. In any case, Rosetta Stone was immersive and I liked that. Pretty soon, I had developed a plan for learning each and every day—that last part being the most important:

1. Every day, I completed about an hour’s worth of lessons in the program.

2. Afterwards, I went back and wrote each sentence I had encountered in the program into a notebook.

3. Since Rosetta Stone is immersive and doesn’t (or didn’t when I used it at least) explain grammar, I augmented my understanding of the sentences in my notebook with reputable websites on grammar (such as https://yourdailygerman.com/ and https://learngerman.dw.com/en/grammar).

"I was a college dropout with no plan when I purchased “Rosetta Stone: German” on a whim..."

I did the above 3 steps each and every day until I had completed the entire program. While I was still nowhere near fluent, I was most definitely hooked. Using the same method I had developed with Rosetta Stone, I soon devoured other popular software including the Living Language and Pimsleur series, about 100 ephemeral apps and videos, and later, Duo Lingo. Within two years, I was conversational... but it still wasn’t enough.

I doubled down: I decided it was time to practice speaking with someone. Via an online search, I quickly found a German tutor, a native speaker, with whom I would meet as much as my humble bank account would allow (which meant about two hours of lessons per week). The progress was slow and often grueling, but over the following year, my skills vastly improved. I had just started to feel somewhat comfortable in the language as a daring thought came to mind: What if I looked for a German-speaking position? As I was still in between odd jobs, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

To my surprise, I quickly secured an interview for a German-speaking customer support role with a promising startup. Although my German initially wasn't developed enough for the position, they offered me an English-speaking role as well as one of the best proposals I’ve ever received: a desk near the German Team so I could practice with them. 6 months later, after daily practice speaking German with my new friends, I was promoted to the German Team, full time. Suddenly, the 8-hour workday had become my childhood dream. While my sentences weren't always perfect, I was now a fluent German speaker. This journey still remains one of my greatest accomplishments.

"... a daring thought came to mind: What if I looked for a German-speaking position? As I was still in between odd jobs, I figured it couldn’t hurt."

And yet life moves us in unexpected directions...

Serendipitously, my path eventually led me back into the classroom where I now pursue my Ph.D. in German and Linguistics. I hope someday to teach.

Still, I often miss the daily interaction with my coworkers and the amazing world of our shared language in the office. As a student, I find that dedicated “language time” doesn’t always make the daily cut on my to-do list. But it doesn't matter. Life is a creative process and language is always around us. Now, as I work part-time delivering food across town, I simply put on my German audiobooks and enjoy the pleasure of practice—a world to dive into.

In college, communication is key, both in language and in learning. In whatever world you find yourself, there are always new connections to be made.

-Aaron Turner, HSO Social Media Team Lead

[spacetimewithstuartgary]

New SpaceTime out Monday

SpaceTime 20240122 Series 27 Episode 10

Lessons from the dark energy survey

Astronomers taking part in the recent release of data from the Dark Energy survey say the findings closely follow existing predictions of the properties of dark energy but still can’t answer if it’s changing over time.

Titan’s “magic islands” finally explained

A new study claims ethane, methane and other organic compounds can accumulate as chunks on the ground on Saturn’s moon Titan, and may even calve like glaciers at the edges of the moon’s methane lakes, forming ephemeral, floating “magic islands.”

Peregrine lunar lander burns up above Australia and the South Pacific

Mission managers have confirmed that the troubled Peregrine lunar lander has made a fiery return to Earth on Thursday burning up over eastern Australia and the south Pacific Ocean during atmospheric re-entry.

The Science Report

A new study shows that Greenland's ice sheet has been shrinking at an ever accelerating rate.

Chinese scientists say they’re experimenting with a new mutant COVID-19 strain that’s 100% lethal

Scientists have successfully cloned a healthy rhesus monkey which has survived for more than two years.

Skeptics guide to Narcissists and conspiracy theories

SpaceTime covers the latest news in astronomy & space sciences.

The show is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through Apple Podcasts (itunes), Stitcher, Google Podcast, Pocketcasts, SoundCloud, Bitez.com, YouTube, your favourite podcast download provider, and from www.spacetimewithstuartgary.com

SpaceTime is also broadcast through the National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio and on both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

SpaceTime daily news blog: http://spacetimewithstuartgary.tumblr.com/

SpaceTime facebook: www.facebook.com/spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime Instagram @spacetimewithstuartgary

SpaceTime twitter feed @stuartgary

SpaceTime YouTube: @SpaceTimewithStuartGary

SpaceTime -- A brief history

SpaceTime is Australia’s most popular and respected astronomy and space science news program – averaging over two million downloads every year. We’re also number five in the United States.  The show reports on the latest stories and discoveries making news in astronomy, space flight, and science.  SpaceTime features weekly interviews with leading Australian scientists about their research.  The show began life in 1995 as ‘StarStuff’ on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) NewsRadio network.  Award winning investigative reporter Stuart Gary created the program during more than fifteen years as NewsRadio’s evening anchor and Science Editor.  Gary’s always loved science. He studied astronomy at university and was invited to undertake a PHD in astrophysics, but instead focused on his career in journalism and radio broadcasting. He worked as an announcer and music DJ in commercial radio, before becoming a journalist and eventually joining ABC News and Current Affairs. Later, Gary became part of the team that set up ABC NewsRadio and was one of its first presenters. When asked to put his science background to use, Gary developed StarStuff which he wrote, produced and hosted, consistently achieving 9 per cent of the national Australian radio audience based on the ABC’s Nielsen ratings survey figures for the five major Australian metro markets: Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, and Perth.  The StarStuff podcast was published on line by ABC Science -- achieving over 1.3 million downloads annually.  However, after some 20 years, the show finally wrapped up in December 2015 following ABC funding cuts, and a redirection of available finances to increase sports and horse racing coverage.  Rather than continue with the ABC, Gary resigned so that he could keep the show going independently.  StarStuff was rebranded as “SpaceTime”, with the first episode being broadcast in February 2016.  Over the years, SpaceTime has grown, more than doubling its former ABC audience numbers and expanding to include new segments such as the Science Report -- which provides a wrap of general science news, weekly skeptical science features, special reports looking at the latest computer and technology news, and Skywatch – which provides a monthly guide to the night skies. The show is published three times weekly (every Monday, Wednesday and Friday) and available from the United States National Science Foundation on Science Zone Radio, and through both i-heart Radio and Tune-In Radio.

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Just the Best 2/2001 2001 Pop / Euro-House / Trance / R&B / Pop-Rock / Europop / Pop-Punk / Dance-Pop / Hip Hop

God, do I really love going through these Now That's What I Call Music!-type comps from Europe. Late 90s/early 2000s releases like these always make for such fun, eclectic trips down memory lane, but from the perspective of a different region of the world. Our top 40 charts in America share a lot in common with other places, and that leads to a nice nostalgia rush for everyone involved, but there's also a lot of music we don't share in common at all. So the goal when listening to these ephemeral things is to get some of that good nostalgia, discover a few sweet tracks that you weren’t previously familiar with, and then hopefully find something so patently absurd and terrible that you really can't help but just smile at how ridiculous it is. And fortunately, I was able to tick all three of those boxes with this 28th dispatch from Germany's Just the Best series.

So let's start with all of this goofy and gaudy, brain-melting Eurotrash madness first, because that happens to arrive immediately on this double-disc in the form of an unbelievably awful and BIG nu-rap-metal cover of, yep, you guessed it, "Kumbaya," by Mittermeier vs. Guano Babes. But get this, y'all (as I pull up a chair and proceed to sit in it backwards): they didn't actually end up calling their version of the song "Kumbaya;" they called it "Kumba Yo!" instead, which should really give you an idea of just how cool this song actually is 😎. I mean, they even loaded it up with turntable scratches and there's a quieter beatboxed portion too! It really is such a dynamic work!

But we're really only just getting started here, folks, because later on in this first disc is also an utterly mindless Italian Eurohouse groove by a group called The Pizza Boys, who deliver their debut hit, "Oh Le Le," with verses about pizza pie that sound like they're being sung by a robot! And, honestly, does it really get more Italian than that?

Tomato, mozzarella Pizza bella, pizza bella Salami, margherita Pizza pazza, dolce vita!

And then there's this group of Danish teenage girls called Little Trees, who end up supplying a piece of manufactured, cotton-candied Europop fluff in...wait for it..."Help I'm a Fish," which apparently served as the title track for a 2001 animated box office bomb by the same name (also called A Fish Tale, which is *not* to be confused with the much more successful 3D-animated 2004 film, Shark Tale), and also somehow managed to fall just outside of the top ten on the UK's Singles chart as well. I've pretty clearly never seen this song's corresponding movie before, but this definitely feels like one of those soundtrack tunes that—just like how cheesy rap songs used to do it in the credit rolls for family-oriented blockbusters in the 80s and 90s—explains the plot of the movie through its very own lyrics. So I think this flick's about the wacky adventures of a kid who gets turned into a fish after ingesting a magic potion. But thankfully, the ending isn't spoiled through the song, so you'll just have to watch it for yourself in order to find out if the kid ultimately chooses in the end to go back to being a human, or if they decide to remain a fish. It's all so suspenseful, I know, but guess what else? The English-language version of the movie also happens to star not only a then-completely-unknown Aaron Paul, but also...Alan Rickman?!?

Alright, enough of this lunacy. Next section.

Let's get to the nostalgia portion of this post, which actually won't be very long, because I think there's only three songs across these two discs that actually turned out to be hits in the States: one-hit wonder Wheatus' radio-friendly nerdy Hot Topic anthem, "Teenage Dirtbag" (currently stuck in my head), which features frontman Brendan B. Brown singing every vocal part, including the falsetto of the female character that he himself is smitten with; the Britney Spears ballad, "Don't Let Me Be the Last to Know," which was co-written by Shania Twain and didn't actually chart in the States because it was never released as a single here and only aired on the radio; and then brief R&B star Joe's "Stutter," which, much to my surprise, actually managed to top Billboard's Hot 100 chart for four whole weeks back in 2001?! 😯 An okay slate overall, I guess, but usually when it comes to Euro comps like these, somewhere between about a quarter and a third of their selections are songs that were popular in the US. So, on the early 2000s US nostalgia front, this release seems to be a bit of an anomaly.

And now, to finish with something else that also came as a bit of a surprise: some pretty decent dance tunes. Most of the time, these comps might come with one or two good dance tracks, and then the rest will be these disposable hunks of plastic junk that feel inexplicable as to how people ever unironically enjoyed them in the first place. And, to be clear, there's still a bunch of those types of tunes that are on here (see Gigi D'Agostino's monotonously stupid "Super (Riscaldamento)," featuring Albertino, for example). But there's also a good amount of tracks on this release that, I think, feel both pretty fun and well-made too. Stuffy trance snobs may still bristle at the songs that I'm going to list as highlights here anyway, but I really enjoyed the tribal drum-infused "Played A-Live (The Bongo Song)," by Safri Duo, as well as Airheadz' "Stanley (Here I Am)," which strangely goes on these brief trip hop detours that smack of Dido's "Thank You." Plus, there's a *really* good vocal house tune from French group Superfunk too called "Last Dance (And I Come Over)" that feels kinda perfect for a pool party.

So, another long and strange turn-of-the-millennium trip through the nutty German mainstream is in the books here. Didn't really end up getting the nostalgia rush that I thought I was gonna get, but the unexpected dose of good dance tunes made up for that anyway. And that small handful of extremely tacky and beyond-the-pale Eurotrash could also definitely come in handy for the next time I end up reaching a plastered state of delirium as well 🥴😅.

Highlights:

CD1:

Wheatus - "Teenage Dirtbag" CD2:

Safri Duo - "Played-A-Live (The Bongo Song)" Airheadz - "Stanley (Here I Am)" Rui da Silva feat. Cassandra - "Touch Me" Superfunk feat. Everis Pellius - "Last Dance (And I Come Over)" RMB - "Deep Down Below" Svenson & Gielen - "The Beauty of Silence"

Lowlights:

CD1:

Mittermeier vs. Guano Babes - "Kumba Yo!" Little Trees - "Help I'm a Fish" Pizza Boys - "Oh Le Le" Glow - "President of Boarderland"

[scriptaed]

ink nemesis. 05

Genre: Angst/Fluff || paparazzi!au; fake dating!au;

Pairing: Reader x Yoongi

Length: 7.8k

Synopsis: As an aspiring writer drowning under the public’s radar, a click of the pen is all you need to accept your supervisor’s offer to co-write an article for the SS - Secrets Spilled, a regular section of your company’s weekly tabloid; but fabricated stories and invasive details aren’t all that you write when you discover Min Yoongi’s dirty little secret. 

Help.

The ones who need it the most, speak it the least; not you, though, certainly not. You’re an exception, a loophole in the system they call humanity and its fragile emotions. Stone cold, apathetic, incapable of sorrow—somehow, under the cruel hands of reality, you’ve conjured a facade, a true master of a weighted heart and a bottled mind. 

No one knows you. No one understands you. No one wants your company unless you’re needed.

Rather, you won’t let anyone know you, you won’t let anyone understand you, and you won’t let anyone take advantage of you. 

Because how could you dare enable them to belittle you? You’re a self-proclaimed warrior in an army of one, fighting for the dignity of one, dying in the name of one: yourself. To wage a war against the rest of the world with a weapon fractured by faults as to be named honesty is to submit defeat; so you conceal the cracks and force in whatever you can to provide a temporary fix with permanent damage. 

You’re strong, you’re intelligent, you’re independent. 

Ill spite, malevolent comments, self-absorbed requests, they could never faze you. 

You’ve cultivated this art yourself, see? Your chest no longer aches, your mind no longer lingers, and your heart is numb but nonetheless persists to beat blood into your flesh. Emotions are mere words you could once sympathize with in the days of yore now overtaken by the present you. 

Frozen cold but begrudgingly living, you’re still a human.

Are you human? 

Your end lies after this frosted, forsaken era, a time you had sworn to never allow to be shed the light of day; but you had underestimated the addiction that vulnerability entails, for in the presence of him, you find yourself coveting for more. 

One moment, one touch, one kiss at a time, he disassembles the stone wall of your own prison. You could still remember it clearly. The graze of his touch thaws your icy skin, from your fingers to your arm, forming a trail of swirling, mystical circles. The warmth of his delicate, slender fingertips and the comfort of his palm resting on your cheeks elicit a fervent burn to your already rosy cheeks. The gaze of his secure, intent eyes that meet your wavering ones convey a thousand words more than any picture could. 

It’s okay to be weak. It’s okay to not understand. It’s okay to rely on me. 

It’s okay to hurt. It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to admit defeat. 

Even if they try to stomp on you, even if the entire world parades in the aftermath of your end, with me, you’ll always be okay. 

It is only now, as you lie on the bed side by side to this man whom had only been an infinitely distant star, do you believe that soulmates in the midst of countless constellations could truly coexist. 

He is the star whom you had always wished to whisk across your dull skies, after all.

There’s no doubt about it. He’s shy and a tad awkward, but in this very moment, he doesn’t dare take his eyes off his celestial pair and neither do you. The scene still electrifies your very being. Your insides stir at the vivid memories of his hand clutching yours after the two of you exit the daze in the aftermath of your kiss of faith and hastily leading the retreat back into your apartment. 

You could still whiff the petrichor along with his faded hint of minty, fresh cologne intermixed with the musky scent of his studio. You could still hear her gasp accompanied by the thud of her grab onto the concrete. You could still catch sight of her familiar silhouette, fading farther into the distance as he whisks you away, the two of you stumbling into the elevator and impatiently jabbing at the button to enclose the doors as well as your privacy, giggles, and breathy, fleeting kisses; even if the following hours of confiding in the silent embrace of another all occurs in a blur, you could still live vicariously through a moment too dreamlike to be true for an extinguished star like you.

On this bed and on this very night, serene on a high of this surreal spur of the moment, you finally believe you could reveal your authentic self. 

You hate your work.

The coworkers who only acknowledge you in search for aid after you had outscored them on monthly evaluations, the authorities who only take interest in you when you churn out works that rode the waves of ephemeral trends, the public who forgot you within the blink of an eye because you could not serve their exact orders, and the company that keeps you within the confines of your damn contract despite being promised freedom as a creative writer—all of your insecurities come flooding before your eyes.

As you turn to divert your attention from the ceiling to the now asleep boy, you wonder how you could halt the return of ice that creeps along your melted chambers. 

Would Yoongi treat you the same? Would he discard you when his interests prove to be fleeting and you could entertain him no longer? Had you fallen for the genuine him or had he put up a facade like your own? 

Is it okay to be happy? Is it okay to be in this unrealistic and unhealthy relationship between yourself, the predator of a paparazzi, and him, the prey of a star? Is it okay to love elsewhere outside of writing? The subconscious squeeze of his hands that wander over to yours subconsciously in the midst of sleep tells you: it’s okay.

Like each other’s liquor, finely aged by the warm embrace of another lonely soul passing by the cold, cruel skies, you’re gracefully lulled into deep slumber, wondering, wondering, wondering...

-

A chaste kiss held to your forehead as he holds both sides of your head securely, whispers of his trek to work, and tucks a blanket over your cradled body were only enough to stir you gently in slumber; for when you awaken by the sunlight that floods through the curtain you had drawn open along with the windows at dusk, a rarity in this chamber, the plush of his lips are as ethereal as last night. 

A hoarse groan follows your lengthy yawn when you discover you had somehow slept through the violent buzzing of your phone. One eye just barely peeled open and the other kept tightly shut in the blinding wrath of your screen, you reenter the interwebs with inadequate precaution so unlikely of you. 

The dozens of messages from clout-chasing coworkers whomst names you didn’t even know until the news between you and Yoongi had broke out were one thing. You had been so desensitized to the nagging idea of being used and tossed to the side at the convenience of others that you roll your eyes and scroll past without a second thought. 

The messages you receive on your personal writing blog, however, are a different matter. 

[Anon 7:01 PM] When is the bots update?

One minute right after you posted your longest work up to date of which you had poured your heart and soul into. Not even a single nod to its existence. Not even a courteous waiting period of five minutes.

One minute.

[Anon 8:20 PM] Put your god damn works under the read more line. It’s so annoying to scroll past

It isn’t your fault the “read more” option malfunctions on various devices.They wouldn’t care to listen, though. You’ve explained a myriad of times but received radio silence in return. 

[Anon 8:03 AM] OMG i can’t believe you finally updated bots! i won’t lie, i was upset when i thought it was discontinued. welcome back, writer! 

Welcome back? Writer? 

You had never left; and even if it had been several months since the last update of said series, it had never been indicated as discontinued. You had been here, writing, and interacting every single day of the past two months. Where, why, how would they assume you had left unless updates were the only factor to the status of your blog?

You have a name. Maybe you’re just looking into things now, surely. Perhaps it’s the grogginess of the morning haze that has left a bad taste on your tongue, but writer? Your name has been plastered all across your blog. It’s the very first line of your header on the top of your page, for Heaven’s sake! 

You had to have been overthinking things and conjuring conclusions that had never been implicated between the lines in the first place; but you couldn’t help it, not after your hours upon hours of work had been discarded, ignored, and kicked aside. No one is obligated to read all of your works. No, but all you desire is mere acknowledgement. You want to believe this is a rare mistake, yet why is this just one of the many incessant, perpetual trends of your blog as of late? 

Is this your fault? 

And why are you feeling so guarded, accused, betrayed, victimized, and so utterly frustrated, when, clearly, someone is supporting you? 

The pain gnaws at your constricted chest, so you handle it with the only coping method you know: writing.

[Reply] first off, thank you for supporting bots :”) i’m glad to know of your enthusiasm for this series. however, as much as i know you didn’t mean any harm with this comment, i do have to confess that this comment kind of irked me;; i get it if you’re upset because one of your favorite series hasn’t been updated in a while (2 months, really, which isn’t as long as i’ve seen some other series go without updates), but i’ve already said multiple times that the series is not on hiatus. i’ve already said i was working on it, and if i wasn’t, it was because i was busy with life and academics, which are my utmost priorities, or i was investing time on other fics. 

which leads me to say, i didn’t come “back” with the update of bots. no, i’ve always been here and i’ve always been writing. in fact, i posted a 33 THOUSAND words long oneshot for namjoon just 4 weeks before updating bots. and it’s not just bots, it happens for every ongoing fic that somehow overshadows all of my other side works. 

again, i know that these aren’t your intentions and i’m definitely reading into some comments, but with all the messages i’ve received, the interactions i’ve faced between my various fics, i feel like i have to voice my thoughts on my own blog. 

i’ve held back and bottled up my own emotions on this blog for almost 3 years now, but i’m just going to say this: i am a writer and i am human. i am not a writer of just one fic, of just bygones of the sun, of just the labyrinth, of just paper hearts, etc. i am NOT defined by just one work. i am so utterly grateful for the support any of my fics receive, and i’m not saying that people need to read all of my works (you’re obviously not obliged to and i’m thankful if you read even just one work), but i’m just asking for you guys not to just acknowledge my existence/worth only when your favorite fic is mentioned.

At the end of your spill, when all is said and done, you fail to publicize your heart by the simple click of a mouse like the many times before. It’s revitalizing to finally put the amassed angst in your chest into words, but the guilt of burdening others with concerns that no one deserves to bear plagues you on the daily; so there it stays, hidden and buried in your drafts for the long years to come. 

With moments of dread like these, however, there never fails to be dozens upon dozens more that awaits to whisk you away into brighter days within the comforts of your inbox. There were countless readers who would send you unconditional support through thick and thin. You could never understand how kindhearted they were to you, someone they’ve never seen, heard, and sometimes never even spoken to. Were they trying to take advantage of you? Are they trying to coax you into a perpetual cycle of writing absent of rest? Why were you always searching for a fault when so many have displayed nothing but patience, love, and understanding to you?

Just why could you not let anyone in? 

It’s an ongoing battle between you and yourself, one proven to be fruitless a myriad of times before. You let out a hefty sigh, persisting to express your gratitude, genuine and cautious to omit one half the truth, when a certain comment sends your heart racing. 

[MP3 7:56 AM] The pianist sounds like an enigma. Reminds me of this one girl I’ve been crushing on lately. Can’t wait for the story, genius. 

The ear-to-ear grin adorning your lips don’t come to attention until your phone rings and the butterflies in your stomach scatter as you’re snapped out of your short-lived reverie. A relieving yet oddly disappointing name plasters across your screen. 

“Yes, Solji?” 

“Y/N? Where are you right now? Are you home? Where’s Yoongi? Is he next to you?” you can hear the shaking of her head as she forces an abrupt halt to her blurted questions. “What I mean to ask is are you okay?” 

“Whoa, calm down, are you using me as a guinea pig for your future child or something? Ooh, someone must have got it on lately,” you hope your wiggling brows could be captured by the suggestive tone of your voice. “Don’t worry, I’m doing fine—” you sigh “—you’re the only one who actually worries for me at work. Thanks, I’m at home right now. Yoongi should be at work—wait, how did you know he was with me?”

“The paparazzi somehow caught you two last night in front of the apartment and now pictures have leaked and literally everyone’s talking about it at work. You’ve been living under a rock the entire last night, haven’t you? Or did you two…” she gasps. 

“No!” you exclaim almost to vehemently. You clear your throat and repeat with a lowered voice, “no, we didn’t do anything last night. We just...” 

Your cheeks burn red, despite the truth in your statement. 

“Girl, you better give me the entire story in full detail later,” she presses as the excitement manifests in the squeak of her voice, “but for now, you should drop a visit to the company as soon as possible. Even if you’re on a break, boss still wants you to attend our monthly meetings.”

“Ew, you mean those gatherings filled with passive aggressive jabs and snotty, arrogant colleagues?” you groan grotesquely. “I guess I don’t have the luxury to be fired just yet. Fine, whatever pays my rent.” 

“Don’t worry,” Solji’s familiar laughs envelop you with warmth, “I’ll be there too. I got your back.”

“Thanks, moooom,” you drawl. “I’ll see you soon.”

“Byeee,” she adds in a quick tease, “oh, and don’t forget: no glove, no love—” 

—she hangs up. 

Well, at least one person still remembers you, even if it’s to nag you about something that you would never even dare to fathom in the first place. Shaking your head, you laugh to yourself when your phone starts ringing again. 

This time, however, the name doesn’t disappoint. 

Your thumb accidentally accepts the call way too soon and you find yourself on the line with the very person who had your blood pumping just a second ago. 

00:00:01… 00:00:02…

“...hello?” 

His voice tangles your throat and you’re forced to clear it before hesitantly raising the phone to your right ear. You can’t sound too eager nor nervous, otherwise that would send the wrong signal—damn it, since when did you pay any attention to Yoongi’s impression of you?

“Yeah, what do you need—” oops, that’s too rude “—I mean... is something up?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” he struggles to get his words out, “I, uh, left my… jacket at your place.”

You quickly scan through the mess of your apartment only to find his jacket neatly folded and conveniently placed right before you at the end of the bed. 

“Oh, found it. Do you need me to bring it to you—”

“—no,” the abrupt silence after his adamant refusal catches the both of you off-guard, “no, I can just… come over and grab it. Or, uh, you can keep it.” 

You could just imagine him shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly, gradually catching onto his antics.

“Okay, I guess I’ll just keep this hundred thousand dollar jacket here,” you chime. 

“Oh?” you could hear him kicking his feet onto the desk. “You’re keeping my jacket as keepsake?” 

“And why would I do that?” you scoff.

“Because you miss me.”

His firm statement comes with ease and oozes with so much irking confidence that you force yourself to hang up before the fluttering in your stomach overtakes your very being… that is, until the phone rings again. 

“What?” you groan. “I told you I’m keeping your jacket and not because I miss—”

“—did you check your blog today?” 

“Huh?” he takes you by surprise. “Yeah, I did. Why?”

A momentary silence befalls his lips. “Oh, well, did any comment stick out to you?”

“Hm…” you play along. “No, not really. Is there a specific comment you’re referring to? Have you been checking my blog, Min Yoongi? Hm? Thinking about me?”

“Yes, I’m referring to the comment I made under ‘MP3,’ you dumbass.”

“In that case, yes, I did,” you snicker before hanging up, “maybe you should check my response later.” 

Your phone rings again. 

“Ugh, what now? You’re being so clingy—”

“—are you free tonight for dinner?” 

“Dinner?” you repeat, taken aback. “Dinner as in… date dinner or just dinner dinner…?”

“Well, I was just thinking dinner dinner,” he mulls, “but I guess we could call it a date if you so want.” 

“Shut up,” you can’t help but laugh, “it’s a date then. I have something to do at work but I’ll let you know where and when to pick me up later.” 

“Oh,” he pauses and follows up with concern, “do you need me to come with you?”

“No, it’s not like I’m getting fired or anything,” you snort, “thanks, though… it means a lot. See you soon.”

The phone rings again right after you hang up.

“What?!”

“Nothing, I just missed your voice,” he says nonchalantly and probably shrugged before murmuring darkly, “oh, and, I’m the one who gets to hang up.”

The dial tone fills the silent air. 

-

Oh, how had you ever forgotten the pain of commuting to work, especially when making an unexpected detour under time constraints?

[Xiao Lin 1:29 PM] Hey Y/N! Sorry for hitting you up out of the blue but can we meet up really quick? I have something important to show you. 

The acquaintance’s text had you nearly sweating bullets, for she had persistently insisted on meeting this very moment—an hour prior to work; because according to her, whatever she has in her hands could be a pivotal moment in both his and your careers. 

What could she possibly have and were you right in suspecting her friendly mien?

Your toes scrunch in the tight fit of your pointed heels, fearing for dear life at the pace you were striking the ground. Incessant gusts of wind from passing cars and buses dishevel your hair but you pay no mind to the distractions, striding down the bustling streets with tunnel vision settled on the coffee shop a few blocks from work. 

A series of bell chimes capture the attention of the girl who had sat in deep contemplation with eyes under her jet-black bangs, staring at nothing and mind evidently elsewhere. 

“Y/N, you’re here,” she gives you a small, gently pressed smile, beckoning for you to sit in the chair across the table. “How have you been doing lately?”

“Hey, doing just fine,” you prim, quickly shuffling into the seat. “So what is it you wanted to tell me?”

Her eyes widen at your haste, blinking blankly for a few seconds before reaching into her purse perched to the chair beside her. The long, luscious locks of hers fall gracefully into curtains that shield you from glimpsing at whatever she’s pulling out. Your heart is suspended at the brink of a cliff when she suddenly pauses, stares at the cards in her hands, and takes a deep, determined breath in and out. 

Alas, she unveils her weapon.

There, spread neatly across the table, is a series of photos capturing the intimate moment you had accidentally intruded on during that fateful night. 

“This girl here,” the white paint of her nails highlight the silhouette beside Yoongi on the balcony, “is the CEO’s daughter that I mentioned to you before.” 

Xiao Lin’s gaze peers at you from under her bangs, intently observing your every movement. 

You gulp. You struggle to breathe. You don’t want to give her anything that could jeopardize your career and most importantly… him. 

Why, though? Why are you protecting someone whose photos elicit the painful drop somewhere deep within you? Why are you conveying nothing but jealousy and insecurity from the flashbacks that play right before your eyes? Throughout the fantasy that has been the last few months, somewhere along the way, you had let him slip through a fault in your defenses, even under the once so vigilant watch of yours. 

“Okay,” you finally muster the courage to lift your gaze to meet hers, “and why are you showing this to me?”

“Y/N, aren’t you dating Yoongi?”

Well, are you?

“Yeah, but these don’t have any context to them. For all we know, maybe this photo is old and she could just be his ex.” 

“I’m afraid not,” she presses her lips into a frown. “This venue is the same day the news about you and Yoongi broke out. They’re wearing the same attire as in their press, as well.”

Your brows furrow at her persistence. “Where did you get these photos anyway?” 

“One of my sources happened to snap a shot and showed me just last night… including this picture,” she slides forward a familiar scene you had bore witness to—your hands cupping his cheeks, his back facing the camera as he leans into you, and the woman’s figure watching from afar. “Don’t worry about it, though. I made sure to delete the photos from all her devices, and even if she slips, no one’s going to believe someone without previous credit to back her up.”

“Well—” you’re completely petrified by the attack “—I’m sure there’s a misunderstanding.”

“Y/N…” she says hesitantly under her breath, “did you know about this…? I’m required to report everything to my company by contract, especially since this involves relations to our CEO, but I’m telling you this first because I don’t want to hurt one of my only friends.”

Friend? How could she call you her friend after cornering you like this? She must have something up her sleeve. She must. 

“I don’t there’s anything I could add,” you deadpan with eyes glaring at her. “People are gonna take those photos and run away with whatever wild stories they can capitalize off of anyways, regardless of my commentary.”

“That’s why I’m asking you… do you not want me to release these photos?”

“You’d do that…?” you frown, cautious in wading the waters. “Why risk your career for me?”

“I’m not so dirty as to throw my friends under the bus without a thought,” she laughs and pretends to zip her lips shut. “Alright, my lips are sealed, then. Oh, also another thing…”

You keep her under your wary watch, still dubious, “yeah?”

“I’ve heard through the grapevine that Bang PD has been in talks with the company an immensely popular tabloid, SS, writes under… which, from what I remember, is your company. I heard there’s a certain writer there whose stories they want to use for BTS’s concepts.”

“Oh,” you cock your head, “and why are you telling me that?”

“I’m just saying,” she leans back into her chair as she watches you gather your things, “be careful no one’s taking advantage of you, especially after those photos.”

“Alright, well,” you scramble to find a safe response in the mess of your state, “thank you for having my back, but it really isn’t something you should be meddling with. I really have to get going now—”

“—wait,” a delicate hand clutches onto yours before you could depart and you whirl around to peer down at her. With orbs reflecting the sun rays in its dark chocolate hues, she speaks. “You know I’m putting my entire career at risk by working behind my company’s back.” 

“...yeah,” your eyes narrow at her, “I’m thankful for that.”

“But you know the kind of industry we work in, right? People aren’t afraid to stab others in the back as long as it profits them, so we always have to be vigilant.” 

“So…”

“So,” her words never linger on her thoughts, “I’m saying I need assurance from your side that you won’t turn your back on me, either.” 

“Lin,” you let out a breath of disbelief, “why in the world would I tell your CEO about this?”

“I don’t know,” she says firmly, “but that’s the thing, we never know until we’re on our knees, regretting every decison we’ve ever made.” 

“Lin, please—” you’re at a loss for words “—please don’t hurt Yoongi. Don’t release those photos. Please. I’d do anything.”

“Anything that gives me leverage, Y/N.”

Her stern gaze bores into yours. 

What could you possibly tell her? That your relationship with Yoongi is fake? That would only be throwing Yoongi and the entirety of BigHit under the bus. You can only imagine the despair that would come from betraying him like that. 

“I don’t have anything, Lin,” your voice cracks on the brink of tears. “I seriously don’t have anything. Please let him go. Just this once. Please—”

“—Y/N,” she murmurs with those pleading eyes, equally desperate as yours, “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

Yoongi. BigHit. His members. The company. Solji. SS… you could tell her about SS. 

“I’ll—” you hesitate with bated breath “—I’ll tell you my real pen name.” 

“Your pen name?” her eyes widen at your suggestion, accepting the weight of your proposition by the wavering of your breaths. “Okay.” 

With your career, past, heart, tears, and soul, your every being is encompassed by these two words. Should you let her have her way? Hand over the key to control your state of mind? Let the potential infiltration of outsiders to intrude on your one companion in life?

Should you give it all up for him?

“Ink Nemesis,” you mutter, feeling your heart drop. “My pen name is Ink Nemesis.” 

The recognition of your alias in the tabloids manifests in her brightened expression and you had never struggled to inhale with such magnitude like you did at this moment. 

“Alright, nice to meet you, Ink Nemesis.”

She smiles.

-

Something smells in this meeting room. It’s a perpetual stench that reeks your surroundings that you would do anything to bolt from your chair.

Bullshit. 

“What’s with the long face?” one of the girls asks you with fake concern plastered all over that overly done face of hers. If it weren’t for the incident just an hour prior, maybe your thoughts wouldn’t have been so malicious; but you can’t help but wonder how you had ever put up with her attempts to get on your good side when monthly evaluations were just around the corner. 

“Nothing,” you mumble, sitting even more upright when you notice her own pretentious posture. 

“Aww, did someone wake up on the wrong side of the bed today?” another girl bumps your leather chair with hers. “Mr. Min Yoongi’s, perhaps?”

Oh, there’s the other girl who never really cared for your existence or anyone’s except her so called “squad” for that matter… until someone’s work garners enough momentum to be worthy of her attention, that is. 

“Yeah?” you snap and everyone jumps at the raise in your voice. “Well, whose bed did you wake up in this time?” The silence is overbearing enough to have you mentally regretting your temper in guilt. “Haha… just kidding.”

The group of girls force a nervous laugh before rolling back to their respective spots and gathering their files. 

“Ooh…” Solji mumbles under her breath beside you. “It’s 2019, Y/N. Slut shaming isn’t acceptable anymore.” 

“I know,” you grunt, storming out of the meeting room as Solji follows in your trek. “I messed up, okay? I’m just having a shitty day.” 

“Oh?” her playful expression immediately transitions to one of concern. “What’s wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“No, unless you, their supervisor, can tell them to shut the hell up and stop acting so fake,” you roll your eyes and punch your timecard. “It’s just that they’ve never cared for me as a person until my works did somewhat well, and the only time that happened is when I hop on the bandwagon and write because I want to be praised and receive attention and not because I want to write. I can’t even be creative because then no one will ever even read my shit.”

“Is that why you’re still writing for SS?” Solji quickly punches her timecard and paces after you as the door slams behind you. 

Cars honk at every corner, buses puff at every stop, and lights beam in all orientations of the city as night befalls it. Her questions lingers in your mind, even as you march through the sidewalks and into the neighborhood a few blocks from the company. 

Why are you still writing for SS? Sure, the stream of comments are addictive not to say the least; but what you’ve always vied for is the euphoric rush of anticipation, the power that runs through your veins, knowing just how much control you had at the tips of your fingers. You had exclusive information and everyone is all ears. You could release a simple audio and set millions abuzz. 

At long last, the world is yours and you’re not theirs. 

“No, not exactly,” you finally answer. 

“Good then,” Solji huffs when she finally catches up with you at the end of the block, “because you should stop updating SS. I don’t want you involved with it anymore. I’ll have someone else in charge or maybe I’ll even pick it up again, just not you—”

“—what? No,” you vehemently shake your head, “no, why?” 

“Because he’s your boyfriend, Y/N. Did you forget that all of a sudden or something? It’s unhealthy to be writing as a paparazzi for your boyfriend. Does he even know about this?”

“Yeah, he knows I’m one…”

“For the SS?” she articulates.

“...no,” your voice is nearly inaudible until you erupt in protest, “but you can’t do that. You can’t just take it away from—”

“—yes, I can,” she raises a brow at your behavior, “it’s my tabloid.”

A sharp intake of breath cuts your words off as you submit to a temporary defeat in silence. A breeze passes by, carrying your locks gently in its waves along with the dampened traffic in the distance. 

It seems like the entire world is stripping you of your joys; because even Solji, the one motherly friend you could always rely on, is turning her back on you now. 

Your colleague senses the tension in the stagnant air and speaks once again, “what’re you doing here anyway—”

—a black car pulls up and you don’t hesitate to enter when you recognize the familiar silhouette of his through the tinted windows.  

“Do you always enter any stranger’s car—”

—Yoongi’s remark is interrupted by the shrieks belonging to a certain someone at the curbside. You had almost forgotten the reason SS was even created in the first place. 

“Oh my GOD! I’m-I’m such a big fan, I’ve loved you since you were a trainee a-and, I just can’t believe!!!” Solji manages to shrill as she jumps up and down, completely overjoyed.

“Do you know her…?” Yoongi whispers, slight concern intermixed with bashful gratitude adorns his face as your supervisor continues to jump in circles.

“Yeah, she’s, um,” you stubbornly give in despite your grudge, knowing fully well how much this moment must mean to her, “she’s like a mother to me. She’s a huge fan. Probably your first, actually.”

Solji’s head violently bobs in agreement and Yoongi could only chuckle at her enthusiasm. Removing her hands from her cheeks that are streaked with her tears, she manages to scavenge through her pocket to find a notepad and pen. She wipes away the mascara streaks and fruitlessly attempts to regain composure. “I’m sorry, I really didn’t want to act like a crazy fan. I mean, I’m not a crazy fan, but could you… if it’s not too much of a bother… sign this…?”

“Yeah, of course.”

It’s difficult for you to hide the grin twirling at the corner of your lips as he reaches over you to further fuel the elation Solji must have been squealing over. Once the star finishes his business, Solji ducks to meet the two of you on eye-level, continuously expressing her gratitude to her idol for his time when, out of the blue, she redirects her remarks to you. 

“Thank you, Y/N. Please understand I’m doing this for your own good,” she presses a bittersweet smile, even if you avoid her gaze by looking straight out the windshield. Chortling, she takes a few steps back onto the curb and waves you two goodbye, “have a nice date!”

The engine purrs to life as the window scrolls up and you’re left comfortably alone with Yoongi—until Xiao Lin’s voice echoes in the back of your mind. You had just given your entire life for this man whom you don’t even completely understand just yet. Lin has a point: who is that woman to him and why hasn’t he told you about her? 

Could you really trust the last remaining figure, a man of many secrets, in your life?

“What does she mean ‘doing this for your own good?’’ he quirks an inquisitive brow while keeping his eyes on the road. 

“Nothing really,” you mumble, looking out the window at the skyscrapers blurred by the warm golden streetlights. 

“Really?” he muses. “She seems like she really cares for you. I’m grateful.”

“Grateful? Who’s this cheesy man and where did you take my Yoongi?”

Yoongi chuckles at your retort before reaching behind your seat to reveal the bouquet of pastel colored flowers. He tips the adornment in your direction, beckoning for your acceptance. “Congratulations on being fired.”

“Ah, yes, there he is,” you roll your eyes briefly, despite the apparent smile that stretches from ear to ear as you take the bouquet into your hands. You could tell he must have ordered for an excessive number of flowers because the ribbon hangs on for its dear life to keep the bouquet unified. Your eyes flutter closed and you relish in the fresh, floral scent.

But he’s lying. He’s keeping something from you.

Alarms sound off to interrupt the ephemeral moment of genuine bliss. It always does this. You always do this. Why can’t you just take things as it is? Why suspect him? You’d be better off living in ignorant bliss. Or is it your innate method of preventing the dreadful anxiety that comes with the painfully endless falls off the highs? 

“Yoongi.”

“Hm?”

“Do you…” you struggle to speak, tongue-tied. “Do you… know anything about your CEO and how he’s coming up with your concepts?”

“Him? Coming up with our concepts?” his voice raises in surprise. “The boys and I come up with them ourselves. Why?”

“Nothing.” 

Your attempt to conceal your utter relief is in vain. 

“That’s a whole lot of nothing’s today,” he chuckles, catching a glimpse of you sniffing the bouquet before deciding not to press further. “Do you like the flowers?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty,” you turn to meet his cheerful gaze illuminated by the flood of red from the traffic light. “Why’re you suddenly acting like you’re my boyfriend?”

“Am I not your boyfriend?” 

He returns his attention to the street when the red shadows on his skin flicker green.

“You never explicitly said anything about it.”

“Why should I?” he muses as his hands find yours by the gear stick. He then intertwines his fingers with yours. “I feel our connection. You feel our undeniable connection. Do we need any words to define us?”

Words to define us. Words to commit. Words to omit the truth in the wake of a lie. 

“We do,” you firmly state and he turns to cock a brow at you. “I need to know who I’m with. I need the complete truth or else I can’t give my all in this relationship.” 

“Okay—” the both of you could feel the drop in temperature and the rise in tension “—what do you need to know?” 

“Do you know the daughter of the CEO who sponsored your movie premiere?”

“What premiere?” 

You raise your voice, “the night we met.”

“Oh,” the firm grip of his hands go limp and something mercilessly hammers against your chest, “no, I don’t know the CEO’s daughter personally.” 

Lies. Utter lies. He’s fucking lying. 

Why? Just why?

Do you tell him you know more than he thinks you do? Would that be a foolish tactic?

“Are you sure?” you press.

I’m giving you one last chance.

“What’s up with you, Y/N?” Yoongi frowns, brows knitted. 

“Nothing!” you nearly yell. Yoongi doesn’t react in the least bit. He retains that damn stupid cold facade of his, even as he lies. “Look me in the face and promise me you’re going to give this your all.”

Because I gave you my all. 

“Y/N, what even,” he mutters under his breath, turning to stare at you straight in the eye. “There’s nothing going on between us—”

“—turn the corner,” you demand lowly. “I want to go home.”

“Y/N, is there something I need to know?” he exasperates, groaning when you fail to meet the frustration in his eyes and obliges to your orders. “What the fuck is going on—”

“—what’s going on is that you’re fucking lying to my face!” 

Your screams stun him into silence. His lack of a response boils your blood. 

“I told you to tell me the truth! I literally shoved the answer to your face and gave you multiple chances to confess!” you struggle to catch your breath, chest heaving up and down. “At least say something damn it!”

The car comes to an abrupt stop. He doesn’t waste a second and shoots a stern gaze your way. His once cool temperament has been replaced by the fire set ablaze in the grinding teeth of his, jaws jutting and eyes darkening. One hand of his still clutches the steering wheel so tightly you could see veins popping under his white collared shirt. 

Both participants evidently fear the heated argument soon to erupt. 

“I don’t have any feelings for her,” he enunciates. “I only like you. I swear.”

“You still lied to me.”

“I’m sorry,” he takes a deep breath and sighs, eyes never disconnecting from yours. “I’m really, really sorry.” 

“Do you know—” you pause in a fruitless attempt to save yourself from breaking out into tears; instead, you choke over your sobs and despise the look of concern adorning that fake frown of his “—do you know how much I gave up for you? Do you know how much I left behind to protect you?” 

“What do you mean—”

“—I gave up my career, Yoongi!” you bellow. “I belittle myself, I’ve become hooked on the idea of fame, I’ve become the very person I feared. I’ve bargained away my only companion for you and you betrayed me!” 

“Y/N, just tell me what happened and I can fix it.” 

He sounds genuine, but is he? Can you trust him? Can you trust anyone but yourself?

Can you even trust yourself?

“You can’t,” you fail to inhale silently in an attempt to conceal the shaky breaths of yours. 

“And why not?”

“You can’t because,” your hands rummage through your purse for your phone so hastily that you almost cut yourself with your own nails, “because I told the one person I warned myself over and over not to trust but did anyways all because I loved you.”

The both of you are taken aback by your sudden confession; and if it weren’t for the condition that you’re in right now, maybe this would have been a monumental moment you would’ve spent hours and hours reliving and relishing through your memories. 

“I loved you,” you repeat, eyes shaking,” and you hurt me.”

He hurt you. Maybe he didn’t mean to. Perhaps this is partially your fault for neglecting to fill him in on your side of the argument. This could be the moment you tell him about that night you caught sight of him with her on the balcony or about how you had just revealed your pen name and signed your career away if Lin were to use it against you for his sake. 

But he hurt you.

People have trampled over you and you’ve had enough. 

How do you hurt the people who have hurt you?

How did Yoongi hurt you?

You don’t realize the blinding screen of your phone where your blog and its eight tabs are on full display until Yoongi squeezes your left arm. The imprecise, hasty jabs of your fingertips at the screen render your phone unresponsive, only furthering your fueling frustration as you clutch the device to the point of numbing your hands. 

Delete. Delete. Delete. 

“What are you doing, Y/N?” he seems to have collected himself in comparison to your wrath. 

“I’m deleting my shit,” you grumble through gritted teeth. 

“I know you are,” he emphasizes, “but why are you? I know how happy your blog makes you. Why are you doing this? What’re you going to do about all the people who love and support you?”

“Why do you care?” you snap, stopping momentarily to shoot a death glare at him. “It’s not always a source of happiness for me. To tell you the truth, you brought me happiness when this blog couldn’t. You, Yoongi. How am I supposed to trust them if I can’t even trust the one person I thought would have my back?” 

He’s silent. He’s holding back.

“How am I supposed to handle all this… all this pain? How do I—” you pause “—how do I get back at the people who hurt me? How do I regain control of my life?”

Silent, again. He’s biting his tongue. 

“I take back the one thing I had that they wanted from me. The one thing they can’t have. Then, I’ll finally be in control again—”

“—what kind of fucking control is that?” 

“Excuse me?” 

“I said,” the flames in his orbs have ice crawling along your skin, “what kind of fucking control is that? How can you call yourself in control when people have literally forced you into taking down the works that provided you solace? How can you call yourself in control when you’ve allowed people to get into your head and push you to this state of darkness, to the point that you want to hurt? You have this stupid fucking complex about you and I get it. I really get it, but do you ever plan on acknowledging it or do I have to shove it in front of your face for you to understand?”

“What? What is it that a successful boy like you could understand about a girl born with nothing like me? Huh?” 

 Yoongi doesn’t hesitate to bring forth reality. Cold, cruel, just like your world.

“You think the whole world is against you and you’re nothing but its poor victim; but have you ever stopped to think that maybe, just maybe, others are suffering under your hands as well? That, maybe, there are people who are genuinely kind and those people deserve so much more of your fucking time than those dumbasses who don’t deserve the light of day. Won’t you trust in the people who light up your world like you’ve lightened mine? Won’t you?” he flinches at the waterworks that stain your cheeks. “Are you going to love yourself by accepting yourself or are you going to keep picking at the faults of others and acting blind in front of your own? When will you let down those walls, Y/N?”

An epiphany dawns upon you when you find your gaze fixated on his, locked and challenged; and for a second, it’s almost as if you’re staring at an older self in the mirror. 

“You’re right,” you grab your purse and phone, kicking open the door. “There’s nothing left to love, not even myself.”

“That’s a lie,” he shakes his head, “at the very least, you should love yourself.”

“How can I?” you give him one last tilted, pressed grin before slamming the door. “How can I when even I have lost sight of myself?”

You can tell his heart shatters by your confession. His face turns pale, his lips part but fail to utter a single word of assurance, and he simply lets you go. Turning your back on him, you smile to yourself and take long, painful strides toward your front door. 

Why does it hurt so much to bring him pain like you so wanted? 

You’re on your way to self-discovery. All you need is to be alone again, like you’ve always told yourself to be, like you’ve always known would be best for you. 

Your mind works on autopilot, as if distancing yourself from others is merely second nature to you by now. The accursed picture still haunts you even as you shut your eyes. 

[99% uploading]

Now, finally, surely, you’ll be a hundred percent free from burden and the hands of……..

...

[laularlau8]

When she was cast as a sex therapist raising a teenage son in the Netflix comedy “Sex Education” (which debuts its second season on Friday), Gillian Anderson didn’t need to do much research. “I’m a mom of three kids, I’ve been in therapy since I was 14 and I have sex,” said Anderson. “I spent more time working on the balance of her as an appropriate professional and an inappropriate parent.”

More preparation was required for her forthcoming role as Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in another Netflix series, “The Crown” (created by Anderson’s real-life boyfriend, Peter Morgan). “I did a lot of research and reading,” she said. “I’m asking for as much help as humanly possible.”

Still, Anderson has found time to consume other cultural offerings and discussed some of her favorites in a recent telephone call from London, where she is based. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

1. “The Fact of a Body” by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich “It’s weird: I’ve done a lot of dark, gruesome series, and I’ve never been able to stomach murder stories. But somehow in turning 50, I’ve become completely fascinated, if not obsessed, with them. This is a study of a particular crime, but it’s also a memoir.”

2. “Maiden” “I pretty much only watch documentaries. This one’s about the first-ever all-female [yacht] crew to enter the Whitbread Round the World Race in 1989. It’s the most incredibly moving story about how a handful of 20-somethings were celebrated for their guts and perseverance despite initially being ridiculed.”

3. Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide” “I could listen to it every day. I find it heartbreaking, classic and inspirational. If there were a soundtrack to my life, this would be it. The lyrics are actually quite depressing, but at the same time, I somehow find the song uplifting.”

4. Gabriela Hearst “She’s the most incredible women’s wear designer. Year after year, she’s created some of the most beautiful and ethically sourced collections, and she works really hard to make her products sustainable. She’s a force of nature and a thoroughly decent human being.”

5. “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” “I’ve always been a huge fan of hers as a writer, woman and advocate for change. She was one of the most interesting, intelligent and talented writers of the last century. This doc celebrates her with so many articulate champions speaking about her.”

6. Darren Waterston “He’s at the pinnacle of his career. His paintings are ephemeral and jewel-like. He’s about to launch his reimagining of Whistler’s Peacock Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It’s an extraordinary piece.”

7. AJ Tracey’s “Ladbroke Grove” “I listen to this song a lot in my car. There’s a BBC Radio 1 live video recording of it with Jorja Smith on YouTube. The two of them together are incredibly sexy, cool and talented.”

8. “The Confessions of Frannie Langton” by Sara Collins “It’s a debut novel about a former slave who becomes a lady’s maid in London. She falls deeply in love with her mistress and is accused of murdering her and her scientist husband. It’s a well-crafted, searing depiction of race, class and oppression.”

9. “The Forgotten Masters: Indian Painting for the East India Company” “This hidden gem is at the Wallace Collection in London. It’s a collection of artwork that illustrates both the beauty of the natural world and the social reality of late 18th- and 19th-century colonized India.”

10. “Believed” “It’s a podcast about Larry Nassar’s systemic sexual abuse of gymnasts who trusted him. This is clearly a time in history where victims of abuse feel empowered to come forward and expose their abusers publicly. And this podcast is, as much as anything, a celebration of the very courageous women who got to have their day in court.”

[dustedmagazine]

Dust Volume 6, Number 12

The Flat Five

It’s November, and the culture is telling us to be thankful again, at least from a distance. We’re a prickly, argumentative bunch here at Dusted, but I think we can all agree on gratitude for our health, each other and the music, good and bad, that comes flooding in from all sides. So while we may not agree on whether the best genre is free jazz or acid folk or vintage punk or the most virulent form of death metal, we do concur that the world would be very dull without any of it. And thus, seasonably overstuffed, but with music, we opine on a number of the best of them once again. Contributors this time include Bill Meyer, Andrew Forell, Tim Clarke, Ray Garraty, Jennifer Kelly, Mason Jones, Patrick Masterson, Jonathan Shaw and Justin Cober-Lake. Happy thanksgiving. 

Cristián Alvear / Burkhard Stangl — Pequeños Fragmentos De Una Música Discreta (Insub)

Pequeños fragmentos de una música discreta by CRISTIÁN ALVEAR & BURKHARD STANGL

The acoustic guitar creates instant common ground. Put together two people with guitars in their hands together, and they can potentially communicate without knowing a word of each other’s language. They might trade blues licks, verses of “Redemption Song,” or differently dire remembrances of “Hotel California,” but they’re bound to find some sort of common language. This album documents another chapter in the eternal search. Cristián Alvear is a Chilean classical guitarist who has found a niche interpreting modern, and often experimental repertoire. Burkhard Stangl is an Austrian who has spent time playing jazz with Franz Koglmann, covering Prince with Christoph Kurzmann and realizing compositions that use the language of free improvisation with Polwechsel. This CD collects eight “Small Fragments Of Discreet Music” which they improvised in the course of figuring out what they could play together. Given their backgrounds, dissonance is part of the shared language, but thanks to the instrumentation, nothing gets too loud. Sometimes they explore shared material, such as the gentle drizzle of harmonics on “No5.” Other times, they find productive contrasts, such as the blurry slide vs. palindromic melody on “No6.” And just once, they flip on the radio and wax melancholic while the static sputters. Sometimes small, shared moments are all you need.

Bill Meyer

 Badge Époque Ensemble — Self Help (Telephone Explosion Records)

Self Help by Badge Époque Ensemble

 Toronto collective Badge Époque Ensemble display the tastefully virtuosic skill of a particular strain of soul-inflected jazz-fusion that politely nudged its way into the charts during the 1970s. Led by Max Turnbull (the erstwhile Slim Twig) on Fender Rhodes, clavinet and synthesizers with members of US Girls, Andy Shauf’s live band and a roster of guest vocalists, Badge Époque Ensemble faithfully resurrect the sophisticated sounds of Blue Nun fuelled fondue parties and stoned summer afternoons by the pool. Meg Remy and Dorothea Paas share vocals on “Sing A Silent Gospel” which is garlanded with Karen Ng’s alto saxophone and an airy solo from guitarist Chris Bezant; it’s a track that threatens to take off but never quite does. The strength of James Baley’s voice lifts the light as air psych-funk of “Unity (It’s Up To You)” and Jennifer Castle does the same for “Just Space For Light” during which Alia O’Brien makes the case for jazz flute — Mann rather than Dolphy — with an impressive solo. The most interesting track here is the 11 minute “Birds Fly Through Ancient Ruins” a broodingly introspective piece which allows Bezant, Ng and bassist Giosuè Rosati to shine. Self-Help is immaculately played and has some very good moments but can’t quite get loose enough to convince.

Andrew Forell  

 Better Person — Something to Lose (Arbutus)

Something to Lose by Better Person

Like any musical genre, synth-pop can go desperately awry in the wrong hands. The resurgence of all things 1980s has been such a prevalent musical trend in recent years that it takes a deft touch to create something that taps into the retro vibe without coming across as smug. Under his Better Person moniker, Berlin-based Polish artist Adam Byczyowski manages to summon the melancholy vibe of 1980s classics such as “Last Christmas” by Wham!, “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin, and “Drive” by The Cars, reimagined for the 21st century and set in a run-down karaoke bar. This succinct and elegant half-hour set pivots around atmospheric instrumental “Glendale Evening” and features three Polish-language tracks — “Na Zawsze” (“Forever”), “Dotknij Mnie” (“Touch Me”), and “Ostatni Raz” (“Last Time”) — that emphasize the feel of cruising solo through another country and tuning into a unfamiliar radio station. There’s roto-toms, glassy synth tones, suitably melodramatic song titles (including “Hearts on Fire,” “True Love,” and “Bring Me To Tears”), plus Byczyowski’s disaffected croon. It all creates something unexpectedly moving.

Tim Clarke

 Big Eyes Family — The Disappointed Chair (Sonido Polifonico)

The Disappointed Chair by Big Eyes Family

Sheffield’s Big Eyes Family (formerly The Big Eyes Family Players) released the rather fine Oh! on Home Assembly Music in 2016. Its eerie blend of folk and psych-pop brought to mind early Broadcast, circa Work and Non Work, before Trish Keenan and James Cargill started to explore more experimental timbres and themes of the occult. Bar perhaps the haunted music box instrumental “Witch Pricker’s Dream,” Oh!’s songs cleaved along a similar grain: minor keys, chiming arpeggiated guitar, spooky organ, in-the-pocket rhythm section, plus Heather Ditch’s vocal weaving around the music like smoke. The Disappointed Chair is much the same, enlivened with a touch more light and shade, from succinct waltz “(Sing Me Your) Saddest Song,” to the elegant Mellotron and tom-toms of “For Grace.” “From the Corner of My Eye” is stripped right back, with an especially affecting guitar line, plus Ditch’s vocals doubled, with the same words spoken and sung, like a voice of conscience nagging at the edge of the frame. It’s a strong set of songs, only let down by the boxy snare sound on “Blue Light,” and on “The Conjurer,” Ditch’s lower register isn’t nearly as strident as her upper range.

Tim Clarke

 Bounaly — Music For WhatsApp 10 (Sahel Sounds)

Music from Saharan WhatsApp 10 by Bounaly

The tenth installment in Sahel Sounds’ Music For WhatsApp series introduces another name worth remembering. In case your attention hasn’t been solely faced on the ephemeral charms of contemporary Northwest African music in 2020, here’s the scoop: Each month, Sahel sounds uploads a brief recording that a musician from that corner of the world recorded on their cell phone and delivered via the titular app, which is the current mode of music transmission in that neck of the woods. At the end of the month they take it down, and that’s that. This edition was posted on November 11, so set your watch accordingly. Bounaly is originally from Niafounké, which was the home of the late, great Ali Farka Touré. Since civil war and outside intervention have rendered the city unsafe for musicians of any speed, he now works in Mali’s capital city, Bamako, but his music is rooted in the bluesy guitar style that Touré championed. Accompanied solely by a calabash player and surrounded by street sounds, Bounaly’s singing closely shadows his picking, which is expressive without resorting to the amped-up shredding of contemporary guitarists like Mdou Moctar.

Bill Meyer  

 Cash Click Boog — Voice of the Struggle (CMC-CMC)

Last year, Cash Click Boog made a few very noticeable appearances on other people albums (especially on Lonnie Bands’ “Shred 1.5” and Rockin Rolla’s First Quarter) but his own Extras was a minor effort. This Californian rapper was always a dilettante at music, but that was his main appeal and ineradicable feature: you always knew that he’s always caught up in some very dark street business, and he appears in a booth once every blue moon, almost by accident. He is that sort of a player who always on the bleachers, yet when they let him on the field he always does a triple double or a hat trick (depending on a kind of sport).

Voice of the Struggle was supposed to be his big break, the album in which he would expend his gift for rapping while remaining in strictly amateurish frame. Sadly, Boog has chosen another route, namely going pop. He discards his amateur garbs almost completely and auto-tunes every track. If earlier he was too dark even by street standards, now almost all the tracks could be safely played on a radio. The first eight songs are more or less pop-ish ballads about homies in prison, tough life and the ghetto. By the time we reach the last three tracks where Boog recovers his old persona, it’s already too late. The struggle remains but the voice is gone.

Ray Garraty 

 The Flat Five — Another World (Pravda)

The Flat Five musters a great deal of Chicago musical fire power. Alt.country chanteuse Kelly Hogan, Andrew Bird collaborator Nora O’Connor and Casey McDonough sing in Andrews Sisters harmonies, while NRBQ mainstay Scott Ligon minds the store and Green Mill regular Alex Hall keeps the rhythm steady. The sound is retro —1930s radio retro — but the songs, written by Ligon’s older brother Chris, upend mid-century American pieties with sharp, insurgent wit. A variety of old-time-y styles are referenced — big band jazz, country, doo wop and pre-modern pop — in clean, winking style. Countrified, “The Great State of Texas” seems, at first, to be a fairly sentimental goodbye-to-all-that song, until it ends with the revelation that the narrator is on death row. “Girl of Virginia,” unspools a series of intricate, Cole Porter-ish rhymes, while waltzing carelessly across the floor. The writing is sharp, the playing uniformly excellent and the vocals extra special, layered in buzzing harmonies and counterpoints. No matter how complicated the vocal arrangements, no one is ever flat in Flat Five.

Jennifer Kelly

 Sam Gendel — DRM (Nonesuch)

Normally, Sam Gendel plays saxophone in a classic jazz style. You might have caught him blowing dreamy, airy accompaniments on Sam Amidon’s last record, for instance, or putting his own spin on jazz standards in the solo Satin Doll. But for this album, Gendel experimented with ancient high tech — an Electro Harmonix DRM32 drum machine, some synthesizers, a 60-year-old nylon-string guitar —t o create hallucinatory fragments of beat-box-y, jazz-y sound, pitched somewhere between arty hip hop and KOMPAKT-style experimental electronics. “Dollars,” for instance, laces melancholy, Latin-flavored guitar and crooning with vintage video-game blips and bleeps, like a bossa nova heard dimly in a gaming arcade. “SOTD” dances uneasily in a syncopated way, staccato guitar runs paced by hand-claps, stuttered a-verbal mouth sounds and bright melodic bursts of synthesizer. “Times Like This” poses the difficult question of exactly what time we’re in—it has the moody smoulder of old soul, the antic ping and pop of lush early 00s electronics, the disembodied alien suavity of pitch-shifted R&B right now. The ringer in the collection is a cover of L’il Nas’ “Old Town Road,” interpreted in soft Teutonic electro tones, like Cluster at the rodeo. It’s odd and lovely and hard to get a bead on, which is pretty much the verdict for DRM as a whole.

Jennifer Kelly

 Kraig Grady — Monument of Diamonds (Another Timbre)

MONUMENT OF DIAMONDS by Kraig Grady

The painting adorning the sleeve of Monument of Diamonds is entitled Doppler Effect in Blue, and rarely has the cover art’s name so accurately described the sound of the music paired with it. The album-length composition, which is scored for brass, saxophones and organs, consists almost entirely of long tones that Doppler in slow motion, with one starting up just before another peters out. The composer, Kraig Grady, is an Australian-based American who used to release albums that purported to be the folk music of a mythical land called Anaphoria. Nowadays he has no need for such subterfuge, since this lovely album holds up quite well on its own merits. Inspired by Harry Partch and non-Western classical music systems, Grady uses invented instruments and strategically selected pitch intervals to create microtonal music that sounds subtly alien, but never harsh on the ears. As the sounds glide by, they instigate a state of relaxed alertness that’ll do your blood pressure some good without exposing you to unnecessary sweetener.

Bill Meyer  

 MJ Guider — Sour Cherry Bell (Kranky)

Sour Cherry Bell by MJ Guider

MJ Guider’s second full length is diaphanous and monolithic, its monster beats sheathed in transparent washes of hiss and roar. “The Steelyard” shakes the floor with its pummelling industrial rhythms, yet shrouds Guider’s spoken word chants with surprising delicacy. “Body Optics” growls and simmers in woozy synth-driven discontent, while the singer lofts dreamy melodic phrases over the roar. There’s heft in the low-end of these roiling songs, in the churn of bass-like synthetics, the stomp of computer driven percussion, yet a disembodied lightness in the vocals, which float in pristine purity over the roar. Late in the disc, Guider ventures a surprisingly unconfrontational bit of dream pop in “Perfect Interference,” sounding poised and controlled and rather lovely at the center of chiming, enveloping synthetic riffs. Yet the murk and roar makes her work even more captivating, a glimpse of the spiritual in the midst of very physical wreck and tumult.

Jennifer Kelly

 Hisato Higuchi — キ、Que、消えん？ - Ki, Que, Kien? (Ghost Disc) 

キ、Que、消えん？ - Ki, Que, Kien? by Hisato Higuchi

Since 2003, Tokyo-based guitarist Hisato Higuchi has quietly released a series of equally-quiet albums, many on his own Ghost Disc label, which is appropriately named. Higuchi's work on this and the previous two albums of his "Disappearing Trilogy" is a sort of shimmering, melancholy guitar-and-vocal atmosphere — downer psych-folk in a drifting haze. His lyrics are more imagery than story, touching on overflowing light, winter cities, the quiet world, and the transience of memories. As the guitar floats slowly into the distance, Higuchi's voice, imbued with reverb, is calmly narcotic, like someone quietly sympathizing with a friend's troubles. These songs, while melancholy, convey a peacefulness that's a welcome counterbalance to the chaotic year in which we've been living. Like a cool wind on a warm summer evening, you can close your eyes and let Higuchi's music improve your mood.  

Mason Jones

 Internazionale — Wide Sea Prancer (At the Blue Parade) (Janushoved)

Wide Sea Prancer (At The Blue Parade) by Internazionale

It’s been nearly half a decade since Copenhagen’s Janushoved first appeared in these annals, and in that time, a little more information — and a lot more material — has cropped up to lend some context to the mystery. The focus, however, steadfastly remains with the music — perhaps my favorite of which among the regular projects featured is label head Mikkel Valentin’s own swirling solo synth vehicle Internazionale. In addition to a reissue of 2017’s The Pale and the Colourful (originally out on Posh Isolation), November saw the release of all-new songs with Wide Sea Prancer (At the Blue Parade), 14 tracks of gently abrasive headphone ambient that carry out this type of sound very well. Occasionally there is a piano (“Callista”) or what sounds like vocals (“El Topo”), but as it’s been from the start, this is primarily about tones and moods. Notes for the release say it’s a “continuation and completion of the narrative set by the release Sillage of the Blue Summer,” but it’s less the narrative you should be worried about missing out on than the warmth of your insides after an uninterrupted listen.

Patrick Masterson    

 Iress — Flaw (Iress)

Flaw by Iress

Sweeping, epic post-metal from this LA four piece makes a place for melodic beauty amid the heaviness. Like Pelican and Red Sparrows, Iress blares a wall of overwhelming guitar sound. Together Michelle Malley and Alex Moreno roust up waves and walls of pummeling tone as in opener “Shame.” But Iress is also pretty good at pulling back and revealing the acoustic basis for these songs. “Hand Tremor” is downright tranquil, with wreathes of languid guitar strumming and Malley’s strong, gutsy soprano navigating the full dynamic range from whisper to scream. “Wolves” lumbers like a violent beast, even in its muscular surge, there’s a slow, anthemic chorus. Likewise, “Underneath” pounds and hammers (that’s Glenn Chu on drums), but leaves space for introspection and doubt. It’s rare that the vocals on music this heavy are so good or so female, but if you’ve liked Chelsea Wolfe’s recent forays into ritual metal, you should check out Iress as well.

Jennifer Kelly

Junta Cadre — Vietnam Forever (No Rent Records)

"Vietnam Forever" (NRR141) by Junta Cadre

Junta Cadre is one of several noise and power electronics projects created by Jackson Abdul-Salaam, musician and curator of the long-running Svn Okklt blog. As the project’s name implies, Junta Cadre has an agenda: the production of sound that seeks to thematize the ambiguities of 20th-century radical, revolutionary politics. The project’s initial releases investigated the Maoist revolution in China, and the subsequent Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and 1970s. Vietnam Forever shifts topics, to the American War in Vietnam, and tactics, including contributions from other prominent harsh noise acts and artists: the Rita, Samuel Torres of Terror Cell Unit, Leo Brucho of Controlled Opposition and others. Given those names, Vietnam Forever is as challenging and rigorous as you might expect. Waves of dissonant, electronic hum and fuzz accumulate and oscillate, crunching and chopping into textured aural assaults; wince-inducing warbles and needling feedback occasionally assert themselves. Abdul-Salaam’s harsh shout cuts in and out of the mix. The tape (also available as a name-yo’-price DL on Bandcamp) presents as two side-long slabs of sound, both over seventeen minutes long, both completely exhausting. At one point, on Side A, Abdul-Salaam repeatedly shouts, “Beautiful Vietnam forever!” It’s hard to say what he means. An affirmation that Vietnam survived the war? That its people and culture endure? Or that the U.S. can’t seem to shake the war’s haunting presence? Or even a more worryingly nihilistic delight in the war’s carnage, so frequently aestheticized in films like Apocalypse Now (1979), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Da Five Bloods (2020)? The noise provides no closure. Maybe necessarily so.  

Jonathan Shaw  

 Bastien Keb — The Killing of Eugene Peeps (Gearbox)

The Killing of Eugene Peeps is a soundtrack to a movie that never was, a noir-ish flick which winds restlessly through urban landscapes and musical styles, from the orchestra tremors of its opening through the folky group-sing of “Lucky the Oldest Grave.” “Rabbit Hole” wafts by like an Elephant Six outtake, its woozy chorus lit by glockenspiel notes, while “God Bless Your Gutters” conjures jazzy desolation in piano and mordant spoken word. “All the Love in Your Heart” shimmers like a movie flashback, a mirage of blowsy back-up singing, guitar and muttered memories. “Street Clams” bristles with funk and swagger, an Ethio-jazz sortee through rain slicked streets. What’s it about? Musically or narratively? No idea. But it’s worth visiting these evocative soundscapes just for the atmosphere. It’s a film I’d like to see.

Jennifer Kelly

 Jesse Kivel — Infinite Jess (New Feelings)

Nostalgia haunts the new solo album from Kisses guitarist/singer Jesse Kivel. Infinite Jess is full of that knowing melancholy of The Blue Nile, Prefab Sprout and The Pale Fountains that was so magnetic to a certain brand of sensitive young thing seeking to articulate their inchoate visions of a future steeped in romance and adventure. Think wistful mid-tempo songs wrapped in cocoons of strummed guitars, shuffling percussion and wurlitzer piano fashioned into a catalogue of adolescent radio memories. These tunes are topped by the understated sincerity of Kivel’s voice and lyrics which effectively evoke the place, time and emotion of his vignettes. The production suffers occasionally from a distracting reliance on too perfectly rendered tropes — overly polite drum programming, thumbed bass, blandly smooth electric piano — but the overall effect is oddly beguiling. Infinite Jess closes with a charmingly wobbly instrumental cover of Don McLean’s “Vincent” played on the wurlitzer that captures the poignancy of the melody and serves as a fitting epilog to the record.

Andrew Forell

 Kyrios — Saturnal Chambers (Caligari Records)

Saturnal Chambers by KYRIOS

The corpsepaint-and-spiked-codpiece crowd are still making tons of records, but fewer and fewer of them are interesting or compelling. The retrograde theatrics and cheap pessimism can be irritating enough (I’d rather be reading Schopenhauer, thanks); it’s even more problematic when the songs can muster only the vividness and savor of stiff leftovers from the deep-freezer’s darkest and dankest corners. Still, every now and then a kvlty band that follows the frigid dictates of black metal’s orthodoxy creates a set of songs worth listening to. This new EP from Kyrios is super short, comprising three tracks in just under 10 minutes that pull off that neat trick: when it’s over, you want to hear more. Sure, the dudes in the band call themselves silly things like Satan’s Sword and Vornag, but the tunes are really good. Check out the churning strangeness of “The Utterance of Foul Truths.” Kyrios claims Immortal, Enslaved and Dissection as primary influences, and the band recognizes the stylistic debt they owe to Deathspell Omega (let’s hope Kyrios digs the twisted guitars and weird-ass time signatures, but passes on the National Socialism declaimed by that French band’s vocalist). Stuff gets even more engaging when bleeping and blooping keyboards vibrate at the edges of the mix, giving the songs a spaced-out vibe. “Saturnal Chambers”? Maybe Kyrios has met the astral spirit of Sun Ra somewhere along their galactic journeys into the heavenly void. He liked bleeping, blooping noises and gaudy costumes, too.

Jonathan Shaw

 Matt Lajoie — Light Emerging (Trouble In Mind)

Light Emerging by Matt Lajoie

The second volume of Trouble In Mind Records’ Explorers series is, like its predecessor a cassette that comes concealed within a brown slipcase. Like many other discretely wrapped products, the fun is on the inside. This time, it’s a tape by guitarist who understands that toes aren’t just for tapping. At any rate, I think he’s managing his pedals with his feet. Most likely Lajoie has spent some quality time listening to mid-1990s Roy Montgomery. But since a quarter century has passed, he doesn’t just stack up the echoes. Sped-up tones streak across the surface of this music like swallows zooming close to that sheet you hung on the side of your barn the last time you had everyone over for a socially distanced gathering to watch Aguirre, The Wrath of God. Wait, did that really happen? Maybe not, but if someone were to make a fake documentary about the hanging of the projective surface, this music is suitably epic to provide the soundtrack.

Bill Meyer

 Lisa/Liza — Shelter of a Song (Orindal)

Shelter of a Song by Lisa/Liza

Lisa/Liza makes a quietly harrowing sort of guitar folk, singing in a high, ghostly clear soprano against delicate traceries of picking. The artist, real name Liza Victoria, inhabits songs that are unadorned but still chilling. She sings with childlike sincerity in an ominous landscape of dark alleys and chilly autumnal vistas. She wrote this album while chronically ill, according to the notes, and you can hear the struggle against the body in the way her voice sometimes wavers, her breath comes in sudden intakes. But, as sometimes happens after long sickness, she sometimes strikes clear of the physical, achieving an unearthly purity as in “From this Shelter.” A touch of plain spoken magic lurks in this one, in the whispery vocals, the translucent curtains of guitar notes, though not much warmth. “Red Leaves” is earthier and more fluid, guitar flickers striking out from a resonant center, and the artist murmuring dreamily about the beauty of the world and its transience.

Jennifer Kelly

Keith Morris & The Crooked Numbers — American Reckoning (Mista Boo)

It's easy to imagine Keith Morris as perpetually frustrated. His last album, after all, took on psychopaths and sycophants, and the title of his new release American Reckoning doesn't suggest happy thoughts. There's plenty of bile on these five tracks, of course, but Morris approaches the album like a scholar. The opening verse describes the US as “Machiavellian: the mean just never ends” before referencing Othello and Yo-Yo Ma (the latter for a “yo mama” joke). If Morris and the Crooked Numbers just raged, they might be justified, but they'd be less interesting. Instead, they use a wide swath of American musical styles to thoughtfully consider racial (and racist) issues in our contemporary society. “Half Crow Jim” turns a Southern piano tune into a surprising tale about the fallout from slavery. It's a sharp moment, and it highlights that the only disappointing part of this release lies in its brevity. Morris has said he has more music on the way, and if he continues to mix styles, wordplay, and cultural analysis, it'll be worth a study.

Justin Cober-Lake

 Tatsuya Nakatani and Rob McGill — Valley Movements (Weird Cry)

Valley Movements by Tatsuya Nakatani / Rob Magill

In most percussion ensembles, the gong-ist is a utility player, charged with banging out a note once or twice per composition for drama and ideally not screwing it up. Tatsuya Nakatani works on a wholly different level, transcending the possibilities of this ancient, archetypical instrument with vision and an unholy technique. More specifically, his set-up includes at least two standing gongs, each about as tall as he is himself. He plays them with mallets, standing between, in blur speed rolls that range all over the surface of the instrument. The sound he evokes is distinctly unpercussive, more resembling string instrument glissandos than any form of drums, a full-on high-register wail of sound that he sculpts and roils and coaxes into compositions of incredible force and complexity. He also plays a bunch of other percussion instruments, little drums and cymbals which he layers on top of each other so that when he strikes one, the others resonate. It is quite an experience to see him at it, and if you ever get a chance, you should go. Here, he works with the saxophonist Rob McGill unfurling a single 40-minute improvisation at a studio in the appealingly named Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. McGill is an agile player, laying alternately lyrical and agitated counterpoints onto Nakatani’s rhythms, carrying the tune and threading a logical through line through this extended set. He finds frequencies that complement Nakatani’s antic, nearly demonic drum sounds and knows when to let loose and when to let his partner through the mix. The result is a very high energy, engaging adventure in sound that evokes a rare response: you wish you could hear the drums better.

Jennifer Kelly

 Overmono — The Cover Mix (Mixmag)

Mixmag · The Cover Mix: Overmono

It’s a really weird time to be advocating for club music of any kind, but Overmono’s Everything U Need EP out recently on XL again showcases what the fraternal duo known better as Tessela and Truss do best: melding thoughtful percussion patterns with these airy, gliding synth melodies that work at home just as well as in the club (theoretically, anyway). It’s not just original material they do well, though; whether it was the Dekmantel podcast a few years back or their live cassette from Japan or this mix for Mixmag, Ed and Tom Russell also have a knack for pacing in their sets. This one features stuff from the new EP as well as three unreleased tracks (not counting the Rosalía remix, which remains one of the year’s most addicting) and names both old and new — listen for DJ Crystl’s 1993 jungle jam “Deep Space” sidled up next to Smerz’s new skyscraper “I Don’t Talk About That Much.” If that sounds like everything you need, lock in and let Overmono do the hard work. Truly, they do not miss.

Patrick Masterson

 Pole — Fading (Mute)

As Pole, Stefan Betke’s work has always been both comforting and disconcerting. The amiotic swells and heartbeat bass frequencies generate a warm human feel in his music despite their origins in serendipitously damaged equipment. Fading, his first album in five years explores Betke’s reactions to his mother’s dementia and reflects on the nature of personality, memory and soul. Building on his trademark glitchy beats and oceanic bass tones, the eight tracks echo a consciousness unmoored by the fog of unfamiliarity that smothers and distorts but never completely submerges awareness. “Tölpel” (slang for klutz) evokes impatient fingers tapping out the guilty resentment of the forgotten and the frustration of the forgetful. The title track closes with a woozy waltz punctuated by recurrent sparks. Fading is a deeply felt work; somber, reflective, stumbling towards understanding and acceptance, alive to the nuances and petty nettles of grief and above all beautiful in its ambivalence.

Andrew Forell

Quakers — II: The Next Wave (Stones Throw)

II - The Next Wave by Quakers

After eight years of silence following 2012’s self-titled debut, Stones Throw production trio Quakers (Portishead’s Geoff Barrow as Fuzzface, 7-Stu-7 and Katalyst) dropped the 50-track beat tape Supa K: Heavy Tremors out of nowhere in September and now, just two months later, are back with another 33-track behemoth that allows a litany of emcees to shine. Calling this The Next Wave is a bit of a stretch when you consider many of the voices on here are from guys who’ve been in the game for years or even decades (Jeru the Damaja, Detroit’s Phat Kat and Guilty Simpson, Chicagoan Jeremiah Jae, etc.), but even so, the dusty grooves and Dilla loops prove perfect foils for many of those who hit the mic. My favorite might be Sageinfinite slotting in with the organ grinder “A Myth,” but even if you don’t like it, everyone’s in and out quick. If you’re burned out on Griselda, give this a go for 1990s vibes of a different kind.

Patrick Masterson   

 Rival Consoles — Articulation (Erased Tapes)

There are deep pockets of silence in “Articulation,” ink black stops between the thump and clack of dance beat, sudden intervals of nothingness amidst limber synthetic melodies. London-based producer Ryan West, who records as Rival Consoles, layers sound on sound in some tracks, letting the foundations slip like tectonic plates on top of one another, but he is also very much aware of the power of quiet, whether dark or luminously light. Consider, for instance, his closer, “Sudden Awareness of Now,” whose buoyant melody skitters across factory-sized fan blasts of whooshing sound. The rhythm is light footed and agile, pieced together from staccato elements that hold the air and light. Like Jon Hopkins, West uses the glitch and twitch to insinuate the infinite, chiming overtones and hovering backdrops to represent a gnostic, communal state of existence. “Vibrations on a String” may jump to the steady thump, thump, thump of dance, but as its gleaming plasticine tones blow out into horn blast dissonance, the cut is more about becoming than being.

Jennifer Kelly

  Sweeping Promises — Hunger for a Way Out (Feel It)

Hunger for a Way Out by Sweeping Promises

The title track bounds headlong on a rubbery bassline, picking up a Messthetick-y blare of junk shop keyboards. All the sudden, there’s Lira Mondal unleashing a giddy screed of angular pop punk tunefulness, her partner in Sweeping Promises, Caulfield, stabbing and stuttering on guitar. In some ways, this band is straight out of late 1980s London, jitter-flirting with offkilter hooks a la Delta Five or Girls at Our Best. In others, they are utterly modern, lacing austere pogo beats with lush, elaborate vocal counterpoints. “Falling Forward” is a continuous rush of clamped in guitar scramble and agile, bouncing bass, anthemic trills breaking for robotic chants; it’s a mesh of sounds that always seems ready to collapse in a heap, but instead finds its antic balance just in time.

Jennifer Kelly

Martin Taxt — First Room (SOFA)

First Room by Martin Taxt

Sometimes a room is more than a room. In the matter at hand, it is a space that proposes a state of mind and a consequent set of experiences. It is also the score for a piece of music that extrapolate that state into the realm of sound. The cover of First Room depicts a pattern of tatami mats that you might find in a Japanese tea room. Martin Taxt is a microtonal tubaist and also the holder of an advanced degree in music and architecture (next time someone tells you that some good thing can’t happen, remember that in Norway you can not only get such a degree; you can then go ahead and present a CD that shows your work. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in the stars, but in our society.). This music takes inspiration from the integrated aesthetic of the tea ceremony, using carefully placed and deliberately sustained sounds to create an environment in which subtle changes count for a lot. The album’s contents were created by mixing together two performances, one with and another without an audience. Taxt and accompanist Vilde Marghrete Aas layer long tones from a tuba, double bass, viola da gamba and sine waves. Their precise juxtapositions create a sense of focus, somewhat like a concentrated version of Ellen Fullman’s long string music, and if that statement means something to you, so will this music.

Bill Meyer

 Ulaan Janthina — Ulaan Janthina II (Worstward)

Ulaan Janthina (Part II) by Ulaan Janthina

Part two of Steven R. Smith’s latest recording project echoes the first volume in several key aspects. It is a tape made in small numbers and packaged like a present from your favorite cottage industry; in this case, the custom-printed box comes with an old playing card, a hand-printed image of jellyfish, an old skeleton key and a nut. And Smith, who most often plays guitars and home-made stringed instruments, once more plays keyboards, which enable him to etch finer lines of melody. The chief difference between this tape and its predecessor is the melodies themselves, which have begun to attain the evocative simplicity of mid-1970s Cluster.

Bill Meyer

 Various Artists — Joyous Sounds! (Chicago Research)

Joyous Sounds! by Various Artists

It’s been less than two years, but Blake Karlson’s Chicago Research imprint has already made its presence known both in the Windy City and beyond as fine purveyors of all things industrial, EBM, post-punk and experimental electronics. There were two compilations released within days of one another toward the beginning of October, and while Preliminaries of Silence veers more toward soothing ambient textures, Joyous Sounds! is more upbeat and rhythmic (Bravias Lattice’s “Liquid Vistas” is a beautiful exception). My favorite track is Club Music’s “Musclebound” (not a Spandau Ballet cover, as it turns out), but the underlying menace of Civic Center’s “Filigree” and Rottweiler’s pummeling “Ancient Baths” sit alongside merely unsettling fare like Lily the Fields’ “Porcelain” well. If you’re not already aboard or just have a Wax Trax-sized hole in your heart, you have a lot of work ahead of you with this label’s consistently superlative output.

Patrick Masterson

  Kurt Vile — Speed, Sound, Lonely KV (Matador)

Given John Prine's passing from COVID-19 this year, the new Kurt Vile EP might be received as a tribute to the late artist, with extra significance coming from Prine's appearance here. Four years in the works, Speed, Sound, Lonely KV offers more than just tribute, though. Prine's guest spot (if you could call it that) on his own “How Lucky” certainly makes for a moving highlight, the two singers fitting together nicely as Prine's gruff tone balance's his partner's smoother voice. Vile also covers Prine on “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness,” and he adds “Gone Girl” by Cowboy Jack Clement as he takes further cosmic steps.  

His two originals here complete the record, and, mixed in with the covers, draw out the lesson. Vile's entire EP blends the country influences with his more typical dreamy sound, the guitar work bridging the gap between a songwriter's backing and something more ethereal. Nashville, it seems, has always suited Vile just fine, and hearing him embrace that tradition more immediately adds an extra layer to his work. Putting a cowboy hat on his previous aesthetic puts him opens up new but related paths for him, and the five tracks here could play on either a Kris Kristofferson mix or a laid-back indie-rocker playlist. Either way, they'd be highlights on an endless loop.

Justin Cober-Lake

 WhoMadeWho — Synchronicity (Kompakt)

Danish trio WhoMadeWho — drummer Tomas Barfod, guitarist Jeppe Kjellberg and bassist/singer Tomas Høffding — make enjoyable indie dance music that suffers somewhat from lack of personality and a tendency toward a middle ground. That may be due to an effort to accommodate a roster of Kompakt-related collaborators including Michael Mayer, Echonomist and Robag Wruhme. While there’s nothing bad and some pretty good here, the individual songs flit by, pausing briefly to set one’s head nodding and feet tapping, before evaporating from the mind. “Shadow of Doubt” featuring Hamburg’s Adana Twins has the kind of driving bass that anchored New Order hits but also, unfortunately, the unconvincing vocals only Bernard Sumner could get away with. More successful moments like the eerie piano riff and jazz inflections of “Dream Hoarding” with Frank Wiedemann, the arpeggiated house of “Der Abend birgt keine Ruh” featuring Perel and miserablist Pet Shop Boys inflected closer “If You Leave” do stick. Synchronicity might work well on the dance floor, but it doesn’t quite sustain at home.

Andrew Forell