#they do this dance between songs that have no transition at all (intentionally) as a form of contrast but then will have songs lead

[lucyvsky]

i truly think fall out boy are the only band in the entire world who understand how to do song transitions on albums like they fucking get it

[nadircozy]

A pleasure to listen to

“Pleasure” by Dylan Sinclair is an amazing listening experience from start to finish. Sinclair, Toronto, Ontario native is more of a traditional R&B artist. A lot of alternative R&B has become popular in recent years circa 2014, that’s 808 Drum based, with content that’s veering away from the blue’s. A lot of R&B has been become over saturated because the recipe for every rapper since Drake has been to make melodic Hip Hop songs to appease the female consumer that acts as a taste maker for what’s trending. Most of these rappers can’t hold a note or construct a song that packs the substance of what we know R&B to sound like, to be brutally honest. The substance of his music or far from this watered down music that’s out now.

In addition, Sinclair is criminally underrated in my opinion. His music isn’t exactly what you would want to hear on the dance floor like his successful Canadian counterparts (The Weeknd, Drake, Tory Lanez) to name a few. But, they do evoke emotions that adults from all different walks of life can relate to. Pleasuring and stimulating your lover mentally, physically, and spiritually is something that we strive to do naturally.

Ironically, the first time I heard this song was during a car ride after an argument. After the argument subsided, not ended but came to silence. Here enters the music playing to cut the tension, the music usually serves as the knife between her and I. As soon as the song started, the music captivated me. The song starts off with what I hear to be filtered background vocals serving as a sort of guitar melody or a woodwind instrument even. Followed by a melancholy, lower pitched keys to create harmony to make your ears smile. Not to mention the two different drums echoing each other, slow tempo of course, to match the melody. These sounds are euphoric. The collection of sounds all lead up to the beginning of the first verse where it all starts to make sense.

“Take my hand, let’s dance slow.” These lyrics paint the picture of a foreshadowing climax, not only with the content of the lyrics but the with the beat as well. The beat continues to build and he intentionally sings “as the music plays.” More elements are added to the song as the baseline starts to become more prevalent and the melody becomes stronger. The baseline is very on par with the subject matter with it being very potent while the sound of Sinclair’s voice is flowing delicately, specifically over the hook. “Let me please you,” He starts singing in a falsetto voice.

Where I have to critique the song is as the song come to a close. The songs transitions into a deeper vocal pitched, snare punching, different melody jam. Nothing is distasteful about these elements but it should have been incorporated sooner and more smooth. It doesn’t fit the aesthetic and sounds like a completely different track. It almost sounds like an unfinished demo. He echo’s the same sentiments such as “Lemme please, baby.” Also, “just say how you want it.” While I can commend that he didn’t waver his desire to please his lover, the production change was just too abrupt to be the same song.

In conclusion, the music is trance like, filled with ear catching melodies, drums, and vocals that you can feel. Not your typical go to for foot tapping, but a great listen to go along with a glass of bourbon next to a fireplace.

[stillness-in-green]

Idk if anyone told you but the MVA OST leaked, with themes for both the League and the MLA. If you haven't listened to it yet, please do! And if you have, what are your thoughts? I think Mine Woman and RE-DESTRO slap for 2 characters that got shafted hard by canon so I appreciate them a lot.

I have listened to them, and I like several of them! I feel like I need to lead with that, because I'm about to add some criticism about my previous responses to BNHA's score for context, so it's important to know that I genuinely do enjoy quite a few of these.

So, I haven't listened to a lot of Yuki Hayashi's scores, but he's definitely done work I've liked! He composed the music for several of the more recent PreCure shows, including their movies; I particularly loved his finale for the 15th anniversary film, which prominently featured a truly delightful medley of every team's opening theme. I'm also very fond of some of his pieces for Kiznaiver and Welcome to the Ballroom.

His BNHA work, though, I feel like suffers from two main problems: the tracks are too short to work up a good head, and yet, despite that short length, they sometimes feel exhaustingly over the top. (Did Shigaraki's theme really need crying children to get across the point that he's bad news?) I've long felt that the BNHA anime wants me to feel like everything is way more Epic and Stirring and Dramatic than I actually find the material to be, so curiously, the music winds up having a distancing effect rather than drawing me in. This is frequently compounded by placement choices that feel so staggeringly poor that I'm often left wondering whether the staff chose the music out of a hat! (Seriously, why does a fairly rote test of character in Nighteye's office warrant doom choirs?)

As to the MVA tracks specifically, I wish there could have been tracks that sounded a bit more fun or heroic, given that the League in MVA really are the heroes for the arc, complete with Shigaraki suddenly having access to Shonen Nakama Tropes and getting all these little comedic reaction takes. It'd be nice if the music could cue in and let the League have some aural triumph without being all doom all the time ("Oh, no! The villains are winning!" Yes, they are; let them have this for one arc, would you?)

But that said, I do rather like most of these! There are some that I do suspect will fall prey to the This Is Too Much Drama, Would You Please Ratchet Back? problem, but there are also some that I can imagine playing better in the context of the show than they do in isolation, and some that feel like they could even be exactly what I was dreaming about, if they go where I hope they will. For some individual thoughts, see below:

The Mission of the Stealth Hawks: A reasonable enough little tense atmospheric piece. Doesn't jump out at me.

Different Ability Liberation Army: I always approach the MLA as styling themselves as an army, but in reality being more of a sect--far more cult than militia-- I appreciate that if they can't have a good dramatic march despite having Army, like, right there in the title, I'm glad I could get church bells instead. On the whole, though, this is a good example of the first problem I mentioned having with Hayashi's work for BNHA--his pieces tend to be pretty short, and it takes them so long to land on a melody that by the time they find one, there's hardly any time to develop it before the song ends. Even a lot of the hero pieces are like that, and the villain songs, even more so. That said, I do like the horror strings that creep in around the 1.25 mark, blossom at 1.45, and float on through 2.10. I just wish they went on longer. Admittedly, "erratic church bells and horror strings" is still not the choice I would have made for the MLA's main theme. I really would have preferred something with a more militant air; as it is, this sort of feels like it scores a creepy prologue that plays before the opening credits kick in and then the episode proper starts. Which isn't a bad description for the way the dinner scene played in the manga, but thanks to the anime's decision to reshuffle everything, I don't think that dinner scene's going to maintain that feeling of "prologue" when we finally get to it.

My Villain Academia: Better on the melodic front; I enjoy the drama at .43, the dancing tension at 1.05, and particularly the minor strings from 1.25 that just keep climbing until everything else drops out around 2.10. I do wish it found a better place to end rather than noodling on for a further thirty seconds, but the melody will get a more central, and more bombastic, treatment in the final track, so it's probably okay for it to trail off here. (It's also apparently a reprise of a villain theme from the very first season's OST, which is rad. More on that in the Track 11 blurb.)

Second Coming: This is a bizarre one because, while I complained that Hayashi's BNHA tracks are usually short, this one is a full six and a half minutes--except that it falls clearly into movements of about a minute each, with clear lulls in between. I wish it was twelve minutes and everything was twice as long! As it is, I'm highly doubtful that we're going to hear this one played in its entirety anywhere, since I can't imagine what scenes would require this specific sequence of musical passages at this length. 0.00 - 1.01: I love that the song kicks in comparatively quickly; the first minute's passage has a great, thrumming drive that very nearly hits major key towards the end. 1.02 - 1.53: The drive picks up pace in the second minute before the chorus arrives, and for once, I am very prepared to love a BNHA choir piece. I hope this is what plays when Deika's going up in ash. 1.54 - 3.01: I love the melodic line being carried by the intentionally hard to distinguish violin and whatever brass instrument the violin's trading off with in the third minute. It's bit out of place with the rest of the track, but I like it quite a bit on its own, and it does have a similar sound as some of the "dirty" brass in RE-DESTRO and Mine Woman. It's probably too long for RD's childhood flashback, but I wonder if it'll play for an MLA character somewhere? 3.02 - 4.07: The fourth minute has some very fun drums, but otherwise doesn't jump out at me as much of the rest of the track. I'm very curious to know when this will play, though. 4.08 - 5.32: The fifth minute, god bless, has some proper march drums--I like this passage a lot, particularly when it come back in the sixth minute accompanied by the choir. I like this because the key is minor but it's not "oooo scaaaary" minor; it's more dramatic, a bit tragic, but triumphant too--pretty much perfect for Re-Destro, Spinner and Machia's moment of revelation in the crater. I wish it were longer. 5.33 - 6.36: And here for the end we're back to the driving guitar and some fun low-thrum strings and percussive chain sounds. Like the fourth passage, it's fun, but jumps out at me less, particularly as the song's finale.

Gigantomachia: This is an extremely boss kaiju song. Seriously, that brass in the opening could come right out of a Toho flick. Extremely good walking calamity number, love that distorted synth stuff towards the end. It's going to sound great when (if) it plays over Machia leaving the villa, the hand rising up through the floor behind Toga, Momo and the other students surveying the desolation left in his wake, and so on. (I know that's all Season Six material, shhhh. I hope they use this piece there.)

Mine Woman: This is so fun. And so extremely superior that that awful Christmas insert song! I'm glad Curious got this at least, and I love the moment the beat drops at the one-minute mark, and that interwoven sax. So good. It's hard to imagine the fight between Toga and Curious being paced to this song, mind, but it's real good, anyway.

TOGA's Nature: This one showcases the other problem I have with Hayashi's BNHA work, especially his stuff for the villains: it feels very on the nose in a way that tips over into being Too Much. The birdsong, I think, is on the nose but in an effective, playful way, with the natural beauty of the birds undercut by the lovely but ominous piano/synth melody. I am considerably less kindly disposed to the creepy child laughter, which just feels on the nose in a thuddingly obvious way--though I do like the way it slides in when the birdsong fades. I like, too, the sort of cloudy roaring reprise of the melodic line that kicks in around the 1.10 mark. It feels like an effective echo of Toga--cute but creepy as a young girl, and then, after she snaps, creepy in the same way but now you can't ignore it.

Symbol of Fear: The beginning doesn't do much for me, but I enjoy the howl that gives way to the organs at 1.15; while it's too action-heavy to be Tenko, the transition does still put me in mind of Tenko wandering the streets, internally crying for anyone to help him, and the person who finally does is--well. I like that the organ nurtures that howl into something considerably more dire, though you still get a return to that guttural cry periodically. While it is, again, difficult to imagine this scoring the scenes between AFO and Tenko's first meeting and Tenko being formally named Tomura--it's much too bombastic--it does still feel like an excellent representation of AFO sculpting Tomura's formless, aimless rage into something that really could tear down the world.

I Don't Kill My Friends: It would have been really nice if they'd let the most significant, unadulterated personal triumph of the arc sound actually fun. Why does the Sad Man's Parade song sound so upset?? @aysall predicts that it'll play over Twice's confrontation with Hawks and death scene, and I can see it working extremely well there, but it's a pretty weird call for the Dead Man's Parade bit, if that is indeed what this is intended to evoke. Quibbling about the title aside, I do like the way this pulses and throbs, something like an exposed wound, which is not a bad description of poor Jin's mentality. I still hope this isn't what scores his breakthrough, though. As I said previously, the villains are the heroes for just this one arc, and it'd be nice if the score could reflect that at least a little.

RE-DESTRO: I like this one a lot. I love the interwoven layers of that dirty sax and the Big and Dramatic orchestral strings + brass, but both of them undercut with that regular, machine beeping that could almost be a heart monitor, but mostly isn't--right up until the long beep at 1.52/1.53. It feels like a strong illustration of the titular character's different personas--his attempts at casual, friendly villainy (like menacing Giran or chatting with Shigaraki on the phone), him when he's thundering full-volume about the weight of his legacy at people (THE BLOOD OF DESTRO FLOWS THROUGH THESE VEINS I AM RE-DESTRO), and, beneath it all, the constant little thread of stress that Rikiya can never escape (right up until Shigaraki). I probably wouldn't love it so much in isolation, but I'm easy to win over with the right character association. XD

Paranormal Liberation Front: Very fun grubby guitar intro. It also has much the clearest melodic throughline, which inclines me towards it. What inclines me to it even more is the knowledge (per @aysall again) that it's the same main melody as the track Villains Theme from the very first season's OST. That track already having used its allotted Doom Choir quotient, this track makes do with less synth and a lot more orchestra and chunky bass backing, which is much to its benefit, I feel. I do wish it had any of the MLA's theme in it, to represent the merger, but admittedly, it'd be hard to make that very audible when the MLA theme has…next to no central melody, percussive rhythm, etc. Still, as an evolution of the League to something bigger, classier, and far more dangerous, it's real good--just long enough to develop into itself and explore its central leitmotif. Probably my favorite track simply on its own merits.

Thanks for the ask, anon! I'd listened to the tracks once driving around for work, but sitting down with them properly gave me a greater appreciation for them, and now I'll definitely have an ear out for them when we get to this material in the anime…

….whenever that winds up being. *sob*

[sometimesiwritetoo]

Thoughts on The Musical Themes In FF7 Remake

So, some thoughts on the musical themes in the remake and the og. Please note that I do not have any qualifications to speak as an authority on music. I didn’t study it in school. I’m not classically trained. I just played in band and have had a growing interest in music and music theory for about a year or so now and have been studying on my own. Take everything I write with a grain of salt, I fully admit I can be wrong.

I’ve talked about this on Twitter and Discord. But let me just summarize what I think happened originally: during the development of the og Uematsu was working alongside with the development on the music. He’s told the story and what emotional beats the directors wanted. So he writes all the music for the og. The main theme for the game is shared with Cloud and it basically summarizes Cloud’s entire journey split into parts.

There’s the main part of Cloud’s theme. Those first five 13 notes that you hear all over the game. They appear in various pieces of music throughout the game including A Tower, A Promise. Which appeared in the og under a different title. A Tower, A Promise happens during the promise with Tifa. And in the og a similar song plays when everyone’s escaped Midgar and are discussing what they’ll do next. I think it’s used to represent when Cloud’s heading out on a journey. So his journey to Midgar as a teen, and his journey to find Sephiroth as an adult. You also hear Cloud’s theme as the overworld theme. It also plays in the minor key when something is off about Cloud’s memories, eventually reducing down to the main interval which is a seventh. The seventh interval is one of the most dissonant intervals in western music. Thus I think it’s really clever for Uematsu to basically hide that in Cloud’s theme the way he did.

Interestingly enough The Price of Strength does contain a reference to Zack. I noticed it from the beginning part of “Flowers Blooming in the Slums” which contains a guitar section only in CC and lacks it throughout future appearances. It also sounds like that little riff is found on a few other tracks featured in the CC soundtrack. Though, to be fair, it does sound like there is a reference to Cloud in the chords or harmonization. But I haven’t gone that deep into it because I don’t have the time. It’s appropriately used during the flashback with Claudia, where it’s actually part of her theme. But it also appears after Elmyra asks Cloud to leave. I think the name of the song is appropriate. This is the price of strength. It’s a lost mother. Or a friend who died out in the middle of nowhere, giving none of his loved ones, including his girlfriend, the closure they need. The Price of Strength seems to be used to illustrate what Cloud, and Zack, have both lost. And it’s fitting that it’s lifted from the CC soundtrack. CC was more about loss, arguably, then the og. Which did have loss, but didn’t feature it as a main theme in the way CC arguably did and thus didn’t have a musical representation for it. But I need to see how it’s used more.

The game is connected to the compilation with a track called “The Promised Land” which opened up the Advent Children movie. The Promised Land plays after the first bombing mission and is an early sign that this game is part of the compilation in a whole as this music doesn’t exist, as far as I can see, in the og. Though give what’s already been discussed, the inclusion of this is only done as an early example that this game is importing compilation themes not just in the music but the story.

Tifa’s theme gets peppered throughout Sector 7, and it’s used about how one would expect. Though it does seem to also represent home for Cloud as it basically gets repurposed for the track “Home is where the Heart is” it’s a bit more ominous and sounds like it’s being played in a minor key. This plays after the plate falls. The minor key is pretty often used for darker moods, to the point that it can be a shortcut. Which is used to effectively show Tifa’s sorrow at the destruction of her home, both in Sector 7 and 7th Heaven.

Sector 5 has Hollow Skies, an instrumental of Hollow. Which really highlights how similar to Crisis Core the song is. Not only does it have Zack’s motif peppered everywhere, but it plays in the sector Zack often visited while in the slums. And it’s interesting that you can basically transition between Hollow Skies and Aerith’s home, which also plays her theme. It’s almost like he’s in everywhere but Aerith’s home, which I don’t think he really spent much time in. Which probably is intentional. If they’re trying to reference Zack in Sector 5 and in certain themes from his game then intentionally not referencing him in Aerith’s theme shows that break*. Aerith has had to move on. She’s sent her last letter. As far as she knows he just got tired of her.

*That being said, when you visit Aerith’s house for the first time listen for a clarinet as she opens the door. It could just be embellishment. Or it could be a reference to something. I genuinely could not tell.

Now, onto Hollow. A song that I don’t think is romantic. First of all Zack’s leitmotiff is pretty prominently featured in the song. And second of all the lyrics are pretty sparse. Which is interesting considering the Final Fantasy as a whole, and hell the VII compilation, aren’t afraid of the ur typical pop song. Not to mention info on the song has been sparse to say the least. With the only info I’ve been able to find is that the writer imagined Cloud in rain or something. Not sure if nuance is being lost in the translations but there ya go. The instrumental part of the song is used as a theme for Sector 5, and the full song appears at the end when (spoiler warning) Zack appears. I think just by it’s use it’s meant to represent Zack. And that’s probably why info on it is so sparse. Zack was a spoiler in part one, and if they plan on expanding on him then saying anything more about the song can be a spoiler. I’m interested in seeing how they’ll use Hollow in the future if it is meant to represent Zack.

There doesn’t actually seem to be any really romantic song in the game. The only one that I’ve actually confirmed the developers seem to have said might be romantic is the song Stand Up. Which the developers thought Japanese audiences would find cool, but the localization team warned might be thought of as sexual or romantic. Especially when you consider the way Cloud and Andrea dance. But there’s nothing that really solidifies a romantic connection. Cloud and Aerith get their themes melded together while they’re in Aerith’s old room at Shinra. But it’s not romantic considering the information revealed does impact the main journey. It also lacks the romantic B section of Cloud’s theme. Given how dedicated Uematsu is to his own themes, and how committed Hamauzu has been in respecting musical history, I doubt we’ll get a straight up romantic theme for Cloud without that B section. Which, for reference, was rearranged for strings in the og and became “Interrupted By Fireworks”.

[darlingfettucini]

So I just finished Carole & Tuesday

And I have a lot of mixed feelings.

Here is a nonsensical rant

And also, is this the first season of many or the only season?

On the one hand, we have multiple characters who are poc and are represented respectfully. One of the main characters is a black woman, with complex feelings and depth and all that good stuff. That by itself is a huge step for anime, and it's one of the things that drew me in.

However, there were some side characters who were poc that, frankly, were a little disturbing? There was a character in the prelim auditions who was dancing and singing obnoxiously who just kind of seemed like a black lady caricature to me. I liked the Mermaid sisters at first, I thought that they were fun drag queens until they were weirdly aggressive. I was excited for nonbinary drag queen representation that seemed pretty positive and comedic (that song is 👌) , but then that aggression happened at the end and... Seems like that angry-black-lady stereotype. I just want to forget those five seconds happened.

Carole and Tuesday are such natural feeling characters, so cutely animated, that they almost felt out of place in their own anime filled with explosive caricature personalities. I think that that's intentional commentary on the world of showbiz. It was natural talent and uncommercialized music vs AI-designed, fabricated, showy music, except I'm not sure who the winner was.

The main female characters, including Angela, the antagonist, are also great. They're unique and they don't go over the top in their own syereotypes--Angela being a bratty idol, Carole a tough kid who knows the street, Tuesday a naive rich girl. They're complex, they don't always act how you expect. They aren't typical anime girls, and it's refreshing. My feminist sides were quite tickled.

Unfortunately, I did feel like the anime didn't focus on the two main girls enough? I feel like I didn't get to know them enough. I wish I could have felt their struggle. Neither of them had happy lives, but I came out feeling worse for Angela than for them, despite Angela having a lot of her success spoonfed to her. Maybe I'm just really used to anime with saturated angst and flashbacks and high stakes, but I think this one could have leaned into it more. The only flashback of Carole we get is when she's in school, getting bullied, and she fights back. I loved that, and I think a bit more would have been great. This anime is supposed to be sweet and feel-good, but sometimes feel-good means you get a taste of feel-bad for a little antithesis.

The plus size representation. I wasn't expecting anything. I certainly appreciated that the 17 year olds looked like 17 year olds and there weren't minors with weirdly huge busts running around. The character designs seemed pretty varied and fun, and there were a few fat men that existed and didn't follow the usual stupid/constantly eating shtick that every cartoon ever likes.

Also, are we really supposed to believe that these two girls from different backgrounds just get along perfectly right from the start? Best friends forever? We do get some conflict between them towards the end, and there are moments where they both fail (Tuesday is a bad homemaker and can't clean, Carole can't keep a job) but it feels a little too perfect between them. I don't mind that they magically sing well together--I'm into that--but I wanted them to have to work together on their songs and struggle to become closer and united.

OKAY NOW LET'S TALK LGBT.

I'm really not happy about this, overall.

I heard that this anime had a lot of representation, and I was excited about that! But theeeennn. Yeah. No.

Once again, some people are troubled by the mermaid sisters. I liked them until they got aggressive. It would have suited the situation more if they had huffed at the rude judge lady and stomped off the stage, but the aggressiveness was not a good time.

Cybelle definitely has this predatory lesbian stereotype going on, doing all us girls-who-like-girls dirty. I thought it was cool that Tuesday had to face crazy fan pressure and high expectations--it's definitely something someone with her personality would struggle with. Frankly, I think a crazy stalker fan as a plot struggle is exciting, but... I don't think this was handled well. I liked Cybelles character design and her song, though--if only she wasn't out here biting people.

However, there was a healthy lesbian relationship going on somewhere in the world when that happened. One of the side characters talked casually about how she's going to marry a woman. That was great! Characters casually being LGBT without it being a main plot point is SO important!

And now. Some transphobia. Angela's mom is a somewhat disturbing mtf caricature. She's got crazy makeup that doesn't look great, shes got a deep voice, mousey hair. Have ya'll seen mtf folks? They don't look like that!

She apparently was on some kind of medicine that made her aggressive and abuse Angela years before. She seems to have changed since then, but uh, Idk why we out here forgiving people who hit kids. Angela seems to resent her for the abuse (valid), and perhaps for transitioning (yikes), there's a scene that seems to link the two somehow, but we don't know exactly why.

What is with this link between aggression and non-cis, non-straight characters? It's so odd. Is it intentionally homophobic and transphobic? I think it's trying to not be? I think it's the thought that counts and a sign that anime is almost out of the twentieth century.

I liked that there were these characters with different sexualities, but there weren't any scenes that were fan-servicey. It wasn't trying to target a specific fujoshi audience with them, it just had them to have them. It was intentionally diverse. There weren't unnecessary romantic subplots that didn't fit the show's tone. It really felt like it was about music, and I liked so many of the songs. I've been replaying dancing laundry and dance tonight constantly.

Okay, those are my random thoughts. What do you guys think? Anything to add?

[happymetalgirl]

Devin Townsend - Empath

I had just been talking about trying to streamline these bad boys (these posts) by trimming my introductory paragraphs, but Devin Townsend is a character in the world of heavy metal that simply refuses to let discussion around him and his music go easily, both in his artistic expression and in his discussion of his artistic motives. Since my discovery of Strapping Young Lad and subsequently Devin’s other solo projects, I have always appreciated how unrestrained he is with following his artistic drives honestly: diverting to different styles before even the hint of staleness creeps in, ending projects that he feels have run their course. Sure, it might be easy to simply reduce him to metal’s answer to Frank Zappa, but despite all Devin’s influences, he doesn’t just come off as simply a rip-off of Zappa with metal as a means to complicate their similarities. Devin has never let his projects’ identities, his influences, or his perceived identity define him, and I've never gotten the sense that he's trying to fit some kind of image of himself that he or other's have constructed.

As prepared as anyone knowing Devin’s catalog is for the uninhibited nuttiness that he brings once again, it’s hard to be cynical about it because it’s clearly just Devin being himself as he always has. He knows his fans love his heavy Ziltoid shit, his groovy and massive Ocean Machine stuff, and that they would all jump at the chance for him to reunite Strapping Young Lad. Yet his fans, myself included, stick around to see what he’ll do next because he doesn’t just give the people what they want. Despite knowing what would more universally please his audience, Devin does what his artistic drive leads him to do, and that liberated creativity has produced so many one-of-a-kind albums, from the fucking weird ambiance and noise of Devlab, to the soothing chamber folk of Casualties of Cool, to the conceptual prog metallic madness of Deconstruction. Devin is the kind of artist whose vocal and compositional talent has allowed him to branch out into all these odd ventures with the rotating staff of instrumentalists he directs to produce more than just novelty albums, and after over two decades of musical adventure, it seems very natural that Devin decide to finally make a “fuck it” album and smash all his various influences and artistic twinges together into one glorious Frankenstein monster of an album, the prospect of which is the kind of thing that makes one lean back a bit to brace for like an impending crash. But if there’s anyone I would entrust to make an album like Empath, it’s Devy.

The soothing sounds of echo-y guitar and angelic choir over cawing sea gulls and gently crashing waves of the introductory track, “Castaway”, leads smoothly into the 75-minute-long guessing game of unpredictable structural shifts of Devin’s seminal work that begins with the gratuitous symphonic cat dance metal of the lead single "Genesis". I enjoyed the song when I first heard it for its big metallic chorus, its constant back-and-forth between grandiose and dancy, and its samples of cats, cows, and other weird shit that only Devin Townsend or Igorrr would utilize, and I enjoy it additionally as an opening ceremony to usher one through the gates of the Wonka factory of metal that the album is. Once inside, it certainly is a chocolate-y wonderland of sounds too colorful to describe piece-by-piece, which would simply spoil it anyway.

Devin gives us a gorgeous uplifting choir hearkening back to Epicloud on the andante glory of “Spirits Will Collide”, what feels like a metallic Christmas anthem on “Evermore”, and mashes death growls and into similarly jingly, carol-y orchestration on “Why?”, which begs and leaves that question wonderfully unanswered. Devin makes a lot of sudden stylistic shifts perhaps for the mere surprise factor of it all, even though at this point I’d be more surprised to hear Devin say something is off-limits, but he could definitely be accused of just trying to be quirky.

But on “Hear Me”, the proggiest piece on the album, Devin in his experienced proficiency brings together thrash palm-muting, blast beats, Dream-Theater-esque dynamics, and a glorious raspy chorus to make perhaps the most Devin Townsend song ever. Similarly proggy is the 11-minute epic “Borderlands”, which opens with a rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo and blends Devin’s eccentricity with his expert orchestration in the most obnoxious way on the entire album, but he pulls it off. Les Claypool-like vocal sytlings, an airhorn sample, synth lines Jordan Rudess would be thrilled with, and even a jazz sax solo all decorate the dance-y funk of a choir-supported rock guitar riff until the song comes down from its explosive elemental climax and transitions into the interluding choral segment of “Requiem” before the album’s real centerpiece: the six-part “Singularity” suite. For the album’s massive prog opus, Devin drops the kookiness and wraps up the last 23 minutes of the album in a patient, comprehensive exposition of his metallic, progressive, and ambient tendencies across six focused, grounded sections. 

Empath definitely has the power to just push away the hard-hearted or those completely unfamiliar with Devin’s work, but this album was never for them. Despite Devin never intentionally catering to fan impulses, Empath is very much an album made for the hardcore fan, the fan who has stuck with Devin through all the weird twists and turns and enjoyed them. And this should certainly feel like a gratifying reward for all their listening dedication as well. Where to go from here, who the hell knows? While such an exhaustive expelling of Devin’s creative bank into one album might suggest that he’s emptying it all out at once to relieve himself and put an end to the nagging of countless musical ideas in his head and be free of it, I think Devin is the kind of person who cannot help but constantly find inspiration to put into his idea box. I think a big emptying of built-up inspiration will only make the creative voices in his head clearer as they accumulate more ideas. And who’s to say this even did the trick? There could still be plenty more Devin feels he needs to do, and being that forming a certain career arc seems to be no concern of his, I don’t think this will be the end of Devin’s creativity, not at all. Based on what I have seen from him, I don’t think there ever will be. And while that may seem like sentenced artistic servitude, albums like Empath make it seem like it’s a blessing of a flowing wellspring of purpose.

Devy/10

[onestowatch]

Berhana’s ‘HAN’ Is a Sonic Treatise On Intent [Q&A]

When we last saw Berhana, he ended his debut EP with the phrase “Copped this one way out to Mexico, cause you compress my soul and call it love.” Utilizing his innate storytelling ability, he used that final line on the project to serve as a bridge to the future.  His new project picks up exactly where the last one left off. HAN, the debut album from LA-based singer Berhana, is out this week via EQT. It’s been about three years since the success of his self-titled debut EP, Berhana. Fueled by the breakout singles “Grey Luh” and “Janet”, Berhana has garnered over 100 million streams and has continued to win over fans all over the world.

With HAN, Berhana is able to execute the next level of his artistry and showcase his growth as a person and a musician. We chatted over the phone a few weeks ago and a reoccurring theme from our conversation was intent. From moving to New York City to study film to taking music more seriously and releasing a project, to making a promise to himself that by the time he released his second project he would be living in Los Angeles, he knew how he wanted his life to look and he did whatever it took to make it happen. That level of intent and vision echoes throughout his entire artistic output. We talked about his thoughts on genre classifications in 2019, working with Pomo, his relationship with time as it relates to creating, staying intentional, and what city has the best ugly dancers. Read the full interview below:

OTW: So it’s 2016 and your first project just dropped. How did your life change?

Berhana: Well, it was slow. People really didn’t fuck with that project immediately so it took a while to hit after I put it out. So when I released it, nothing immediately changed. I still had to work in a restaurant and grind outside of music. But after a while, I started to see it slowly snowball. That's when I was able to transition into music being my full-time thing.

OTW: When did you feel the difference?

Berhana: I remember I moved to LA but I still had to get this restaurant gig, and I really didn’t want to be there. They put me in the lowest position possible even though I was working a much higher position in New York. All of these artists and people would walk in, like people that I would want to work with in the future, and it really just made me want to get out. And one day I got in a fight with my boss and I was just like “alright I’m out of here - it’s a wrap.” And it just so happened that in that month I made just enough money to get by without having to get another job. And then that next month I made just enough to squeeze by again and that’s when I was like “ok, cool I’m just gonna save as much as I can just to not get another job”, and that’s what I did.

OTW: That’s crazy. You can be so close but still, have all of these little things that you need to figure out.

Berhana: Totally. Not everything is going to be an explosion of success. People might picture it like that but sometimes it’s a slow build, and then it gets to this point when you’re like “oh shit we’re here now.” It seemed like it came out of nowhere but it was a slow build.

OTW: It’s funny that your fans kill you for how long it’s been between your releases. What is your relationship with time and the process behind waiting to make sure the music is right?

Berhana: For me, it’s a mix of a couple things. The EP was the first thing that I ever made and I was very cognizant of that, so I wanted to make sure that the second thing was as good as it could be. But I also wanted to make sure I had enough time to grow. The second thing someone puts out solidifies a pattern - it solidifies an expectation from your audience and I didn’t want to put out some half-hearted bullshit that sounded like the EP for everyone to say “oh yeah this is what he does.” I wanted it to be bigger and I wanted it to be better, and that just took time. I didn’t intentionally wait a certain amount of time. I just did my best to give it the time it needed to make sure that everything was right.

OTW: Various playlists refer to you as an R&B artist, and that title doesn’t feel right to me. How do you feel about genre classification in 2019?

Berhana: I think that genre as a concept is dying, and I think people care about it less and less. One day it’ll be extinct but until then I don’t let it affect me too much. They called Prince an R&B artist and other famous people that clearly aren’t, so yeah, I can expect the same. But it’s not my job to tell people what I am.

OTW: Your first project was entirely produced by Sapphire Adizes. Han features a lot of production from you and Pomo. How do you approach production for a project and how did you connect with Pomo?

Berhana: I like locking in on projects with people, and I want the people I work with to feel invested. I think that happens when you bring people in during the early stages and keep them there throughout the entire process. I had wanted to work with Pomo for awhile. I’d seen a lot from him and had gone to a couple of his shows and I could tell that we were into similar things musically so I finessed to get one session with him that my manager set up. That one session was so great that it turned into three sessions and then it turned into this full project.

OTW: What do you think makes you guys such a good team?

Berhana: I think we have similar tastes - I think that’s where it starts. And I think the things that get me really excited, like when I hear a certain thing in music, are the same things that get him excited. And I think that’s a really good place to start when collaborating with artists - having that same taste and the same feel.

OTW: So Han is almost here. How do you feel?

Berhana: I’m stoked, man. I’m just so excited for it to be out in the world and exist as one body of work. Like it’s cool having singles but having it all out there at one time - I’m really excited about that.

OTW: Can you explain the overall theme or concept behind it?

Berhana: Yeah, I always wanted it to be this kind of journey. The very last line in “Grey Luh” is “cop this one way out to Mexico, cause you compress my soul and call it love.” So I knew that I wanted this next thing to feel like a journey and feel like an experience.

OTW: When I was listening to the project, it had a familiar aesthetic based on your singles but then I got to “G2G” and it jolted me out of my seat. Explain how “G2G” came to be.

Berhana: “G2G” is probably my favorite on the entire project. It felt like a science project because I already knew that I wanted a song to have different sections and I knew that I wanted the last section to have this drum and bass section, but I wasn’t sure where to fit it in. We were all in an Airbnb one day jamming and making music and made the first half of “G2G” super fast. It was a joke that turned into something crazy that we loved. Then we realized that this was the song where we were going to add all these different sections. After that, we kept finessing it into what it is today.

OTW: It’s like a shock.

Berhana: I like that. I like messing with people’s expectations.

OTW: As you should. Another standout song on the project is “California.” It feels like what you were setting up on“Grey Luh” and leading into Han, you’re also setting up and leading into the next project as well. Is that intentional?

Berhana: Totally. Everything is intentional. The details are always the best part, it makes it special.

You have a tour coming up so lastly I have to ask, what city has the best ugly dancers?

[Laughs] Ooh, Toronto. We’ll see how other people come out for this tour but on the last tour, Toronto people were dancing pretty ugly and I loved it.    

Check out Berhana’s debut album available everywhere on Friday, October 18th! 

[woodwind-sensei]

The Program Components: An In-Depth Look

 If you’re relatively new to the figure skating world, you’re probably confused as fuck about the program components. What do they mean? Where did they come from? Why are people complaining about the component marks for particular skaters? If you’re one of these people, this is the post for you.

After the judging fiasco that was the 2002 Winter Olympics, the ISU began measures to completely redo the judging system, which was the beginning of the end of the old 6.0 system that had long ruled over the sport. What emerged about a year later was what we know as the first iteration of the ISU Judging System; a new, open-ended scoring system where technical elements had base value points that were given bonuses/deductions for execution. Then the artistic impression mark was replaced what is known as program components: Skating Skills, Transitions, Performance, Composition, and Interpretation of the Music would be judged on a scale of 1-10, and combined to make a PC mark.

This post is going to be a very in-depth look at the program components. There have been many contentions to these marks in the past couple of seasons, so it’s paramount that, as fans, we educate ourselves so that we understand whether or not component marks actually make sense for a particular program or performance. 

Skating Skills

“Defined by overall cleanness and sureness, edge control and flow over the ice surface demonstrated by a command of the skating vocabulary (edges, turns, steps, etc.), the clarity of technique and the use of effortless power to accelerate and vary speed.” - ISU Handbook

Skating skills is the movement component. How well a skater moves across the ice and how they achieve speed and flow is fundamental to how a program is perceived. You could have amazing edges and multi-directional skating, but if you move slow as a snail, your skating skills could still use improvement, and your other submarks could be also affected (if you have judges who actually, ya know, judge).

If I had to point at any examples of skaters with skating skills, the one I immediately think of is Guillaume Cizeron (FRA). He moves across the ice effortlessly, and has such variety and beauty in every stroke and step. The Japanese skaters in general also embody everything that is good skating skills. Satoko Miyahara and Kaori Sakamoto are the two skaters that come to mind for me: they both have an amazing knee bend that allows them to dig into the ice and really create some powerful strokes. Then we have skaters like Alina Zagitova (RUS). She has some good skating qualities, but what sets her a little bit lower than, say, Sakamoto can be seen in their back crossovers: Kaori is so smooth when she does a back crossover, and can reach max speed without restricting the flow of her body (that’s where those good knees come in). But Alina’s crossovers are a lot more jagged in motion. Her feet move rather statically, and she tends to be high in the knee. This translates into her usage of her upper body in jumps, because she doesn’t get the natural spring into the air that a deeper knee bend could help with. 

Transitions

“The varied and purposeful use of intricate footwork, positions, movements and holds that link all elements.”

How do you connect the technical elements? Transitions is the mark that covers the in-between, “moves-in-the-field” (6.0 term) kinds of movements. The mark is based on variety and difficulty of movements before and after major elements. So, if a skater uses interesting entries and exits for all the jumps, or there is a seamless quality between all the elements, the Transitions mark should be high. There is also the opposite: a problem American singles skaters have is that they often “telegraph” their jumps, meaning that they will do close to no choreography and just hold a long edge before their jumps. Even if a choreographer gives them a program with built-in transitional content, you find that by the end of the season, these moments are often removed for the sake of the jumps.

This is the mark that I have the most issue with. Of all the criteria that the ISU gives for the transitions mark, the glaring omission is “movement that matches the music/phrasing”. Nowadays, transitional content is done for the mark, and there isn’t any care to really match it to the music (????). This is extremely evident in Eteri Turberidze’s skaters’ programs. Johnny Weir said about Alina Zagitova (RUS) at the 2018-19 GPF, “she’s been choreographed within an inch of her life.” And that’s why I hate her programs this year. The transitions and movements are distracting rather than enhancing or impressive. The movements are so crammed into the program, there is no time to breathe. An unfortunately, this is rewarded: Tutberidze skaters generally get a bump in the components scores, especially in this specific mark. There needs to be more relationship between the music and transitional content. The king of the transition mark is Yuzuru Hanyu (JPN). He is able to weave the elements into the program at any point, and there’s no telling when a jump or spin will begin. For example, watch his 2018 Olympics short program, and pay close attention to the triple axel. It comes out of a series of super hard steps capped off by a left-back-outside counter turn. The counter is one of the harder figures to use in front of a jump, and Yuzu does it with complete freedom.

Performance

“Involvement of the Skater/Pair/Couple physically, emotionally and intellectually as they deliver the intent of the music and composition.”

The mark that is easiest to understand at a base level, the Performance mark is about how the skater(s) perform on a specific competition and how they project past the board of the rink. How do they carry themselves on the ice? Are the movements clear, precise, and easy to read from the rafters? If it’s a pair or an Ice Dance team, are they in unison the whole way through? Do they move as one unit? These are contributing factors to how involved a performance is. Another key factor to this mark is audience response. Does the program illicit cheers, or leave an audience breathless and captivated? If there were skaters who are the complete rulers of the Performance mark, it’s Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir (CAN). They really move together, and engage the audience in a way that few skaters can. I personally believe Papadakis and Cizeron should have won the Olympics, but I can for sure see why Virtue and Moir came away with the gold: they knew how to draw the audience in, especially in the short dance. Javier Fernandez (ESP) also excelled in this particular component mark. He was the showman of the quadrennium, and was charming and engaging in any program he performed on competition ice.

Composition

“An intentionally developed and/or original arrangement of all types of movements according to the principles of musical phrase, space, pattern, and structure.”

This mark encompasses choreography. Does the movement presented cover the ice well? Are the patterns into and out of elements clean and interesting to watch? Is there a clear arc to the choreography? Is it original material? The last Olympic cycle was the catastrophe that was Backload City, Russia. A lot of Russian skaters began placing all their jumps in the second half of the program, which garnered a 10% bonus. As former ISU judge and co-creator of the Program Components Joe Inman put it, “the program is unbalanced.” Backloaded programs should have had reduced Composition marks in the previous system, which wasn’t the case. 

A good program composition evenly spreads out the technical elements, and reflects the personality of the skater. This season, my favorite program hands down is the short program from Satoko Miyahara. Known for her grace and subtleness on the ice, Lori Nichol did an absolutely amazing job bringing power to Satoko, while maintaining elegance, softness, and purity. It also helps that Satoko is one of the strongest skaters in the world in terms of pure skating skills: she is able to spin in both directions, which helps in both spins and step sequences, and is able to link very difficult steps together with ease. Every program she has done was full of variation and virtuosity.

Interpretation of the Music

“The personal, creative, and genuine translation of the rhythm, character and content of music to movement on ice.”

This component encompasses music and movement. If the other components slightly touched upon this important relationship, this final component mark has it in a stranglehold. There are some key things to think about here: does the movement match the pace of the music? Do the steps and strokes align with the emphasized beats/tempo of the music? Does the movement clearly express the emotion of the music? Does the skater match the program? This is another criticism of the Tutberidze camp. You could honestly take any Daniil G. choreography, mute the music, then put Yakkity Sax on, and the choreography would make just as much sense. The choreography is done for levels, not for presentation, which is what the components marks should be modeled for. 

  One of my favorite programs of recent years was Kaetlyn Osmond’s (CAN) 2017-18 short program to Edith Piaf songs. It’s sexy, age appropriate, and has a variety of beautiful movements that are tailored to the music. This season, though, has seen some great programs that use the music to enhance the skater’s qualities and strengths. Lim Eun-soo’s (KOR) short program this year is a complete stunner. Choreographer Jeffrey Buttle did a stellar job, interpreting the music of the movie Somewhere in Time, using it as a frame to make Eun-soo the consummate skater: powerful, yet delicate. Soft, yet strong. 

How [I think] The Components Relate to Each Other

A lot of what I’ve said so far seems like it overlaps. Sweetie, they were designed to overlap. If a skater doesn’t have a solid grasp on one component, chances are the other marks are questionable at best. The most obvious relationship is skating skills and transitions: without good skating skills, there is no chance in hell a skater can do interesting and varied transitional content. I keep on using Kaori Sakamoto as an example for skating skills/transitions, because she really is a skater who puts two and two together. Sonoko Nakano, her coach, makes her students practice figures like counters and rockers, so they understand how those steps function in their routines. The result is that Kaori has excellent knees, speed, and flow through almost any step. Take her entrance into her first triple-triple here. Only a few sweeping crossovers and some rockers and she is able to fly across the ice. Then there’s performance, composition, and interpretation of the music. They all convey the same thing: what is the program and what does the skater do it affect the audience? Let’s take a program like Virtue and Moir’s (CAN) Free Dance at the last Olympics: it’s a clear interpretation of Moulin Rouge with excellent carriage and a composition designed to bring the house down. That energy in Gangneung Ice Arena must have been so powerful. It leaps right off your TV screen and sucks you in. Even with a program like theirs, or something more nuanced and subtle like that of Gabriella Papadakis/Guilaume Cizeron (FRA), you can’t do them without good skating skills. Everything inevitably has to relate back to the skater’s athletic ability. If a skater cannot accomplish movement on the ice, the program is going to suffer indefinitely.

This analysis of the components is far from perfect. I’m not a trained skater myself, but I really wanted to understand as many of the steps and moves myself in order make sense of a lot of the programs. Hopefully this helps you learn more about the current judging system and why sometimes, fans will speak for or against certain marks that the judges give out.

[disorientedblog-archive]

举杯望明月，低头思故乡。- I Raised My Glass and Look to the Bright Moon, Then Lowered My Head and Think of Home

by EJ Mitchell / photo: Bufan Zhu

He smiles, satisfied.

I watch as Mark rocks the shaker back and forth, the ice, green tea infused gin, passionfruit, and red pepper syrup sloshing around until they are perfectly blended. He takes a straw to taste his concoction. “嗯。”

(“Mmm.”)

He grabs a fizz glass and carefully places three ice cubes inside. He pours the mixture, gently shaking out every last drop. I appreciate such care.

He adds a few splashes of seltzer, and the fruity aroma begins to perfume my nose. I pick up the glass and inhale deeply, taking a generous sip.

“嗯，可以 !”

(“Mmm, pretty good!”)

Mark helps another guest as I enjoy my drink. AirPods in ear, I listen to Amber Mark’s “Love Me Right” for the nth time, letting the layers of Mark’s creation and Mark’s harmonies soothe me. I normally don’t drink by myself. But around this time of year, when Beijing is emptied by 春运 (the Spring Festival travel rush), I am alone and most reflective. The beginning of 2019 begets the transition into a new zodiac year, the anxiety surrounding performance reviews, and my fifth annual winter odyssey back to the US. I also find that people are at their most inquisitive:

What are you doing for New Years?

Where are you going for Spring Festival?

Are you staying for another year?

How much longer do you see yourself in China?

When are you coming home?

These questions assume a lot—that I have funds to do something or go somewhere, or that I am thinking about leaving China, or that one day I will eventually “go back.” The longer I live in Beijing, the more the last question perplexes me.

Beijing is where I have accumulated over six years of formative experiences. I’ve cried because I was in love (or so I thought). As an educator, I’ve experienced my worst nightmare—the loss of a student and the ineffable numbness that follows. I’ve even danced my way into free rounds of tequila shots on my birthday. At least that’s what I was told. If nothing else, Beijing is certainly the only place where I feel confident in my adulting skills. Literally, and I mean literally, every time my Didi arrives, the driver says,

“我还以为你是我们中国人！没想到你是外国友人，打电话听不出来！”

(“I thought you were Chinese! I didn’t think you were a foreign friend. Couldn’t tell over the phone!”)

This is a compliment that I have learned to authentically accept humbly (”我中文还行吧…“ / “My Chinese is okay…”), instead of simply saying thank you. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t proud of my Beijing accent, but I know better than to think that just because I have adopted erhua and say things like “Bu ri dao!” or “Ma qu?” that I can by some amount of sheer effort become or be seen as a true Beijinger. When asked, “你什么时候回家？” I intentionally, and perhaps defensively, reply, “我要去美国,” emphasizing that I am going to America, not returning home. Have I not done enough to demonstrate to others that I am at home when I am in Beijing?

I have the last gulp of my drink and have a feeling that I am going to need another.

“Mark，再来一杯。你随便调吧。“

(Mark, another one. Mix as you see fit.)

As Mark readies a mixture of blackberries, aged sherry, port, and rum he calls “Darker the Berry,” I find myself starting to feel guilty. Here I am, sitting in not just any bar, but my bar. Five Beijing blocks away the streets are lined with H&M, Alexander McQueen, stadium-style night clubs, and the entrance to my gated apartment complex. In a mere few days I will return to Forest Park to sleep on my mother’s living room couch in a Cincinnati suburb of fewer than twenty-thousand people, in contrast to the three and half million that call Chaoyang district their home. If I’m honest with myself, though I love my mom’s cooking and dearly miss my five siblings, I could do without the tear-filled overtures of emotional baggage and petty arguments masked as “discussions.”  

“很快就能回家啦，开心了吧？” Mark asks.

(“You’ll be returning home soon. You must be happy?”)

“嗯。” I feign a smile.

(“Mhmm”).

Counting the time in my head, I haven’t gone back to Cincinnati in over a year and a half, choosing instead to visit a friend and former colleague from Beijing in Scotland last summer. Sometimes I wonder if I’m just running away.

“You don’t know…you weren’t there! You’re never around!”

This isn’t the first time my brother’s words have echoed in my mind, but this time I feel different. My ears are warm. I can’t tell if it’s from the stiff drink or because of recalling my adult brother’s emotional eruption the last time we were together. His words, though at the time came as a shock, were true, and to some degree still are. I remember writing in my personal statement for college about how, following the dissolution of my parents’ marriage, I felt that I had outgrown my family and that I, too, needed a divorce. Now 6800 miles away in Beijing, I have my chosen family, a job that I don’t just like but love, memories of vacations to St. Petersburg’s palaces and Almaty’s mountains, a savings account with actual savings…

Haven’t I done enough? Am I not the child my parents raised? Am I not a person that they—no, that any parent or family—would be proud of?

“You’re never around! You’re never around! You’re never around!”

Apparently not.

I have reveled in the freedom that I have discovered in Beijing, a place I did not have or want to share with my family until their first venture out of the US to visit me; I was too hurt by what was behind me and too overwhelmed by what was in store. Yet, in my attempt to free myself from the aftermath of my parents’ divorce, I have created a distance between myself and my family beyond just physical separation—a college degree, language barriers, and inadvertent intellectual elitism, to say the least. But the distance hasn’t been all bad. In fact, in many ways, it has provided the critical space that I have needed to begin metabolizing the guilt that has been left to fester over time.

With a fonder heart, I am learning to patiently explain that Tokyo is neither where I live nor a city in China instead of rolling my eyes, and I strive to get as many hugs and selfies in with my youngest sisters, though I often wonder if they even know who I really am. Acquaintances and strangers alike have a habit of reminding me that I could always “just go back home,” reasoning that I would be closer to, and arguably closer with, my family (and definitely less frequently stared at). But one doesn’t just simply “go back” and expect years of mismanaged expectations and trauma to be fixed. Though well-intentioned, they are missing the point. I choose to stay because of the acceptance and affirmation from my friends. I stay because when I walk the streets and hear or see police I am not afraid for my life. I stay because when I look at a billboard I am not perplexed by the characters’ strokes but still in awe that I understand the language of the future. I stay because the look of ecstasy on my sister’s face after having her first bite of kaoya or my mom’s after her first sip of baijiu at dinner in Haidian with my host family is priceless.

As I empty my glass, my attention turns to the Cocaine 80s song in my ears.

“Or maybe you're just going through shit

And that's a part of your design

Just maybe all your dreams are lucid

Been in control the whole time…”

I used to dream that one day my family’s issues would work themselves out. But dreaming that I’m there for my brother isn’t enough to lift his spirits when he’s down. No amount of dreaming can change the fact that I can only remember celebrating one birthday with my sister who turns ten this year. The distance between me and my family is our reality, but that doesn’t mean I can’t build bridges. I can pick up the phone more—I’m always on it anyway—or offer to help offset the costs of visits. My experiences leading up to and in China have provided access to a life that was previously unimaginable, for me and my family. If I want to continue to do better for us, I have to acknowledge that things don’t work themselves out. I have to put in the work, despite how uncomfortable it may be.

“...Relationship nightmares

Your soul is drained

The demons that you've been dreaming up

Are angels under the pain”

Maybe, just maybe, I’m finally ready to do that.

EJ Mitchell has been working as an educational consultant in Beijing since 2014 and is a co-owner of Sanlitun cocktail bar 50/50.

[secretradiobrooklyn]

Two Lions In Love Edition | 6.19 & 6.26.21

Secret Radio | 6.19 & 6.26.21 | Hear it here.

 6/19: Juneteenth “Two Lions in Love Edition”

“Tropical use only” — drug salesperson

1. Daddy Don’t - “Bottom Side of Texas”

One of our favorite spots to play in the whole country is the Pilot Light in Knoxville — it’s not just the club, but the neighborhood and really the whole drive into town, digging into the Tennessee mountains. There’s a little St. Louis in its bricks and pathways too. One evening brought us a night with Daddy Don’t, which was a gal on guitar singing songs about the gal on drums, plus a guy onstage strictly to blow bubbles. They seemed so shy and so completely cool. Their set was hilarious and touching and maybe a little stumbly and thoroughly charismatic. I felt an overlap with Birdcloud and Schwervon and ‘90s Olympia but also definitely their own thing. I hope they’re doing cool stuff these days too.

2. Ennio Morricone - “Guerra e Pace Pollo e Brace” - “Grazie Zie” soundtrack

The great music find from the wedding of Josh and Ashleigh. We spent some time recently remembering what a fantastic time that was…

3. Panjabi MC - “Mundian to Bach Ke”

…because we all met up in Chicago this month to celebrate the marriage of Ren and Kiera! It was in the Morton Arboretum, bringing together both American and Indian families in one grand event. The music throughout the evening was lovely, from the ceremony (Josh on solo guitar) through the early events and the meal. Once the dance floor was opened, however, a whole new flavor dropped: the DJ rocked between Nelly and Indian dancefloor music, then over to Michael Jackson, then into Panjabi MC and on and on. We danced our faces off!

- “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” karaoke version with special guest star!

4. Sparks - “The Number One Song in Heaven”

“Gabriel plays it and God how he plays it!” I know everybody’s gonna be talking about Sparks soon because of the doc that just dropped, and it’ll be both from people who know everything about Sparks and from people who are brand-new zealots. Bring it on — I’m so looking forward to learning more about these guys… especially because, in just over a month, on August 6, there’s going to be a whole other film dropping that we’ve been looking forward to for years. It’s called “Annette,” and it’s directed by Carax, who did “Holy Motors” and “Lovers on the Bridge” — it’s his first movie in English and his first musical. But check this: Sparks wrote all the music! The cast includes Adam Driver, Marion Cotillard, Angèle AND Russell Mael … I mean, we couldn’t be any more excited for this film. It’s entirely possible that it won’t work at all, but it’s also entirely possible that it turns out to be the combined efforts of some of the most interesting artists working today.

5. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - “Noude Ma Gnin Tche De Me”

We met up with Theo Welling recently just off Atlantic Avenue at a place with a questionable name and a brothel theme but a pretty epic back patio. Not only were there chandeliers and a disco ball hanging from the broad branches of the tree overhead, but the music was DEAD ON our tastes. When this song came on, it was like: they got us. There was some Francis Bebey a little later on, I mean it was the very stuff. And the thing is, this song totally rocked that patio. Because T.P. rules.

This is from Analog Africa’s crucial T.P. collection, “Echos Hypnotiques.”

6. Elsa - “Ecoutez”

The energy in French records from the ‘60s is crackling hard — this one 

We picked up this record at Dave’s Records when we were in town for Ren and Keira’s wedding. It happened to be Record Store Day as well, so we went to Dave’s Records, an old favorite with a “CDs — Never Had Em, Never Will” sign in the window. “They powered through CDs,” says Paige. That sign is this relic of them living through the ‘90s and ‘00s, really.”

7. Velvet Underground - “White Light/White Heat”

Theo was wearing a Lou Reed Transformer shirt that night and we spent some time talking about this crazy band. I feel like this track is the ultimate experience of VU where they find the most ragged frayed edge of pop music to ride and they spend the whole song there, until the end when they jump on the song like leopards on an antelope and start attacking it. But the song resists, takes off running, and actually gets quite a long ways before it is finally taken down. The ending sounds like a brutal act of nature.

8. Sroeng Sari - “Kuen Kuen Lueng Lueng”

It took me a while to stop and actually listen to this song — the opening riff is kind of blinding. You stare into that riff and think that you’re gonna have to deal with a whole version of “Iron Man,” but on the other side of the riff lies a fascinating new riff and completely independent verse shape. (I have no idea if the lyrics relate to the concept of “Iron Man.”) In fact, it turns out the riff is practically only used like a sample within the structure of the song, and it’s mainly not Iron Man at all. 

9. [REDACTED] Keep an eye out for the Extended Drunk Scarface Cut Edition.

[9. Paige Brubeck as Scarface & Tony S. in - “Favorite Gangster Friend” feat. Chumbawumba]

10. Midnight Oil - “The Power and the Passion”

Paige was a little too late for Midnight Oil, but she’s extremely receptive to an ideologically, ecologically driven band. “If I had heard that band when I was listening to ska music, I would have fuggin loved this band. I think I would have listened to this band a lot. The part of me that likes Reel Big Fish and the Pietasters… it’s very punk and then when the horns come in it’s like, Oh yeah I love this stuff.”

For me: I love the drum solo. It’s such an interesting full-length exploration of a few different ideas, and it helps point out the ways that the percussion operates in Midnight Oil songs. The overdubbed variations on the singer’s voice reminds me of techniques we used in Bound Stems. I really like that way of recording multiple emotions within a single line and just kind of smashing them together for a multi-faceted take on the lyric. I feel like “Jane Says” was the first recording where I noticed that approach. I also love the crescendo structure to the whole song. But to me, this feels like a song that was built to be played live but someone thought should be represented on the album. I think the transitions between the A, B and C parts are weird and unfinished, even though each of the parts is really good.

11. Phuong Dung - “Do Ai”

What a truly incredible voice… and the guitar accompaniment only slowly reveals its depth and litheness through the course of the song.

12. Group Inerane - “Ikabkaban”

This was a lucky discovery. It’s as much a state of mind as a recording of a song. The sound is very live and not ideal, which I do think ultimately makes it more interesting. There’s something about live recordings that can be embarrassing and compromised… or it can feel like lightning in a bottle. I think this one feels special. This sounds to me like desert blues. These are some of the notes on the track itself: “This album by the rebellious Tuareg musicians from Niger is certainly more hypnotic and less ecstatic than the first (which was recorded at a wedding celebration). It should be said that the guitarist Adi Mohamed, who played on the first album, was shot dead in a skirmish between the nomads and junta forces.”

Yow.

13. The Lemon Twigs - “As Long As We’re Together” (video version)

Now I should just say A) this is the video version of the song, and B) that’s the real version of the song as far as I’m concerned. This video is a perfect thing, at least to me. It was directed by Autumn de Wilde, who went on to direct the film “Emma,” which was one of the most enjoyable pieces of art we saw during the pandemic. (She initially got notice as a photographer before going into music videos.) The recording is masterful, with an intentionally pushed back main vocal and all kinds of panned effects both minimal and baroque. These guys were all teens when they wrote and recorded this song with Foxygen’s Jonathan Rado, which only makes it more (annoyingly?) brilliant. Also: this is our candidate for the song likeliest to get stuck in your head.

That video (I love the ending): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQ4nqnVOfMo

- Nisar Bazmi - “Aesi Chal Main”

Pakistani music from a collection labeled “Folk and Pop Instrumentals 1966-1976.” It’s easy to imagine this as a folk song, but the instrumentation is so radically electric that it feels like new information being learned on the spot.

14. Katty Lane - “Ne Fais Pas La Tête” 

Another live recording. Actually, that’s probably not true: it’s a recording from a TV of a TV appearance that Katty made, almost certainly lip-synching the vocals. But it sounds better than the album version to us. Katty Lane is going for a cross between Nancy Sinatra and Brigitte Bardot, and it’s really interesting how close she gets but how far away she remains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T4gWLi5RUw

15. Ezra Furman - “I Lost My Innocence”

Man, the rhythmic arrangement of the opening verse knocks me out. The production on this whole album really, but the minimalist rhythmic clarity that comes from splitting the beat among a variety of instruments is so amazing. As a drummer I just find the pattern-building in this song enviable.

We got to know these songs well during a tour we did with Ezra Furman. The whole band is full of heavy hitters, including Tim Sandusky, the guy who recorded the album and plays a variety of instruments there and live. He’s one of my favorite musical brains, period, and “Transangelic Exodus,” the album this comes from, is one of my favorite pieces of album production, period.

16. Voilaaa - “Pas bon”

These are apparently contemporary people! This album is from 2015. I think Josh pointed us to this one.

17. Francois and the Atlas Mountains - “La Verité”

This a band Paige came across a couple of years ago, at 2222 Jefferson I believe. This chorus is a true tonguetwister and thus irresistable to try to sing along with. The melody is really strong, and check out how the guitar enters the solo!

18. Ata Kak - “Daa Nyinaa”

We had an amazing night in the back patio zone we share with our building. Dexter had a few friends over including a dude named KG who turned out to be super interesting on a variety of subjects. As we were talking about music he brought up Ata Kak, whose “Obaa Sima” we’ve played on here and who we absolutely love. Paige disappeared inside and came back with our tape of this whole album. He fell out, like what are we doing with this thing? I started telling the whole back story of how the album was discovered in a street tent in Ghana by the guy from Awesome Tapes From Africa, and eventually after many adventures actually tracked down Ata Kak, who was surprised to be found and even more surprised to find that the tape Awesome Tapes had found was distorted and ran way faster than originally intended. But then KG started playing that original tempo track, which does indeed sound comPLETely different. I still haven’t been able to find a way to get ahold of that original track. “Daa Nyinaa” is another banger off the same tape. The man just has a really great sense of what makes a hook.

19. Sakuran Zensen - “Taxi Man” 錯乱前戦　タクシーマンのMVです

This was a video that flickered through my feed a couple of years ago, I think thanks to Steve Scariano (not Steve Pick as I claim aloud). I don’t think a single recommendation of Steve Scariano has ever been the wrong answer — the man has impeccable taste. This song has all of the rock and all of the roll PLUS a ladder. It’s a strong song and an even stronger video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNmubstNGFs

20. New York Dolls - “Looking for a Kiss”

As soon as we were in the nasty distortion of Sakuran Zensen it was probably inevitable that we would go looking for the New York Dolls. The live performance of this song is worth the price of admission… and the drummer looks like one of the brothers from The Lemon Twigs!

21. Mina - “La verità”

Sometimes Italian is the only language that will do. It does tend to have its own melodic shapes separate from French. I adore the way she goes for the high notes in the chorus only to get to the climax, which is her dropping down into her lowest register to bitterly and sarcastically deliver the title phrase: “La verità:” “the truth.” I know just enough Italian to catch that her final declaration is “Sono stato io,” or: “It was me.”

22. Pylon - “Cool”

Pylon has been back in the news recently thanks to a big ol’ rerelease at the 40 year mark, and it’s a great way to get more in touch with a band that lies at the source of so much music we love. They are every bit as cool as the song.

23. Dalida - “Aghani Aghani”

Dalida is Egyptian born, in an Italian household, who first gained fame singing in French — or in Italian to French audiences. She ended up singing in 10 languages in all. She is a blockbuster French star with no parallel, though she died young by her own hand. “Aghani Aghani” is an Arabic medley that became a gigantic hit all across the Arab world and has since entered the fabric of the language and culture.

24. Betti-Betti & T.P. Orchestre Poly Rythmo de Cotonou - “Mbala”

We have been falling deeper and deeper for Betti-Betti’s songs. This one has so many of my favorite things that she does — the fantastic melodies that cycle past each other, the expressive horn lines, and the mouth percussion that totally transforms the song for me. We just recently got a different album of hers that we’re also really excited about; that one features an entirely different band in a different style. This one is T.P. though, those consummate collaborators, and this song is an epic joining of forces.

- Mulatu Astatke + Black Jesus Experience - “Mulatu”

25. Nick Drake - “Pink Moon”

Oh that strawberry moon with its red halo.

[famedexclusivearchive]

Exclusive interview with Mia on her album “Stopwatch”

WISH has been everywhere since they debuted. They can be seen on advertisements all over Seoul and their songs can be heard playing on every street. They’ve been dubbed the Nation’s Girl Group, and with that comes little rest for a member like Mia, who also has a rising acting career and has branched out into music of her own. Over the past year, she’s promoted the collab “Ma Boy”, released the BC Portal song “Rain”, featured on the albums of groupmate Vivienne and Decipher’s Duri, and also starred in Girls’ Generation 1979 and the webdrama Short. Now she’s taken on the project of a solo album of her own, titled Stopwatch which was released at the end of March. Here at Exclusive, we got to have the first interview with Mia about the release of her solo album. Read what she had to say below!

You’re the third WISH member to release a solo album. How do you feel your album is different from Vivienne’s and Wren’s?

All of our solo releases are unique to ourselves, and it’s hard to really pit them against each other when they’re all full of such amazing music. I think how Stopwatch separates itself from other albums or anything that I’ve released before is how the music has two stories. I was able to explore a lot of different concepts and songs while developing the album, but I think what makes it special is how the songs all tie into each other as whole. They were all produced individually, but with a bigger picture in mind or so to speak. The songs separately all tell a different story, a different concept- but when put together they paint a whole different picture, and I’m really proud of being able to call that painting something of my own.

You had a hand in some songwriting and producing on the album, and you also contributed to the choreography. What was that like?

The barest way to put it would be incredible. This is the first time I’ve been able to work so closely with the music I release, and it feels amazing to see the end product altogether. A little secret I’ll share here is that some of these songs were created before we were even planning on releasing a solo album. Cosmic Dust in particular was actually a song that I first drafted as a trainee. It’s really satisfying to see this all come full circle. Helping choreography Why Don’t You Know, especially with Dax-sunbaenim, was probably the cherry on top. For as long as I could remember I’ve been wanting to release a song with choreography that I created myself and being able to actually do it, and for it to be for such an amazing song like Why Don’t You Know- it’s magical.

What was it like working with other idols on components of your album like RIZO, Vivienne, Taeyong, Duri, Taeho, Dax, Silver, and Tokki?

It was more than I could have ever asked for, honestly. Thanks to them, and all of the staff behind the scenes, they’re the real reason why this album even exists honestly. Both literally and metaphorically, considering some of the songs were produced by them. I owe my thanks to all of them, really. For the amazing lyrics to the wonderful production of music to choreography and just being there for input and to mentor me through this. I think that’s another reason why the album ended up so great. It’s not just influenced by me, but by other idols and people as well. Art isn’t about what’s on the surface level. It’s the little things, like maybe how there’s a bit more percussion in one section of the song compared to the rest to accentuate that part of the song, or how a sentence is phrased to convey a differently different meaning. And we were able to bring that altogether through everyone’s efforts, and I can’t begin to think of how to express my gratitude in words.

Do you feel “Roller Coaster”’s concept or “Why Don’t You Know”’s concept fits you better as a performer?

I don’t think one or the other match myself more or less than the other does. They just bring out different sides of me. Roller Coaster lets me show off a more mature side of myself while still staying young, almost to represent my age this year. It shows off playfulness of my youth while showing that I’ve begun to grow up now, and how I’m transitioning as I begin my twenties. It’s funny because I think the message that Why Don’t You Know contradicts the one portrayed with Roller Coaster does. It’s a lot more playful and carefree in my opinion- about having fun and expressing yourself in a different way. It’s more similar to concepts that WISH have produced compared to Roller Coaster, but it has a more mature touch to it that I haven’t done before as well. Both concepts criss-cross in that sense, but they bring two different end results over all, so it’s hard to identify which one I’m similar to more.

Other than the title tracks, which one song do you recommend everyone listens to?

What Do I Do is one of my personal favourites off the album. It was produced by Taeyong-sunbaenim, and I’m really thankful that he created this track. It’s a pop-dance song that matches title tracks Roller Coaster and Why Don’t You Know well. I was tempted to make it one of the titles when I first heard the demo, honestly. It makes you really energized and motivated while listening to it. Although if you’d like a more relaxing song (even if the question just asked for one song- I can’t decide!) I’d recommend taking a look at Cosmic Dust and Remind Of You. I participated in the production and writing of both songs and wrote them intentionally as a pair of sorts, almost like a story between the two songs. I really like those two as well.

Did you have any major inspirations for this album and your performances?

I….watch a lot of dramas in my spare time, and I don’t really have much relationship experience, so it would be a lie to say that some inspiration for lyrics didn’t come from that. Asides from fiction, of course, a lot of inspiration came from WISH, my friends- my family, in that sense. They inspire me to be better and work harder, because they’re always here supporting me and encouraging me to do my best. I’m really grateful for that. And our fans! They always have such amazing ideas to offer us and I definitely looked towards them to help them guide this album. Our Wishing Wells are the best!

What do you hope people take away from listening to this album?

A lot of things, really. I’m the type of person to find it a hard time expressing myself through words, so I really worked to express myself with music in this album. I took this as a chance to communicate with my fans and myself better. I was a little bit afraid, honestly, when I released the album. Will people understand the message? Will people be okay with it? But the reception so far has been overwhelmingly encouraging and it makes me really happy to know that people enjoyed my music.

Do you have any other comments you’d like to make to your fans?

Everything from the songs to the choreography to the amazing reception- it’s all thanks to them. This album wouldn’t have been half as well done had I not been able to receive support from our fans during production. So thank you- well, this entire interview has been a thank you of sorts- but really, thank you. I love you all!

[rxbxlcaptain]

I'd like ... 'are you still awake ... ?', if you wouldn't mind. :)

Months ago while searching for writing inspiration, I found an prompt that said “You were supposed to be aone night stand, but we ended up talking till dawn instead of sex. And wow wereally click, so do you maybe want to have breakfast and stay longer?” and I’d really wanted to write that for these two (it just seemed to fit so well!) and with this sentence prompt I was finally able to do it! So enjoy a modern, not-quite-a-one-night-stand AU :)

AO3

The first fingers of light were coloring the distant horizonwhen the balcony door slid open behind her. She didn’t turn at the noise,leaving her head resting on her hand and her eyes trained on the early sunrise.

“Are you stillawake?” Cassian asked gently, the accent that first intrigued her lastnight at the bar thicker now, more tired than it was when she’d first heard it.

“Yeah.”

“You’d been quiet for so long, I wasn’t sure.” At that, Jynturned to him, enjoying the way his lips curved up into a half smile and hiseyes softened as he looked at her.

“What can I say?” Jyn gave him a smile of her own, teasing.“You wore me out last night.”

“Yeah,” Cassian laughed, moving to sit in the chair besideher, propping his feet up on the balcony railing. “Just not quite in the way Iwas expecting.”

“It’s not my fault you believe ‘All You Need Is Love’ is abetter song than ‘Hey Jude.’” Jyn threw her hair up in the air with a mockserious expression on her face. “Your opinions needed to be corrected and somethings are just more important than sex.”

Cassian laughed again, the low sound escaping into the crispearly morning air freely. Jyn wished she could bottle that sound; she’d onlyheard it for the last few hours, ever since she’d met this gorgeous stranger ata bar, but she wanted to keep it with her and replay it occasionally.

Ten hours previous, Jyn was gathered in a crowded bathroomwith her two flatmates, Leia, who was trying desperately to arrange Jyn’s hairin any style other than her traditional bun, and Shara, who kept intentionallyknocking Jyn’s elbow every time she started applying eyeliner. They hadn’t hada “girls’ night out” in months, Leia had been complaining, so she’d organizedan evening of a classy dinner – followed by a less-than-classy after party at abar Leia had been suspiciously pushy about going to.

(It wasn’t until they arrived at the bar to find Han Solo, aman Leia refused to admit she was attracted to, working as the bouncer. Jyn andShara only rolled their eyes when Leia went pink at the sight of him.)

The music was loud and the drinks were strong. Han clockedout an hour after the girls arrived and Jyn and Shara subsequently lost trackof Leia; Shara remained by Jyn’s side for another twenty minutes until, with awink and a request to not wait up, Shara was led onto the dance floor by a tanman with dark eyes.

That was when Cassian found her.

He’d skipped the cheesy lines and the sleazy moves most menin a bar like this would have tried (smart move, Jyn thought, since that wouldhave earned him either a fist to the face or a knee to the crotch). Instead, he’dgaze at her from under the mess of hair littering his forehead and smiled thatillusive smile and, god, something about his long eyelashes…

Jyn was pulled in before he’d asked if she wanted to getaway from the noisy music and rowdy atmosphere.  

She texted Leia and Shara – both of whom were likely toooccupied to notice if Jyn had gone or not – and accepted the outstretched handCassian offered her.

(She’d used that hand to her advantage, too, pulling himinto a nearby alleyway and pushing him up against the brick wall of the club.)

But the wait for their Uber quelled the heat between them –but not, as it turned out, the intrigue.

It all started with a random car driving down the street,its windows rolled down and blaring, not the hip-hop tunes Jyn expected, but anold Beatles tune. Cassian picking up the tune – and what a voice he had! –sparked a debate over the merit of the different Beatles eras.

By the time their Uber met them, they’d transitioned over toclassical composers (both parties were overly surprised the other knew anythingabout the true art of classical music, though Cassian insisted Jyn’s educationwas lacking, since she didn’t recognize several Mexican composers) and, by thetime they’d arrived at Cassian’s apartment, they had found their way toliterature. (Jyn maintained Cassian won their contest over who could place the openingline with the correct novel because they were in his apartment and near hisbook shelves. Cassian wanted to kiss the stubborn pout off her face.)

Somewhere between Kurt Vonnegut and Aldous Huxley, betweenletting her hair down and finishing an entire bag of Lay’s potato chips, thesun began to rise and Jyn slipped out onto Cassian’s balcony, taking in hisview of the city from a lounge chair.

Whatever Jyn had been planning on when she left her flat theprevious evening had not been this, but, taking in Cassian’s profile in thepale light and considering how she’d discovered so much more than what helooked like, she wasn’t sure she regretted it.

In fact, the whole crazy situation made her throw her headback and laugh.

“What is it?” Cassian asked, asmile already on his face and in his voice.

“This,” Jyn replied, gesturingacross the space between them. “Me and you.”

Cassian reached out to take her hand,rubbing his thumb over her knuckles. “Will your friends be worried about you?”

“No. They know where I am.” Leiaand Shara likely weren’t even awake yet and, if they were, they had morepressing matters to attend to than worry about Jyn’s one night stand. Besides,they knew she was a big girl who could take care of herself.

“Then they aren’t expecting youback anytime soon?”

“I think your time for attemptingto seduce me has past,” Jyn teased. “You should have taken me up on the offerlast night.”

“Ah, I didn’t realize it had an expirationdate,” Cassian smiled back. “You should have been more clear in the contract Isigned.”

“You didn’t read the fine print.”

Cassian inclined his head,conceding the argument. “If it’s too late to try and seduce you, what aboutbreakfast?”

Jyn raised an eyebrow at him. “Idon’t get breakfast with one night stands.”

“Good thing you didn’t sleep withme, then.” Cassian stood and reached out his hand to her. “What do you say?There’s an excellent breakfast joint a few blocks from here that puts out freshbagels at six.”

“Hmm,” Jyn tapped a finger to herchin, pretending to consider her answer. “That depends on whether you preferblueberry or cinnamon swirl bagels in the morning.”

“Blueberry, of course.”

“That,” Jyn said, rising to herfeet and poking Cassian in the chest. “Is the first correct opinion you’ve hadall night. Lead the way to the fresh bagels.”

[hamilkilo]

Making That Cash Money, Yo

Prompt: Second Chapter of the Moulin Rouge AU Pairing: This chapter has Creepy!Lee and Boss!Conway, hamilsquad MIA rn, but wait for it for the next chappie TW: stripper, strip club, Lee is a creepy old man that makes advances on reader but Mr. Conway stops him, playful nonsexual way of calling the manager Mr. Conway as Daddy C, drinking A/N: I’m excited about this, and I hope y'all are enjoying it! Please feel free to leave comments! I love y'all so much! Please let me know if you need me to tag something! I want y'all to feel safe when reading my work! Word Count: 1989

Your Sons of Liberty Chapter 2

You had work that night. You weren’t too thrilled about it. It wasn’t that your job was awful. I mean, the pay was really good. It was completely worth it. It’s just that you were feeling bloated and totally not sexy today, which made your job difficult. However, an hour into your shift, you felt fine. Actually, you felt wayyyy better than fine. After pounding back several swigs of orange juice and vodka, or what you called “Go Go Juice,” You were buzzed and having a great time. The only setback was the slight wobble you had when you walked. Your heels didn’t help your balance issue, but you weren’t new to this, so you were able to keep the tottering to a minimum. You weren’t sure how long you had been working anymore. You’d had your fair share of Go Go Juice and your body was glistening with sweat. You had made several trips across the stage, and even more trips to your locker to stow away your cash. Your strappy one piece was really a hit tonight. You had your hair down, and after all of the perspiring, the curls had left, and it was straight against your back. Your makeup was still in tact, though, and you still looked hella. 

“Please welcome to the stage, Miss Glimmer!” You made another trip across the stage and to the center pole. You felt a sultry grin on your face as you slowly slid your hand down the pole and leaned on it, awaiting your cue. As soon as you heard the chanting and the guitar, you quickly moved your body to the rhythm against the pole as “Cherry Pie” began to play. Hoots were heard from the crowd as you began to dance, shaking what the good lord gave you. You swung your hair behind you as you rolled your hips, using the pole to your advantage. You worked through your routine, occasionally grinding on the pole, swinging around it, wrapping a leg around it and sliding down. As the song approached the end, you slid down into the splits and arched your back, showing off your glistening chest, barely contained by the strappy one piece you wore. You swung your leg behind you and slowly crawled your way across the stage towards the men in front of you, your eyes never locking on any of them for long as their hungry eyes searched your face. You did recognize a few as regulars, and you knew for sure that they recognized you. You licked your lips as you pushed yourself up and swept your hair to one side. The song finally ended, and the men hooted, stuffing your bodice with bills, feeling you up while doing so, but you didn’t mind as the sight of a few twenties caught your eyes. You grinned as you watched dollar bills float onto the stage around you. Some of the paper bills stuck to your sweaty skin. You pulled yourself up, giving them a good show, before you flipped your hair over my shoulder, added an extra sway to your hips, and made your way towards back stage. As you drew close to the shadows, you turned to the crowd, their eyes still following my every move like hungry eels, and you blew them a kiss before you disappeared. You went back to your locker and began to pull out the cash and stuff it away. One of the managers came back with a sack full of bills and handed it to you without a word. Maybe they tried talking to you. You weren’t sure. You were too buzzed from my performance. You shut your locker before you poured yourself another glass of Go Go Juice and made your way back out onto the floor. “Glimmer!” A gruff voice called out, and you turned to find your manager, Mr. Conway. He approached you with a grin before he swung an arm around my shoulder. “That was a hell of a performance tonight!” You beamed up at him, “Only for you, Daddy C.” He giggled to himself, “I know, sugar.” It was funny because contrary to archetypes, Mr. Conway actually had a husband at home. “So, one of our regulars, Mr. Lee, requested a private dance from you.” You scowled in response, “Again?” Mr. Lee practically begged for a private dance from you every night he turned up. It was becoming annoying. “He’s willing to pay a lot, Glim,” he murmured to you, and you could barely hear him over the thumping music and the shouting of the men as one of the girls danced on the stage. “I’ve told you, Daddy C. I’m not that girl,” you insisted as you pulled away from him. “I know, Glim, I know. But…” he bit his lip before he looked back up at you, “He’s willing to pay five figures.” You felt the blood drain from your face. Five figures? For one dance? One, small dance from you? Maybe you were that girl. I mean, you did work at a strip club. You were exactly that girl. Who were you kidding? “Fine,” you admitted defeat, “I’m in.” Mr. Conway grinned at you and clasped your shoulder. “Atta girl! I’ll bring him to the room in five if you wanna go get ready!” You nodded in agreement, your stomach churning. You quickly retreated backstage to your locker and dug through your bag. You found your meshy, black, strappy, top and paired it with your strappy thong. It barely covered your nipples and the gateway to your body. Just the way the boys liked it. You swept your hair over your shoulder and changed into a pair of tall, black boots. They zipped up to your mid thigh. You felt like a badass. You sprayed your skin with body shimmer and perfume before you threw back another glass of Go Go Juice and made your way to the private room. When you entered, there was a chair in front of the stage, facing away from you. The lights were dimmed and red, adding a sexy undertone. The stage was brighter, but smaller than what you were used to, with a pole in the middle. As I approached the stage and passed the cushioned arm chair, you noticed that Mr. Lee was sat in it, his fingers fiddling nervously with the buttons of his jacket. You hadn’t figured out what he did in the day light, but you didn’t care. As long as he stuffed your thong with a thick wad of cash, he could be a pimp for all you cared. You saw the mirror that lined the back wall, and you knew it was actually one way glass. Mr. Conway monitored on the other side and played the tracks. “Hello, Mr. Lee,” you purred as you brushed his arm gently. You stepped onto the stage, the light already heating your body up. “Glimmer,” his voice came out low and scratchy before he tugged at his collar. His Adam’s apple bobbed, and you smiled to myself. You were completely in control in this situation. “Did you have any… fantasies… in mind for tonight?” Your voice lilted and smoldered in the distance between you, and his fingers twitched. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. Maybe I’ll remember some when you start shaking that ass of yours,” he growled out, and you felt my stomach clench. There was the Mr. Lee you knew. He wasn’t the shy, intimidated man he played to be. Oh no. He was a business man, a con. He knew the right angles to play. You nodded at the mirror, and “My Neck My Back” started playing. It definitely wasn’t your favorite, but it was a popular song for the men. You moved slowly and as seductively as you could, your eyes never wavering from Mr. Lee’s. His eyes were dark as he watched your body roll. He was starving. Your movements were intentionally slow, drawing on the anticipation as you ground your pelvis on the pole, then turned and slid down it. The song quickly transitioned to “Treasure”, and you crawled your way to the foot of Mr. Lee’s chair. His eyes were locked on you, tracking his prey, as you pulled yourself slowly up his legs and into his lap. You were never the best at lap dances. You didn’t like the intimacy. It was easy for you to dance on stage by yourself. Hell, you were even mediocre at dancing with other girls in feature performances. But lap dances? Not your forte. So you did what got you through high school, you bullshitted your way through it. You ground, shook, and taunted to the best of your abilities. You only had to bullshit your way through one more song. That was the customary length for private dances. Mr. Lee’s hands twitches on the arm rests, but he never made a grab for you as you moved, inches from him. Then, the last song came on. Of course, this song would come on. “Animals” began to play, and you could almost see Mr. Conway shrug apologetically at you since he knew you hated this song. But you sucked it up. This was the last song. Luckily, it was also fairly upbeat. You moved at a faster pace, more aggressive than slowly seductive, as you dragged your nails down the sides of his chair and let your hair brush across his skin. You were so close that you could feel his breath on your face. It smelled like mint and cigars. It made you sick. You turned your back and shook your ass for as much as you were worth as you moved to the beat, trying to clear the sick feeling. You were becoming breathless from the effort you had put forth. You were so close to being done. Soon, you’d get to hold that thick stack of cash and pay off some bills. You could almost smell the money, and that was enough to calm your nerves. Your body was icy and clammy as you continued to dance, and you felt Mr. Lee’s hands brush across the exposed skin on my hips. You shuddered, knowing it was against the rules, knowing he knew it too, but because the session was almost over, you let it slide. He gripped your hips and drew you back towards him, and you hesitated. I stopped dancing, tottering in your heels, as he pulled you onto his lap. You could feel the warm cloth of his dress pants, the cold silver of the buttons on his jacket, and the hard length of his erection pressing into you. You squirmed, and he lazily brought his hips up to kiss yours. You felt your breathing halt, then his breath was on your ear. “You’re delectable, Glimmer,” he breathed, his raspy tone sending ominous shivers down your spine. “I can’t wait to taste your body.” You were terrified. Mr. Lee was a predator. He wasn’t a man to play games with. He always won. He always bent the rules until he dominated his opponent. “Okay! Session over!” Mr. Conway shouted as he burst through the door. You quickly shuffled off of Mr. Lee, whose hands slowly slid down your ass and to his lap to hide his arousal. You felt a blush tinge your cheeks, and you scolded yourself. You, a stripper, blushing like a silly school girl. Mr. Conway handed you an envelope as you passed him, and you felt the heaviness of cash in your hand. You went to your locker. In small scrawl, written in the right corner of the envelope, was 20000. Your cut for the session. Mr. Conway must’ve taken his twenty percent. You opened the envelope to see a thick stack of hundreds, and a tremor similar to an orgasm, only better, ran through you. You loved your job.

[eichy815]

Fall Fusion 2019 (CBS)

In another month, ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW are slated to unveil their primetime rosters for the 2019-20 network television season.  Adding an unprecedented complication, this year, is the unresolved standoff between the WGA (Writers Guild of America) and ATA (Association of Talent Agents).

NBC and Fox announce their fall schedules on May 13, followed by ABC on May 14 and CBS on May 15.  Bringing up the rear will be The CW on May 16.

The “bubble shows” for this season, which most likely won’t know their fates until May:  Blindspot, The Village, The Enemy Within, Manifest, A.P. Bio, and I Feel Bad on NBC; For The People, Whiskey Cavalier, The Fix, Single Parents, and The Kids Are Alright on ABC; Madam Secretary, Bull, Ransom, Instinct, Life in Pieces, Murphy Brown, FAM, and Happy Together on CBS; The 100, All-American, Roswell New Mexico, and In the Dark on The CW; and Lethal Weapon, The Gifted, The Orville, The Passage, Proven Innocent, and REL on Fox.

So, as I’ve been doing for the past several years, here is the roster I have dreamed up for the broadcast networks when the Big Five trot out their autumn slates in a few weeks.  I also include potential backup plans for the spring months, depending on which TV series fail or succeed.

When a show is picked up for the fall, it usually gets a 13-episode order – which can then be extended (usually via a “Back-Nine” order), if the show performs well enough.  Some freshmen series fall short of receiving a full 22 episodes (usually with an 16- or 18-episode order).  If the show stays far enough above the network’s average in terms of ratings and demos (the estimated number of viewers between the ages of 18-49, who are coveted by advertisers), it will most likely return for the following season.

As for the series that are held over to be midseason replacements:  they usually get 13-episode orders, as well.  Sometimes, a program that looks like more of a gamble might only get picked up for 6, 8, or 10 episodes instead.  If those shows attain a significant audience when they step in to fill gaps anytime between November and May, they may also find themselves on the next fall schedule.  

There are yet other TV series that are intended to be “limited series” or an “event series” – airing for a finite period of time during one predetermined juncture of the year – similar to many original cable television shows intentionally designed with shorter runs.  Fox and The CW have gradually transitioned to more of a year-round format for their programming, and ABC, CBS, and NBC should follow suit over the next two or three years.  For this reason, we may see more of the broadcast networks “time-sharing” different programs within the same time slots as they transition from winter to spring to summer and back to autumn.

After all, there are a limited number of available time slots on the primetime schedule.  With the frequency of limited-run “event programming,” we should expect to see less of the traditional model where one solitary series occupies one specific time slot for nine months of original programming (followed by three months of reruns).

(All times are Eastern/Pacific; subtract one hour for the Central/Mountain time zones)

(New shows highlighted in bold)

Featured network for today’s column…

CBS

Sunday

7:00 – 60 Minutes

8:00 – God Friended Me

9:00 – NCIS:  Los Angeles

10:00 – SEAL Team (fall/winter) / Madam Secretary (spring/summer)

The success of God Friended Me and the stability of NCIS: Los Angeles can lend lead-up support to SEAL Team, which has struggled to reach coveted demographics in its Wednesday night slot.  Midseason (or Summer 2020), Madam Secretary can be waiting in the wings to give viewers an event-style glimpse of Elizabeth McCord’s journey to the presidency (with an abridged seventh and final season possible in 2021, if she wins the election).\

Monday

8:00 – The Neighborhood

8:30 – Carol’s Second Act (with possible Back-Nine) / Broke (spring)

9:00 – Criminal Minds (fall) / Man With A Plan (winter/spring)

9:30 – Criminal Minds (fall) / The Emperor of Malibu (winter/spring)

10:00 – Blue Bloods

Building on the prosperity of The Neighborhood, the high-profile Patricia Heaton sitcom Carol’s Second Act would seem to be sure bet to carry over much of the former’s audience.  Criminal Minds would air its 10-episode swan song in the middle hour up through November sweeps, and Blue Bloods could be relocated from Friday to Monday in order to stabilize that time slot (and make room on Fridays for Magnum P.I. to join MacGyver and Hawaii Five-0 forming a three-hour block of Nostalgia TV).

Broke, a sitcom featuring Pauley Perrette of NCIS, would receive a midseason tryout here.  Meanwhile, reliable utility player Man with a Plan can take over for Criminal Minds in December and January, followed by Ken Jeong’s new sitcom The Emperor of Malibu.  Any leftover new sitcoms with shorter orders could be placed on Mondays in April or May, contingent upon the broadcast timelines of Carol’s Second Act, Broke, and/or The Emperor of Malibu.

Tuesday

8:00 – NCIS

9:00 – FBI / FBI: Most Wanted (spring)

10:00 – NCIS: New Orleans

There’s no reason to believe CBS won’t continue to nurture FBI in-between the NCIS mothership and its New Orleans spinoff.  And, with the offshoot FBI: Most Wanted in the works, Dick Wolf’s first CBS-based spinoff can be tried out here for 8-10 episodes in the spring.

Wednesday

8:00 – Survivor (fall/spring) / The Amazing Race (winter)

9:00 – Courthouse (with possible Back-Nine) / Tommy (spring)

10:00 – Bull

Courthouse (not to be confused with the short-lived 1995 series of the same name) – headlined by CSI alum Marg Helgenberger – can benefit from Survivor as its lead-in, while simultaneously being compatible with Bull.  In the spring, Edie Falco’s new cop drama, Tommy, should receive a limited run in that same slot.

Thursday

8:00 – Young Sheldon

8:30 –  The Unicorn (with possible Back-Nine) / Life in Pieces (spring)

9:00 – Mom

9:30 – Our House (with possible Back-Nine) / Bob Hearts Abishola (spring)

10:00 – S.W.A.T.

Following The Big Bang Theory’s retirement, CBS will likely turn to Young Sheldon to lead off the night.  Pairing it with another single-camera family sitcom would be the smartest strategy; The Unicorn, starring Walton Goggins, is the only contender in the running that fits this bill.  The post-Mom slot at 9:30 should be utilized while Mom is still hot; this is where I would place Katherine Heigl’s multi-cam family sitcom Our House.

S.W.A.T. has remained fairly stable, and will probably return in its established time slot.  If The Unicorn flails, Life in Pieces can be reserved for midseason. Similarly, if Our House doesn’t receive a back-order, Billy Gardell’s return to CBS in Bob Hearts Abishola might also be compatible with Mom (especially since it comes from the same creative team).

Friday

8:00 – MacGyver

9:00 – Hawaii Five-0

10:00 – Magnum P.I.

As I said earlier in this article:  I would transplant Magnum P.I. over from Monday onto Friday.  Together, MacGyver, Hawaii Five-0, and Magnum P.I. would provide Friday night viewers with a synergistic slate of nostalgic remakes – not to mention the potential for many crossover episodes, seeing how all three of these series are likely set in the same universe.  The loyal audience of Blue Bloods should follow it to Monday night (where Bull has been struggling).

MIDSEASON:  Undercover Boss (16 episodes), The Amazing Race (13 episodes), Life in Pieces (16-22 episodes), Madam Secretary (18-22 episodes), FBI: Most Wanted (10 episodes), Tommy (13 episodes), Evil (13 episodes), The Emperor of Malibu (13 episodes), Bob Hearts Abishola (13 episodes), Broke (8 episodes)

LATER THIS MONTH (APRIL 2019)

The Amazing Race (CBS)

Life in Pieces (CBS)

The 100 (The CW)

Bosch (Netflix)

The Son (AMC)

Cuckoo (Netflix)

Tales (BET)

Cobra Kai (YouTube Premium)

Top Gear (BBC America)

The Protector (Netflix)

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix)

Deep State (Epix)

MAY 2019

The Bachelorette (ABC)

Animal Kingdom (TNT)

Elementary (CBS)

Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC)

iZombie (The CW)

Lucifer (Netflix)

Sneaky Pete (Amazon Prime)

What Would You Do? (ABC)

Beat Shazam (Fox)

Archer (FX)

Good Witch (Hallmark)

MasterChef (Fox)

American Ninja Warrior (NBC)

America’s Got Talent (NBC)

Bill Nye Saves the World (Neflix)

Chrisley Knows Best (USA)

Our Cartoon President (Showtime)

Southern Charm (Bravo)

Good Bones (HGTV)

Fleabag (Amazon Prime)

The Rain (Netflix)

Secrets of the Zoo (National Geographic WILD)

She’s Gotta Have It (Netflix)

Vida (Starz)

Pure (WGN America)

Property Brothers (HGTV)

JUNE 2019

Instinct (CBS)

Fear the Walking Dead (AMC)

Big Brother (CBS)

The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)

Celebrity Family Feud (ABC)

Pose (FX)

The $100,000 Pyramid (ABC)

The Wall (NBC)

Claws (TNT)

Masters of Illusion (The CW)

Match Game (ABC)

So You Think You Can Dance? (Fox)

Whose Line is it Anyway? (The CW)

Queen of the South (USA)

Good Trouble (Freeform)

The Affair (Showtime)

Younger (TV Land)

Food Network Star (Food Network)

Orange is the New Black (Netflix)

GLOW (Netflix)

Big Little Lies (HBO)

Queen Sugar (OWN)

Luther (BBC America)

Abstentia (Amazon Prime)

Yellowstone (Paramount)

Riviera (Sundance)

Rosehaven (Sundance)

JULY 2019

Bachelor in Paradise (ABC)

Stranger Things (Netflix)

The Terror (AMC)

Lodge 49 (AMC)

Hollywood Game Night (NBC)

The Wall (NBC)

Dateline NBC (NBC)

Power (Starz)

Suits (USA)

Killjoys (SyFy Channel)

13 Reasons Why (Netflix)

Harlots (Hulu)

AUGUST 2019

Preacher (AMC)

Insecure (HBO)

Ballers (HBO)

The Sinner (USA)

Shahs of Sunset (Bravo)

SEPTEMBER 2019

American Horror Story (FX)

BoJack Horseman (Netflix)

The Deuce (HBO)

OCTOBER 2019

The Walking Dead (AMC)

Below Deck (Bravo)

Ray Donovan (Showtime)

Van Helsing (SyFy)

Mr. Robot (USA)

Andi Mack (Disney Channel)

Shameless (Showtime)

The Man in the High Castle (Amazon)

NOVEMBER 2019

Outlander (Starz)

DECEMBER 2019

Running Wild with Bear Grylls (National Geographic)

Fuller House (Netflix)

Alexa & Katie (Netflix)

Marvel’s Runaways (Hulu)

Homeland (Showtime)

Impractical Jokers (TruTV)

JANUARY 2020

Future Man (Hulu)

Star Trek: Discovery (CBS All Access)

Baskets (FX)

Grownish (Freeform)

Grace and Frankie (Netflix)

High Maintenance (HBO)

Schitt’s Creek (CBC)

FEBRUARY / MARCH 2020

Good Girls (NBC)

Silicon Valley (HBO)

Scream (MTV)

Barry (HBO)

APRIL 2020

Brockmire (IFC)

Killing Eve (BBC America)

[wyrd-and-wonderful]

Playing Dumb with ‘Assume Form’: A Word on Pitchfork’s Pettiness

What is it about James Blake’s latest album that’s forced music journalists to forget what song-writing is?

The pervasive criticism of Assume Form seems not to be of any technical shortcomings in the album or non-delivery in any discernible musical terms, but instead a criticism which derides Blake for writing songs with apparent confessional themes that are within easy-reach of his personal life and recent circumstances. Pitchfork pronounces a decidedly ambiguous verdict on Assume Form with little technical justification, calling it ‘aggressively pastel’. This lazy critical response has nothing to do with the substance of the album. The reviewers’ problem lies not in their ability to interpret the developed confessional nature of Blake’s song-writing, but rather in Blake’s public-facing persona which has challenged music journalism’s ‘toxic masculinity’ in relation to his music.

Pitchfork justifies its 5.8/10 rating for Assume Form by describing: ‘a suffocating seriousness that runs through the singer and producer’s fourth album, one that bogs down genuine moments of levity and love.’ (Note here: the description of Blake as ‘singer and producer’, rather than songwriter.) This seriousness, they seem to suggest, is at odds with ‘an album ostensibly all about the freedom to be oneself that love bestows’ – their criticism is one of perceived mood and emotion, failing even to notice that ‘freedom’ has to come from a constriction – from being ‘bogged down’ in some way in the first place. That Assume Form might in fact be the journey of the very transition they are describing seems to have escaped them. In any case, Blake doesn’t owe it to himself, the Industry, or the art of expression through music to focus wholly on ‘levity and love’.

Elsewhere, Crack Magazine supplies this justification for its 6/10 ruling: an ‘aesthetic tangle is the undoing of Assume Form, an album of gorgeous moments going nowhere in particular.’ (Though, exactly which elements are caught up in this aesthetic tangle is unclear from the article, and an outline of where the gorgeous moments are expected to go is explained nowhere.) Both critical opinions do pick up on a tension in Blake’s sound which has historically been critically celebrated; but now these two facets have suddenly become problematic for the review-sites. The two facets are Blake’s electronic dance-music heritage and 808 drum-palette, alongside his soulful lyric moments, and often delicate harmonics and chord progressions. Pitchfork goes on to suggest that Blake ‘sounds hamstrung by old habits’, supposedly ‘trapped in a musical cage of his own making’; though these habits are not described anywhere in the article.

But if Pitchfork, Crack, and other outlets are having problems reconciling the two aspects of Blake’s sound on Assume Form – the tender, lyrically lucid and confessional, and the ‘heavier’, club-friendly 808 dance-music styles – then such journalists should remind themselves of how they celebrated the union of these supposedly disparate aspects on Blake’s first album. On Limit To Your Love low-frequency dubstep-style oscillations rumbled below Blake’s soulful lyrical delivery: ‘There’s a limit to your love / like a map with no ocean.’ There were no complaints here surrounding the same dual-influence of Blake’s song-writing style. And Assume Form with all its guest features, Spanish-language singing, and rap verses is hardly recycling the same material or composition habits. So, what’s changed?

Stepping back a few months into May 2018: Pitchfork journalist Kevin Lozano calls Blake’s Don’t Miss It ‘sumptuous sad boy music’ – suggesting ‘maybe he [Blake] needs a night out’. This prompted Blake to issue a social-media response where he expressed his frustration with such ignorant and intolerant labels being attached to creative work which attempts to deal with issues of mental health, male suicide and expression.

As industry leaders, we should be safe to assume that Pitchfork employ highly-skilled writers who are attuned to all the resonances of the terms they apply to artists’ work. These journalists serve as first-response commentators on so many significant album releases. As such, they have a serious responsibility for which they are – presumably? – paid. So when these writers use an oxymoronic term like ‘aggressively pastel’ as an overall summation of Assume Form, we must assume that they are doing so knowing their words’ full resonances, and are intentionally invoking a tension which is fair to the album at hand. ‘Pastel’: a sense of soft, subtlety within the music (perhaps also referencing back to Blake’s previous album The Colour in Anything), but which is also a tenderness that, in their opinion, is ‘aggressive’ – suggestive of an excess, an overworked or forceful wishy-washy nonchalance in the music.

The intended tension in their ‘aggressively pastel’ labelling is indicative of what they deem to be problematic: an unsatisfactorily-resolved (5.8/10-worthy) tension in the album. That is to say: the tension between ‘aggressive’ (as in a kind of angry and direct forward force) and ‘pastel’ (as in a refusal to commit to anything solid) exemplifies these journalists’ problem with the album. More distressingly, it demonstrates a really reductive preschool-level preoccupation with two aspects of Blake’s sound that the same journalists have hitherto celebrated in previous releases. They suddenly find it banal or unsuccessful that a lyrical or harmonic tenderness can be combined with harder, club-music sensibilities; that, suddenly, the music must commit to a unified mood or uncomplicated emotional discourse. But the reason the dual-aspects of Blake’s sound have now become problematic for these journalists is not because of any technical, musical shortcomings in Assume Form – it’s problematic because Blake has addressed these journalists head-on for labelling him a ‘sad boy’. Shortly after its publication, Blake sent a tweet about Pitchfork’s review: ‘I think they’re still angry that I called them out for their toxic masculinity [kissing-face emoji]’. Something we can now see – to the detriment of both the industry and its supporting journalistic craft – is beyond doubt.

Perhaps Lozano could have had a point in one sense: Blake’s musical versatility has had a slightly preferentially divisive effect among fans; some preferring the softer side to his sound, others his weightier dance-music heritage on his earliest EPs. And we might sympathize with new, first-time, or late-coming listeners who have to reconcile the James Blake of early 140-bpm productions such as CMYK with the more lucid present-day song-writing of Don’t Miss It. But, any journalist worth their Pitchfork page-space would surely recognize (if they could not praise) this development as part of Blake’s song-writing growth – not least in the ambitious lyrical departures and achievements he makes on Assume Form.

While for the first time to such an extent on a James Blake album, the reviews are quoting and dissecting Blake’s lyrics (indicating a transition to newfound significance and lucidity in Blake’s lyric-writing), none of the recent reviews make mention of Assume Form’s comment on the effects of technology and its influences on the contemporary mind and emotions. It’s one of the album’s most important successes, especially when considered in relation to (but not necessarily as a representation of) Blake’s openness about his mental health. ‘Drop the pin on the mood that you’re in’ sings Blake in Power On. ‘Power on’ as in continue, keep going, but also turn on your device; become connected – a kind of semantic neighbour to switch off. The role of technology in relation to its user is constantly reinforced on the album, especially in Don’t Miss It. The video for the track is a real-time scrolling iPhone-note transcription of Blake’s lyrics as he sings them: bringing both the lyrical content and technology’s role in intimate thought-transcription to the foreground of the audience’s mind.

Furthermore, the long list of ‘When you…’ clauses in Don’t Miss It seems to have escaped the reviewers’ attention so far. These ‘when-you’ clauses resonate with a contemporary format for internet memes that the modern listener (and music journalist) instantly recognizes: e.g. When you … ‘do X,Y,Z’ + image. Blake uses and repeats this familiar internet idiom from everyday meme frameworks to make a serious, accumulating, and accessible commentary about issues of mental health – ‘When you stop being a ghost in the shell / And everyone keeps saying you look well’. By using the language construction of an exclusively technological medium (the meme) in Don’t Miss It, the album enters into contemporary dialectic (through a contemporary idiom and sound palette) with contemporary issues surrounding mental health – interrogating how technology can be used to variously exacerbate and assuage our concerns of self-worth (‘if there’s no need for the perfect image’). The Pitchfork journalists owe it to their readers and to anyone who’s ever acknowledged (or has yet still to acknowledge) difficulties with their mental health to properly confront these crucial themes on the album. And whilst Blake’s frank responses and interview comments to Pitchfork, Dazed, and other outlets may indicate a personal struggle in this area, we do not necessarily have to equate a song’s experience of mental health with Blake’s own.

This is because Assume Form will inevitably be more than a ‘loved-up’ confessional outpouring of Blake’s feelings – ‘peeling off the layers to bare all his innermost thoughts’ as Pitchfork will have us believe. As its title suggests, Assume Form also allows Blake (the artist and songwriter, rather than the LA-dwelling Londoner) to assume the form of a number of variously afflicted, contented, and obsessive personas. These personas might closely align with Blake’s own at times, but they are not wholly or necessarily Blake himself. A confessional song-writing mode does not necessarily represent the artist directly. Surely Pitchfork’s journalists are aware by now that a songwriter’s physical singing voice is distinct from the possible persona or character established by the lyrical content of a song. In fact, the Pitchfork reviewer almost comes close to completing this distinction – but his adverb (‘off-puttingly’) betrays the whole problem. The reviewer ‘can’t help but find something off-puttingly performative and voyeuristic in its [the track Can’t Believe The Way We Flow’s] romantic rapture’. But the romantic rapture isn’t Blake’s – it’s a character, or derivative persona of Blake’s creation and articulation. If the track and its refrain is sickening or off-putting then it is deliberately so, in order to embody an excess of a particular romantic emotion. If the journalist is ‘off-put’ it’s because of the ‘voyeuristic’ position the song establishes; it’s because Blake is being deliberately ‘performative’ –articulating excess and astonishment through a separate character.

A similar thing happens on I’ll Come Too – what could be a kind of modern-day poolside crooning is transformed into something yet more severe and sinister through the obsessive persona’s asides, making him even stalker-like at times. Blake sings ‘Oh you’re going to New York, I’m going there / Why don’t I come with you? / Oh, you’ve changed to LA / I’m going there, I could go there too’. Any tenderness or romance in the song’s mood which is established by the rich chords and vocal hums as Blake sings ‘I don’t wanna go home / Shall we drive from zone to zone’ is quickly undercut by the sinister suggestions of finality: ‘if it’s the last thing I do’; ‘I’ve got nothing to lose.’ Even if she’s ‘the reason this album exists’, Blake isn’t describing his courting process with Jameela Jamil here – he’s embodying a persona to explore an obsessive kind of love.

It’s worth saying that elsewhere, in cruder musical instances, Pitchfork seem capable of grasping this distinction. They can identify an artist inhabiting a different persona for a certain rhetorical effect. They don’t really think Tyler, the Creator is writing a song to consolidate his first-hand experience of murder when he delivers the lines on Garbage: ‘I got violent, long story short he's not breathing / For some reason I liked it and it was really exciting’. These journalists do not take it to be an autobiographical statement from Tyler himself; in fact, they are able to define it as: ‘a rap persona pitched between shock-riddled misanthropy and confessional reflection’. So why are they taking all of James Blake’s ‘confessional’ lyrics to be entirely autobiographical – and failing both their readers and their own appreciations in the process? The answer is simple: they just don’t want to make the effort. Blake has called them out and now they’re playing dumb with his album.

The world of music journalism moves fast. But saying something quickly is far less important than saying something accurate and considered. It’s why Assume Form will survive to be an important album and the quick-fire clickbait labels of Kevin Lozano & Co. will be proved careless, petty, and ill-conceived. More importantly, such comments will be quickly forgotten when listeners witness for themselves the stunning tensions and resolutions of an album that can be both ‘aggressive’ and ‘pastel’ simultaneously.

With that in mind, Lozano, I’ve got tickets for James Blake’s Assume Form live show. I’m going to stand in the front row – maybe I’ll dance, maybe I’ll cry. Maybe I’ll do both at once.

[aion-rsa]

One Night in Miami Review: Regina King’s Triumphant Directorial Debut

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

It’s a strange sight. Fresh off witnessing his pal Cassius Clay become the heavyweight champion of the world, soul singer Sam Cooke sits alone in his room. Actually, it’s a motel space Malcolm X has rented out for Cooke and several other Black luminaries at the center of 1960s American culture, but Cooke is the first one to arrive… and he looks more comfortable here by himself, finding peace while strumming a guitar, than moments earlier when he stood in the ring with Clay, holding hands up after the new champ’s TKO victory over Sonny Liston.

But then that is one of the remarkable strengths of director Regina King and writer Kemp Powers’ One Night in Miami: It approaches four larger than life figures who loomed tall above the mid-20th century and reveals each to be, in his own way, an introvert. Yes, weeks before he changed his name to Muhammad Ali, even Clay drops boasts of being The Greatest to concede “I’m good,” admitting to self-doubts over the Liston bout.

These are the benefits that come from King and Powers—the latter drawing from his stage play of the same name—using extreme artistic license to put Ali (El Goree), Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and football star Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) alone together for most of One Night in Miami’s running time. But while the situation may be fictional, the textures and paradoxes it reveals among these four real-life friends is luminously authentic. It’s also a feat more lasting than traditional biopics, which posit themselves as allegedly true accounts of a person’s entire life. Instead One Night in Miami, which just premiered at TIFF, prefers examining the legion of pressures facing Black artists and leaders who hold the double-edged sword of America’s undivided attention.

At one point in the film, Sam criticizes Malcolm, saying he’s greater than just the fiery persona seen on television. “Maybe [that’s you], but you were also so much… more.” One Night in Miami seeks to explore just how much more.

The construct of the psychological deep dive is simple enough. On the night Cassius beat Liston after six rounds, Malcolm arranged a small party with his aforementioned friends and celebrities. Each is at the top of the world in their given field: boxing, football, music, and politics. Yet none realize when they arrive to the motel that it’ll just be them, plus two Nation of Islam brothers standing outside as security.

Malcolm is using this get-together to announce among friends that Cassius is converting to Islam, and that Jim and Sam should also get on board with the good work. This is not to say he necessarily means conversion, though he’d clearly welcome it. But Malcolm himself is less than a month away from leaving the religious and political movement he’s successfully courted Cassius to join—much to Clay’s soon-to-be anger. Indeed, Malcolm is using this night to slowly hint at his own plans of breaking away from NOI leader Elijah Muhammad, and his hopes for each man to do more to help their Black brothers and sisters calling for change. The conversations that arise are not spoken gently.

By adapting Powers’ play, King reveals a flair for direction and, perhaps not surprisingly, working with actors. An Oscar and Emmy winning thespian whose credits include If Beale Street Could Talk and HBO’s Watchmen, King is not new to directing; she’s helmed episodes for numerous television series before. Yet One Night in Miami is her first directorial effort intended for the big screen, and with it, she announces a visual confidence that can overcome the stagebound quality that bedevils most play-to-film transitions, including this one. For Powers’ screenplay can occasionally be heavy-handed in the film’s first act while the picture lays a vast expositional foundation.

However, King overcomes these limitations with as much visual distraction and ringside panache as needed to get them to where the heart of the movie is, and where Powers’ script begins to sizzle as all four outsized personalities butt heads in the same space. It’s also where King allows her ensemble to sing, even if Odom’s dead-on imitation of Cooke’s velvety vocals is the only actual crooning.

Each of the four key performances recreate the well-known tics of their historical personages. And in this arena, Goree is a delight. With wind in his sail after winning the heavyweight belt, his Cassius is so nimble in his dancing and prancing that it’s a wonder his feet ever touch the ground. Yet whereas most biopics, particularly in the last few years, have leaned into the legend of its subjects, One Night in Miami seeks to imagine a psychological truth that’s far slipperier, and far more rewarding.

In this context, Ben-Adir’s Brother Malcolm may be the most revelatory. In contrast with Spike Lee and Denzel Washington’s electric depiction of the civil and human rights activist, there is something slightly subversive about King and Ben-Adir’s interpretation. Here is the firebrand who preached African American separation and just several months before the film’s February ’64 setting referred to JFK’s assassination as “chickens coming home to roost”—a statement that gets him no shortage of grief from his friends in One Night in Miami—yet beyond his moral disgust at Elijah Muhammad’s affairs with young secretaries in the NOI, this version of Malcolm is full of second-guessing anxiety and a pained inner-life just bubbling behind the horn-rimmed glasses.

He wants to do right by the Black community, but just as he challenges Jim Brown and Sam Cooke’s lack of political activism he is challenged by their rebukes; if he’s the political leader hanging with the artists and athletes, is he little more than the nerd trying to run with and influence the jocks? Of course the verbal conflict between Malcolm and his brothers is greater than that.

At its heart, One Night in Miami is the eternal struggle about the different sensibilities pulling at any Person of Color with social power, be they intentionally political or not. Unlike the athletes among them, Cooke attests he’s the only Black man here not taking a paycheck from a white man, owning his own recording masters and producing other Black artists. But at that point in ‘64, none of his songs were about how a change is gonna come, nor were his personal aspirations higher than winning the approval of white audiences and tastemakers on the pop charts.

Conversely, Cassius is in his own way an entertainer, but one who enjoys playing antagonistic heel to white mainstream sensibilities. In this way, every one of them is confronted with the uncomfortable power afforded from standing in the crossroads of American pop culture—and is being pulled either toward art or commerce, moral clarity or the innocuous soft power of apolitical affability. No matter which way they go, however, the destination of Black Power feels within reach.

There’s no easy answer about which is the right direction for the characters or the audience, especially as the film is haunted by the beleaguered feeling that 60 years after these men’s struggles, ones which would take Malcolm’s life, Black leaders and entertainers are still having the same debates. Still trapped at the same intersection. Despite the tough decisions, big and small, these men made, the full change is yet to come.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

One Night in Miami premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday, Sept. 11.

The post One Night in Miami Review: Regina King’s Triumphant Directorial Debut appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3hoJYeS