#the furlong bray

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Nick Jonah Davis

Photo Credit: Andy Joskowski

Nick Jonah Davis lives in Derbyshire, England, which is a place where evidence of older editions of England is always easy to find. Successive eras likewise coincide in his music. Davis plays acoustic and electric guitars, drawing on both American and English folk and instrumental traditions. He has worked with like-minded folk, such as C. Joynes and Sharron Kraus, and is also an established guitar teacher and provider of therapeutic musical interventions. He’s been recording the occasional solo record since 2009, and in 2016, Dusted’s Bill Meyer had this to say about House of Dragons: “the Nottingham-based guitarist isn’t living in bifurcations of the past, and he isn’t asking us to either. Rather, he invites the listener into a world bounded by the resonance of his tunings and the vividness of his evolving melodies.” Thread Recordings is about to release a swell new LP, When the Sun Came, and Davis has compiled a list of sounds made by some of his favorite associates.

Even for solo guitarists, music is a collaborative, social thing. For this list I’ve picked some music by artists that I’ve collaborated, recorded or gigged with over the last decade or so. Members of the NJD home team.

Kogumaza — “Ursids”

WAAT048 Split 7" w/Hookworms by Kogumaza

When I lived in Nottingham, Kogumaza were my favorite band in town. They play deep, droning riff-based cosmic guitar music which draws on their backgrounds playing with local heroes like Lords, Rattle and Bob Tilton. They’ve also done their homework, having sat in with heavy hitters like Glenn Branca, Damo Suzuki and Boredoms. This tune was recorded in Nottingham, with Nathan Bell of Lungfish sitting in on bass. I was the assistant engineer on this session, and remember getting a pleasing headful of Katy Brown’s kick drum as we set up the mics. Mind-manifesting stuff.

Ex-Easter Island Head — “Large Electric Ensemble Third Movement”

Large Electric Ensemble by Ex-Easter Island Head

Liverpool’s Ex-Easter Island Head are a revelation. They repurpose electric guitars through a variety of extended techniques, with unprecedented, nourishing results. I was lucky enough to play a couple of shows as a member of their Large Electric Ensemble, a 12-guitar band powered by 1 drummer and multiple Arts Council pizzas. I learned a lot from them in terms of playing guitar with craftily-deployed allen keys and bolts. Living proof that people can and do make genuinely beautiful, ground-breaking music without being all precious and up themselves about it. Good lads.

C Joynes and the Furlong Bray — “Sang Kancil”

The Borametz Tree by C Joynes & The Furlong Bray

Joynes and I have been fellow travelers in the solo guitar realm for many years now. We’ve probably seen more of each other’s gigs than anyone else alive. I was really pleased to be invited into the making of the Borametz Tree album. Not exactly sure how you’d describe my role on that project, but it involved some bass playing, some refereeing and, in the case of this piece, heading into my cellar with Nathan Mann to process some sounds through my echo units. I really love this bizarre, swirling piece of music. It defies description and I really can’t see how it could have happened under any circumstances. Power to the Furlong Bray.

Jim Ghedi — “Bramley Moor”

A Hymn For Ancient Land by Jim Ghedi

Jim popped up a few years ago, around the same time as Toby Hay, and has been a sure source of decent sounds ever since. Jim’s initial, masterful solo guitar work has bloomed out into an exploration of both traditional folk and his own songwriting. Having sat right next to him when we played together in my village a couple of years ago, I can confirm that he has a huge, resonant chest voice. Luckily, he always commits to his guitar just as fully, as you can hear on this jaunty instrumental on which I played some weissenborn. Nathan Mann pops up again playing percussion on this one, small world…

Cath and Phil Tyler — “King Henry”

The Ox and the Ax by Cath and Phil Tyler

I first met Cath and Phil at the legendary Sin Eater festival, a 3-day weekend of fine underground music and excellent ale at an isolated pub in Shropshire. Almost everyone on this list played there actually. This is folk music as it should be played, plain and flinty with a complete focus on the song. Understatement goes a long way in this music and, I suspect because of this, Phil is one of the most criminally under-rated guitarists around. There’s a little part of me that lives for Cath’s jaw harp break at the end of this one.

Toby Hay — “Now in a Minute”

New Music For The 12 String Guitar by Toby Hay

Toby has a special place in my heart for lining me up an annual show in a cafe at the wonderful Green Man festival for the past several years, meaning my family could go for free. Here’s a near-perfect example of a miniature acoustic study from his album New Music for the 12 String Guitar. The guitar in question was custom-built for Toby by Roger Bucknall of Fylde guitars. Fylde put out the word that a label was looking for a young guitarist to make a record on a custom-built Fylde that they would commission, and I immediately suggested Toby. He rose to the occasion. Reckon he owes me a handmade guitar though; I’ll give him a nudge one of these days.

The Horse Loom — “Silver Ribbon”

The Horse Loom by The Horse Loom

Steve Malley played in post-punk bands back in the day, gigging alongside the likes of Fugazi. He later picked up a Fylde guitar and went down an acoustic rabbit hole where his love of British folk and flamenco come to the fore. The DIY-or-die roots of his playing flash an occasional fin. After we met I persuaded him to come down to Nottingham and let me record his first album in First Love studio. He did the whole thing in a day and it’s awesome. This is my favorite instrumental from that collection.

Sharron Kraus — “Sorrow’s Arrow”

Joy's Reflection is Sorrow by Sharron Kraus

I started playing shows with Sharron as we were both UK artists on the Tompkins Square label at the time, so it kind of made sense. She’s a bit of an institution in psych-folk circles and eventually I began playing on her records and at live shows, which has been a real joy. This tune features some heavy drones and an occasional splish of my lap steel. It’s classic Kraus — mournful, insightful, immersive. If you want to hear someone with a bigger brain than yours talking about the weirder side of life, check out her Preternatural Investigations podcast.

Haress — “Wind the Bobbin”

Haress by HARESS

Haress is centered around the twin electric guitar work of Liz Still and David Hand. Located in downright gorgeous rural Shropshire, they ran the Sin Eater Festival and still put out essential music on Lancashire and Somerset Records. I reckon they’ve helped me out more than anyone over the years, releasing House of Dragons on vinyl and always setting me up a show when I need one. This gorgeous piece features Nathan Bell again, this time on trumpet. Those Nathans do get around.

Burd Ellen — “Chi-Mi-Bhuam”

Chi Mi Bhuam by Burd Ellen

I first saw Debbie Armour singing with Alasdair Roberts, a good start. When I went up to play in Glasgow in 2018, I asked if she’d like to open up my show at the Glad Café, which she did, alone except for a borrowed harmonium. I was mesmerized, I think everyone was. Too good for a support slot. Here’s a Gaelic vocal piece which demonstrates exactly who we’re dealing with here, a profoundly talented and committed artist with a lifelong immersion in traditional music, using it as a springboard into something entirely her own.

[lornaslibrary]

Witches, Werewolves, and Vampires

Last week I asked you to recommend books on the subject of witches, werewolves, and vampires. Here are all of the books that were recommended!!

Bold = the books I’ve read * = the books I personally would recommend + = want to read/on my TBR

Witches

Children of Blood and Bone (Legacy of Orïsha #1), by Tomi Adeyemi +

Undead Girl Gang, by Lily Anderson

The Girl Who Drank the Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

Chime, by Franny Billingsley

The Witch’s Daughter (The Witch’s Daughter #1), by Paula Brackston

The Gemma Doyle Trilogy, by Libba Bray

The Lost Coast, by Amy Rose Capetta +

The Bone Witch (The Bone Witch #1), by Rin Chupeco +

The Binding, by Bridget Collins

Labyrinth Lost (Brooklyn Brujas #1), by Zoraida Córdova +

Witches of Lychford (Lychford #1), by Paul Cornell  

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1), by Cassandra Clare

The Witches, by Peter Curtis

The Witches, by Roald Dahl

Truthwitch (The Witchlands #1), by Susan Dennard

The Wicked Deep, by Shea Ernshaw +

Bitter Greens, by Kate Forsyth

Wise Child (Doran #1), by Monica Furlong

Coraline, by Neil Gaiman +

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman +

The Ocean at the End of the Lane, by Neil Gaiman +

Beautiful Creatures (Caster Chronicles #1), by Kami Garcia & Margaret Stohl

Hex Life: Wicked New Tales of Witchery, by Christopher Golden

A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #1), by Deborah Harkness

Chocolat (Chocolat #1), by Joanne Harris

Practical Magic, by Alice Hoffman

Born At Midnight (Shadow Falls #1), by CC Hunter

Sanctuary,  by V.V. James

Howl’s Moving Castle (Howl’s Moving Castle #1), by Dianne Wynne Jones

Literary Witches: A Celebration of Magical Women Writers, by Taisia Kitaiskaia  

Summer of Salt, by Katrina Leno

Hold Me Closer, Necromancer (Necromancer #1), by Lish McBride

When the Moon Was Ours, by Anna-Marie McLemore *

Wicked, by Gregory Maguire

Circe, by Madelline Miller

Witch Hunt, by Syd Moore

A Secret History of Witches, by Louisa Morgan

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern +

The Worst Witch (Worst Witch #1), by Jill Murphy

Akata Witch (Akata Witch #1), by Nnedi Okorafor

Wyrd Sisters (Discworld #6, Witches #2), by Terry Pratchett

The Wee Free Men (Discworld #30, Tiffany Aching #1), by Terry Pratchett

Falling Kingdoms (Falling Kingdoms #1), by Morgan Rhodes

The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches #1), by Anne Rice

Carry On (Simon Snow #1), by Rainbow Rowell

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter #1), by J.K. Rowling *

A Darker Shade of Magic (Shades of Magic #1), by V.E. Schwab *

Toil & Trouble: 15 Tales of Women and Witchcraft, by Tess Sharpe

Secret Vampire (Night World #1), by LJ Smith

A Curse of Ash and Embers (Tales of the Blackbone Witches #1), by Jo Spurrier

These Witches Don’t Burn (These Witches Don’t Burn #1), by Isabel Sterling +

The Raven Boys (The Raven Cycle #1), by Maggie Stiefvater

When My Heart Was Wicked, by Tricia Stirling

Cirkeln (Engelsfors #1), by Mats Strandberg and Sara Bergmark Elfgren

Book of Shadows (Sweep #1), by Cate Tiernan

The Price Guide to the Occult, by Leslye Walton

The Babysitters Coven, by Kate Williams

Sorcery & Cecelia: or, The Enchanted Chocolate Pot, by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer

Castle Hangnail, by Ursula Vernon

Werewolves

Bitten (Otherworld #1), by Kelley Armstrong

Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1), by Gail Carriger +

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1), by Cassandra Clare

Silver in the Blood, by Jessica Day George

Fateful, by Claudia Gray

The Silvered, by Tanya Huff

Born At Midnight (Shadow Falls #1), by CC Hunter

Cycle of the Werewolf, by Stephen King *

Blood and Chocolate, by Annette Curtis Klause

Hemlock (Hemlock #1), by Kathleen Peacock

Red Moon, by Benjamin Percy

The Fifth Elephant (Discworld #24), by Terry Pratchett

Secret Vampire (Night World #1), by LJ Smith

Shiver (Wolves of Mercy Falls #1), by Maggie Stiefvater

Vampires

The Coldest Girl in Coldtown, by Holly Black *

Eighth Grade Bites (The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod #1), by Heather Brewer

Soulless (The Parasol Protectorate #1), by Gail Carriger +

City of Bones (The Mortal Instruments #1), by Cassandra Clare

The Passage (The Passage #1), by Justin Cronin *

The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman +

Evernight (Evernight #1), by Claudia Gray

The Radleys, by Matt Haig

A Discovery of Witches (All Souls Trilogy #1), by Deborah Harkness

My Blood Approves (My Blood Approves #1), by Amanda Hocking

RoseBlood, by A.G. Howard

Bunnicula (Bunnicula #1), by Deborah and James Howe

Blood Price (Vicki Nelson #1), by Tanya Huff

Born At Midnight (Shadow Falls #1), by CC Hunter

The Immortal Rules (Blood of Eden #1), by Julie Kagawa

‘Salem’s Lot, by Stephen King *

The Silver Kiss, by Annette Curtis Klause

The Historian, by Elizabeth Kostova

Let the Right One In, by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Vampire Academy (Vampire Academy #1), by Richelle Mead

Sunshine, by Robin McKinley

Anno Dracula (Anno Dracula #1), byKim Newman

Carpe Jugulum (Discworld #23), by Terry Pratchett

Interview with a Vampire (The Vampire Chronicles #1), by Anne Rice +

Night Owls (Night Owls #1), by Lauren M. Roy

Strange Practice ( Dr.Greta Helsing #1), by Vivian Shaw

Tantalize (Tantalize #1), by Cynthia Leitich Smith

Secret Vampire (Night World #1), by LJ Smith

Dracula, by Bram Stoker *

Dracul, by Dacre Stoker and J.D Barker *

If you recommended books but don’t see your recommendations here, feel free to message me to let me know I missed your response

Other Chain Recs Masterposts

[doomandgloomfromthetomb]

C Joynes & The Furlong Bray - The Borametz Tree

There are occasional bursts of thrilling electric guitar on C Joynes’ latest LP, but the overall vibe is decidedly pre-rock-and-roll. Scratch that, The Borametz Tree is decidedly pre-Christian. The wild, ecstatic music he and his cohorts make here would make for the perfect accompaniment to some kinda summer solstice celebration on the British isles before the Romans arrived. Droning fiddles, martial rhythms, stinging strings ... it’s absolutely great stuff in the vein of Third Ear Band or some of the more intense Early Music Consort of London jams. And “Gottem ni Gottem” may well be the most beautiful tune you’ll hear this year, with banjo and fiddle conjuring up a gorgeous sunset of sound. This is Britfolk that isn’t fussy or overly scholarly, using age-old ingredients to create something totally fresh. Get it! 

[cjoynes]

**AVAILABLE NOW**

C JOYNES & THE FURLONG BRAY - ‘THE BORAMETZ TREE’

LP/DL Thread Recordings THR 006 / Feeding Tube Records FTR443

"A strange and beautiful collection of hybrid oddities." ★★★★ MOJO 

"This year's most explorative gem." ★★★★ RNR "'The Borametz Tree' is a difficult-to-describe hybrid of approaches and techniques, drawn from the vast collective imagination of the group, abetted by field recordings and cassettes Joynes has collected on his peregrinations across continents." Byron Coley "A multi-paced and multi-cultured journey that is utterly idiosyncratic; at times dense in its structure and challenging in its rhythm, at others gentle and spare. Layered and intelligent, finding art and inspiration from many places, this particular result is something that really should be heard." Folk Radio

Order here: https://cjoynes.bandcamp.com/album/the-borametz-tree-2019 

And here: smarturl.it/THR006

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

What other fandoms are you familiar enough with to use as an AU prompt? Pokemon Trainer AU? Homestuck AU (they'd still probably die but at least there are lots of ways to come back to life)?

I’m not that familiar with Homestuck, definitely not enough to do an AU.  I read the novelizations of the Pokemon show as a kid but never saw the show or played any of the video games.  I did play the super-obscure Pokemon board game, but most of my trading cards were printed in Japanese (I had a strange childhood), so my experience there is, uh, probably not quite overlapping with everyone else’s.

Anyway, if you want list of all my fandoms… Boy howdy.  I don’t think I can come up with them all.  However, I can list everything that comes to mind between now and ~20 minutes from now when I have to end my procrastination break and go back to dissertating.  So here it is, below the cut:

Okay, there is no way in hell I’ll be able to make an exhaustive list.  But off the top of my head, the fandoms I’m most familiar/comfortable with are as follows:

Authors (as in, I’ve read all or most of their books)

Patricia Briggs

Megan Whalen Turner

Michael Crichton

Marge Piercy

Stephenie Meyer

Dean Koontz

Stephen King

Neil Gaiman

K.A. Applegate

Ernest Hemingway

Tamora Pierce

Roald Dahl

Short Stories/Anthologies

A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor

The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka

I Am Legend, Richard Matheson

Dubliners, James Joyce

Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes

Who Goes There? John W. Campbell

The Man Who Bridged the Mist, Kij Johnson

Flatland, Edwin Abbott

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison

To Build a Fire, Jack London

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bier

At the Mountains of Madness/Cthulu mythos, H.P. Lovecraft

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Arthur Conan Doyle

The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Washington Irving

The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury

Close Range: Wyoming Stories, E. Annie Proulx

The Curious Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Robert Louis Stevenson

Bartleby the Scrivener (and a bunch of others), Herman Melville

Books (Classics)

Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neal Hurston

The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The Secret Garden, Francis Hodgson Burnett

Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte

The Secret Annex, Anne Frank

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

Frankenstein, Mary Shelley

Tom Sawyer/Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison

Slaughterhouse-Five, Kurt Vonnegut

The Stranger, Albert Camus

The Call of the Wild, Jack London

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Lord of the Flies, William Golding

Atonement, Ian McEwan

1984, George Orwell

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith

The Iliad/The Odyssey, Homer

Metamorphoses, Ovid

Journey to the Center of the Earth, Jules Verne

The Time-Machine, H.G. Wells

The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Twelfth Night, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Hamlet, MacBeth, Othello, and The Taming of the Shrew, William Shakespeare

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead, Thomas Stoppard

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood

Books (YA SF)

Young Wizards series, Diane Duane

Redwall, Brian Jaques

The Dark is Rising sequence, Susan Cooper

The Chronicles of Chrestomanci, Diana Wynne Jones

The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis

Abhorsen trilogy, Garth Nix

The Giver series, Lois Lowry

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

Uglies series, Scott Westerfeld

Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbitt

A Wizard of Earthsea, Ursula K. Le Guin

Song of the Lioness, Tamora Pierce

A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle

Unwind, Neal Shusterman

The Maze Runner series, James Dashner

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, Patricia C. Wrede

Sideways Stories from Wayside School, Louis Sachar

Ella Enchanted, Gail Carson Levine

Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card

The Phantom Tollbooth, Norton Juster

Coraline, Neil Gaiman

Among the Hidden, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, Avi

Interview with the Vampire, Anne Rice

Poppy series, Avi

The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd

Tithe, Holly Black

Life as We Knew It, Susan Beth Pfeffer

Blood and Chocolate, Annette Curtis Klause

Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum

Haunted, Gregory Maguire

Weetzie Bat, Francesca Lia Block

Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

East, Edith Pattou

Z for Zachariah, Robert C. O’Brien

The Looking-Glass Wars, Frank Beddor

The Egypt Game, Zilpha Keatley Snyder

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Homecoming, Cynthia Voigt

Alice in Wonderland/Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll

The Landry News, Andrew Clements

Fever 1793, Laurie Halse Anderson

Bloody Jack, L.A. Meyer

The Boxcar Children, Gertrude Chandler Warner

A Certain Slant of Light, Laura Whitcomb

Generation Dead, Daniel Waters

Pendragon series, D.J. MacHale

Silverwing, Kenneth Oppel

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Define Normal, Julie Anne Peters

Hawksong, Ameila Atwater Rhodes

Heir Apparent, Vivian Vande Velde

Running Out of Time, Margaret Peterson Haddix

The Keys to the Kingdom series, Garth Nix

The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, Joan Aiken

The Seer and the Sword, Victoria Hanley

My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George

Daughters of the Moon series, Lynne Ewing

The Midwife’s Apprentice, Karen Cushman

Island of the Aunts, Eva Ibbotson

The Night Circus, Erin Morgenstern

The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm, Nancy Farmer

A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray

A School for Sorcery, E. Rose Sabin

The House with a Clock in Its Walls, John Bellairs

The Edge Chronicles, Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell

Hope was Here, Joan Bauer

Bunnicula, James Howe

Wise Child, Monica Furlong

Silent to the Bone, E.L. Konigsburg

The Twenty-One Balloons, William Pene du Bois

Dead Girls Don’t Write Letters, Gail Giles

The Supernaturalist, Eoin Colfer

Blue is for Nightmares, Laurie Faria Stolarz

Mystery of the Blue Gowned Ghost, Linda Wirkner

Wait Till Helen Comes, Mary Downing Hahn

I was a Teenage Fairy, Francesca Lia Block

City of the Beasts series, Isabelle Allende

Summerland, Michael Chabon

The Geography Club, Brent Hartinger

The Last Safe Place on Earth, Richard Peck

Liar, Justine Larbalestier

The Doll People, Ann M. Martin

The Lost Years of Merlin, T.A. Barron

Matilda Bone, Karen Cushman

Nine Stories, J.D. Salinger

The Tiger Rising, Kate DiCamillo

The Spiderwick Chronicles, Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi

In the Forests of the Night, Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

My Teacher is an Alien, Bruce Coville

The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles, Julie Andrews Edwards

Storytime, Edward Bloor

Magic Shop series, Bruce Coville

A Series of Unfortunate Events, Lemony Snicket

Veritas Project series, Frank Peretti

The Once and Future King, T.H. White

Raven’s Strike, Patricia Briggs

What-the-Dickens: The Story of a Rogue Tooth Fairy, Gregory Maguire

The Wind Singer, William Nicholson

Sweetblood, Pete Hautman

The Trumpet of the Swan, E.B. White

Half Magic, Edward Eager

A Ring of Endless Light, Madeline L'Engle

The Heroes of Olympus, Rick Riordan

Maximum Ride series, James Patterson

The Edge on the Sword, Rebecca Tingle

World War Z, Max Brooks

Adaline Falling Star, Mary Pope Osborne

Six of Crows, Leigh Bardugo

Children of Blood and Bone, Tomi Adeyemi

Parable of the Sower series, Octavia Butler

I, Robot, Isaac Asimov

Neuomancer, William Gibson

Dune, Frank Herbert

The Miseducation of Cameron Post, Emily M. Danforth

The Martian, Andy Weir

Skeleton Man, Joseph Bruchac

Comics/Manga

Marvel 616 (most of the major titles)

Marvel 1610/Ultimates

Persepolis

This One Summer

Nimona

Death Note

Ouran High School Host Club

Vampire Knight

Emily Carroll comics

Watchmen

Fun Home

From Hell

American Born Chinese

Smile

The Eternal Smile

The Sandman

Calvin and Hobbes

The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For

TV Shows

Fullmetal Alchemist

Avatar the Last Airbender

Teen Titans (2003)

Luke Cage/Jessica Jones/Iron Fist/Defenders/Daredevil/The Punisher

Agents of SHIELD/Agent Carter

Supernatural

Sherlock

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

Angel/Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Firefly

American Horror Story

Ouran High School Host Club

Orange is the New Black

Black Sails

Stranger Things

Westworld

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Movies

Marvel Cinematic Universe

Jurassic Park/Lost World/Jurassic World/Lost Park?

The Breakfast Club

Cloverfield/10 Cloverfield Lane/The Cloverfield Paradox

Attack the Block

The Prestige

Moon

Ferris Bueler’s Day Off

Django Unchained/Kill Bill/Inglourious Basterds/Hateful 8/Pulp Fiction/etcetera

Primer

THX 1138/Akira/How I Live Now/Lost World/[anything I’ve named a fic after]

Star Wars

The Meg

A Quiet Place

Baby Driver

Mother!

Alien/Aliens/Prometheus

X-Men (et al.)

10 Things I Hate About You

The Lost Boys

Teen Wolf

Juno

Pirates of the Caribbean (et al.)

Die Hard

Most Disney classics: Toy Story, Mulan, Treasure Planet, Emperor’s New Groove, etc.

Most Pixar classics: Up, Wall-E, The Incredibles

The Matrix

Dark Knight trilogy

Halloween

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

The Descent

Ghostbusters

Ocean’s Eight/11/12/13

King Kong

The Conjuring

Fantastic Four

Minority Report/Blade Runner/Adjustment Bureau/Total Recall

Fight Club

Spirited Away

O

Disturbing Behavior

The Faculty

Poets

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Marge Piercy

Thomas Hardy

Sigfried Sassoon

W. B. Yeats

Edgar Allan Poe

Ogden Nash

Margaret Atwood

Maya Angelou

Emily Dickinson

Matthew Dickman

Karen Skolfield

Kwame Alexander

Ellen Hopkins

Shel Silverstein

Musicals/Stage Plays

Les Miserables

Repo: The Genetic Opera

The Lion King

The Phantom of the Opera

Rent

The Prince of Egypt

Pippin

Into the Woods

A Chorus Line

Hairspray

Evita

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Fiddler on the Roof

Annie

Fun Home

Spring Awakening

Chicago

Cabaret

The Miser

The Importance of Being Earnest

South Pacific

Godspell

Wicked

The Wiz

The Wizard of Oz

Man of La Mancha

The Sound of Music

West Side Story

Matilda

Sweeney Todd

Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

Nunsense

You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown/Snoopy

1776

Something Rotten

A Very Potter Musical

Babes in Toyland

Carrie: The Musical

Amadeus

Annie Get Your Gun

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee

The Final Battle

Rock of Ages

Cinderella

Moulin Rouge

Honk

Labyrinth

The Secret Garden

Reefer Madness

Bang Bang You’re Dead

NSFW

War Horse

Peter Pan

Suessical

Sister Act

The Secret Annex

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Disclaimer 1: Like a lot of people who went to high school in the American South, my education in literature is pretty shamefully lacking in a lot of areas.  (As in, during our African American History unit in ninth grade we read To Kill a Mockingbird, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn… and that was it.  As in, our twelfth-grade US History class, I shit you not, covered Gone With the Wind.)  There were a lot of good teachers in with the *ahem* Less Woke ones (how I read Their Eyes Were Watching God and The Bluest Eye) and college definitely set me on the path to trying to find books written/published outside the WASP-ier parts of the U.S., but the overall list is still embarrassingly hegemonic.

Disclaimer 2: There are a crapton of errors — typos, misspelled names, misattributions, questionable genre classifications, etc. — in here.  If you genuinely have no idea what a title is supposed to be, ask me.  Otherwise, please don’t bother letting me know about my mistakes.

Disclaimer 3: I am not looking for recommendations.  My Goodreads “To Read” list is already a good 700 items long, and people telling me “if you like X, then you’ll love Y!” genuinely stresses me the fuck out.

Disclaimer 4: There are no unproblematic faves on this list.  I love Supernatural, and I know that Supernatural is hella misogynistic.  On the flip side: I don’t love The Lord of the Rings at all, partially because LOTR is hella misogynistic, but I also don’t think that should stop anyone else from loving LOTR if they’re willing to love it and also acknowledge its flaws. 

[birchbritches]

Ugh Honk

Aesthetically untraditional, missing signals, missing the incubation period, the long story of mother’s neck,

and an anatid antacid credits digestion to my flexibility, I dive and dabble, will shovel any muck, am much

adept at moving my inherited shit, my gullet the only place left to put it all. I am vocal without parentage, by percentages my edentulous fostering taught negligible words, and, innate, by eight I talked down to other fowl.

Oh, I grieve, a glebe given like grebe-bray, eat every feather, mine and my father’s. I have been to the sea, see cycles of it, every year

I leave arable land behind, questioning if a deity or oracle thereof could conserve a furlong, if so, how long, how could a mammal-god manage its own lung let alone an estate under all that fur,

but I’ve tried pied and pious, I resign to the migratory patterns, a foie gras heart fat with a need to fly. The mirror

of night glints a signet, reminds with the song of a long neck, the eggshell felling, the accursed worship of every forebear felon,

every distant myth balancing with the geologic record to more than enough to convict, a throat ode showing its owed debt, the brittle and tenuous histories, born masked and mistaken under the storied cygnet, a full-length creature predisposed to deposing myself, calling out the audible ringing of my neck.

- B B Pine

[chevreuilrecords]

2019

75 Dollar Bill - I Was Real (Glitterbeat)

Ahmed Ag Kaedy - Akaline Kidal (Sahel Sounds)

Alasdair Roberts - The Fiery Margin (Drag City)

Big Thief - U.F.O.F. (4AD)

Bill Orcutt - Odds Against Tomorrow (Palilalia)

C Joynes & The Furlong Bray - The Borametz Tree (Thread)

Caterina Barbieri - Ecstatic Computation (Editions Mego)

Christophe Clébard - Honte (Les albums claus, Kakakids)

clipping. - There Existed an Addiction to Blood (Sub Pop)

Cucina Povera - Zoom (Night School)

Danny Oxenberg + Bear Galvin + friends - Early Abstractions Vol. 1 (three:four)

Derya Yldirim & Grup Simsek - Kar Yagar (Bongo Joe)

Dis Fig - Purge (PTP)

Ela Orleans - Movie for Ears: An Introduction to Ela Orleans (Night School)

Ellen Arkbro - CHORDS (Multiverse)

Elvin Brandhi - Shelf Life (C.A.N.V.A.S.)

Felicia Atkinson - The Flower And The Vessel (Shelter Press)

François J. Bonnet & Stephen O’Malley - Cylene (Editions Mego)

Froth - Duress (Wichita)

H. Takahashi - Sonne und Wasser (Where To Now?)

Hygiene - Private Sector (Upset The Rhythm)

Hyperculte - Massif Occidental (Bongo Joe)

Joachim Montessuis - Le Vrai Remède d’Amour (Erratum Musical)

Josiah Steinbrick - Meeting of Waters (Hands In The Dark)

Joshua Abrams & Natural Information Society - Mandatory Reality (Eremite)

Juan Wauters - Introducing + La Onda de Juan Pablo (Captured Tracks)

Julia Reidy - Brace, Brace (Slip)

Ka Baird - Respires (RVNG Intl.)

Kali Malone - The Sacrificial Code (iDEAL)

Kim Gordon - No Home Records (Matador)

Lea Bertucci - Resonant Field (NNA Tapes)

Lispector - Small Town Graffiti (Teenage Menopause)

Loraine James - For You And I (Hyperdub)

Lungbutter - Honey (Constellation)

Martina Lussi - Diffusion is a Force (Latency)

Matt Jencik - Dream Character (Hands In The Dark)

Metro Crowd - Planning (Maple Death)

Mega Bog - Dolphine (Paradise of Bachelors)

Monokultur - LP (Ever/Never)

Moor Mother - Analog Fluids of Sonic Black Holes (Don Giovanni)

Pan American - A Son (Kranky)

Papivores - Death And Spring (Hands In The Dark)

Rangers - Spirited Discussion (Baked Whale Media)

Ryley Walker & Charles Rumback - Little Common Twist (Thrill Jockey)

Sarah Louise - Nighttime Birds and Morning Stars (Thrill Jockey)

Sun Cousto - Satan And I Walk Under A Rainbow (Wedontmakeit)

Tachycardie - Probables (unjenesaisquoi)

Tanz Mein Herz - Dosses (Standard In-Fi)

Tomaga & Pierre Bastien - Bandiera di Carta (Other People)

Trash Kit - Horizon (Upset The Rhythm)

Triple Negative - Precious Wake In Our Wake (Penultimate Press)

Tyler Holmes - Devil (Ratskin)

Valentina Magaletti & Julian Sartorius - Sulla Pelle (Marionette)

Ventre De Biche - III (Teenage Menopause)

[dustedmagazine]

C Joynes & The Furlong Bray— The Borametz Tree (Thread Recordings)

Gamelan, Chinese opera, Morris tunes, South Asian percussion, Sahel guitar, pre-war blues, and Scotch/Irish dance tunes and their scruffy Appalachian descendants are just a few of the sounds haunting The Borametz Tree, the new record from Cambridge guitarist C Joynes and his ad hoc band, The Furlong Bray. Plenty of well-meaning heads take the ecumenical approach, but what makes The Borametz Tree special, besides its melodic facility, is that (with one exception) Joynes & Co. have zero interest in empty genre exercises, authenticity, or bragging about the size of their record collections. Rather, they’ve created an evocative, playful, sui generis sonic world where their imaginations run rampant and yours is invited to do the same.

Most pieces on The Borametz Tree indulge in music’s higher purposes: to amuse, inspire, and comfort yourself and your neighbors. Put it another way—it’s folk music; it just so happens to be from somewhere you won’t find on any map. It would be a blast to dance with your dearly beloved to the fifes and electric guitar of “Hamasien Wedding Song”, while on the crepuscular “Gottem Ni Gottem” you can almost hear the musicians looking at each other from across the porch, smiling and trying to get their timing right. The wiry exchanges of “Tango Wire 334” and the Eurasian-pagan stomp of “The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary” beg to be described by archaic words like badinage, charivari, and rodomontade, while standout opener “Triennale” is, among other things, Jakarta juke joint Buddhist boogie. Perhaps best of all is the stirring finale, “Mali Sajyo”, which rides the cyclical swells of gospel or marching songs, of “There Is A Happy Land” and “Bread and Roses”. Like the nearly forgotten city-state of Hav, (colonized by Russia, Turkey, Britain, Italy, France, Greece, Armenia, China, and a handful of Arab countries) The Borametz Tree is redolent of a dozen cultures and not easily identifiable with any of them.

Which brings us to the album’s big misstep. Unlike the best tunes here, “Librarie Du Maghreb” tells you everything upfront. The Furlong Bray includes members of the wonderfully named Dead Rat Orchestra, who make their living, in part, from creating music for BBC history documentaries. Honorable work, but the one-dimensional Saharan signage of “Librarie Du Maghreb”, even with its strange distortions and half-heard vocals, is incidental music, soundtrack work. Too, “Jacket Shines” is, by itself, a lovely piece of post-Pelt rural drone, particularly when the banjo and fiddle interpolate some sprightly airs, but it doesn’t fit with the surprising, ramshackle vibe of the other numbers. On both tracks, you know where you’re going long before you get there. Prune them from The Borametz Tree and you’ve got yourself a veritable Anthology of Aghartan Folk Music.

Of course, the aforementioned syncretic city-state of Hav never existed. It was the invention of travel writer Jan Morris, one so credible that she reportedly fielded questions from confused would-be travelers and a member of the Royal Geographical Society about its location. Similarly, C Joynes and the Furlong Bray have dreamed up a wholly convincing invisible city and utopian alternative musical history of the world. While the beleaguered Havians “do not excel at the musical art”, the Bray boys do, and have created something warm and joyful out of the long ages.

Isaac Olson

[theleaderdotinfo-blog]

SATURDAY RACING Extra has been published at http://www.theleader.info/2019/04/20/saturday-racing-extra/

New Post has been published on http://www.theleader.info/2019/04/20/saturday-racing-extra/

SATURDAY RACING Extra

Love The Leader, that has racked up three wins from his last six outings, runs at Newton Abbott (2.10) on Saturday. "Love The Leader is a great horse, having completed wins this season, travelling over 2,500 miles throughout the country," said trainer Johnny Farrelly. Farrelly, based in Bath, is hoping Love The Leader, ridden by Leighton Aspell, can continue with the form in the Racing Partnership handicap hurdle over 3 miles and 2 furlongs this afternoon. Leader selections: 1.35 River Bray. 2.10 Love The Leader (ew). 2.45 Primal Focus. 3.20 Falco Blitz. 3.55 Lord Bryan. 4.25 Iniesta (ew). 5.00 Flanagans Field.   *Love The Leader - runs at Newton Abbott 2.10.

[firstdraftpod]

Ep 171: Melissa Albert

Melissa Albert, New York Times bestselling author of The Hazel Wood and its forthcoming sequel, as well as Tales from the Hinterlands, talks about stuffing her debut book with secret book recommendations, the borderlessness of being a young reader, and loving angry girls in fiction.

  Melissa Albert Show Notes

Vera Nabokov

The Baby-Sitters Club by Ann M. Martin

Lolita

Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner

Wise Child by Monica Furlong

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

Hook (movie)

Charles de Lint

Helen Oyeyemi

Philip Pullman’s Grimm Brothers translation

Roshani Chokshi’s forthcoming trio of novellas

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

Kelly Link

Language of Thorns by Leigh Bardugo (listen to her First Draft episodes here and here)

Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs (listen to his First Draft interview here)

Flannery O’Connor

Time Out Chicago

A Spark of Light (Barnes & Noble exclusive edition)

Barnes & Noble YA Blog

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

Akata Witch by Nnedi Okorafor

Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

Feed by M. T. Anderson

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor (listen to her First Draft interview here)

Francesca Lia Block (listen to her First Draft interview here)

His Hideous Heart by Dahlia Adler

Working Partners (work for hire book company in England)

George Saunders essay about what writers really do when they write

Sadie by Courtney Summers (listen to her First Draft interview here)

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black

The Twilight Zone (TV show)

Radiance by Catherynne Valente

The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien

Romeo + Juliet (movie)

Love Lists, a blog post by Stephanie Perkins

Emma Chastain, writer

The North Texas Teen Book Festival

Welcome to Night Vale (podcast)

The Magicians Trilogy by Lev Grossman

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke

Ira Glass A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (listen to her First Draft interviews here and here)

Listen now!

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: C Joynes

Cambridge, UK guitarist C Joynes is conversant with English folk tunes, North and West African music, the European classical tradition and its mutant minimalist offshoot, and various improvisational folkways. Better yet, Joynes has a gift for organically incorporating his various influences into beguiling and haunting melodies. He has released seven albums to date, and his most recent, The Borametz Tree, was released on Thread Recordings in the UK and Feeding Tube Records in the US. The Borametz Tree was recorded with The Furlong Bray, an ad hoc band comprising members of experimental folk ensemble Dead Rat Orchestra, plus electroacoustic composer Cam Deas and fellow guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Nick Jonah Davis. Isaac Olson, in his review, called it, “a wholly convincing invisible city and utopian alternative musical history of the world, something warm and joyful out of the long ages.”

Joynes lists down a handful of the elements that have contributed to this multi-layered project.

Ali Farka Toure—Ali Toure Farka

In some ways, the alpha and omega of guitar music. Hard to choose one album but anything from his earliest recordings, released on Radio Mali or on the ‘red’ and ‘green’ albums, is going to be pretty much essential. However, I’ve dropped this one in here for its gentler, rolling, slightly distant feel.

Jorge Luis Borges—Collected Fictions

Borges’ short stories are among the most concise, densely-written and downright entertaining literature ever written, with each one opening up an infinite field of possible realities through a hotchpotch of fantasy, mythology, fake academia, ethno-forgery, philosophical murder mysteries and shaggy-dog stories. Basically, a how-to manual for growing your own worlds.

Violeta Parra—Composiciones Para Guitarra

Violeta Parra was a songwriter, folklorist, poet and political activist from Chile, whose recordings were first introduced to me few years ago by the film-maker Harry Wheeler. Right from the outset, I was struck by her unique and idiosyncratic compositions for solo guitar, which are still pretty much unlike anything else I’ve heard before or since.

Edward W. Said—Orientalism (1978)

Pretty much the ur-text for starting to think about the ways in which Western cultures have regarded others in relation to themselves, and the implications that holds for how we now interact with or absorb music, art and literature from other parts of the world. Sounds like a daunting topic, but it’s hugely readable and kind of essential for anyone interested in engaging with the world at large.

Sun City Girls—330,003 Crossdressers from Beyond the Rig Veda

The secret history of the Sun City Girls as underground legends, fourth-world pioneers, ethnomusical experimentalists, performance artists, post-modern pranksters, X-ray bullshit detectors and anti-everything provocateurs is now pretty well documented across the internet. I don’t get on with everything they do and some of it makes me downright uncomfortable, but that’s probably at least one objective for their activities—to challenge and confound. There may be something for everyone, but there’s no-one for everything... However, if I can choose one record that captures all that is best about the possibilities they offer, then it would be this sprawling unwieldy fragmentary world-gobbling collection.

Various—Gamelan of Java Vol 1: Kraton Kasunanan (Lyrichord 7456)

Listen here

Of the many many recordings of traditional Gamelan that are available, the best seem to blur the boundaries between musical performance, live event, environmental recording and sound art. Of all recordings of Gamelan that I’ve heard, this particular one is a long-standing favorite.

Edwin Prevost—No Sound Is Innocent (1995)

Entertaining, opinionated and provocative collection of essays from Eddie Prevost, founder member of pioneering improvising group AMM among other things. His basic thesis is that, rather being ‘above politics’, any musical sound that we listen to—whether in performance or on record—is loaded with pre-conceived messages and cultural assumptions. This book is not written to be agreed with, but it is good at encouraging you to think again about what you listen to and why you do so…

Eritrean Wedding Music

I was lucky enough to work in Eritrea for a few years on and off and spent a lot of time at weekends wandering around Asmara looking for weddings to invite myself into. Most social music seems to involve a perfect and minimal assemblage of traditional and modern elements: here we’ve got a distorted drum machine, the electrified Krar, a mutual partnership between audience and performer, extended durations and that loping driving beat.

Punk Ethnography: Artists and Scholars listen to Sublime Frequencies—eds. Michael E. Veal & E. Tammy Kim (2016)

Tying back to Sun City Girls, this book is a scrappy collection of academic essays and interviews exploring Seattle-based record label Sublime Frequencies, founded in 2003 by Alan and Richard Bishop of Sun City Girls along with filmmaker Hisham Mayet, and famous for releasing high-quality collections of ‘unknown’ music from around the world. A big debate about whether modern labels and download sites works to liberate global music from studious academia and worthy ‘World Music’ tags, or whether their approach is only serving up cultural stereotypes for a Western post-punk hipster audience. Some of the pieces are a bit dry, but there’s a lot of chippy to-and-fro between the academics and the musicians over issues like cultural appropriation and intellectual property. It’s also kind of entertaining how personally everyone seems to start taking it...

Omar Khorshid

Omar Khorshid was an Egyptian guitarist and film star who recorded a bunch of stuff in the ‘70s, and was hugely popular in Egypt, Lebanon and Turkey. Most of his recordings have got this super-modern maximalist approach to production, using loads of effects, synths and electronic sounds—I guess you could draw some parallels with the experimental dub producers from around the same time. While rooted in traditional instrumental music, the results are unashamedly exotic and sound like a technicolour sci-fi surf music.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

Pretty much any footage from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and his ensemble seems to work as a testament for the extraordinary heights that group improvisation can reach. Here you can read the exchanges between the vocalists and the instrumentalists as a kind of benign ecstatic duelling, each goading the other on to greater levels.

Michael Denning—Noise Uprising: The Audiopolitics of a World Musical Revolution (2016)

This great book maps out the hidden history of global popular music, based on recording sessions made in the 1920s by major labels around the world. These sessions first captured on record many previously undocumented forms of popular music—jazz, samba, rebetika, flamenco, kroncong - as distinct from traditional or classical music. The recordings were then circulated around the world via shipping routes, leading to new hybrid forms of music and explaining, for example, the popularity of country music in West Africa or the presence of Hawaiian guitar in Bollywood film music. A great book for restoring faith in the natural process of musical exchange and cross-fertilisation.