#that other fans also have varied interests and use their lyrics and songs in creations for those other interests

[allsassnoclass]

i know that 5sos is an extremely popular world-famous band but every time i see a fandom edit using their songs out in the wild it throws me off

[duckprintspress]

Meet Aether Beyond the Binary Contributor ilgaksu

Wondering what Aether Beyond the Binary is and why you should care? It’s Duck Prints Press’s latest anthology, currently crowdfunding: 17 stories, modern aetherpunk settings, outside-the-binary main characters! Help us reach our funding goals by checking out the campaign now!

About ilgaksu: Full-time fandom cryptid, Furby enthusiast, and the human embodiment of that one gif of Elmo on fire, ilgaksu was born and raised in an  undisclosed location, living in several others, and now currently residing in [REDACTED]. Their interests include collecting haunted toys, using their artistic practice as an excuse to forget to do their laundry, and playing with fictional men like Bratz dolls. They have not unclenched their jaw yet today, but they do remember to drink lots of water. 

Link: personal webpage

This is ilgaksu’s first publication with Duck Prints Press.

An Interview with ilgaksu

What is your “dream project” – the thing you’d see as the culmination of your work as a creator?

I have a list of dream projects – a big queer space opera trilogy, a series of detective serials, I want to pastiche all of the genres I adored growing up – but I think I’m never going to find the culmination of my work. I’m going to have to make do with whatever I do while I’m alive, and other people can argue about that for me or something. The work is the work. It has to speak for itself without me defending it.

When you look at your “career” as a creator, what  achievement would you most like to reach – what, if it happened or has  already happened, would/did make you go “now – now I’m a success!”?

Does any writer actually get to the point where they fully believe they’re a success, and the feeling lasts forever? This is a genuine question. Where are they hiding? I want their advice.

What are your favorite snacks and/or drinks to consume while creating?

I have to have at least three emotional support beverages, and one of those will always be a form of iced coffee, then usually bubble tea, and then usually water. These are because I clearly run on three separate hydration systems. Snack-wise, I don’t tend to eat while I’m actually making things, but I like churros and loaded fries and ramen and salmon on bagels and, listen, I just really love food.

Describe your ideal creation space.

I like writing somewhere near a window, ideally when it’s raining outside, with three emotional support beverages and my favourite headphones and the very specific song that works as white noise in that moment on repeat. Possibly for the next five hours.

Do you like having background noise when you create? What do you listen to? Does it vary depending on the project, and if so, how?

I have to have background noise or I can’t focus to write, and it’s usually music with lyrics. I tend to have a mix of current songs I’m fixated on in a huge Everything playlist, and then I often have a smaller playlist for the project itself. Like I said before, I can also easily listen to the same song on repeat for as long as it takes to finish the necessary section, even if it that takes hours, because after a while I stop hearing the music itself – it functions as white noise.

Share five of your favorite books. (You can include why, if you want!)

Wolf Hall Trilogy (Hilary Mantel, technically 3 but)

The Dream Thieves (Maggie Stiefvater) 

Evensong’s Heir (L. S. Baird)  

Daughter of Fortune (Isabel Allende)  

The Magpie Lord (KJ Charles)

Share five of your favorite (blanks). 

Five favourite current bubble tea flavours: Earl Grey, Snow White, Rose, Lavender, Honeydew

If you could give one piece of advice to a new creator who came to you for help, what would that advice be?

You don’t want to write like me. 

That probably sounds incredibly arrogant, but let me explain: the most common thing I’ve had said to me by a new creator, or a fan of my work, is “I want to write like you.” And I get where people are coming from, and I get it’s from a place of admiration – which is very very flattering, of course – because early on in my writing career that used to be a desire that consumed me to. But my point is this. I realised that it was futile to want something like that, because I would never be that creator, with their experiences in life and reading that had informed how they view the world and filter it into their own work. Even if I tried to mimic it, and maybe if I managed it on a superficial level, it wouldn’t be animated by the same mind moving through it, and so I’d be doing us both a disservice. So, I no longer want to write like other people. I want to write more and more like myself. And because of that, I try and advise people to redirect how they’re verbalising that desire. What is it about my work, or anyone’s work, that speaks to you? What parts of it don’t work for you? What is it you want that’s similar – the assurance of their authorial voice, their breadth of lexis or grammar, the themes they focus, how they make you feel as a reader in that relationship with them through the text? Identify those things. Start from there, and think about who you are and take these little ingredients from everyone you’ve read and loved, and everything you love in the world outside writing. Do that instead. Not only will it help you identify more concretely the goals you’re working towards in your craft, but you deserve a voice as a writer that’s solely your own.

What would you say to a demoralized creator to inspire them?

The same thing I said earlier but reappropriated: nobody can write like you.

ilgaksu’s Contribution to Aether Beyond the Binary

Title: chameleon trick

Tags: be gay do crimes, be gay solve crimes, established relationship, heist, manchester, non-binary, past tense, present tense, suicidal ideation (mentions of), united kingdom, third person limited pov, trans man

Excerpt:

Sasha turns on him; gleeful, sparking with it. It’s less a dropping of a mask and more of a perfect, total illumination as they ask, “How did I do?”

You would think they were an amateur at this, looking at their borderline puppyish excitement. They even tilt their face up, less in expectation of a kiss and more in certainty of one. But they are both working. Martha has read the codes of conduct at this factory: no fraternisation during work hours. And so:

“I don’t have time for your praise kink right now,” Martha says, and sidesteps them.

End-of-post reminder: check out our campaign on Kickstarter! It ends January 25th – we’re about half-way done.

[herrlindemann]

Interview with Richard for METAL HAMMER N°3 - 1997

The tension in the Rammstein camp is increasing: their second album, Sehnsucht, is due to be released in April. Henning Richter wanted to know how the climbers of '96 cope with the pressure that weighs on them.

Is there actually a Rammstein concept? With a few ingenious associations, resourceful critics had created a wonderful concept: with their flamboyant singer, the group wanted to commemorate the burning victims of the Rammstein air show disaster, while the blazing flames symbolized the easily ignited lust of heated bodies in trembling beds... Nothing there : With a short, disillusioning sentence, guitarist Richard Kruspe destroys all these dreams: “There is no Rammstein concept. We started with a sparkler, from which this show gradually developed, which we are also keeping by the way. On our next tour we will employ a pyro company though. During the last concert in the Berlin Arena, our backdrop caught fire, things fell down, there were people who bled a little... But we visited them all, there are no complaints“, at least that's what he hopes.

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. So hit the rewind button again and rewound. The afternoon began with a short audio sample of the upcoming Rammstein album Sehnsucht in a shoebox-sized studio in Prenzlauer Berg. Five titles resounded from slender speakers, although not quite finished yet, they point to the future. One thing is certain, their “Techno-Metal mit Drill-Deutsch” (WOM-Journal) has become more varied. The song 'Du has(s)t' in particular surprises with its rather soft vocals and its harmonious melody. Other numbers like the mercilessly heavy 'Bestrafe mich' are total techno trash. Richard is satisfied, although the expectations of his band, which has sold an impressive 180,000 units of their debut Herzeleid, are of course huge. "You can only lose with the second album," he fears, "either people complain: 'They haven't developed at all' or they complain: 'That doesn't sound like Rammstein anymore'.”

What remains are texts that often deal with "sex and love in extreme forms," ​​says Kruspe, "I'm interested in relationships.” Masochism and sadism are dealt with, frustration and lust are addressed. Incidentally, relationship frustration was a cornerstone of Rammstein. “When we first met in the rehearsal room, we all had stress with women, it went to the point of sheer hatred, which is also reflected in the lyrics. Frustration was a good creative driver, and it also bonded us as a group.” In the meantime the stress seems to have disappeared, almost all Rammstein butchers have wives and children, Richard already has two. “Kids take you out of your world, they give you a new perspective. Get kids,” he recommends, but frankly, he doesn't quite convince me.

In the course of the interview, Richard's will to stand out from the crowd with Rammstein shines through again and again. “I like bands like Metallica or The Prodigy, who see their own way. That's why I'm also into techno, because it's European music that differs from the vast amount of American productions.” He sees America as a real challenge for his combo. Since Kraftwerk and the Scorpions no German band has managed to be recognized there. After all, Rammstein has had two good experiences with American artists so far. On the one hand, cult director David Lynch used two of their songs for the soundtrack of his new film "Lost Highway", on the other hand they toured with the Ramones. “It was certainly an unusual composition, but it worked. The fans accepted us. The Ramones themselves were great, bassist C.J. always wore a Rammstein shirt from day two. Joey used to sing (mimicking a typical American R) in the dressing room, 'Rrrammstein, Rrrammstein'. He has a bar in New York where he constantly plays a live recording of our concert.”

My interviewee reveals that computers played an important role in the creation of the new material. “Up until a year and a half ago, I was also very skeptical about samples and computers. Now they fascinate me. I feel like making modern computer music, after all you can't resist the development of the times. When it comes to composing, I picked up the guitar again after a while. A lot of these techno computer freaks don't play an instrument, that's definitely a disadvantage. I love songs, and they're just easier to write on the guitar.” Several members of the 'Tanz-Metaller' now work with a computer, curiously enough keyboarder Flake doesn't have one, although bits and bytes should actually be closest to him. It is also strange that singer Till Lindemann does not give any interviews, as Kruspe explains in a dry and nebulous manner: "He doesn't say anything because he simply has nothing to say.” Ah.

That is completely natural, as is Lindemann's strongly rolling R, claims Richard, "the man comes from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, people sometimes talk like that there.” When I asked whether Rammstein “Jean Claude Van Damme-Double” is close to East German singers such as Eugen Balanskat from the Skeptics, my counterpart vehemently denied: “Till is more into Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys.” Right from the start, it was important for the sextet to appear as a group and not to single out any member, maybe frontman Lindemann's non-appearance has something to do with it... The effort to always appear together was put to the test when the Prenzelbergers started their career: “We calculated that we were together for 200 to 250 days last year,” groans the muscular guitarist, “that was really hard.” The men even marched together to swim to keep fit on tour. At the moment the musicians are enjoying their freedom, taking care of the kids before they go on an extended tour of Germany again at the end of April.

The disc was recorded in Malta, in the same studio where Braunschweig's Such A Surge recorded their major second division AGORAPHOBIC NOTES. The capital cities again hired Jacob Hellner as the sound coach, and the recordings were again mixed by the mix genius Roland Prent. "It's about time we changed producers, though. At first we still had a lot of respect for him, but now we've noticed that he only cooks with water. That's why we co-produced the album,” says Kruspe with a touch of disappointment. The record company also tried to have a say, which he thinks is only natural. “They invest a lot of money and now want to make money. But we didn't listen to the Company envy, relying more on our instincts.”

Rammstein are sailing their very own course, summarizes Richard, who appropriately wears American sailor pants today. Musicians are like sailors, I say, they're always on the move and there's a bride for everyone in every port. “If you mean groupies, all I can say is I'm not into them. I like equal women, groupies are so submissive. But one thing is true: like sailors, we are rarely at home.”

[wearecaptaingeorgiou]

[id: A banner featuring Captain Philippa Georgiou in her desert ensemble from the shoulders up in front of a golden-orange background. In brightly glowing letters arcing around her head is the title “We Are Captain Georgiou,” and above her is the subtitle “A Captain Philippa Georgiou Appreciation Fanbook” and “Submissions: wearecaptaingeorgiou AT gmail DOT com.” end id.]

About

“We are Captain Georgiou” is a project born out of love. When Captain Philippa Georgiou stepped onto our screens for the first time three years ago, her warmth and indomitability captured the hearts of many of us. Though she departed the story early, she continues to spark our imaginations and to inspire us as people and as storytellers.

This initiative endeavours to gather and share the many facets of this beloved character, the impact her brief appearance has made, and the varied ways fans have been embracing her. We want this project to be collaborative, open to all fans, and filled with creations and perspectives as diverse as we are. Captain Georgiou’s influence over the fictional world and among the fans extends far beyond the story shown on screen, and in creating this book we hope to celebrate Philippa and how much she means to many of us. We will compile submissions into a fanbook to send to the production of the show and to share with fans as a free PDF. There will be one PDF with text + images, and another with text + images + image descriptions (please let us know if you have suggestions for other PDF formats, or other suggestions on ways to make this project accessible!) Full About page here.

Submissions

Open March 12, 2020 - Edit: TBD, Second Edit: Probably early 2021

Edit: In view of the world health crisis, the timeline of this project is now flexible, with probable weeks’ and months’ extensions to take into account our new reality. Our new spore-powered deadline gives more room to those who wish to participate and those of us organizing the project--please feel welcome to reach out with any questions or thoughts on what timeline alterations would be most helpful to you. More on the deadline extension here.

Second Edit: As of now (October), we are thinking the deadline will be some time in early 2021. Again, if you’d like to contribute, please feel welcome to let us know what timeframe is workable for you!

Submissions can be in any language, can have been previously posted online, and should be kept safe for work. They can be messages to the creators, personal anecdotes, your favorite Captain Georgiou quote and why, essays and meta/analysis, or any other type of fanwork (except fanfic and its close equivalents), such as art, cosplay, crafts and handiworks, poetry, recipes, floral arrangements, manicure/nail art, song lyric photo edits, moodboards (please use images that are cc0 or used with permission of the image author), or anything else than can be printed! Full Guidelines page on what and how to submit here.

Collaboration

Please let us know if you’d like to collaborate on this project! We’re looking for folks interested in promotional material creation, proofreading in any language, accessibility user testing, or any other organizational or media/promotional aspects of this project. 

Also helpful: sharing far and wide! ;) Here is a PDF of project info and submission guidelines if you’d like to share this project with friends who don’t use social media. Twitter: twitter.com/werecptgeorgiou

Getting to the launch point has already been a wonderful team effort--thank you to the fanbook creators who have fielded our questions, and to everyone who has reached out to get involved! We couldn’t be more excited to see where this project goes next.

[olderthannetfic]

Vidding absolutely counts as a fandom, and Escapade is key to the history of vidding.

Notice how the terminology shifts over the course of Escapade: The first year, it’s ‘songtapes’ being shown, then ‘songvid’ or ‘song video’ predominates for much of the 90s, and then we move on to ‘vidding’ and ‘vids’.

The vidshow moves from being more of a curated presentation of old favorites to having a lot of premieres. It goes from just one night to two, then back to one. Vidshow panels where you just watch vids for a whole panel slot come and go. In 1998, vid review starts up: This is a Sunday morning panel for in-depth critique of the vids shown the previous night and is a famously contentious part of the con. And then there was this:

2002, Friday, 6pm - VividCon Discussion (Come discuss the proposed VividCon, tentative time/location, August/Chicago.)

Yep. Escapade was where Vividcon was born!

By 2008, people were talking about how vidding had moved on from Escapade. In 2011 a vidshow retrospective was added to try to counter the lack of vidding-centric programming. There was a big resurgence for a few years, including such hard-hitting topics as:

2016 - Vidding Aesthetics (”Why is there so much show audio in this vid?", "Why didn't that cut hit on the beat?", "What do you mean 'Cheesy?' She's Celine Dion!" and other immortal questions of vidding aesthetics. If you've ever watched a vid, we want your opinions.)

Why yes, it was my panel. Why do you ask?

There were rounds of warnings wank, caused by Oz vids and by that time Absolute Destiny sent a vid of a violent coming of age film.

Check out this 1994 panel description from Fanlore:

"[The technology in fandom panel] included several things that people can now do in-home that they couldn't do five years ago: cutting and splicing songs on Macintosh computers (to remove inappropriate choruses, verses, or the word "girl"); the soon-to-be-easier ability to select different people from different clips and combine them onto a new background (also for songtapes); printing vhs video frames directly to computer screens, printers and/or color copiers (for fun); and zines and/or libraries on disk. Most of the new technology possibilities were followed by comments that the actual work we can do is illegal [...]. Which comments were followed by the statements that seventeen years ago, writing and publishing a slash fanzine was illegal.... [...] a few people [...], talked to me at different times throughout the con about getting accounts or modems [...]”

This is interesting not just technologically but aesthetically. Is the word ‘girl’ bad in a slashvid? Different communities have disagreed.

Conversations about digital vidding and digital vs. VCR really heated up around 2001, much later than you might expect if you’re coming out of an AMV background. While most of Youtube vids on Sony Vegas--a Windows-only program--at Escapade, Mac has been the norm.

The topics that have remained big are vidding aesthetics, including things like how to make an effective pimp vid, discussions of hosting options and where the community is hanging out now, and how-tos for people who want to get into vidding.

(And before anyone asks, the answer is that you should download DaVinci Resolve because it’s free and cross-platform. And you should encode with h.264 because it’s widely compatible.)

The 2020 vidding panels are:

Vidding 101: The Vid Bunny Farm So you’ve had an idea, and it’s gnawing on your leg? Or maybe you have too many vid ideas and can’t choose? Or you want to make a vid but don’t know where to even start? Aspiring fan vidders, unsure-vidders-to-be, and experienced vidders welcome alike to share vid bunnies, brainstorm together, and talk about the processes of conceptualizing a vid.

Vidding Genres Then & Now We’ve come a long way from “living room vids” vs ‚”con vids‚” or have we? Let’s talk about evolving fanvid genres, from ship vids to AU vids to multivids, from character vids to fake trailers, from genre-bending vids to long form vids to cosplay music videos, and more. Let’s talk about all the genres of fan videos floating around YouTube, Billibilli, AO3 and beyond, and also consider if the old school genre terms still apply.

Escapade has had many, many vidding panels. So many that even I feel the need for a readmore. I’ve pulled out the meta ones and left off some single-fandom vidshows and whatnot. Sorry for the wonky formatting, but Tumblr, in its infinite wisdom, seems to have removed the horizontal rule feature.

1991  - "Classic" songtapes were shown at 9:00 on Friday.

1994 - Song Video Roundtable (Bring works in progress or finished works you're having difficulty with for a quick jump-start. Open to anyone who enjoys videos as well as the people who make them.)

1994 - Songvid Editing (Authors get edited and usually have to do at least one rewrite of a story. Artists have erasers. What stops songvid makers from doing drafts and re-edits of their work? Let's talk about editing style (what cuts to use for best emphasis) and technique (how to physically do the inserts.)) [Notice how much of an issue editing is. These are VCR vids, edited in order, so insert edits are a gigantic pain.]

1995 - Techno Vids—Media Cannibals, (What's available with the new computer hardware and software? Can have Bodie & Doyle screwing on screen if we apply the right touches. Should we? How and when?) [Yes. Sweatily. Always.]

1995 - Video Workshop (video makers & watchers discuss the art.)

1996 - Music Video Critique and Workshop (Roundtable critique of videos, how to tell/recognize story, POV, rhythm. Also, tricks of the trade.)

1997 - Music Choice for Song Vidding (Finding the right song for the fandom is almost as great a challenge as finding the right clips for the song. Discussing what to look for in music choice.)

1997 - Songvid Critique (An exploration of different elements of media vids, with an emphasis on aesthetics. We'll look at segments of different songs to see how the images were used in conjunction with the varied rhythms of the music, and to enhance the mood.)

1998 - Media Cannibals Self-Indulgence Hour (Stunned to look back on vidding effort, MC plans to show -- and talk about -- some of their best and worst vids, pointing out some happy accidents and some annoying f*ckups. This is a great panel for people who want to learn about vid-making, the work that goes into them, and what to look for when watching them.)

1998 - Con Vids vs Living Room Vids (What are the elements that make a music vid accessible to a large crown, or more appropriate to an intimate setting?)

1998 - Music Video Show Review (Selected vids from Saturday's show will be replayed and discussed for their aesthetic, technical and musical choices. Open to all, for feedback and fun.) [Perhaps the start of the Sunday vidshow critique, which was also such a feature of Vividcon?]

1999 - Songvid Aesthetics (An exploration of theme, color, mood, and rhythm. Choosing clips to relate to the music and convey your message to the viewer.)

1999 - Sunday Morning Vid Review (Selected vids from Saturday's show will be replayed and discussed for the aesthetic, technical and musical choices. Open to all, for feedback and fun.)

2000 - Vidding Basics (Or "you want to learn how to make a music vid, huh?"—Carol and Stacy will take a group of novice vidders from the basics of what you need on your VCR, to all your hardware set ups, thru the selection of music, to actually doing some hands-on putting a dip (or two) into a music vid. So if you're interested in music videos and you want to try your hand at making one... you know what panel you need to go to.)

2000 - Songvid Appreciation 101 (Remember Art Appreciation? "Why is this painting good?" Well, we're doing the same for vids, using examples from the ESCAPADE Video Show. Let's take advantage of the fact that we've all just seen these vids, and use them to illustrate how to do cool things in a vid. We'll look at clever POV changes, appropriate choice of music to theme, skillful uses of musical changes within a vid, storytelling techniques, changes of mood, cutting on the beat vs. cutting on the lyric line, the different approaches to serious and humorous vids, or single fandom vs. multiple fandom vids, and more.)

2001 - Vidding Workshop (2 hours) (This workshop will cover: a comparison between digital and analog vidding; a how-to for analog vidding; a how-to for digital vidding; and a discussion of the artistic side of vidding, including song and clip choices, and techniques to avoid.)

2001 - Impact of Computer Tools on Vidding (Vidding used to be push-and-pause between 2 vers, and a LOT of patience. Now with I-movie and Final Cut and Macintosh G4's, the technological leap is here and it isn't going anywhere. Are vids better for the technology available to them?)

2001 - Songvid Appreciation (2 hours) (Comments and feedback on vids you saw last night, Escapade style.)

2002 - Art Manipulation Using Photoshop (A how-to overview, with demonstrations in Photoshop, and more detailed techniques for creating photo manipulations, web graphics, and zine graphics. Depending on interest, creation of vid titles and overlay vid graphics may be included.)

2002 - Digital Vidding (An overview of the digital vidding process, including some advice on the hardware and software you need to get started. Learn the basics of editing with Premiere and similar programs, and get an overview of some of the fun options you have when using a computer to vid.)

2002 - Vidding Workshop: Art After Craft (What is the Art of Vidding?)

2002 - Vid Revision (The art and craft of revising vids—how you get from a song in your heart and a bunch of clips on your hard drive to the final product. We'll show multiple versions of a few vids, critique them, and talk about what improves a vid. No technical knowledge needed; come whether you make vids or just like watching them.)

2002 - Vids: Pro vs Fan Editing (A long time fan vidder and a professional editor discuss techniques.)

2002 - Sunday Morning Vid Review

2002 - VividCon Discussion (Come discuss the proposed VividCon, tentative time/location, August/Chicago.) [VVC started 6 months later, in August 2002, and ran until 2018]

2003 - How to Vid on the Computer (A brief intra vidding on computers. It will touch on hardware requirements, software options, and basic concepts of non-linear editing and what makes for a good vid, and, time and tech permitting, it may also include a demonstration of some of the editing basics. There will be handouts.)

2003 - Vid Show Review (A discussion (and literal re-viewing in some cases) of some of the vids from the Saturday night show.)

2003 - Also Premiering Vid Show (The "Also Premiering..." vid show is for vids premiered in the last year that aren't going to be shown in the Friday or Saturday shows. This will be an informal setting and we'll go by participant preference — if folks want to see a vid a second time, or want some time to chat about it, or if a vidder wants some feedback on it, we can decide to do that on-the-fly. If you'd like to show any vids in this show, just bring them to the show itself. There are no hard-and-fast limits on number of vids; we'll just go with what shows up and take turns until we run out of time. Afterwards, consider going out to lunch with other participants to talk about the vids!)

2004 - I want to vid! (But I don't know how) (Introduction to vidding hardware, software and maybe some concepts if we have the time.)

2004 - Made On a Mac: The MacFen Symposium (So you're a slasher and a Mac user. Come and share your tips and tricks for HTML coding, photo editing, website management and vidding on a Mac, Share the programs that have and haven't worked for you and hear some helpful tips from the front lines.)

2004 - Vidding: Creating Mood (Why do rapid cuts of short clips create tension? What does a wipe *feel* iike? A vidder's toolbox Includes more and more options, but how do we know what emotional effect each technical effect will produce? Leave the music at the door; this one's about the visuals.)

2004 - Editing Techniques and Vidding (How can you edit together clips from widely different episodes and movies into a seamless whole? A familiarity with concepts in filmmaking can help you achieve the results you're aiming for. A look at some of the common rules of continuity editing and how they relate to vids.)

2004 - The changing face of vids (How has increasingly cheap technology, wider highspeed access and the new flood of vidders changed vidding? What should we rejoice about and what should we worry about? How do we help make it a winning situation for all?)

2004 - Vid Review (A retrospective on the Saturday night show.)

2005 - Vidding: Let the Lyrics Help You (How to look at lyrics to add depth and structure to your vid. or why top 40 songs usually make you do all the work.)

2005 - Vid Review (A Sunday morning tradition at Escapade, and a chance to discuss those great vids.) [See how it’s a “tradition” by this time.]

2006 - The Changing Vid Audience (The move to digital vidding, the availability of vid source and software, and the expectation of online distribution have all radically affected audience desires and expectations. What do audiences want from vids now? Vidders, share your historical perspectives. Vid fans, this is your chance to tell vidders what you want.)

2006 - Defining the Character Study Vid (We love character study vids, so how do you go about making a good one? What's the difference between a vid about a character, a vid about a universe, and a vid about seeing the universe through the eyes of a character?)

2006 - Marketing Your Vid (How can you stand out among the swelling ranks of vidders? What's the best way to present yourself, and to draw attention to your work? We'll focus on knowing your audience, timing your release, pimp communities, etc.)

2006 - Vid Review  (Like Ebert and Roper, but much better looking.)

2007 - Ulead Media Studio Pro 8 and Why It's Better Than the Rest (A compare and contrast of the semi-professional video editing software programs with a strong emphasis on Ulead Media Studio Pro 8. If you are new to vidding, or interested in upgrading your video editing software, this panel should help you make an informed choice.)

2007 - Mac Workshop (The ins and outs of vidding on a Mac.)

2007 - Vid Show Review (Take apart what worked and what was missing from selected vids in the Saturday show. Audience participation at its finest.)

2008 - Ulead Video Editing Introduction (Intro to Ulead Video Studio/Media Studio Pro for those who are interested in vidding but don't have a clue as to where to start. or wouldn't mind a refresher course.)

2008 - Vid Review (Last night was for watching, today is for analyzing. What worked, what didn't, and why?)

2009 - Fannish Aesthetics: Extrapolation v. Subversion (How do we as writers (and especially as vidders) interact with the source material? Is that relationship evolving? What can we say about where we've been and where we're headed?)

2009 - Vid Review (Last night was for watching, today is for analyzing. What worked, what didn't, and why?)

2010 - 2010: A Vidding Odyssey (Current trends in vidding, including what's changed and what's remaind the same when it comes to slash, vidding in particular. We will show some examples of "classic" slash as well as some of the newer develpoments in constructed reality.)

2010 - Vid Review

2011 - Escapade Songvid Retrospective (A trip back to the days of yesteryear, when vids were made on VCRs and Escapade was the place for vids and vid programming. Compiled by Kandy Fong, this show will survey vids from a variety of vidders and shows, covering Escapade 1992-2001 in a fun, informal environment.)

2011 - Decoding Vid Meaning (How do you read a vid? Clip choice, lyrics, structure, symbols or the tone of the music— vids offer plenty of clues, and we decipher them as we see fit. Come watch a vid (or two!) and discuss how we get meaning from what we see and hear to develop a deeper understand of what's going on in the vid. Multiple viewings are required!)

2011 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2011 - The Vidding Explosion (1985-1990) (Who taught whom. The growth of storytelling, technique, and sophistication. Includes vid show and presentation.)

2012 - Vidwatching 101 (Vids have their own language and their own framework for discussion. It can be tough to translate vids into words, but if we have the same language, vid discussion can be wonderfully rewarding for both vidder and viewer. This panel is a primer to get us all on the same page.)

2012 - The State of Vidding Fandom (Ten years of VividCon and roughly the same years vids have been distributed online, let's talk about the state of vidding and the community of vidders. Is there one? Where is it? How do vidders fit in with fandom at large? What are the different options for watching/releasing vids, and how do they stack up for vidders and viewers? If you love vids, join us—whether you vid or not.)

2012 - Festivids Review (Festivids is a fannish vid exchange inspired by the Yuletide fic exchange. This will be a vid review-style panel where we show clips from some of this year's highlight vids and talk about the challenge.)

2012 - MVD Vid Retrospective Show (Sometimes the oldies really are the goodies. Mary Van Duesen has made songvids since the 1980s, working in a range of fandoms. She has also remastered many old vids, and they look better now than they ever did. Come see some old favorites, or find some new ones.)

2012 - Vid Show Review

2012 - Nearly New Vids (So many wonderful vids were submitted for the Escapade show that we couldn’t fit them all in the early show. Here’s your chance to see the rest in the daylight hours (replay of the late-show vids).

2013 - Mac Vidders Roundtable (What’s the best way to vid on a Mac? Our vidding options have changed a lot in the last few years, and it’s been a while since we had a roundtable to discuss and compare our tips, tricks, and processes. This panel is for all of the above.)

2013 - The Art of the Pimp Vid (What makes a pimp vid so addictive one hit will get you hooked? Let’s talk vids for people outside of your fandom. Plot arc vids, character vids, pairing vids: How do you grab a new audience hard and never let them go? Hey there, little fangirl, the first taste is free!)

2013 - The Bestivids of Festivids (This year’s Festivids featured everything from incest testtube babies to care bear Avengers to a surprisingly large amount of kickass femslash. Let’s watch and discuss some favorites from Festivids 2012.)

2013 - So You Want To Be A Vidder (Nobody vidding your OTP anymore? Sad that vidders haven’t discovered your new favorite show? Why not vid it yourself? Come learn the very basics, from choosing programs in your price range to dos and don’ts if you’re planning to submit to cons.)

2013 - How Do Vids Work? (Let's talk about the techniques (not just the feelings!) that make a slash vid work. What makes for a vid that we watch over and over and that sticks with us long- term? We'll talk about these things with reference to a couple of specific vids, see what strategies, commonalities, and differences we can identify, and then open up discussion to additional favorites from the audience.)

2013 - Vidding Aesthetics (Vidders and vid watchers: let’s talk vidding aesthetics. How have styles changed over time? What makes a good vid and what’s just a matter of personal taste? What do you want to BURN WITH FIRE? Let’s get this cage match... err... discussion going.)

2013 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite vids (or not) vids from the show.)

2014 - Vidding 101 (Never edited before? Haven't made a vid since the VCR went the way of the dodo? Come learn how to turn those vidbunnies into reality!)

2014 - Vids for the Viewer (We often discuss writing from the perspective of a reader, but vidding from the perspective of vid-watchers not so much. Let's talk about how to read a vid, different vidding aesthetics and how accessible or popular they are with viewers vs. vidders, and impostor syndrome in vid review.)

2014 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2015 - Best of Festivids. From the slashy to the merely sublime, what tickled our fancy in this year’s Festivids?

2015 - The Perfect Slash Vid. What makes the perfect slash vid? Is it the song choice? The point of view? The abs? (Okay, you got me: it’s the abs.)

2015 - So You Wanna Be A Vidder. Bring your laptop or at least a pen and paper and find out how to get started in vidding.

2015 - Vid Review: Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.

2016 - The State of *Vidding Fandom. Sunday, Noon, San Diego 2. What's going on in vidding fandom today? Where are people hosting and posting? What's next?

2016 - Vid Review. Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.

2016 - Vidding Aesthetics (”Why is there so much show audio in this vid?", "Why didn't that cut hit on the beat?", "What do you mean 'Cheesy?' She's Celine Dion!" and other immortal questions of vidding aesthetics. If you've ever watched a vid, we want your opinions.)

2017 - Vidding 101 - Have you dreamed of making a vid but just aren’t sure where to start? We’ll go step by step, talk finding your source(s), choosing music, finding your way with non overwhelming tech-tools, brainstorming ideas, finding collaborators, and learning by doing. Already a vidder? Come and help new vidders find their way, find new collaborators, and make new ideas happen.

2017 - Let’s Collab! New Forms of Collective Fan Creativity , Newport Changing technologies mean that we collaborate with each other in ever-evolving ways when we create fic and vids. What are the possibilities for collaborating beyond geographic boundaries with digital technologies? How are you collaborating with fellow writers and vidders these days? Are you interested in finding new collaborators and new ways to connect? And are these new forms of collaboration creating new forms of creative fan work?

2017 - Vid Review, Marina del Rey On Saturday night, we watched the vid show. On Sunday morning, we talk about it. Join Rache to discuss the good, the better, and the great of the show, including techniques and all of the reasons Charlotte doesn’t vid anymore and never will again.

2018 - Noon (Vids from the Vault, Part One Kandy Fong Newport A curated retrospective of vids from early Escapades.

2018 - Fanvid Feels (What vids do you return to again and again because they just make you *feel* things, thrill you, or fill you with joy, or even sadness? Maybe a vid introduced you to a pairing, or a fandom, or perhaps you love it even though you’re not really that into the source? Let’s look at some of our/your favorite vids and think about what makes them tick. Come with vids you want to talk about in mind, or just come to watch and talk about vids that make us feel stuff.)

2018 - Vid Review (Flash all the way back to Saturday night to dissect our favorite (or not) vids from the show.)

2019 - 3-Minute Pimp Vid (Forget telling: Show us your canon with a vid or clip! (3-5 minutes each.))

2019 - Lend Me Your Ears: Vids and Music (Have you ever discovered a song or musician because of a fanvid? Do you have thoughts on what music works and doesn't with fan vids? Let's talk about all the ways in which different types of music can work in vids, and look at some vids that work with music in awesome or surprising ways. Plus maybe there will be a little singing along...)

2019 - AO3 But For Fanart and Fanvids (AO3 has been great for fic, we need safe harbors for art and vids too. Let's talk about it!)

2019 - Pitch a Vid Bunny, Find a Vid Beta (Have an idea for a fanvid you'd love to see happen? Come with concept, song, source ideas, characters--share your bunnies, find some cheerleaders, brainstorm together. For newbie & experienced vidders alike, all welcome!)

2019 - Vid Review (Rehash the Saturday night vid show with a room full of fans.)

[alexazbofficial]

[ARTICLE] How Much Does It Cost To Debut A K-Pop Star? Zanybros CEO Discusses AleXa’s Debut

With the glitz and glam of K-pop leveling up each year, it’s clear that there is major money being invested into that sector of the South Korean entertainment world. Hundreds of young talents undergo formal “debuts” each year, releasing their first formal song or album as a way to greet the world, and there are often wide scale marketing and impressive audio-visual contents associated with K-pop debut eras as a way of gaining immediate traction for an artist or act.

AleXa, also known as Alex Christine, grew up in Oklahoma and eventually began to pursue a career in South Korea after competing and taking the top place in an online K-pop talent competition in 2017. During a brief appearance on 2018’s Produce 48 show, it was revealed that she was signed as a trainee to ZB Label, a subsidiary of Zanybros, one of the most prominent video production teams associated with the K-pop world. Last year, she released the dynamic “Bomb” on Oct. 21, announcing her debut to the K-pop world with a powerful song paired with captivating sci-fi aesthetics in a music video, giving the first glimpse of what AleXa has to offer the world as a soloist.

Kim Junhong, CEO and co-founder of Zanybros, opened up about the costs of launching AleXa’s career, sharing some insight into the immense financial investment that South Korean entertainment companies put into the official K-pop debuts of burgeoning talent.

Tamar Herman: How much was the total cost spent on Alexa's debut?

Kim Junhong: The total cost spent on AleXa's debut was around $300,000 USD.

Herman: How much was the expected cost?

Kim: The expected costs had been around $200,000 USD.

Herman: What was the cost breakdown?

Kim: Overall, this analysis shows that the highest costs when making an album go into the music video production and the cost of promoting the artist and the music. This may vary slightly depending on the genre of the artist's music or the size of the agency, but this breakdown is quite typical in the production of a debut album in the K-pop industry.

The breakdown of AleXa’s debut under ZB Label is as follows:

2% planning (A&R, recording planning, data survey)

10% song creation (composing, lyrics, recording, mixing, mastering, chorus, producing of recording)

10% dance (choreography, choreography training, practice room rental, dancer payment)

40% music video (directing and art team, filming and lighting equipment rentals, special effects such as fire, water, smoke, etc., location rental, props, costume production/rental, hair, make-up, stylist teams, editing, color grading, FX, CG, and sound effects)

3% album (character design, album and logo design, photoshoot, CD production costs)

30% promotions & marketing (domestic PR manager and agencies labor costs, international marketing labor costs, international online advertising costs, promotional merchandise production, promotional video content production, purchase and rental of outfits for music show and press appearances, hair, makeup, and stylist teams for music shows and press appearances)

5% miscellaneous, such as lodging, food, medical care for artist, car rentals, parking, gas, etc.

Herman: Were there any unexpected costs?

Kim: As music videos are one of the most important parts for a K-Pop idol's career, we spent more on the music video than expected, as well as on domestic and global marketing.

Herman: Was there any cost cutting involved?

Kim: While we did end up spending more on the music video than planned, we were able to keep the costs comparatively low thanks to Zanybros being a music video production company, as we could use both in-house facilities and manpower. Thanks to the company and its crew's network we were able to were able to save a lot of costs related to the casting of AleXa for music shows. Overall, we were able to reduce costs at various points of the process by using in-house staff.

Herman: How does this compare, based on your knowledge of the industry, to the average debut of a soloist?

Kim: While the cost spent on a soloist's debut varies greatly depending on the company's scale, I think AleXa's debut cost were fairly high compared to other debuts from small to mid sized companies. Of course, we didn't spend a lot compared to big companies but considering the fact that AleXa is from a very new and small company, the debut costs were quite high. But I think the higher cost also lead to a bigger effect.

Herman: Is there anything else you think our readers would be interested to hear about investing in a K-pop star’s debut?

Kim: Different from, say, manufacturing companies and factories, the entertainment industry doesn't have a strict form by which to measure exactly how much impact the invested money has, as the results are not always and not only profit. For example, if investing into the production of high quality contents to gain the interest of more fans actually reaches its goal and the number of fans rises, then the investments were not just spendings but can be seen as an increase in profits. It's true that it takes time until there is actual profit in the entertainment industry; there is a lot of waiting. But we are investing into this industry in the end to create something that can reach people all around the world – this is the special charm of entertainment. In addition, creating our own intellectual property will allow us to later branch out into other business areas and thereby continue to develop.

South Korea's entertainment industry is expanding and very competitive, but I am convinced that by understanding and trying the needs of global K-Pop fans we can develop marketing strategies using new media with which to win the market and establish a blue ocean market.

© Forbes

[wazafam]

Composers behind the soundtracks of two PlayStation 5 titles have shared some of their creative processes during development. PlayStation has amassed an arsenal of well-produced AAA games since the PS3, along with its suite of incredible music. Games such as Journey, Persona 5 or God of War are just a few that both gamers and music lovers alike have lauded for their soundtracks. Journey even earned a Grammy nomination.

This isn’t the first time that PlayStation has gone into detail about some of its exclusives either. In 2018, after the release of God of War, a nearly two-hour video dedicated to the creation of Kratos’s new adventure was posted to PlayStation's YouTube channel. Similar videos about the creation of The Last of Us and other titles are present on the channel. Developer diaries have become some of the most interesting content from game devs, showing a glimpse into game development’s hectic and fast-changing world.

Related: Sackboy: A Big Adventure Review - Sackboy's Greatest Adventure Yet

PlayStation Blog uploaded two stories about the creation of the soundtrack for Astro’s Playroom and Sackboy: A Big Adventure. In the post about Astro’s Playroom, composer Kenneth CM Young wrote about his work on creating the GPU Jungle theme and how it influenced the rest of the soundtrack for the game. Previously unheard versions of GPU Jungle in the post show where the main melody of the game was created and how varied the approach was to make the jungle come to life.

“When I was writing it I was thinking about the genius graphics coders I know or have worked with and wanted the lyrics to be something that they would recognize as being at least vaguely authentic. But I also knew it couldn’t just be a shopping list of rendering terminology because that’s not something most people can relate to. I’m not sure at what point I realized that the love song idea I had been exploring previously could be made to fit, but I do remember being excited about getting the lyrics to operate on multiple levels because that’s what chamfers the hard techy edges off and makes the song palatable.”

Joe Thwaites, composer for Sackboy: A Big Adventure, wrote about how the team approached jamming in as much music into the game as they did.

“It’s the biggest collection of music we’ve put together for a Sackboy title to date. The mix of composed and licensed music from a wildly eclectic selection of different artists and composers posed a unique challenge. How do we stitch all of the musical genres and styles together to give Sackboy a trademark sound? The answer: Sackboy needed a theme!”

In each of his previous adventures in the Little Big Planet series, Sackboy never had a theme song of his own. That may be the result of the game’s direction focusing on Sackboy as a conduit for the player’s imagination but never actually about him as a character. A Big Adventure changed that by expanding on the world of Sackboy and the other “Sack-people” throughout the game, giving the role of a hero to the stitch-bound character. Thwaites said that the composition of much of the music is from three main melodies. It seems it worked as the game earned a nomination for a BAFTA Game Award for Music.

As for Astro’s Playroom, the soundtrack is filled to the brim with character. Along with the other tracks, the GPU song really makes the game feel like a celebration of all things PlayStation while simultaneously singing praise for the future with PS5. It was a winning combination for sure, as many feel that more of Astro’s Playroom is needed. Unfortunately, it seems that may not happen with the downsizing of Sony’s Japan Studio.

Music in video games has unquestionably come a long way from the time of 8-bit chiptunes, even though many of those songs hold their own today as well. If these two PS5 exclusives are anything to go by for this next generation of games, the next few years should be exciting for music lovers AND video game fans.

Next: How To Unlock Stormzy's Music Video In Watch Dogs: Legion

Astro’s Playroom is exclusive to PS5, and Sackboy: A Big Adventure is available on PS5 and PS4.

Source: PlayStation Blog

PS5 Game Soundtrack Composers Share Behind-the-Scenes Details from https://ift.tt/3qAVurZ

[projectalbum]

Spineless bastards, all. 205. “The Smiths,” 206. “Meat is Murder,” 207. “Strangeways, Here We Come” by The Smiths

The process of listening/writing for this project has meant a conscious change in the way I consume music for 2 years.

Used to be, my ideal method was to load up my varied collection and hit that Shuffle mode. Once I began to listen to albums as a linear sequence of tracks, it meant having to make a deliberate choice, each time, about what I was in the mood for. Even when I was putting together playlists or serving as unofficial DJ, I could no longer just be random: a million minute decisions would flit through my head about sequencing, about what song flowed naturally from another. Now that I’ve listened through my discs [Note: writing is a lot slower than rocking out; my blog posts will be catching up for a while], I hit those twisty arrows again, and… it’s discombobulating.

Right off the bat, my iPhone put songs that I know but that I’m not super-familiar with into my ears: a George Harrison deep-cut here, an obscure Flaming Lips album track there. The best part of the random ordering was the creation of juxtapositions I never would have thought of: a song from Trout Mask Replica into a bit of Blonde on Blonde, and somehow it WORKS? You crazy robot mashup artist, you!

This ping-ponging between eras has its antecedent in the music industry’s time-honored money grab: the Best Of set. It’s still a useful entrée into a band or artist you’re trying for the first time. No need to start at the start and wait for them to find their voice through underwhelming debuts or sophomore slumps. Look at this list! Clearly there has been a consensus, determined through sheer popularity, that these songs are the cream of the crop— collected sonic evidence that THIS ARTIST IS IMPORTANT. All killer, no filler!

The deluxe edition of The Sound Of The Smiths was such a useful primer that for a long time I questioned the need to buy the studio albums at all. For instance, more than half of the tracks on The Queen Is Dead, arguably their most iconic album, show up on that compilation in some form. It was re-released in 2017 with bonus material, so the value feels right. But for now, these are my companion discs to the hatful of Morrissey solo releases I’ve written about previously.

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure that I would have become a fan had I started with their 1984 self-titled debut (#205). It takes a while to kick into gear, playing mostly as what critics of Morrissey’s moaning sad-bastard image accuse his whole output of sounding like. In the first handful of tracks, his singing paints outside the margins of what Johnny Marr, et al, are doing, sometimes settling into the groove, but often sliding along on its own frequency. Track 5, “The Hand That Rocks The Cradle,” which shuffles along for 4-and-a-half-minutes, almost but never quite getting in the neighborhood of a melody, is usually the point when I think about putting something else on. The next group of 4- “This Charming Man,” “Still Ill,” “Hand in Glove,” “What Difference Does It Make”- are classics, and tellingly, they kick off that best-of.

Meat Is Murder (#206) fires on all cylinders, starting with the jangly immediacy of “The Headmaster Ritual,” my favorite Smiths song and probably in my top 5 tracks about cruel English boarding schools (I think the other 4 are all on Pink Floyd’s The Wall?) A sizable fraction of that personal goodwill might be due to Radiohead’s admiring cover, but I crank the original when it comes up in the queue. Buying the album was justified by the non-Best Of deep cuts that follow that opener, “Rusholme Ruffians” and “I Want The One I Can’t Have,” which rock fast and tight, and contain the kind of darkly comic lyrics Morrissey-deniers ignore (choice samples: “Scratch my name in your arm with a fountain pen / That means you really love me” and “If you need self-validation / Just meet me in the alley by the railway station”).

Their final studio album, Strangeways, Here We Come (#207), might be their most elaborate sonic affair, with atmospheric intros on opener “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours" and “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me,” and touches like the brass-bolstered chorus of “I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish” creating a Phil Spector-esque Wall of Sound vibe. But there’s also the bouncy “Girlfriend in a Coma,” with Morrissey’s most memorable meter lingering in the mind for decades and giving comedian Paul F. Tompkins infinite applications.

It really seems like I’ve rewired my brain in an interesting way. Tellingly, since building my Smiths LP collection, I’ve rarely, if ever again, dug out that Best-Of. And while there’s no better shortcut than Shuffle for bouts of indecision, I’ve continued to create listening projects with start and end points and chronological progression— I made it through Bowie’s discography from self-titled to No Plan in a few weeks, and now I’m in the mid-90’s with Elvis Costello. (If even one person is waiting for THAT blog… let that held breath escape.)

[doomedandstoned]

Doomed Discoveries: An Interview with Italian Doomers HAUNTED

~By Mari Knox Knox~

(Doomed & Stoned Italy)

We've been wanting to get to know Italian doomers HAUNTED since they emerged from relative obscurity to release an excellent eponymous debut on Twin Earth Records last fall. Today, we present Mari's interview with the members of Haunted (Mari put together our recent compilation 'Italy Strikes Back!' available here). Coming from various bands and varying backgrounds, and drawing upon a rich heritage of epic Italian doom, Haunted demonstrate a passion for downtuned dirges and the esoteric world of magick. (Billy)

Haunted are a newly formed band. Would you tell us how you met and how the project was born? Introduce yourself to the Doomed & Stoned readers, if you will.

Cristina Chimirri: We only joined a year ago, but were always interconnected before then. A fortuitous series of meetings, a flame and a flare sparked in Frank and Bauso, then spread to me and Orlando. We are all made of that self-same fire. We have found ourselves all wired in a tight knot -- a knot made of heavy sounds and low frequencies, of underwater worlds and psychedelic spirals.

Francesco Bauso: I knew just Frank at the time, as we played together with our previous band Pestem. Ever since we first met we both nourished a passion for a certain kind of sound, both past and present. It wasn’t too hard to see immediately what stylistic direction to take. We wanted a slow and heavy sound and so we contacted Valerio for the drums, already addicted to this kind of sound with his sludge band Torpore. What we wanted strongly from the beginning was a singer in a position to know how to give that magic touch and guide our heavier “sound carpet.” Then Cristina came out of nowhere. She wasn’t overshadowed by the intention of having another guitar, and consequently a fuller sound and dynamic. After some auditions, we found ourselves with Francesco Orlando, an old friend and companion of Frank in their previous grunge band, Hog Truck.. Thus was born Haunted.

Haunted by Haunted

Your debut received great reviews from a panorama of international blogs, magazines, and music sites. Are you satisfied by the feedback obtained? Also, how do you feel about working with Twin Earth Records?

Francesco Bauso: We had put a few clips of our songs online, recorded live in the rehearsal room and we were contacted by Ric Bennett, who proved quite interested in our project. We are extremely pleased by the work done by Ric with his Twin Earth Records, which apart from the release of the album, has managed to usher us into the world of doom by supporting our music very well.

Cristina Chimirri: Twin Earth Records is essentially Mr. Ric Bennett. We are proud to have met a person and a professional of such capabilities. It gave us confidence to work with someone who cares about our music, we couldn’t have wished for better. We are excited and amazed by the rogue waves of positive feedbacks. We got what we wanted: to communicate who we are with the world and share the music we love so dearly with fans of heavy music.

Francesco Orlando: It was really a nice surprise for us, we were not expecting much and we are happy. Working with Twin Earth Records proved to be a good thing, we found in Ric the one who fit the bill -- a reliable, serious, professional person -- and we also found in him a good friend.

Your music has many influences, but you able to keep a distinct personality as a band. Are all the members involved in the writing of your compositions and the birth of new songs?

Cristina Chimirri: A composition is the combination of all our suggestions, a kind of osmotic process. Usually, it finds its roots in the guitar riffs, then the trunk forms from bass and drums, and finally the fronds are the vocal lines. Our songs are the product of insights and improvisation in a semiconscious state, which manifest in structure and dynamics, standing over a free atmosphere of pure air.

Francesco Orlando: Naturally, everyone has his influences that determine the way he plays his instrument. The best thing is that each one of us affects the other in some way, with a riff, a rhythmic pattern, a vocal line, and so forth. In that way, each band member is involved in the composition. We always start from an initial idea and develop it together over and over again. Finally, Cristina enriches everything with her melodies. We always enter the creative process in a state of openness and empathy, and all flows quite naturally from there.

Francesco Bauso: We all come from other bands, listen to different genres, and have different tastes and influences. Having right now clear ideas about what to do, it wasn’t too complicated. We just scramble and merge all of these diverse influences through heavy and monolithic riffs. The creation of our songs takes place in the most obvious and simple way: it always starts from the riffs then begins to form into a song. Each of us plays a vital role in adding a personal ingredient to the soup, so we are all involved 100% in the creative process.

Is this a concept album? What are the lyrics talking about and what do you want communicate through your songs?

Cristina Chimirri: It’s not properly a concept album, but throughout the record there is an epiphany that a spirit haunted us during the creation of the album. The lyrics reflect the idea of a man immersed in Nature, because he is Nature himself -- part of a cosmic order. Lyrics are the synthesis of dichotomies: sleep/wake, life/death, night/day. The lyrics are everything and are one.

Francesco Bauso: We're not going to touch one particular theme, though there is a strong magical component to Haunted. Esotericism and occultism have found a place in the song "Watchtower," for example. We are inspired by everything that can be described as aberrant, claustrophobic, and whatever takes your breath away. All this is filtered from the soul poetry of Cristina, who can be vague, mysterious, and sometimes not so easy to understand. This is my idea of magick. She’s very protective of her lyrics. In fact, at this time we decided not to publish them within the LP.

Francesco Orlando: There is not a main theme in the album, at least not intentionally. Our songs talk about the human condition and our fears, all surrounded by the fairly perceptible veil of occultism. I think that everything is meant to be interpreted very personally by our listeners.

The album was recorded in your hometown of Catania, at the NuevArte Studio, while for the mastering you have chosen a super professional, James Plotkin. How did you get in contact with him and how was it was working with such talent? And, speaking about the artwork by Sadro Di Girolamo, did you give him the initiative to create the concept or develop it collaboratively with the artist?

Frank Tudisco: Our idea is that everyone should take care of what he does best. We chose Carlo Longo because he was and currently is the best sound engineer I've worked with so far. We had the pleasure and good fortune to be assisted by Davide Oliveri of Uzeda as a drum technician, as well. And then as far as the mastering, we rely upon another great expert. We've kept an eye on James Plotkin for quite some time, as he's worked with like-minded bands such as Conan and Electric Wizard, to name a few. At first, we left him free to work as he knew now, then with some more information dictated by our feelings we gave input on the final master. We believe he has done a magnificent job and also we found him incredibly easy to work with and very personable.

Francesco Bauso: As for the artwork, we entrusted Sandro Di Girolamo to create the kind of cover evoked by the sound of the album. The image depicts a coven of witches who rule over a helpless body, intent to perform a ritual. The skull that emerges from nothing lends itself to interpretations of all kinds, as indeed the larger image in general. In addition, a more careful eye can find a small gem that could give pleasure to many fans of the genre.

Cristina, your vocals play a very important role in the band's sound. It's central to all five songs. How did you develop your singing skills? Had you other projects before Haunted?

Cristina Chimirri: Actually, I never took singing lessons. All that I have is the result of years of listening. For year, my voice was confined within the four walls of my room, and then about a decade ago came the invitation to join a cover band, and it all began.

In recent years, the Italian scene has grown exponentially. Are there other bands from Italy that you like? What are your musical tastes, overall?

Francesco Orlando: Uzeda in the first place. Besides being our fellow citizens, Uzeda have been for me a keystone. Through them I realized the importance of carefully crafting one's sound as a band. As a child, I used to listen to Morricone and Pink Floyd records. I think these have affected my musical preferences, leading me to this day to appreciate genres such as drone, ambient, noise, and of course doom.

Frank Tudisco: I really like a lot of stuff and I’m always looking for new music to discover. In recent years especially, several things sparked my curiosity and finally in Italy things seem to have changed for the better. Apart from the already established trio Ufomammut, that deserve due attention, I really dig Calibro 35, Naga, and the debut album by Messa -- who we’ll have the pleasure to share the stage soon.

Are you planning some gigs soon to perform your new songs live?

Frank Tudisco: We are doing our best to bring Haunted's music to the public. We've made some lifestyle choices that will enable us to stay away from home for long periods, so we're trying to do it in the safest possible way. Fortunately, in recent months we have received the support of some promoters and organizers interested in working with us. So to properly answer your question I would say, yes we are!

Cristina Chimirri: One date that can be announced regards our participation at Into The Void Fest in The Netherlands in October.

Finally, one last question: what are your plans for the future? Another album in the works, perhaps?

Cristina Chimirri: Tour and promotion, first. A split album with Witchhelm from Ohio is in the works, then a second full-length album. We don't even know if the future holds enough time for all we have planned! Lastly, we would like to thank you Mari, and all the Doomed & Stoned staff, for the attention and support. This has been one crazy ride and we consider it a privilege.

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[gw-thesis]

ABOUT PUNK

Punk is an assault on prevailing canons of beauty. Punk songs are often out of tune, off key, incompetently played, and poorly recorded. Punk fashion can be shabby (a tattered shirt) or grotesque (a safety pin in the cheek). Punk is a celebration of ugliness and discord. Punk rockers regard these features as good precisely because others regard them as bad. 

The anti‐aesthetic aesthetic of punk has been compared to other movements in the history of art. Most notably, it has been compared to dada (Marcus 1989). Like punk, dada rejected prevailing norms and denounced beauty. Dada photomontage anticipates punk album art, and dada periodicals anticipate punk fanzines. Members of the dada movement also wore outrageous clothing

[https://doi.org/10.1111/phc3.12145]

“Conservative religious critics may have denounced heavy metal, but Christian musicians believed the genre’s theatrics and use of sacred symbols presented an opportunity to engage in a dialogue with popular culture. In the mid‐1980s, despite criticism from religious conservatives such as Jimmy Swaggart, Christian artists sought to appropriate the genre’s cultural and sonic power in a genre that became known as ‘white metal’. Within the genre, bands such as Stryper (Salvation Through Redemption Yielding Peace and Everlasting Righteousness), Barren Cross, and Bloodgood sought to offer a ‘Christian’ view of metal in interviews, lyrics, liner notes, album art, music videos, and live performances. As metal acts like Ozzy Osbourne, AC/DC, and Judas Priest were perceived as promoting suicide in songs, bands such as Empty Tomb and Bloodgood recorded songs counseling depressed individuals to seek salvation and redemption. Other bands recorded songs articulating Christian views on topics such as abortion (Barren Cross’‘Killers of the Unborn’), evolution (One Bad Pig’s song ‘Let’s Be Frank’), cults (Barren Cross’ song ‘Cultic Regimes’), gay rights (Torn Flesh’s ‘Gay Rights?’) and abstinence/premarital sex (Lust Control’s ‘Virginity Disease’). Furthermore, Christian metal bands sought – with varying degrees of success – to cultivate secular audiences, often by playing with secular bands or in secular clubs, in order to proselytize among nonbelievers. In both their message and their goals, white metal represented a cultural complement to the work of Christian political activists who sought to reform American culture throughout the 1980s and 1990s (Luhr, pp. 111–53).”

“As heavy metal music became a global commodity, its symbolic and sonic universe proved accessible to an overseas audience looking for a means to express religious and political dissent...More recently, as sociologists have broadened the definition of religion to include ‘cultural religion’, Robin Sylvan (2002) and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett (1996) have suggested that heavy metal functioned as a traditional religion by providing social support and a value system for fans who were largely alienated from institutionalized religion...In general, heavy metal’s fans were white, male, blue‐collar teenagers who viewed themselves as outsiders and embraced the genre for its ability to address the darkest aspects of contemporary life”

“Nevertheless, journalists and scholars have examined religious traditions that have influenced punk and ways that punks have infused their beliefs into major religious traditions. They have also explored how punk attitudes functioned as a belief system outside of organized religion...Over time, some punks began to redefine the attitude of ‘negation’, creating an ethic of community responsibility and positive action that closely resembled a religious worldview. A few younger bands, especially Washington D.C.’s Minor Threat, espoused a ‘clean living’ ideology that included ‘abstaining from alcohol, tobacco, illegal drugs, and promiscuous sex’ (Haenfler, p. 8). In this case, deviance derived from refusing to engage in what had become normative punk behavior. Straight edge, as it became known, drew its inspiration in part from a 1981 Minor Threat song, ‘Out of Step’, in which Ian MacKaye declared, ‘I Don’t Drink, Don’t Smoke, Don’t Fuck—At least I can fucking think!’ (cited in Haenfler, p. 9)...Straight edge grew as a subgenre (and, as will be shown, a subculture) in the 1980s and 1990s. While often linked to the ‘positive’ punk scene, ‘hardline straight edge’ bands such as Earth Crisis and Vegan Reich (which included a Muslim member, Sean Muttaqi) became known for strident demands for animal rights and environmentalism (Wood 2006, p. 47). These bands’ strict belief system has drawn comparisons to Christian bands who stress abstinence and a pro‐life message.″

“No Christian punk band has reached the public consciousness to the degree of heavy metal’s Stryper, but Christian punks found that the genre’s righteous sense of alienation appealed to their sense of dispossession from mainstream American society...As historian R. Laurence Moore has suggested evangelicals’ sense of alienation from dominant culture has allowed them to approach American life as disfranchised populists (Moore 1986), a tradition that fits within the tradition of apocalyptic prophecy dating to the creation of the Book of Daniel circa 165 B.C (Cohn 1970, pp. 20–23). Strong sentiments of outsiderdom gave rise to a thriving Christian punk subculture starting in the late 1980s and continuing to the present day. One obvious piece of evidence of this subculture was the array of fan magazines – that is, amateur magazines, or zines, created by fans in the ‘do‐it‐yourself’ (DIY) style – that appeared on the Christian youth scene. With titles such as Take a Stand, Baptized Rebellion, Radically Saved, Different Drummer, and Thieves and Prostitutes, the magazines were usually written by and for young believers interested in Christian music.”

“Christian zines embraced ‘otherness’ as a signifier of moral righteousness. Luhr has shown how young believers linked punk and Christianity through their requirements for ‘a radical reorientation of the self through nonconformity’; an editor for Thieves and Prostitutes, a Christian zine, even argued, ‘if Jesus were here today…punks would be just the people he would hang‐out with and make disciples of’ (96–7). By highlighting the similarities between Jesus and contemporary punks, the editor hoped to show how Christianity and punk could revitalize one another.”

“Both [Christianity and Islam] began in tremendous bursts of truth and vitality but seem to have lost something along the way—the energy, perhaps, that comes with knowing the world has never seen such positive force and fury and never would again. Both have suffered from sell‐outs and hypocrites, but also from true believers whose devotion had crippled their creative drive. Both are viewed by outsiders as unified, cohesive communities when nothing can be further from the truth. (7)”

“Punk rock means deliberately bad music, deliberately bad clothing, deliberately bad language and deliberately bad behavior. Means shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to every expectation society will ever have for you but still standing tall about it, loving who you are and somehow forging a shared community with all the other fuck‐ups.”

“As with discussions of metal as a subculture, scholars and journalists interested in the intersection of religion and punk have focused on how the genre functions as a religion through punk’s spectrum of moral codes, rituals for expression, and participatory communal activities...straight edge had no institutional core or formal rules; it merely offered a set of fundamental values, which included ‘positivity/clean living... Although ‘clean living’ most obviously meant abstinence from drug, alcohol, and tobacco use as well as casual sex, ‘positive living’ included such values as ‘questioning and resisting society’s norms, having a positive outlook on life, being an individual, treating people with respect and dignity, and taking action to make the world a better place’ (Haenfler, p. 35).”

[https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2010.00221.x]

[metalindex-hu]

Friends for the End of the World – Interview with Alain Johannes

Friends for the End of the World – Interview with Alain Johannes - http://metalindex.hu/2019/08/10/friends-for-the-end-of-the-world-interview-with-alain-johannes/ -

Chris Cornell’s first solo record, Euphoria Morning turns twenty this year. The complexity of its sound and exceptional atmosphere has inspired me for a long time to get to know its authors’ work, so I can get closer to the one-off unrepeatable magical process of its creation. Although solitude, vulnerability, melancholy appear directly in these songs, indirectly they are more about consciousness, common musical inventions and healing harmonies.

On the occasion of this anniversary I was talking to Mr. Alain Johannes. He is a late friend of Chris Cornell and also the co-composer, producer, and sound engineer of the album. The Chilean-American multi-instrumentalist musician co-founded multiple brilliant bands: What Is This (with Hillel Slovak, Flea), Walk The Moon, and Eleven (with his common law wife, Natasha Shneider and drummer, Jack Irons). He worked with Queens of the Stone Age, Them Crooked Vultures, Arctic Monkeys, and supported musicians like Mark Lanegan, PJ Harvey and even Chris Cornell. 

Mr. Johannes answered my questions in writing. This interview is to introduce Euphoria Morning to more people in Hungary: a lesser-known, unique record made by three friends, three artists who supported each other.

Alain Johannes (Photo: Stephen Linsley)

By the time Euphoria Morning came out in September 1999, a lot of things changed in the world of rock music: most ‘grunge’ bands broke up or withdrawn temporarily. At the same time, as the digital age came in the front, new bands appeared and responded to this new lifestyle (for example nu metal, industrial rock…). During these times Cornell went back to some old songs of his, which he could not work on as a member of Soundgarden. On one hand, because the group did not exist yet, and also because the ex-members were not inspired by these tracks. Even so, he found it important to work on these and publish them as new material. 

What was the idea behind this? How long had he been planning on making his first solo album?

I’m not sure how long he’d been planning it or if it was something that rose up in that time, but he stayed with us at our studio home 11AD to decompress and chill after Soundgarden disbanded and in that time we would play around with some ideas he had. A bit later it became clear that’s where it was headed.

When people look at Cornell’s solo records, generally the first thing to do is to compare it with Soundgarden’s output or standard they were together. These comparisons may seem natural but should not be dominant. We tend to ignore something important in Chris’s versatile activity (being a leader of two bands, making solo records, movie soundtracks, collaborating with many musicians etc.): his experimental attitude. This one is crucial if we are thinking of Euphoria Morning. What fueled this experimental attitude: rejuvenation or finding new ways in music?

I think in terms of Euphoria Morning a lot had to do with the chemistry between Chris, Natasha and I as we would explore and play around with ideas. He had a few songs in the works which Natasha helped him arrange harmonically and her and I wrote a few musical beds and riffs for him to write melodies and lyrics to. We’d spend a lot of time just listening to awesome music, watching movies, having conversations about life, creativity, art…

After touring together with Soundgarden and a Christmas song (Ave Maria) the band Eleven begun helping him in creating his first solo record. How did the idea present itself? Who was the initiator that suggested working together? Which song or notes were the first ones that Chris Cornell showed you both?

He originally stayed with us after Soundgarden disbanded not long after the European tour when Eleven was the support band. We just chilled and hung out and we worked on Sunshower and Ave Maria on our small recording setup. He invited Al Cafaro the president of A&M at the time to come to visit and we played him some of Eleven’s new music which lead to a record deal. We convinced Al Cafaro to give us the entire recording budget to buy our own full-on recording studio. So 11AD was born. He came down to stay for a longer period to prepare some demos and that was when we worked on the songs for the album like I mentioned earlier. At the time Daniel Lanois was going to produce the album and at the last minute he cancelled his projects and when Chris asked: “What am I gonna do?” Natasha said “Fuck it! Let’s do it ourselves! We have everything we need…”. He smiled and said “OK!”. He sent for a bunch of his guitars and amps and we had so many instruments and awesome mics, pres and compressors and frankly some of the most amazing and varied acoustic environments in that old 20’s house…we just dug in and worked on the album for several months almost entirely in secret [laughs]. All the instruments were supporting each other but with a clear voice, a personality of its own. Hard to put into words but one can hear it on Euphoria Morning.

So to answer who was the initiator: it was Chris and Natasha combined. He trusted us as collaborators for the writing and arranging and then she convinced him to trust us as co-producers, engineers and mixers.

Euphoria Morning is a unique record. Musicians working on this album were completely in sync  – Chris Cornell stated this in numerous interviews. How do you remember the seven-month-long work process of the album?

The core was Chris, Natasha and I and we’d invite our rad drummer friends, Freese, Cameron, Rieflin, Indrizzo, Upchurch, depending on the song(s). Natasha played all the keys, Chris and I the guitars. On bass Markmann, Falkner and myself. We worked at a chill pace. A lot of sonic exploration for a day or two, take a couple of days off just run around do fun stuff. He’d go back to Seattle for a week or two. We were in no hurry and there was no pressure from the outside. Just our own internal high demand on a achieving a timeless album.

In another interview Cornell said it seemed that making a solo record was easier because you do not have to go over the songs together with the band. On the other hand, it is harder, because you have to make decisions alone. The author is responsible for his art alone. But this may not be the situation with Euphoria Morning, because it is not a solo record in a classical meaning. Also, as its instrumentation shows, that the band Eleven, beyond the members’ main instruments, were playing many other instruments (theremin, mandolin, clarinet, tabla etc), wrote songs (Follow My Way, Pillow of Your Bones, Disappearing One) and were also producers of the album. How did the trio share these roles?

Add Mission to that list…Chris played a lot of guitars and so did I as well as horns and “exotic” instruments. We had a few hundred instruments at 11AD from all over the world. Loving the sound of textures I started collecting a long time ago and since I’ve played guitar since I was roughly 4 years old I became interested in other instruments. Not to any kind of technically high level but enough to get a good sound and to know how to play it to create an atmosphere in an arrangement. Natasha had the most amazing musical mind. Perfect pitch, which she hated having [laughs], and a deep intuitive genius-level understanding of harmony, of counterpoint, how to create tension and release against a melody. The beauty of that. So with my kinda fearless jump head first improvisational approach and Chris’ genius as a songwriter and lyricist and as an amazing composer, not to mention his creativity on the guitar well…it was a really special combination that flowed so well. The three of us together. Just the most amazing, fun experience.

In a Rolling Stone-interview, Cornell was talking about a personal and professional crisis during the last years of the ’90s, which – he reckons – led him to make several bad decisions. According to him, one of those was the ’Euphoria Morning’ title which had been changed to ’Euphoria Mourning’ when the record was reissued in 2015. Though the first title had an obviously positive feeling, the new-old one included some complexity which Cornell’s lyrics usually did: some kind of antagonism. What is the meaning of the title: mourning for something good which is over, or a “euphoric mourning” that is a relief you feel when you realize the cause of your suffering?

I can’t answer that because I wasn’t aware at the time that he had a different title in mind. I love “Euphoria Mourning” obviously from a poetic standpoint. For me Euphoria Mourning opens up a meditation on grief or deep missing. Either happiness now is gone and never to return or the illusion of perfect happiness perhaps. Even grieving the loss of something that never was or could be. As in the artist idealism that creates that tension between what is and what one wishes.

Taking a closer look at Euphoria Morning’s lyrics it shows that they focus on a small and inward space: they are mostly about ’me’, ’me and you (we)’. In this respect, ’Wave Goodbye’ an exception. Chris Cornell wrote it as an homage for his old friend, Jeff Buckley who passed away in 1997. Did you know him?

We had the pleasure of meeting Jeff when we played a show together opening for Soundgarden. We hung out a few times one memorable one was at the SNL taping and afterwards. Jeff and I shared a love of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and we had some fun vocal jams and exciting discussions about Nusrat. He was so funny and smart. He was a fan of my first band What Is This as well. What an incredible badass and genius.

Beyond this song (‘Wave goodbye’) did Buckley influence either the creation process of Euphoria Morning or Cornell’s late art? For example on his second solo album, ‘Carry on’?

I think yes for sure Jeff had a profound effect on Chris as well I’m sure countless many. I’ve been changed forever upon encountering the artists that opened me up and by inspiration or example guide me on my own path.

Songs like ’Someone to Die for’, ’Heart of honey’ or ’Ave Maria’ were not published on this record.

Someone to Die for Natasha and I wrote. We had recorded a demo to turn in to our publisher and my voice was sounding shitty. Chris was staying with us and I came out of the studio and asked hey guys someone want to sing this I can’t right now. Chris said, “I’ll sing it”. When Al Cafaro heard the demo he loved it and wanted it for the Bond theme. It was just a demo but everyone loved that recording. It was almost used then there was an issue between the Broccoli family and A&M and it fell through. Years later Rick Rubin produced a version for Spiderman 2 I believe with Jimmy Gnecco singing and Brian May guesting on it. Heart Of Honey we wrote for a movie and at the end that didn’t go in. It’s made it’s way to youtube though [laughs]. It’s a great vocal from Chris. And Ave Maria was recorded early on before our fancy studio gear arrived at the request of A&M for A Very Special Christmas compilation. We didn’t have fancy synths but the Natasha arrangement and her voice weaving with Chris’ is amazing. She also composed an intro and an outro! [Laughs] Natasha…

Were you planning on making another album, songs together?

We worked together on The Keeper after many years. We also toured together in 2011. Yes, I believe we would have worked on music again. We often sent each other music and kept in touch.

Alain Johannes (Photo: Stephen Linsley)

Euphoria Morning’s first single was ’Can’t Change Me’. What is your opinion: did creating the album changed Chris Cornell? Did it help him to get through that hard period in his life? Was he satisfied with the album? And you?

I think it helped the three of us evolve and grow. At the time of the recording and the tour after I never noticed it being a hard period for him. He was in a great mood, funny and full of energy. And I believe he was very proud of what we had accomplished as were we.

There aren’t two Chris Cornell-solo records that sound the same: his ideas, talent and mood for experimentation are recognizable on each of them. Still, for me Euphoria Morning is the most important, I find it the most complete. When I got familiar with Howling Book by Eleven, I realized what I missed in each solo album of Cornell: your and Natasha’s work. I mentioned this album because I reckon I see parallelism between this and Euphoria Morning. Were there any conscious links made between these records?

Thank you. Well, we are definitely present in Euphoria Morning as part of the creative fountain. Our connection with Chris and Soundgarden, they were hugely important and inspiring to Natasha and I. One changes when moved so deeply. We met them in ’91 and began our friendship and collaborations. So it’s folded in. When we recorded Howling Book, Jack Irons had come back after being in Pearl Jam a few years and we set out to create the album at 11AD much the same energy existed in those Euphoria Morning sessions. I’ve known Jack since we were kids so it was 3 closest friends creating without egos and for the good of the music.

There is also a musical and „constitutional” similarity that is stated by many artists about Cornell and you. They respect you both not only for your creativity, versatility and friendly personality but also because they can turn to you with confidence as a source of inspiration and motivation. What do you think what did Eleven add to Euphoria Morning, and what inspiration did you draw from it?

I think simply being there together and creating the album serving a higher purpose. It’s different than an Eleven album yet the process was similar. It’s all for the song. Create the world where it lives. Intuit what’s right and good to communicate that fully. It’s very lucky when you have not one, not two but three artists resonating so empathically towards a purpose. In terms of inspiration, it just felt amazing to have achieved such work and have fun doing it. And we learned and grew a lot from the experience of creating with Chris.

On his Higher Truth tour Chris used a simple stage-setting: fixtures emitted inness. The guitars and some things made the stage more homelike: a red phone and a vinyl, which Cornell played for the piano track of ’When I’m Down’. Both of these things were related to people who influenced Euphoria Morning: Jeff Buckley and Natasha Shneider. Natasha’s huge influence could have been the classical-music-like solutions in certain songs (like Follow My Way, Disappearing One) and strong overtones from Eastern-European musical literacy. Is this assumption somewhat correct?

Yes, Natasha definitely had that incredible natural sense of harmony. But both of those started as riffs or chord changes that I came up with and then, of course, we developed together. Pillow Of Your Bones one would think would be more from me originally but that was Natasha. We became blurred into each other’s creative stamp from such a long connection and partnership.

As I wrote above she had perfect pitch. It is often also involving a photographic memory so that the piece of music heard can be repeated or notated by the person who has perfect pitch afterwards. Natasha’s was very rare and strong. She would hear something and immediately imagine and work towards an elegance, a depth.

I read in an interview with you that your mother originates from Transylvania. You may know that the word ’eleven’ appears in Hungarian language as well but with completely other meaning: ’vital’, ’lively’, ’animated’, ’alive’, ’living’, ’cheerful’, ’vivid’, ’peart’, ’beany’, ’brisk’, ’crisp’, ’perky’, ’quick’, ’bobbish’, ’mettled’, ’unfaded’. Knowing your life-work, together with the huge personal loss, we wish you keep your ’eleven’ and versatile activity, and we hope you can visit us once in Hungary.

Haha, thank you so much that’s awesome. It was my grandmother, Zita actually. She was born in Kolozsvár/Cluj.

*

At the end of our correspondence, Alain Johannes wrote about what he is doing these days. After finishing the music for the videogame Ghost Recon Wildlands (2017), he was invited to participate in creating the music for its next part as well. So, his most recent compositions can be heard in Ghost Recon Breakpoint in October. His new solo album will be released late 2019 or early 2020. Although we have to wait for an Alan Johannes concert in Budapest, reckless ones can see and hear him in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom this autumn.

Since 1999 Alain Johannes talked on numerous platforms about the making process of Euphoria Morning in English and Spanish as well: for example in the documentary about his artwork (Unfinished Plan: The Path of Alain Johannes directed by Rodolfo Gárate) and also in Abbey Travis’s podcast (listen to it here).

His shows often contain a song written together with Chris Cornell and Natasha Shneider: Disappearing One. He performed this track with Nikka Costa on the Chris Cornell Tribute Concert in January.

I’m your disappearing one Vanish when the curtain’s drawn But I will come again, and you will let me in And you’ll see I never disappear for long

[nacsygen]

i suppose i’ve lost most of my kpop/svtn followers since my account getting deleted after five years for no good goddamn reason and no response when i put in support tickets (thanks, tungles).  “suppose”, hell, i know - went from over 2,000 followers to like, 19, and most of them my previous mutuals i intentionally reached out to.  so that kinda sucks. HOWEVER! it also means i can be freely unpops with my opinions without dreading what might happen every time i see i have a message in my inbox, so i’m not *completely* mad about it. (and at that i probably still only have like three mutuals who are svtn fans, so.)

the following is just gonna be me discoursing about svtn’s last few comebacks and how they lost me. (unexpected makeout dreams with dk not included bc, like, have you *seen* that man??) so like, three of my followers might be interested.

what drew me in the first place to svtn was their authenticity.  like this was a large group of incredibly talented, creative individuals, hungry kids desperate to sing themselves to the world, and they were justifiably immediately, almost shockingly successful based on their own merits and voice, despite being managed by a legendarily terrible company - a company that prospered under their initial success.

they were self-producing.  they had entirely their own sound. jihoon is an absolute prodigy of a song-writer and producer, with the help of kye bum zu (who also helped launch the career of fellow prodigy z*co, which is a topic for another time).  they had their own sound, their own identity, and their creations came directly from the heart.  

like yeah, adore u, mansae, pretty u, aju nice - they were all innocent boyish love songs, but at the same time, they felt like they were coming from a very genuine place - the same genuine prodigy young songwriter that also brought us Simple and 20.  while being in basically the same genre as a lot of american hits of the time (and just true pop music of the last 20 years in general), they still had their own particular style, their own particular sound that you could be like, yeah, this is absolutely a svtn song.  the album tracks, unit songs and mixed unit songs were amazing, exploring various members’ creativity as songwriters and their ranges as performers. (i’m still not mad at most of the album tracks, though they become increasingly unremarkable over time.) i just think that it’s a combination of being strapped for time to make really compelling music given their absolutely punishing schedule, and also studio pressure to make “all 13 of us are your boyfriend” style songs a la the most manipulative boy band style of oneD in, like, 2011, culminating in Oh My.  which at least was fun to listen to and catchy, but the lyrics were absolutely creatively bankrupt. which is a goddamn shame, because so many of svtn’s members have *proven* themselves to be amazing songwriters, from jihoon on Simple and most of svtn’s sincere discography (he holds like 70 copyrights at this point?), to the absolute masterpiece courtesy of minghao and jun that is My I, to at least five other great writers in the group, highlighting wonwoo and dino and seungcheol, who are capable of writing and performing just absolutely arresting lyrics. it just feels like the company’s stepped in and been like “no more creative advancement or remotely avant-garde experiments, we only do shit-that-sells boyband songs now” and it feels like a giant step backward for a group that was always about growing forward and growing up together before.

and while there’s controversy about whether svtn ripped off the chainsmokers’ “closer” for “don’t wanna cry” the fact is that was just the sound of the year, and both groups were cynically taking advantage of it - the chainsmokers probably more (and god, i hate them, that song is so goddamn focus-grouped-relatable written-by-committee cynically corporate, i HATE it). but to my mind, don’t wanna cry at least does have some basic in reality for the people who wrote it and performed it, and while it’s different from their first year and a half or so of music, i can’t be mad at it.  it’s complex, it utilizes each person in it’s varying sections to best suit their ranges and vocal strengths, there’s depths to it, despite moving away from svtn’s “boyish young love” style, and it’s catchy.  it’s a damn good pop song.

that could be argued to be the first step away of svtn getting more corporately-influenced.  but i still like it, after some time.  i don’t think it was “the beginning of the end” just because it was different.  it still was written with an ear to use every member’s individual voice and vocal strengths to their strengths, as an individual instrument.

i could go over more in-depth about thanks (which i do like) and the overall direction since then but like.  this latest song...it’s not good.  it’s not good, it’s not compelling, it’s not interesting, it’s not catchy, and least of all, it’s not svtn.  svtn was always a band that highlighted the sheer range they had, between wonwoo and seungcheol’s and mingyu’s lowest, roughest bass and seungkwan and dk and jihoon’s highest and most pure notes. there’s not a single performer in seventeen that can’t sing, and yet autotune was used for mingyu and seungcheol (both of whom are lovely singers within their low range, which this was) apparently as a style choice?? within the first 20 seconds.  which is, to me, immediately repellent. and then vernon, objectively the worst singer in the band (i know he likes to sing and i’m not mad at him but fight me on this) continues on with exactly the same droning note, not autotuned. then it cuts to dino and josh and like two other people all droning on the same note extremely uninteresting lyrics, all on the same note like five notes above the intro.  one stops singing and the other starts singing on the same note. it’s very not individual (as svtn was SPOSED TO BE) and very monotonous. i will say that a more direct reading of the lyrics while listening (and again, this song is painfully not catchy) seems to be pretty directly about losing one’s virginity. which i guess could be a step forward. but yes, while i know sex is about repeating patterns until it’s done, this is STILL too monotonous for me, and not sexy.

[sinceileftyoublog]

Yamantaka // Sonic Titan Interview: Celebrating What’s Gone

BY JORDAN MAINZER

From a narrative perspective, it can be hard to separate any of Yamantaka // Sonic Titan’s albums from one another. The three records from the Canadian “Noh-wave” collective all take place in the world of Pureland, derived from a strand of Chinese Buddhism by name but resembling the Iroquois story of North America by theme. Their latest album Dirt (out now via Paper Bag Records) is the one that expands on the narrative the most; it has more words on it than on their first two, the amazing Y // ST and UZU. But as founding member/leader/drummer Alaska B inferred in our Skype conversation last month, the albums--especially Dirt--can stand on their own. Musically, it’s the most expansive and hardest album yet for the band. That all band members--including new members--now live in Toronto must have led to an instrumental kinship. With singer/theatre artist Ange Loft, keyboardist Brendan Swanson, singer Joanna Delos Reyes, guitarist Hiroki Tanaka, and bassist Brandon Lim, the band is able to create straight-up noise (“Hungry Ghost”) and power pop (“Out Of Time”) alike, while continuing their embrace of indigenous culture and instruments on songs like “Beast”. Dirt is the band’s most varied and perhaps cohesive effort yet.

In our conversation about the album, the band’s future, and the world today, Alaksa B touched on fan interpretations of the band, how the live show celebrates something that’s already over, and why “nihilism to an extent,” as she says, is the best way to make a better future for longer. Read the conversation, edited for length and clarity, below.

Since I Left You: Are all of your albums going to be continuing the narrative inside Pureland?

Alaska B: I would say yes.

SILY: How do you know when that ends?

AB: When it ends, that’s when the band would end.

SILY: Really?

AB: I don’t know. I don’t see us working in any other way. We’ve done projects like Severed [a video game the band scored], where we scored another world. But as far as us, we’ll always be kind of exploring the same universe.

SILY: To what extent are your fans entrenched in the narrative ideas of the albums, and to what extent do you think they just like the instrumentation or the music? Are the two able to be separated?

AB: I think that every decision we make musically keeps those concerns in mind. Once it’s been created, it’s not my position to worry about how other people take it afterwards. If you like the song, that works for me. If you want to get more into the narrative, then by all means, get more into the lyrics. But there’s not a right way to consume it. I’m never thinking, “Oh, I’m so misunderstood. They don’t see the deeper meaning.” The truth is that’s how people experience all things. People are always looking for themselves. It doesn’t always reflect the creator. People will tell me, “This thing you wrote helped me through a hard time.” Yeah, maybe it helped me through a hard time too, but they’re not the same experience. The way they identify with the songs are not how I intended. So I’m always interested to hear what songs people like. They usually end up being the ones I don’t like.

SILY: Is that true of the new record?

AB: I don’t know yet. It hasn’t been out that long.

SILY: Do you have any favorite or least favorite songs on it?

AB: I don’t know, I feel like it changes all the time. It comes down to what I’m prioritizing at the time. The eclectic nature of our album creation--trying to be as broad as possible--there are going to be parts that work better for me narratively but maybe not as well musically, and vice versa.

SILY: Has your approach to playing these songs live changed with the new record?

AB: We’ve been playing some of these songs for a while. We’re a slightly different lineup with two guitars. This album is much more focused on songwriting. We’re engaged and busy at all times. There are less drawn out, open areas. The biggest thing performing these songs live, something Ange said to me, is it’s the most brash, fun version of us. We’re not doing as many stage theatrics. In a weird way, we’re throwing a party for something that’s already lost. The album is supposed to relate to not necessarily loss--UZU was about loss--but kind of about life in its reflection of death. The more upbeat elements of the record are about celebrating something that’s already done.

When we talk about the current sociopolitical climate and climate change, these are the questions we grapple with. How do we stop or mitigate or accept--the part we have a bigger problem with--the extinction of many of our species, the destabilization of biospheres, etc.? These are things that are too late to stop. The same way we talk about sociopolitical issues facing the black community or aboriginal communities, right now, it’s this moment that’s happening. But things have been messed up for so long, these are the way things are now. Until you address that something is broken, you can’t even begin to fix it. With climate change, things like pollution and plastics you don’t want to think about and deal with. But that’s a barrier to acceptance.

So, live, in a concert setting, when you’re trying to pull people into this communal interaction, our intent is less about live narrative spookiness or wackiness but this much more human, last-ditch party before the end of everything. We know everything is kind of screwy. So playing music together is the way we come to terms with it. When we play heavy metal music live, there’s this element of evil people are trying to get at. But right now, the real evils of the world are so much darker than anything that metal addresses in general. I’m not so worried about death and gloom as I am real practical fears of the future.

SILY: How confident are you that, overall, the best is behind us?

AB: I don’t think it was ever “best.” Things are in decline--there’s a better and a worse. What we idealize as the best is probably done. And maybe something better will come along. But that’s only through shifting our way of thinking. I don’t like to romanticize another time period. Whatever damage we’re doing to the environment has been going on for hundreds of years now. We’ve always kind of been like this. We have to come to terms with things we’re trying to screw up.

SILY: What gives you optimism?

AB: Optimism for me doesn’t come from the hope things are gonna work out. Death is the norm. All of the things we enjoy about life are this fleeting moment. Optimism for me is coming to terms with the inevitability of the end of all things. That sounds like an isolating and scary thing to most people--which it is, to me, as well--but dealing with your eventual death and the pointlessness of it all, there’s a peace you can come to. It’s not necessarily happy, but it’s better than any other emotion.

SILY: What was the inspiration behind the album title?

AB: There was always a plan for our third record to be really ugly and heavy. We were always addressing issues of sovereignty and colonization and what exactly it means to live in a politicized state--not a nation-state, but the North American continent. We decided we wanted to develop the narrative more on this one. So we imagined a sci-fi anime on an Iroquois myth. It’s the story of the creation of Turtle Island. There’s a sky woman who comes down from a sky world who has to retrieve dirt from the bottom of the ocean and spread it on a turtle’s back to create a continent. A group of marine animals swims to the bottom, and in the process, one of them dies, but they retrieve the soil. It was kind of supposed to be about the sacrifice we make to create better outcomes, but also how that drive can lead to worse outcomes. It’s kind of like how inaction is the only safe form of action.

The theme behind the dirt itself is about humanity’s obsession with soil--the control, extraction, and use of it--and in this story, where hydroponics is the only source of food in these dome cities and there are no continents, what does that mean when they redevelop the technology to explore their own ruins? They open up to the possibility of retaining humanity’s glory. But it’s meant to be critical that there’s an easy solution that will go and fix things for us.

Dirt by Yamantaka//Sonic Titan

[swimintothesound]

Artistic Integrity and Commercial Success | Part 4

This is the fourth, final, and most speculative in a series of four posts on the combative relationship between artistic pursuits and commercial achievements. View the first post here, the second one here, and the third here.

Features Aplenty, Featuring Apathy

Unlike Drake, Travis Scott has yet to release an album in 2017. As a result, the final entry in this four-part series will now shift from a post-mortem into (admittedly) premature evaluation. While Drake isn’t quite out of the woods yet, he’s it at least trending upwards artistically. Meanwhile, Travis Scott has been trending upwards in terms of sales and popularity, but I feel like I’ve seen the inverse in his music. And because he hasn’t released a full project yet, all we can do at this point is look at some of the features and individual songs that Travis has worked on since the release of Birds.

Most recently, Trav dropped a trio of loosies on his SoundCloud: “Butterfly Effect,” “A Man,” and “Green & Purple.” Truth be told, none of these songs did anything for me, and for the most part, they feel just as devoid of life as Birds. Reading shitty comments online is what originally prompted me to think about this intersection between artistic purity and commercial success, but this recent drop of songs really inspired me to start getting my thoughts out on paper. If these songs are indicative of what Trav has in store for us on his 2017 album, I’m genuinely concerned.

But the bigger topic here is “what comes first: art or success?” I think most people would say the first one, and then those creations go on to achieve success (however you define that). However, once you reach a certain point, I think you can start creating from the other end of the spectrum and just let the money be your guiding light for creation. That’s the battle.

But maybe this is all just Travis Scott Fatigue at this point, so let’s look beyond the man’s own tracks at some of his 2017 features. If there’s anything that sparks inspiration, it’s working with other artists and jumping into some more varied sounds, right?

Even without an album drop, 2017 has been a banner year for Trav. With guest appearances on everything from Major Lazer to SZA and everything in between, it seems you can’t officially be a part of the music scene in 2017 without a feature from Travis Scott. One of the weirder tracks is the collaborative effort “Go Off” from the Fate of the Furious Soundtrack. Sure, it’s generic as fuck, but it’s hard to judge anything based off a watered-down lowest-common-denominator platform like Fast and Furious.

Even still, the most offensive Travis Scott feature (and quite frankly my tipping point) was his appearance on Migo’s CULTURE at the beginning of the year… but before breaking that down, I’d like to give some additional context on ad libs.

Get Hyped or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ad Lib

For those unfamiliar, ad libs in hip-hop are distinct phrases that rappers interject within individual lines of their own lyrics. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an ad lib-loving hypebeast (you have to be to start a Desiigner subreddit.) It’s nearly a facet of my personality at this point. Ad libs just get me fired up, and I love how much rappers have been utilizing them lately.

Adlibs are typically used to emphasize a point, excite the audience, or flex after a particularly impressive rhyme. Some artists like Migos use adlibs after nearly every line just to add context and extra texture to their bars. Meanwhile, other people like Chance The Rapper have developed their own repertoire of noises that act as a calling card.

As explained by Pigeons and Planes, ad libs at worst represent “a space-filler, a moment that allows for a word to be repeated, emphasized, or followed by an "uh-huh" or some other bland affirmation.” and at best act as “an opportunity for unique self-expression, a brief moment outside of the lyrics themselves to show character, expand the meaning of the song.”

One of my favorite examples of ad-libbing is Young Thug’s “Halftime” in which he drops a lung-collapsing 12-second “SKRR” forty-four seconds into the track. The prolonged cry lies relatively quietly beneath Thug’s yelped rhymes and just above Kip Hilson’s booming bass-drenched beat. After that, Thug goes on to discuss his eccentric fashion choices and throws off his own rhyming couplet by dragging out the syllables of “recycles” to which he laughs. He’s keeping the listener on their toes. Immediately after that subversion, Thug “winds up” into an increasingly-speedier set of overtly-sexual bars, each of which is punctuated by a series of escalating ad-libbed interjections which Thug himself then interrupts with a reserved “no” right at the rhyme’s climax. The fact that this is all happening in between rapped lines makes the track a treat to listen to and rewards repeated listens. Thug is literally his own backing track. On top of that, this barrage of ad-libs is surrounded by hilariously over-the-top lyrics like “suck my dick like Beavis no, Butthead” and “I just want that neck like a giraffe.” It’s an intoxicating display and one that all happens within the space of a minute on a single verse. Blink and you’ll miss it, but “Halftime” is an absolutely flawless example of ad libs flirting with (and improving) a song as a whole.

I’ve always been a fan of Travis Scott’s adlibs. From the hype-building Straight Up! and It’s Lit! to his trademarked La Flame! He’s made a career (and a name for himself) out of expertly-deployed soundbites. So imagine my surprise when I found myself listening to Migo’s world-conquering CULTURE at the beginning of the year and made it all the way to the album’s penultimate track “Kelly Price” which featured Travis Scott.

I entered hesitantly, given how fresh in my mind Birds was, but I remained optimistic since Travis and Quavo have had a near-impeccable track record up until that point. The song starts with a haunting beat and a hook that finds Quavo running down the typical Migos list of favorite things: Cars. Money. Drugs. Women. Pretty standard stuff so far. Then Travis Scott comes in.

He lazily floats the track by sputtering two words: Flash. Dash. and then drops a “straight-up” adlib. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I shouldn’t be as offended at this as I am, but I was amazed that this dude just hopped on a track, said two words that barely rhymed and then dropped an ad lib as if he’d just spit some world-shattering bars. It called to mind “Biebs in the Trap” off of Birds in the Trap where Trav opened a verse in an almost identical, but even lazier way. The verse in question reads more like an unrelated grocery list of things that kind of rhyme but just sound cool when thrown together over a particular beat.

As mentioned before, I don’t go to Travis Scott for lyrical bars. So it feels weird to criticize him for verses like the two above… but at the same time, they’re just so far below his already-low bar for lyricism. I’m mainly surprised that he seems to be regressing towards such a simplistic style. One in which he relies almost entirely on production and v i b e s to carry him and his lack of personality or technical skill.

It’s also disappointing because I loved Days Before Rodeo and Rodeo so indescribably, yet I haven’t fully enjoyed anything that he’s put out since 2015. This all ties back to the first post in the series, because right now I’m just bitching that I don’t like the direction an artist is taking.

I Guess That’s It

I guess if there's any theme to this series, it's been about expectations, disappointments, and hope. I was expecting a lot from both Drake and Trav in 2016, and they both let me down in different ways. Since then Drake has really bounced back in my eyes, but Travis seems to be continuing down a different path. I know I started this series complaining about people online wanting to dictate artists art… so I won't do that. All I can do is hope. Hope that he has something grander and more experimental in stock for us.

I believe that Travis has it in him to create more albums on par (and better than) Rodeo, but he could also continue down the “easier” path that’s already laid before him. And I realize it’s a shitty thing for a fan to just say “their old stuff was better.” You can’t expect an artist to just keep remaking an album forever. To do so is to wish stasis and artistic malaise on someone that you’re supposedly a fan of. It's also hard when Rodeo and DBR are tied to such positive memories in my past, and Birds has no comparable equivalent, but it’s unfair of me to judge an album based on something external to itself.

Earlier this year I actually saw Travis Scott live at Portland’s Moda Center. It was a pretty great show (even if I wasn’t able to snag floor tickets) and oddly relevant to this topic since Drake made a surprise appearance at that show. It was a wild show, but the difference between Travis’ old and new material was night and day. It’s odd because he wanted Birds to get “straight to the meat.” The album was created with stadium tours in mind. According to Scott he quickly learned what songs from Rodeo did and didn’t work live, and that influenced his creative process while making Birds. Maybe I just like the more “intimate” feeling of Rodeo as opposed to the “broad” nature of Birds in the Trap.

Never Taking a Break

Even more recently, Travis Scott did an interview with SHOWstudio. HotNewHipHop had an interesting take on the interview, positing that he would “take a break” from music after the release of his upcoming third album. Travis Scott personally replied to the speculation on Twitter claiming “Nigga I'm never taking a break.”

Reading this exchange filled me with different emotions. First, honestly, a pang of sadness. Despite the recent perceived decline in quality, I would have been extraordinarily sad to see Travis take a break from touring or new material. At the same time, the more I thought about it, maybe a break is just what he needs. I mean, he’s released an album every year since 2013 with one (technically) scheduled for 2017 as well. On top of persistent touring and features, that output has to take a toll on even the most prolific of artists.

Working so tirelessly can be draining. I’ll be a fan of Travis till the end. The man can put on a hell of a show, and he’s released two albums that are absolute classics in my eyes. A true fan is along for the ride no matter what. The albums may vary in wildly in quality, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. Even Weezer still has fans, and in 2016 they released their best album since Pinkerton. I’m not saying Travis is scheduled for a 20-year stretch of disappointment, but I’m just hoping he carves out a niche that inspires.

And when I say “inspires” I’m talking about both himself and fans.

I could just be “aging out” of his music, but I hope not because even through the darkness and malaise of Birds he still dropped “Pick up the Phone” and “Goosebumps” which were some of my favorite tracks of the past year and ones I still spin on a near-daily basis.

I’m a fan. I want the best for Travis. Both commercially and artistically. The hard part is maintaining both without losing yourself.

[colour-is-sound-blog]

Colour Is Sound interview Steve Mallinder, co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire

It was both a pleasure and an education to grab an hour of Steve Mallinder’s time over a cuppa to find out what the co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire, now with the brilliant Wrangler, was up to.

Since forming Cabaret Voltaire in 1973 Mal has remained at the forefront of experimental electronic music whilst working across film, theatre and art to create new ways of hearing and contextualising sound. To see and feel things differently, and as required - to see things for what they really are.

One of his many projects is The Unfilmables, which brings together Wrangler, Francesca and Mica Levi. An extraordinarily ambitious imagined 40-minute abstraction of a film that was never made, in which the soundtrack and 'film' will be mixed live throughout the performance. The first of three shows is at the Brighton Dome Theatre on the 14th of May and will only be Wranglers second performance in 2017.  

CIS: What got you into electronic music? Was it because it was all rock and no roll?

SM: That was the reason we did it. We formed in 73 and played our first gig in 75. It took the arrival of Punk to level the playing field and provide access to gigs. Before Punk there wasn’t any opportunities to play and we had spent quite a few years in our loft creating soundscape experiments. We used tape recorders, a home-built synth, an EMS VCS 3 synthesiser (the one Brian Eno used in Roxy Music, who were a big influence on us).

WE WERE MUCH MORE INTERESTED IN SOUND THAN FORMULA. WE LIKED GUITARS AND BANDS BUT WE WANTED TO DO SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT TO THAT

There was a level of intellectualism in music back then; Bowie leading folks to Ballard and Boroughs, a portal into another world. Richard (Kirk, co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire) and I were skinheads, original soul boys from working class areas of Sheffield. We weren’t clever middle class intellectuals but we were instinctively drawn to the art side of music and performance. We took our name from the Dadaism movement. Rock n roll didn’t do it for us, abstract expressionism did. That’s where our influences were; on the arty side of things.

There was also acknowledgment that rock was out of your ‘reach’ and frame of reference financially. None of us were musically trained or could afford lessons and proper equipment. But we had this space in the loft and we worked away, messing about, hours of taped experiments, making noises. Rather than buy an amp we stuck the guitar through anything with an input to see what would happen to the sound.

OUR CIRCUMSTANCES LENT THEMSELVES TO EXPERIMENTING WITH SOUND RATHER THAN FORMING A 'BAND'

"Cabaret Voltaire's early training as media guerrillas vested them with the mobility to slip in and out of the mainstream earshot almost at will. As yet to be properly pinned down, they've sustained a campaign of civil and dancehall disobedience through more than 15 years. Filtering influences as diverse as Stockhausen, Can, early Roxy Music, Velvet Underground and James Brown through various tape and electronic devices, they have in turn infiltrated all manner of heresies and subversions into the often-conservative territory of dance music”. (Excerpt taken from Grey Area Mute catalogue, Copyright BIBA KOPF, NADA, 1990).

CIS: Having your own technologically enabled space, whether it be the loft, your first proper studio, Western Works, or now with Wrangler, that space is integral to your work. Has this enabled you to forge ahead with new musical discoveries free from the interference of the arbitrary taste makers? Does it stop you becoming jaded?

SM: Music has become part of me, of who I am. It’s what I do a lot of the time. Steve Cobby from Fila Brazillia, whom I collaborate with, said of what we do, “this is mental health for us”. It’s how we negotiate our lives and who we are, so there’s that part.  There’s also that I still love doing it; experimenting with noise and sound. There’s also an element of never having achieved a level where you are trapped by your own creations, so I keep going. Perhaps Cabaret Voltaire did get to that point. There are also those times when you wonder why am I still doing this!

I did have a break, not for long, only 6 months when I went to Australia and intentionally took a step back. It was the mid 90’s and I remember saying at the time that I felt that music had become too easy. The development of home studios meant that anybody could turn out albums. For me the music had stopped being special. It wasn’t that I was cynical about what other people were doing, or a sense of elitism. Perhaps it had all become too formulaic. It had become a little like that in the Cabs in the early 90’s; release two albums a year, sell them to the same people, do six shows, do this and do that and then do it all again next year. I didn’t want that routine for the rest of my life so I went looking for a change.  

CIS: So much seminal music is borne from great mistakes and spontaneity. The wide spread availability of hardware and software offering touch of a button solutions out of a box, potentially erodes and dilutes the invisible hand of brilliant experimental accidents. How does Wrangler avoid this?

SM: By not using computers. That’s a lie in the sense that we use computers live to trigger loops but when we make music it’s all done on analogue and modular gear, old drum machines and effects pedals. It’s a bit of a step back in time our studio, but it is of that era when making electronic music was tactile and hands-on. I don’t like sitting in front of a laptop.

CIS: Laptop watching; the modern recording obsession of looking at, rather than listening to music.

SM: Yeah exactly and it’s not collaborative although folks have managed to interact, it’s just not my thing. I am not from the digital era which is very rule based. It’s not my natural habitat. I like messing around with things. Wrangler were recording last week and we got really into this old bit of kit we had obtained which had a three second sample time. I became the drum machine; mouthing the sounds, capturing three second samples and it sounded great! This bit of gear had its own character and noise but most folks would have thrown it in the bin. We made three tracks out of it. Glitches and distortions and the nature of those sounds is part of the very fabric of the songs.

I LOVE THE POWER OF MACHINES, WHICH YOU DON’T GET WITH A COMPUTER. I KNOW A SEQUENCER OR A DRUM MACHINES IS NOT SPECIFICALLY MECHANICAL, BUT THEY WORK IN A MECHANICAL WAY.

I enjoy working within and subverting the limitations of mechanical processes. Music by artists rather than music by engineers.

CIS: Musically, who inspires you?

SM: Our new drum machine! As soon as we turned it on it was one of those “fuck that’s good” moments.

I listen to such varied musical styles and I dip into so many different things. Off the top of my head, I’ve been listening to the new Scott Walker LP, Johan Johanssen, Demdyke Stare, Kemper Norton, Billy Holiday, DJ Food’s remixes of Aphex Twin. Crooked Man’s new album is fucking great.  Juan Atkins Cybertron from 1980. There is a new band called Africaine 808 from London, who are brilliant. All kinds of shit. There’s tracks where I’ve no idea what era they come from. The other day I was listening to ‘Riot in Lagos’ by Ryuichi Sakamoto. It’s from 1984 but could easily be released in the here and now.

(CIS: From the minute, we met it was apparent that I was in the company of a fella with an encyclopaedic knowledge and passion for music, art and experimentation, but not a hint of pretence, bullshit or stardom. Top bloke!)

CIS: White Glue by Wrangler is a brilliant record. Each tune evolves across multiple melody lines, counter melodies and abstractions. A pulsing weaving electronic symphony. A record which offers warmth within a world mired in decay, cold futurism and decadence, where the game is rigged in favour of the few. Despite its sonic density and conceptual heaviness, its bloody great to dance to (standing up or lying down).

SM: There’s a level of intelligence to it, to avoid lyrics which were throw away. White Glue is very different to the first album which is much darker and more dystopian, rawer, rough-edged. We’ve been around a wee while now and the audience has morphed from hardcore Cabs fans to a cross-mix of the old guard to folks who never heard CV but who dig us and love electronic music.

CIS: Warp Records label owner Steve Beckett remembers the ‘new Yorkshire house' sound as evolving from north England reggae systems:

“People like Ital Rockers in Leeds who didn’t get as much recognition, but who were doing the mental-est records ever. They’d cut just 20 or 30 tracks on acetate, and have sound-system parties underneath this hotel. No lights, 200 people, and they’d play reggae, then hip hop, then these bleep and bass tunes. And they’d be toasting on top of it”. (Excerpt from the brilliant Energy Flash by Simon Reynolds)

What was your take on House music?

SM: Going to Chicago to find Marshall Jefferson to produce Groovy, Laidback And Nasty! Along with Detroit, Chicago played a pivotal role in the development of House music. I loved the music, the city and some of the friendliest people you could ever hope to meet. We'd been making house music for years before 88. Its electronic music.

CIS: I must ask you about your involvement in the early days of New Order?

SM: We were friends, Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire and we did what friends would do. We offered New Order our studio so they could have some peace and quiet to go about demoing new songs for their new band. That’s it really. The tapes are available on YouTube. I even had a go at singing vocals. So did Rob Gretton, everyone did.

CIS: Nice one Mal, I think we’re done.

SM: A pleasure, all the best.