#which is a recurrent feature on the album

[doyoulikethissong-poll]

Nat King Cole - When I Fall in Love 1956

"When I Fall in Love" is a song written by Victor Young and Edward Heyman. It was introduced in Howard Hughes' last film One Minute to Zero as the instrumental titled "Theme from One Minute to Zero". Jeri Southern sang on the first vocal recording released in April 1952 with the song's composer, Victor Young, handling the arranging and conducting duties. The song has become a standard, with many artists recording it; the first hit version was sung by Doris Day released in July 1952. The song reached number 20 on the Billboard chart.

A version was recorded by American jazz vocalist Nat King Cole in 1956, and featured on the album titled Love Is the Thing. The song was also used as the recurrent love theme in the 1957 film Istanbul, in which Cole sang the song on screen. The single was released in the UK in 1957 and reached number 2 on the UK Singles Chart. This recording was re-released in 1987 and reached number 4. Love Is the Thing reached number 1 on Billboard's Pop Albums Chart and number 1 on the UK Charts.

Natalie Cole recorded two different versions of the song: a contemporary R&B/smooth jazz version for her 1987 album Everlasting, and a more traditional version for her 1996 Stardust album as a virtual duet with her father Nat King Cole, including recordings of his vocals from his 1956 version. This version won two awards at the 39th Grammy Awards: Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and Best Instrumental Arrangement with Accompanying Vocal(s) for arrangers Alan Broadbent and David Foster.

"When I Fall in Love" received a total of 68,8% yes votes! Previous Nat King Cole polls: #9 "Nature Boy"

[schismusic]

On abandonment, Lou X, the eternal recurrence of the same

Browsing through the people I follow (and my followers) I can't help but notice just how many of these blogs haven't been updated in literal years. That line Diane Venora has in Michael Mann's Heat comes to mind: "you live among the remains of dead people…".

The idea of neglect and disuse is a weird thing to me, in that I never registered it as an inherently negative thing - it's melancholic, sure, but not everything needs to keep being active and productive. In unrelated news I'm listening to Lou X as we speak, go figure. For my international followers, Lou X is a rapper from Pescara who made his last full record in 1998. It is called La Realtà, la Lealtà e lo Scontro and you could call it a conscious/gangsta rap record in Italian/Abruzzese dialect. Then he basically went off the radar except for maybe one feature or two on other people's songs and albums.

If you think about it Italy's greatest contributions to the culture of the past century mostly involve objects that either don't exist, are somehow crystallized into unserviceable forms, were abandoned years ago and have reached an absolutely dismal state that could only make them interesting as a work of art. Think about it: Neorealism in cinema (and maybe even the Realists' interest in decrepit/disadvantages rural realities, but that would be an overarching nineteenth-century European thing), Ennio Flaiano's Tempo di uccidere, the last writings of Cesare Pavese ("Tutto questo fa schifo. Non parole. Un gesto. Non scriverò più": what else here but the defeated realisation that nothing could ever change?), Italo Calvino's Le città invisibili, Luigi Ghirri's landscape photography work, CCCP and CSI even.

Europe is doomed to its binary division and therefore we are of course doomed to repeat stylings and "revolutionary" aesthetics in never-ending loops: Disciplinatha were smart enough to point it out, but like Whitehouse said: "grubbing job-hunting artists and art aficionados who prefer art that 'raises questions' are certainly as disgusting as those rubbered dilettantes who recognize that the answers are what you masturbate over". Whitehouse also had this to say, in the same context: "So better to just shut your fucking mouth".

Obviously mentioning a rapper from Abruzzo has implications for those of you who know anything about me. God knows there are very few places as left to their own devices as that region of Italy, and considering my violently antihumanist views regarding the Abruzzese people I'm inclined to say that the only reason this abandon should end is just so I can no longer hear these motherfuckers bitch and moan about nobody giving a shit about them or something. It's no big deal to be fair - people think Abruzzo is further down South than Rome is because it was added into the monetary help program for the South of Italy at the end of World War II. The Abruzzese people who have voted for Matteo Salvini in the past seem to have conveniently forgotten that if it didn't mean more votes to him, they would be seen as cannon fodder at best and shit under his feet at worst.

When the Amatrice earthquake hit in 2016 we knew that would be the end of the very little good things we had managed to get back after L'Aquila in 2009: the small towns in the province, which is unreasonably fucking big in L'Aquila's case but honestly what are we going to do, make Sulmona or Avezzano their own province like assholes?, anyway I'm getting distracted - my point being everything went even further to shit when that happened. A lot of the old people, some of whom not as old as you would expect, died in consequence to the quakes or went further down into some form of (if I had to guess) trauma-induced dementia. Happens even to the best of us - then, you can imagine how easily it happens to the average Abruzzese. I was setting up another band with some kids and if we had our way, honestly, I believe there would be no NUMBERS, simply because I had found people who really got me, in the typically effortless way that teens bonding through activities do, and I do believe I got them, too. When I meet them now, and I never meet them together because one of the two guys can no longer come to town now, it feels like I'm on a completely different wavelength. Yet I refuse to let go, because in true Abruzzese fashion I never fucking learn. We did manage to get a record out, though. Its only tangible effect was, likely, to stop NUMBERS and the Operators from playing the La Zona d'Ombra festival at Bronson, in Ravenna. Here in the future, everyone has their fifteen seconds of fame.

In relating to the theme of this post, I cannot seem to let go of this fucking post. I have been writing in circles for literal hours at this point because the idea of abandonment ultimately scares me, disproving what I said at the beginning. It's no surprise that the only things I can think of when they suggest to me the idea of abandonment are Burial, Forest Swords, Techno Animal, maybe some ambient music. No point in trying to prove at all costs that "I'm different" or that "I have something fundamental to say about it".

So better to just shut my fucking mouth.

[charlottecolas]

children's choir

Not unlike gunshot samples, hearing children’s choirs in popular music is not exactly an uncommon phenomenon. And although the effects of the two can be drastically different, they are not incompatible and can be combined and co-exist in a same song (see MIA’s Paper Planes, and how they’re even intertwined).

Culturally and historically, choirs tend to be more associated with folk music. Yet as part of its democratization and popularization over time, children’s choirs are now recurrent in popular music, usually offering a nice break from the rest of the song they occur in. And this, of course, in different genres, and for different purposes. 

One of my favorite uses of this ‘sound effect’ is from the band Dead Man’s Bones, created by Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields. The band has only ever come out with one project – their album of the same name – in which they use children’s choir in most of their songs, as the very essence of the project. The band was indeed created in collaboration with the Silverlake Conservatory Children’s Choir (created by a member of the Red-Hot Chili Peppers, also known to use children’s choirs). The reason I mention this band is that I find the correlation between their aesthetics/sounds/lyrics very interesting and that, enhanced with the choir singing. The duo has it turns out was obsessed with ghosts and decided to write love stories about them (to put it simply), making the theme of the album something of the horrific, or gothic, and at the same time, almost pure. For that reason, we have a first possible effect of the use of children’s choirs in songs, an ominous music that works to build the atmosphere of the songs perfectly (a ghostly but innocent love). Some great songs: Lose your soul, My Body’s a Zombie for You.

(I will also note that their song In the Room Where You Sleep (the video here is from their live session) was featured in the movie The Conjuring). 

Another common use of the children choir element in a song, is of course the political. The collective singing can indeed reinforce a political message, most often when linked to a call for unity and positivism, only made stronger if performed by children (that, when not associated to horror movies and the ‘creepy’, will naturally be linked to innocence and perhaps optimism). A good example would be Dirty Harry by Gorillaz, known to be an anti-war song, and generally believed to be a critic of Bush’s policies on the war in Iraq (as one line of the song is directly borrowed from one of his speeches). I think it’s safe to say that having children singing in unity is an effective way to reinforce the pacifist message of a record. 

I will end with perhaps the most obvious use of children’s choir in songs which is of course a direct reference and illustration of childhood, infancy, and everything connoted with it (innocence, the past, memories…). Such is the case with Lukas Graham’s ‘Mamma said’, or The Rifles’ Young for a Day.

[dustedmagazine]

D.C Cross — Wizrad: Adventures Into Ecstatic Guitar (No Drums)

Wizrad (sic; the spelling is unexplained) is the latest release of instrumental music by D.C Cross, who also records as singer-songwriter Darren Cross and is a veteran of the Australian music scene. The emphasis is on Takoma school guitar, though a few of the tracks feature field recordings and/or what is described as “madcap ambient” often comparable to the work of, e.g., Chihei Hatakeyama. The resulting adventure may or may not be ecstatic, as the subtitle suggests, but it is thoroughly enjoyable.

Cross’s compositions are sprightly and show some pop sensibilities in terms of dynamics and development. His playing is precise and inspired, fast without being showy, apparently all on six-string without a slide, and usually or always in open tunings. Like John Fahey (and Merle Travis before him), Cross makes the most of a three-finger style with a heavy emphasis on the thumb(pick). The compositions have a fresh-but-familiar feel reminiscent of those of Glenn Jones and Ragtime Ralph Johnston, to name two more recent contributors to the genre.

Standout tracks include the one-two punch of “Brumby Revisited” and “The Regicide of Daniel Ek,” which open the album (after a brief introductory track) and chug along like a mountain railroad, and the more meditative “No Trouble,” but all of the tracks are strong and distinctive. Thus, “Rotterdam Hussle” (sic; wordplay seems to be a recurrent theme) differs from the others in focusing on and driving home a fairly simple figure. The ambient and guitar tracks are generally separate, though “Nothing Ever Stops (On the Astral Plane)” starts as the former and ends as the latter. The ambient tracks are a bit more difficult to distinguish apart from those that feature found sounds (“Birdy Birdy” is self-explanatory), but they help to create and sustain the overall mood.

At less than 40 minutes, Wizrad zips by, likely leaving listeners wishing for a longer record and digging into Cross’s back catalog, which is well worth the effort. His approach to the guitar is tried and true, and his mastery of it is on display here, along with a knack for composing memorable tunes.

Jim Marks

[the-active-news]

Jessica Lowndes Net Worth: Is Collaborate On GAC Family Someday At Christmas?

In 1988, Jessica Lowndes was born in Canada's Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended Surrey's Pacific Academy for her education. Jessica is a singer and aspiring actress. Four of her songs are well-known: "Never Lonely," "Break," "Fly Away," and "Goodbye." This most recent one was heard in a Moonlight episode (2007). On the TV show 90210 (2008), Jessica portrayed Adrianna Tate-Duncan, a young former drug user who was pregnant and a high school student. The creators of the television show Masters of Horror (2005), in which Lowndes appeared as a guest star in one episode, first became aware of her in 2005. Adrianna was originally intended to be a recurrent guest part, but because her fandom was so strong, the producers decided to make her a regular. If you're eager to check out Jessica Lowndes' net worth, hop to it! Time's a-tickin'!

Jessica Lowndes's Net Worth

Canadian actress and singer Jessica Lowndes has a 6 million dollar net worth. Jessica Lowndes is probably best recognised for her part as Adrianna Tate-Duncan on the drama television series 90210 on the CW. She has also released several studio albums and acted in several Hallmark and Lifetime Channel films. Read More: - Jim Sinegal Net Worth: Why A Costco Brand Almost Had A Whole Different Name? - Danny Trejo Net Worth: He Declaring Bankruptcy, But Only To Get Rid

Paul Greene And Jessica Lowndes Collaborate On GAC Family's "Someday At Christmas"

The film, an original Christmas film, is scheduled to make its network debut in November. The movie brings Suzanne de Passe, a renowned and award-winning writer-producer and former head of Motown, back together with Knight (Lonesome Dove, Daytime Divas, The Vivianne Carter Story). The new movie will start shooting on September 9 and be a part of Great American Christmas, the network's holiday programming franchise. On October 21, Great American Christmas will return with a new lineup of original holiday movie premieres every Saturday and Sunday and Christmas movies all day and all night through the end of 2022: https://twitter.com/TiBiJa/status/1567903930646155264 As excitement grows for year two of Great American Christmas, Bill Abbott, president and chief executive officer of Great American Media, said, "We are thrilled to be working with the incomparable Gladys Knight who has inspired generations of fans by pushing musical boundaries with her numerous hit songs." "Someday at Christmas is a genuinely magical Christmas movie rich in original music that fans will want to see again and again," says Paul Greene. "High-class performances from Knight and the outstanding Jessica Lowndes and Paul Greene round out the cast." Holly Bose (Lowndes), a full-time shop clerk and part-time chorus girl in Someday at Christmas, frantically counts, on one hand, the number of auditions she has left before giving up on her five-year quest to become a Broadway star. Jason Murphy, a jingle writer (and seasonal Santa), and Holly cross paths multiple times in passing (Greene).

FAQs

How Old Is Jessica Lowndes Married? Jessica Lowndes, 27, is engaged to Jon Lovitz, 58. What Nationality Is Jessica Lowndes? Canadian Does Jessica Lowndes Do Her Singing? On "90210," Lowndes provides her vocals for all of the songs she sings and she independently produced several of her tracks (including "Fool" and "Haven't Been Drinkin'"). Her song "Goodbye" was featured prominently in an episode of "Moonlight." How Tall Is Jessica Lowndes? 5′ 4″ Head over to The Active News and get lit on the latest info! Read the full article

[justforbooks]

Hildegard of Bingen, also known as Saint Hildegard and the Sibyl of the Rhine, was a German Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, Christian mystic, visionary, and polymath of the High Middle Ages. She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most-recorded in modern history. She has been considered by many in Europe to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

Hildegard was born around the year 1098, although the exact date is uncertain. Her parents were Mechtild of Merxheim-Nahet and Hildebert of Bermersheim, a family of the free lower nobility in the service of the Count Meginhard of Sponheim. Sickly from birth, Hildegard is traditionally considered their youngest and tenth child, although there are records of only seven older siblings. In her Vita, Hildegard states that from a very young age she had experienced visions.

Hildegard's works include three great volumes of visionary theology; a variety of musical compositions for use in liturgy, as well as the musical morality play Ordo Virtutum; one of the largest bodies of letters (nearly 400) to survive from the Middle Ages, addressed to correspondents ranging from popes to emperors to abbots and abbesses, and including records of many of the sermons she preached in the 1160s and 1170s; two volumes of material on natural medicine and cures; an invented language called the Lingua ignota ("unknown language"); and various minor works, including a gospel commentary and two works of hagiography.

Several manuscripts of her works were produced during her lifetime, including the illustrated Rupertsberg manuscript of her first major work, Scivias (lost since 1945); the Dendermonde Codex, which contains one version of her musical works; and the Ghent manuscript, which was the first fair-copy made for editing of her final theological work, the Liber Divinorum Operum. At the end of her life, and probably under her initial guidance, all of her works were edited and gathered into the single Riesenkodex manuscript.

Attention in recent decades to women of the medieval Catholic Church has led to a great deal of popular interest in Hildegard's music. In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, sixty-nine musical compositions, each with its own original poetic text, survive, and at least four other texts are known, though their musical notation has been lost. This is one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers.

One of her better-known works, Ordo Virtutum (Play of the Virtues), is a morality play. It is uncertain when some of Hildegard's compositions were composed, though the Ordo Virtutum is thought to have been composed as early as 1151. It is an independent Latin morality play with music (82 songs); it does not supplement or pay homage to the Mass or the Office of a certain feast. It is, in fact, the earliest known surviving musical drama that is not attached to a liturgy.

The Ordo virtutum would have been performed within Hildegard's monastery by and for her select community of noblewomen and nuns. It was probably performed as a manifestation of the theology Hildegard delineated in the Scivias. The play serves as an allegory of the Christian story of sin, confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Notably, it is the female Virtues who restore the fallen to the community of the faithful, not the male Patriarchs or Prophets. This would have been a significant message to the nuns in Hildegard's convent. Scholars assert that the role of the Devil would have been played by Volmar, while Hildegard's nuns would have played the parts of Anima (the human souls) and the Virtues. The devil's part is entirely spoken or shouted, with no musical setting. All other characters sing in monophonic plainchant. This includes Patriarchs, Prophets, A Happy Soul, A Unhappy Soul and A Penitent Soul along with 16 female Virtues (including Mercy, Innocence, Chasity, Obedience, Hope, and Faith).

In addition to the Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard composed many liturgical songs that were collected into a cycle called the Symphonia armoniae celestium revelationum. The songs from the Symphonia are set to Hildegard's own text and range from antiphons, hymns, and sequences, to responsories. Her music is monophonic, that is, consisting of exactly one melodic line. Its style has been said to be characterized by soaring melodies that can push the boundaries of traditional Gregorian chant, and to stand outside the normal practices of monophonic monastic chant. Researchers are also exploring ways in which it may be viewed in comparison with her contemporaries, such as Hermannus Contractus. Another feature of Hildegard's music that both reflects twelfth-century evolution of chant, and pushes that evolution further, is that it is highly melismatic, often with recurrent melodic units. Scholars such as Margot Fassler, Marianne Richert Pfau, and Beverly Lomer also note the intimate relationship between music and text in Hildegard's compositions, whose rhetorical features are often more distinct than is common in twelfth-century chant. As with all medieval chant notation, Hildegard's music lacks any indication of tempo or rhythm; the surviving manuscripts employ late German style notation, which uses very ornamental neumes. The reverence for the Virgin Mary reflected in music shows how deeply influenced and inspired Hildegard of Bingen and her community were by the Virgin Mary and the saints.

In recent years, Hildegard has become of particular interest to feminist scholars. They note her reference to herself as a member of the weaker sex and her rather constant belittling of women. Hildegard frequently referred to herself as an unlearned woman, completely incapable of Biblical exegesis. Such a statement on her part, however, worked to her advantage because it made her statements that all of her writings and music came from visions of the Divine more believable, therefore giving Hildegard the authority to speak in a time and place where few women were permitted a voice. Hildegard used her voice to amplify the church's condemnation of institutional corruption, in particular simony.

Hildegard has also become a figure of reverence within the contemporary New Age movement, mostly because of her holistic and natural view of healing, as well as her status as a mystic. Though her medical writings were long neglected, and then studied without reference to their context, she was the inspiration for Dr. Gottfried Hertzka's "Hildegard-Medicine", and is the namesake for June Boyce-Tillman's Hildegard Network, a healing center that focuses on a holistic approach to wellness and brings together people interested in exploring the links between spirituality, the arts, and healing. Her reputation as a medicinal writer and healer was also used by early feminists to argue for women's rights to attend medical schools. Hildegard's reincarnation has been debated since 1924 when Austrian mystic Rudolf Steiner lectured that a nun of her description was the past life of Russian poet-philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, whose Sophianic visions are often compared to Hildegard's. Sophiologist Robert Powell writes that hermetic astrology proves the match, while mystical communities in Hildegard's lineage include that of artist Carl Schroeder as studied by Columbia sociologist Courtney Bender and supported by reincarnation researchers Walter Semkiw and Kevin Ryerson.

Recordings and performances of Hildegard's music have gained critical praise and popularity since 1979. See Discography listed below.

The following modern musical works are directly linked to Hildegard and her music or texts:

Sofia Gubaidulina: Aus den Visionen der Hildegard von Bingen, for contra alto solo, after a text of Hildegard of Bingen, 1994.

Peter Janssens: Hildegard von Bingen, a musical in 10 scenes, text: Jutta Richter, 1997.

Cecilia McDowall: Alma Redemptoris Mater.

Tilo Medek: Monatsbilder (nach Hildegard von Bingen), twelve songs for mezzo-soprano, clarinet and piano, 1997.

David Lynch with Jocelyn Montgomery: Lux Vivens (Living Light): The Music of Hildegard Von Bingen, 1998.

Alois Albrecht: Hildegard von Bingen, a liturgical play with texts and music by Hildegard of Bingen, 1998.

Christopher Theofanidis: Rainbow Body, for orchestra (2000)

Ludger Stühlmeyer: O splendidissima gemma, for alto solo and organ, text by Hildegard of Bingen, 2011.

Wolfgang Sauseng: De visione secunda for double choir and percussion, 2011.

Devendra Banhart: Für Hildegard von Bingen, single from the 2013 album Mala.

Gordon Hamilton: The Trillion Souls quotes Hildegard's O Ignee Spiritus

The artwork The Dinner Party features a place setting for Hildegard.

In space, the minor planet 898 Hildegard is named for her.

In film, Hildegard has been portrayed by Patricia Routledge in a BBC documentary called Hildegard of Bingen (1994), by Ángela Molina in Barbarossa (2009) and by Barbara Sukowa in the film Vision, directed by Margarethe von Trotta.

Hildegard was the subject of a 2012 fictionalized biographic novel Illuminations by Mary Sharatt.

The plant genus Hildegardia is named after her because of her contributions to herbal medicine.

Hildegard makes an appearance in The Baby-Sitters Club #101: Claudia Kishi, Middle School Drop-Out by Ann M. Martin, when Anna Stevenson dresses as Hildegard for Halloween.

A feature documentary film, The Unruly Mystic: Saint Hildegard, was released by American director Michael M. Conti in 2014.

The off-Broadway musical In the Green, written by Grace McLean, followed Hildegard's story.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[alightwhendarknessfell]

Black Veil Conspiracy Time

So I've noticed something with Andy's costumes for the TPT era videos/photoshoots. He's always wearing a garter around his thigh but the color of it keeps changing. I'm starting to think there is significance to it considering how detailed Andy is with his outfits (especially in this era).

I first noticed it in the Scarlet Cross music video where it's red. I figured it might just be part of the black/red color scheme but then it appeared in all the photoshoots. Then all of a sudden (around the time they started posting the pool photo shoots) it's white. Then in the Torch teaser, it's black (with a red suit, so the reverse of the black suit/red garter).

I wanna hear people’s theories on it and I’ve got a few myself. I'm hoping that with the album/comic release we'll find out what it actually means but until then I thought it might be fun to hear what everyone else thinks it could symbolize.

(Disclaimer: These are just my interpretations of what it could mean and is just meant for fun.)

Theory 1: Religious/Historical Meaning: Garters are traditionally worn by brides and have come to have different purposes/meanings. Given the name of the band is Black Veil Brides it could just be an easter egg type thing or it might have a symbolic meaning.

The garter originated because people believed having a piece of a bride's dress was good luck. That led to bridal parties ripping a brides' dress off in an attempt to get a piece of good luck or to help "consummate" the marriage. In order to prevent this, the tradition of the garter toss started. Giving someone a "piece" of the dress spared the bride. Andy could be wearing it to symbolize the idea of giving a part of himself to the fans/world through Black Veil's music. Much in the same way brides used to toss their garter as a way to appease the wedding guest and keep from having the rest of their clothes ripped off it could be his way of saying "here I will give you this (the music/band)". With the expectation being that in sharing that part of himself he will be allowed to keep the rest of himself private. Andy is a pretty private person when it comes to his daily life, but being "famous" makes that hard.

Another meaning of the garter goes back to the importance placed on the bride being pure (aka a virgin). The expectation was that on the wedding night the groom would "deflower" the bride. The families also placed a great deal of importance on this and the garter was often used as "proof" that the marriage was consummated. Thus tying it to the idea of purity/loss of innocence. If you listen to Black Veil/Andy Black's discography there is a recurrent theme in the songs of innocence, specifically of lost innocence. I think Andy could have incorporated it due to this meaning which would also tie into the religious themes of the TPT era. The changing color (see next point) is also what makes me think this might be closer to the meaning behind it. Andy was 18 when he moved to Hollywood which is still very much a teenager. Before his 20th birthday, he was touring the world, signing major record deals, and basically forced to grow up very fast. There's no end to people waiting to take advantage of young, impressionable, and starry-eyed kids in order to use them for personal gain. I mean how many childhood stars end up fucked up as a result of their early fame, then have to navigate their way back to who they really are. Andy's spoken quite a bit over the last few years about how he kind of fell victim to the "rock n' roll lifestyle" during his early years. I think the "loss of innocence" he's possibly referring to is the blissful ignorance that kids/young adults have about the world. Once you learn how ugly the world can be (whether that's the music industry, fame, or the world in general) that childhood innocence starts to go away.

You can't get it back, and although it's replaced with knowledge and better judgment, I think a lot of us miss the carefreeness of childhood. If this is the meaning behind the garter then I think the color change really deepens it.

Theory 2: Color Meaning: Red -> white -> black I think this has to mean something. Red could symbolize being tainted in some way, whether that be shame, sin, the idea of having "blood on your hands", crime/blasphemy, etc. The fact that the red garter appears in Scarlet Cross, a song about being branded with a scarlet cross as punishment, I think makes this more likely. The lyrics almost explicitly state this idea "A symbol for my shame, the color of your name, its how they see you break, and live with my mistakes". The red garter could be his way of saying there is some sin he feels the need to atone for. Alternatively that he feels he's being accused of a crime/sin. If you read up on The Scarlet Letter there are several parallels to the TPT storyline as it's been revealed so far. I think at least the song was influenced by the pop-culture idea of a "scarlet letter".

The change in color to white (generally seen as good, holy, pure, etc) could mean that whatever sin or transgression has been committed has been absolved. As we saw the red garter in Scarlet Cross, I think it's interesting we see the white garter in an abandoned pool. Pool = water and water is cleansing. This might be a coincidence but it's interesting nonetheless. I do think that the white garter is supposed to symbolize whatever "bad" thing the red meant being forgiven/cleansed.

Which leads us to the black garter. The fact that we first see the black garter in the Torch teaser which appears to be set in a graveyard makes me think it symbolizes death. Interestingly, I believe he wore a version of the red garter that had a black stripe on it which could have been foreshadowing. There is also an inversion of Scarlet Cross where he wore a black suit with red accents, now he is in a red suit with black accents. Andy said that the four music videos represent a story within the TPT world and this could play into it. However, I don't think the "death" meaning is necessarily bad. It could be, but since it was proceeded by white, it might mean that since whatever sin has been absolved he is now free to let it die. Death could symbolize freedom. The teaser made me think back to the Coffin music video which featured Andy closing the lid on his "Andy Six" persona but left the question as to was he really dead.

We'll have to see what Torch brings but I feel that the garter and its color could play into a wider theme of closing a very long chapter in his life/the band's. Since this comes at the start of a new era, before the album I think it might be a way to transition into that new era. The last album, Vale, was a very dark album. Andy has spoken about how horrible of a place he and the band were in (due to reasons I think we now all know given the events of 2019/2020). I have a feeling this new era represents freedom from what was haunting them, past mistakes, etc. The lyrics for Feilds of Bone speak to this idea in my opinion.

Theory 3: Other: There is meaning in The Phantom Tomorrow world and that will be revealed in the album/comic. It might have a personal meaning for Andy or he just thought it was cool and a way to color coordinate. Alternately he's just be fucking with us for fun lol.

I hope you all enjoyed my conspiracy ramblings because I've had a lot of fun thinking up different meanings. Shout out to Andy for creating such interesting looks and for his creativity. I'm loving all the hidden messages, cryptic posts, and mystery surrounding this album. I'm so incredibly excited for it to come out. Feel free to send in your own theories or anything else you've noticed so far!

[bisluthq]

SS Tily does not lay claim to Lover; a thesis

I thought this would take me longer but y’all, I’m done with Part 2 of my Gaylor analyses. Unfortunately this chapter brings bad news for Tily nation. I honestly don’t think many of the songs on Lover are about that relationship. But I also think it’s not as simple as the mainstream Kaylor narrative would have us believe. Let’s dive into this, shall we? 

First things first. I think it’s worth noting that many of the songs on this album are not about romantic relationships at all. Like it’s a bit of a marketing ploy to portray it as an album primarily about romantic love when so many songs explicitly aren’t about that feeling. In fact, there are more themes on Lover than on any of her earlier stuff - it’s something she expands on in folklore. 

I Forgot That You Existed, The Man, The Archer (which I firmly believe is about her debating coming out), Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince (very obviously about the political situation generally and supported by the doccie title), London Boy, Soon You’ll Get Better, YNTCD, and ME! are all about explicitly different themes. Obviously there are a couple references within those (like ME! has that line about “I never leave well enough alone” which reappears on the 1, and The Archer mentions someone “staying” but I still think ME! is about self-love not romantic love and The Archer is about personal anxiety around identity). Fundamentally, they are not love songs.

I don’t think that’s really up for debate. The only one I can see anyone - say Toes or like hardcore Tily fans - debating is London Boy. Unfortunately for my Tily babes, I do think it’s satire that serves as a homage to Joe and the other British beards, and possibly riffs a teeny bit on her time with Lily. Contrary to some gold medalists in Kaylor mental gymnastics, I fully believe Tay does make reference to Joe in her lyrics (I’ve mentioned the fictional verse for Dress and the reference to “keeping him” in Ready for It). This really doesn’t have any of the hallmarks of Tily songs off of Rep. The British references in CIWYW, KOMH and Delicate are subtle and chilled and actually quite cute. London Boy is an onslaught of non-sequiturs about London, the UK and her beards. Also “stories from uni” fits both Joe and Tom H, but it doesn’t fit Lily who never went to university. All her Lily songs are about hiding out in private; London Boy is all about galavanting around town with “his” friends (Lily and Tay had the same friends though?) It’s simply not about the same person or the same relationship. 

I do think there’s a chance it could be poking fun (lightly) at Lily/that period she spent in London because as I’ve already said I think Tay is not above shading ex-girlfriends and it seems like the kind of thing Karlie would’ve also found a bit funny. I think when she got back together with Karlie - which almost definitely happened - she would’ve 100% laughed about the “say you fancy me not fancy stuff” era. That would explain the recurrence of both Motown and queen imagery, which first appeared on KOMH. But where KOMH felt very genuine and authentic, this one is obviously meant to be funny. 

Right. So. Now that we’ve established 8 songs are about other themes, let’s get the Kaylor songs sorted: Cruel Summer, Cornelia Street, DBATC, False God and Daylight are all undeniably about Karlie fucking Kloss. They all feature the images and tropes and hallmarks that pepper Karlie songs. They all have the same kinds of emotions. And they paint a pretty sad, troubling and complex picture. 

Cruel Summer comes first and seems to mostly be about their first breakup, which she first referred to on DWOHT. We have Tay once again begging Karlie to stay and work it out and not being certain for sure about her feelings.  

We say that we'll just screw it up in these trying times

We're not trying (Oh yeah, you're right, I want it)

I mean that’s super sad. Tay’s saying they discussed how they’ll fuck it all up, and she’s feeling like they’re not even trying to fix things. You also have that “I want it” which is interesting considering the “we” that preceded it. “We’re” not trying because only “I want it”. Ouch. 

Killing me slow, out the window

I'm always waiting for you to be waiting below

Devils roll the dice, angels roll their eyes

What doesn't kill me makes me want you more

And it's new, the shape of your body

It's blue, the feeling I've got

And it's ooh, whoa oh

It's a cruel summer

It's cool, that's what I tell 'em

No rules in breakable heaven

But ooh, whoa oh

It's a cruel summer

With you

Here we have “I’m always waiting for you” which yet again suggests Tay is the one who’s more invested. Then we have the shape of “your” body (which is a familiar concept from Dress), but the feeling it gives her here is blue here not gold - maybe that’s why the shape is new? In the past Karlie’s body made her feel golden but now it’s a bluer, sadder feeling. Blue starts recurring more frequently on these late era Kaylor songs. There’s a possible alternate reading, which is blue = Swiftgron (“my love had been frozen deep blue”). It’s a nice theory but it just doesn’t gel with the garden gate below. Also, while both relationships seem to have been colored by commitment issues, the premise of unrequitedness doesn’t really feature on the songs about Di. She asks Di to stay, tells her she’s thinking of her, and they’re “too in love to think straight” but Tay never says Karlie loves her back. Ever. It’s never expressly mutual. 

I'm drunk in the back of the car

And I cried like a baby coming home from the bar (Oh)

Said, "I'm fine," but it wasn't true

I don't wanna keep secrets just to keep you

And I snuck in through the garden gate

Every night that summer just to seal my fate (Oh)

And I scream, "For whatever it's worth

I love you, ain't that the worst thing you ever heard?"

He looks up, grinning like a devil

Look at that fourth line. It perfectly fits with the Kaylor narrative on Rep and it doesn’t fit the Tily songs at all. She wanted to keep that second relationship private and secret and hidden. And here she’s saying “I don’t want to keep secrets” - this is take two of “I don’t want you like a best friend”. Also the “for whatever it’s worth” reminds me of “here’s the truth” from End Game. It’s the kind of thing you’d say in the midst of a fight. 

Then we have her screaming “I love you” and receiving no reply as usual beyond a devilish grin. The more I do these analyses the less I understand how or why Kaylor gets romanticized in the way it does, while Swiftgron gets bashed for toxicity. Like my girl Tay has a thing for chaotic lesbians with commitment issues and Kaylor seems like it was WILD. 

Back to the lyrics, this time let’s look at Kaylor anthem Cornelia Street:

We were in the backseat

Drunk on something stronger than the drinks in the bar

"I rent a place on Cornelia Street"

I say casually in the car

We were a fresh page on the desk

Filling in the blanks as we go

As if the street lights pointed in an arrowhead

Leading us home

I find this whole song really interesting because it features one of Tay’s favorite ideas - glamorizing normal people things. It’s like the time with the “motel bar” in Getaway Car. Like she 100% was thrilled to be able to say “I’m renting this apartment” - never mind that it’s basically a whole ass house. I actually think the above verse is really beautiful. I know I give Kaylor a lot of shit but obviously there were beautiful moments and Tay had/has plenty of good memories. 

And I hope I never lose you, hope it never ends

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

That's the kind of heartbreak time could never mend

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

And baby, I get mystified by how this city screams your name

And baby, I'm so terrified of if you ever walk away

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

I'd never walk Cornelia Street again

I mean frankly this verse above is super insecure in the standard Kaylor way. Tay’s saying she’s terrified of Karlie walking away and that she “hopes” she never loses her. The tone is sad, forlorn and a little desperate. I also think it’s interesting that she says she’d never walk Cornelia Street again, and that the city screams Karlie’s name and then on hoax she goes ahead and says she left a part of herself back in New York. It’s almost like her fears and anxieties did prove justified. Poor baby. 

Windows flung right open, autumn air

Jacket 'round my shoulders is yours

We bless the rains on Cornelia Street

Memorize the creaks in the floor

Back when we were card sharks, playing games

I thought you were leading me on

I packed my bags, left Cornelia Street

Before you even knew I was gone

But then you called, showed your hand

I turned around before I hit the tunnel

Sat on the roof, you and I

Those first four lines seem to be about the good again, and I’m happy for them. I really do think they had good times. Those four lines make me think of parts of YAIL and the toast and weekends and stuff. 

The rest of this verse though seems to be about the first split and subsequent reunion. “I thought you were leading me on” she says, and I “left Cornelia Street” presumably to go to London. But then Karlie called her back, “showed her hand” and Tay “turned around” before she reached the point of no return and they worked it out. “Sat on the roof, you and I” is similar in content to “up on the roof with a schoolgirl crush” but very different in tone. She’s not peppy here, she’s not positive. It’s a little bit tortured - and then it continues with “hoping it never ends”. The reappearance of the Tily imagery on Kaylor 2.0 songs makes sense to me, again, because discussing exes in the same social circle as you is just blatant lesbian culture. It makes complete sense that these two women are on Taylor’s mind. She has really really deep feelings for Karlie but she enjoyed the more simple and straightforward relationship she had with Lily. 

DBATC is the Kaylor 1.0 breakup anthem:

Saying goodbye is death by a thousand cuts

Flashbacks waking me up

I get drunk, but it's not enough

'Cause the morning comes and you're not my baby

I look through the windows of this love

Even though we boarded them up

Chandelier's still flickering here

'Cause I can't pretend it's okay when it's not

It's death by a thousand cuts

We have her getting drunk to forget, trying to say “I’m fine” when it’s not true, and just generally missing Karlie. 

I dress to kill my time, I take the long way home

I mean, this is Cornelia Street (“never walk here again”) and Dress all over again. It’s the two ideas from before but now on the other side, because they’re actually broken up. 

And what once was ours is no one's now

I see you everywhere, the only thing we share

Is this small town

You said it was a great love, one for the ages

But if the story's over, why am I still writing pages?

“I see you everywhere” is very “this city screams your name” and I think “small town” is a metaphor for their social circle. The last two lines are just Tay being hung up on Karlie. She was writing pages in Cornelia Street as well, so this whole idea of telling a story with Karlie is another recurrent image. 

My heart, my hips, my body, my love

Tryna find a part of me that you didn't touch

Gave up on me like I was a bad drug

Now I'm searching for signs in a haunted club

Our songs, our films, united, we stand

Our country, guess it was a lawless land

Quiet my fears with the touch of your hand

Paper cut stings from our paper-thin plans

My time, my wine, my spirit, my trust

Tryna find a part of me you didn't take up

Gave you so much, but it wasn't enough

But I'll be alright, it's just a thousand cuts

I mean this is the usual obsession, desperation and general pining Tay has for Karlie. We also have Karlie touching her briefly, which is something she has spoken about before and is really into. Paper-thin plans is probably about the plans to make it work? We have that image reparations later in hoax so I think it’s most likely about Karlie bailing on Tay’s PR game and doing her own thing and/or Karlie’s (accidental?) involvement in the masters heist. 

Also, this whole song is very sad but it’s not on the level of desperation I would expect if Tay wasn’t rebounding hard and if they didn’t reunite. She’s pretty sad about how the whole thing went down but she does say she’ll “be alright” which is the opposite of “that’s the kind of heartbreak time could never mend”. I think she wrote this after the first breakup and Cornelia Street came later, after they were back together. That’s when she really went all in into this relationship. It still wasn’t enough. 

False God is about their reunion:

We were crazy to think

Crazy to think that this could work

Remember how I said I'd die for you?

We were stupid to jump

In the ocean separating us

Remember how I'd fly to you?

We know Tay ran away to Europe after the mess of 2016 and here she jumps into the ocean separating them and flies back to Karlie. The idea of it being “crazy” that it could work is also a recurrent fear/anxiety she has with regards to Karlie. “I had a bad feeling,” remember?

And I can't talk to you when you're like this

Staring out the window like I'm not your favorite town

I'm New York City, I still do it for you, babe

They all warned us about times like this

They say the road gets hard and you get lost

When you're led by blind faith, blind faith

They’re figuring things out, and Tay is New York - Karlie’s favorite city. “I still do it for you” is an admission of affection, which rarely happens in Kaylor songs, but it’s so sexual that I don’t find it shocking or out of character. 

But we might just get away with it

Religion's in your lips

Even if it's a false god

We'd still worship

We might just get away with it

The altar is my hips

Even if it's a false god

We'd still worship this love

I mean sex songs are just peak Kaylor and this is all just so so so gay and I don’t understand how hets can make it make srnse. “We might just get away with it” is the usual Kaylor anxiety by the way. 

I know heaven's a thing

I go there when you touch me, honey

Hell is when I fight with you

But we can patch it up good

Make confessions and we're begging for forgiveness

Got the wine for you

And you can't talk to me when I'm like this

Daring you to leave me just so I can try and scare you

You're the West Village

You still do it for me, babe

They all warned us about times like this

They say the road gets hard and you get lost

When you're led by blind faith, blind faith

Standard Kaylor imagery with sensual touching, wine and New York and a direct reference to Karlie’s apartment. I think “make confessions and we’re begging for forgiveness” appears to refer to the reunion. 

Daylight is a very beautiful love song for Karlie. The “golden”, the bodies intertwining, New York, and the depth of her emotions all fit the Kaylor story and narrative. I think she wrote this when they were back together. It’s also, as is common with the Kaylor songs, squarely from Tay’s perspective. She wrote it alone, and I think specifically for Karlie when they reunited. Very pretty, very nice. I mean they ended up breaking up and that was bound to happen in like every other song but when they were good Tay did create some gems and they were very happy. I love this song and I do like aspects of Kaylor’s time together. 

Now we get onto the songs that don’t neatly fit Kaylor. 

Afterglow could be a Kaylor song. But it could also be about the breakup with her rebound. It’s not only by Tay, so we’re looking for broad themes rather than specifics necessarily. 

Hey, it's all me, in my head

I'm the one who burned us down

But it's not what I meant

Sorry that I hurt you

I don't wanna do, I don't wanna do this to you (Ooh)

I don't wanna lose, I don't wanna lose this with you (Ooh)

I need to say, hey, it's all me, just don't go

Meet me in the afterglow

I don’t know that this sounds like the Kaylor breakup we heard about. It’s a different premise to False God, DBATC and Cornelia Street. In all of those songs it was a mutual breakup/misunderstanding. “I can’t talk to you” and then “you can’t talk to me” in False God is a two-way communication issue. DBATC goes off at Karlie for taking up every part of her and “giving up on me”. Cornelia Street said Tay thought Karlie was “leading her on” but that was resolved. Then Afterglow goes and lays all the blame on Tay. 

I lived like an island, punished you with silence

Went off like sirens, just crying

Why'd I have to break what I love so much?

It's on your face, don't walk away, I need to say

Hey, it's all me, in my head

I'm the one who burned us down

I mean this really does sound like it’s Tay fucking up badly. Not wanting to let the other person in, taking it out on them, hurting her lover. 

It's so excruciating to see you low

Just wanna lift you up and not let you go

This ultraviolet morning light below

Tells me this love is worth the fight, oh

This really doesn’t sound like the Kaylor fear and stress. It sounds like the cerebral and emotional connection from Rep. “It’s so excruciating to see you low” seems tied up with the heart to hearts and conversations she was having in those secondary songs on Rep. 

Tell me that you're still mine

Tell me that we'll be just fine

Even when I lose my mind

I need to say

Tell me that it's not my fault

Tell me that I'm all you want

Even when I break your heart

I need to say

This just seems like a very different plan for fixing things than the one outlined in the Kaylor songs (which is “let’s bone”). Also “I break your heart” is an anxiety that seems to parallel the burgeoning love in Delicate, KOMH and CIWYW. It doesn’t seem like a Kaylor fear because Tay is always the one who wants Karlie more. I believe this is mostly a Tily breakup song. 

Then we get the three happy songs on the album: Lover, I Think He Knows and Paper Rings. It’s actually pretty intense that there are only three peppy, romantic songs on an album largely touted by Gaylors and Hetlors alike as being about a happy long term relationship. 

You want my controversial explanation for these songs? They’re fictional. All three are extremely vague and lacking in any of the Karlie/other person imagery. They’re like New Year’s Day and some of the early stuff. 

I Think He Knows is a very hetro song. It physically pains me to say that, it really does, but nothing about it seems gay to me. I guess “boyish look” is something you could say about some women but that’s really a reach. Also it’s just very much not a relatable lesbian emotion. I’ve never met a queer woman being like “yeah I think she KNOWS, you know?” about her girlfriend. “She’s so obsessed with me and boy I understand” would make no sense. Us sapphics are compulsive overthinkers. And that’s what comes across on all her songs about Karlie and about Di and even those Tily songs from Rep. That’s largely why Tay’s stuff is so damn gay. 

Tay’s permanently anxious - even on her love songs, there’s a thread of anxiety running through it all. This song is missing any of that anxiety. This song also has so, so many male pronouns…. And “I am an architect, I'm drawing up the plans” is an objectively weird thing to say about a relationship. It just doesn’t strike me as sapphic, and it definitely doesn’t strike me as being about Karlie lr Lily or Di. Also Nashville is 16th Avenue and I don’t know why any of the women would be associated with Nashville.

That Nashville reference makes me think that maybe the song is inspired by the music industry generally? If you go look at 16th Avenue by Lacy J. Dalton, there’s a clear narrative about the music industry. I think it’s possible that Tay’s song is referencing the love she feels for and from the music industry and her fans. That would tie into the architectural plans, being 17 (she often speaks about being stuck at that age because it’s when she got famous), and “he’s so obsessed with me” makes sense when you’re AOTD. Even the “attitude” line makes sense in this interpretation. 

This bit:

Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh

We can follow the sparks, I'll drive

Lyrical smile, indigo eyes, hand on my thigh

We can follow the sparks, I'll drive

"So where we gonna go?"

I whisper in the dark

"Where we gonna go?"

I think he knows

Is a little harder to make sense of and seems like it could maybe be about Lily or at least inspired by her - there’s the car/driving theme from the secondary Rep relationship and Lily does have indigo eyes (they’re way bluer than Joe’s). So maybe she used images and diaries from that period to add to the story about Nashville? But overall this smugness just doesn’t strike me as very gay and in general the song doesn’t seem to be about any one woman in her history. Also “better lock it down or I won’t stick around” is so very hetro and like… untortured. 

Paper Rings is not about Karlie but I also don’t think it’s about Lily. 

The moon is high

Like your friends were the night that we first met

Went home and tried to stalk you on the internet

Now I've read all of the books beside your bed

The wine is cold

Like the shoulder that I gave you in the street

Cat and mouse for a month or two or three

Now I wake up in the night and watch you breathe

This is not about Karlie. We’ve heard repeatedly that they fell in love at first sight so “month or two or three” is kinda wild? Like they full on U-Hauled it with the Big Sur trip and Tay moving to New York and Karlie basically moving into her apartment. They were never cat and mouse? Also Karlie was a supermodel by the time they met one another so “trying to stalk you on the internet” seems a bit of an odd way to phrase it. There would’ve been plenty to find. They both had big reputations. Moreover, they had multiple mutual friends so “your friends” is also an odd turn of phrase. How does this verse fit any aspect of the Kaylor love story? 

In the winter, in the icy outdoor pool

When you jumped in first, I went in too

I'm with you even if it makes me blue

Which takes me back

To the color that we painted your brother's wall

Honey, without all the exes, fights, and flaws

We wouldn't be standing here so tall, so

This is also very not Kaylor lol except for the tall part. The chilled out hanging out and swimming and wall painting sounds more like the songs about Tily on Rep. 

I like shiny things, but I'd marry you with paper rings

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want, and

I hate accidents except when we went from friends to this

Uh huh, that's right

Darling, you're the one I want

In paper rings in picture frames in dirty dreams

Oh, you're the one I want

This seems like it could be Tily because of the “we went from friends to this” (Kaylor were never friends, and had no intention of being friends, they’ve literally only ever dated). But I’m not sure Tay ever wanted to marry Lily? That’s not what comes across in the other Tily songs. 

I want to drive away with you

I want your complications too

I want your dreary Mondays

Wrap your arms around me, baby boy

The driving and the chilledness is similar to the Tily songs but I’m still not sold. It really doesn’t feel particularly authentic. 

Also, I know I mostly do lyric analysis but I’d like to include this quote from Tay about the song: “This song talks about true love, and if you really find true love, you probably don't really care what the symbolism of that love is. Material things wouldn't matter to you anymore if you found someone that you just wanted to live your life with.” The quote is distinctly hypothetical. “You probably don’t really care” “wouldn’t” “if you found”....

My gut says this is based around positive romantic relationships she has had but is extrapolated to a rosy conclusion. One day, Tay’s gonna want to marry someone with paper rings. But for now it’s a fictional hypothetical. None of the details fit any of her relationships. It’s made up. That’s why it includes the “baby boy” line... because it’s fiction. 

And now for the really hot take… Lover is equally made up, although she was - again - inspired by her real relationships. 

We could leave the Christmas lights up 'til January

This is our place, we make the rules

And there's a dazzling haze, a mysterious way about you, dear

Have I known you twenty seconds or twenty years?

This is continuing the themes from New Year’s Day which always strikes me as a “what if” rather than an actual ode to one of the muses. That final line seems like it could be about Karlie but the absolute calmness with which she sings makes it seem like it’s not about her. The mysterious way is also a brand new image and considering how much she sings about Karlie you would’ve thought we’d have had that image at least once before?

Can I go where you go?

Can we always be this close forever and ever?

And ah, take me out and take me home

You're my, my, my, my

Lover

I mean this doesn’t sound like Kaylor. Part of the anxiety there is always about going places together and being seen. It does have bits that seem like Tily to me; “take me out and take me home” kind of reminds me of the “meet me in the back” and “can we always be this close” seems similar to “is it chill that you’re in my head?” 

We could let our friends crash in the living room

This is our place, we make the call

And I'm highly suspicious that everyone who sees you wants you

I've loved you three summers now, honey, but I want 'em all

The first three lines could be about either Karlie or Lily although I don’t know if Tily had “their place”. Kaylor definitely did. 

That last line… is kinda why I think this is mostly fiction. I mean we know it doesn’t make sense for Toe. We know that. And I know about the gymnastics to fit it as a Kaylor song. But the thing is, even if she wrote it around the time that they went away to Wyoming, why wouldn’t she update it when recording it? It literally doesn’t fit the Toe timeline so it can’t be that she wanted it for that. She could’ve made it vague. But no she says “three summers”. Where else have we heard about “three summers”?

September saw a month of tears

And thankin' God that you weren't here

To see me like that

But in a box beneath my bed

Is a letter that you never read

From three summers back

It's hard not to find it all a little bitter sweet

That’s from Tim McGraw. 

She just likes that image. It recurs. It’s not about Karlie, and it’s not about Lily, and it’s obviously not about Joe. It’s just a pretty turn of phrase. She loves counting in summers and Cruel Summers and the summer in Betty/august…. It’s not something she associates with one person. 

Ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?

With every guitar string scar on my hand

I take this magnetic force of a man to be my

Lover

My heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue

All's well that ends well to end up with you

Swear to be over-dramatic and true to my

Lover

This whole wedding bit doesn’t make sense for either Kaylor or Tily or Swiftgron. Like she’s constantly questioning Karlie’s commitment to her. And you want me to believe she’s singing vows? Lol no. 

And you'll save all your dirtiest jokes for me

And at every table, I'll save you a seat

Lover

Very cute. Very non-specific. Not about any one partner. 

So this supposed ode/serenade to Karlie doesn’t feature any of the images associated with her and doesn’t include any details that actively fit their relationship arc as described elsewhere except for jealousy and possibly love at first sight. 

These three peppy love songs - which make up the minority of songs on the album - are about Taylor’s manifestations for the future. ITHK could be about the industry more generally. The other two are describing what she wants and what she pictures as ideal for a relationship. 

So conclusions: a large chunk of the songs on Lover aren’t about romance. Many, many are about Karlie. Afterglow could be about Lily and some of the regrets Tay had about the split. Paper Rings, I Think He Knows and Lover aren’t about anyone in particular. 

Last thought: I agree that It’s Nice To Have a Friend is about lesbians generally. But also possibly about Karlie, in which case the final verse is Karlie choosing the marriage with Josh and in that case the song is fucking devastating and heartbreaking. But tbh a lot about Kaylor is so it’s no surprise 🤷🏻‍♀️ 

---------------------------------------------------

As usual, I’m up to discuss this. Do you agree? Disagree? Let’s talk! xx

[doomedandstoned]

Planet of the Dead Return to the Stars as ‘Pilgrims’

~Doomed & Stoned Debuts~

By Billy Goate

Album Art by Jonathan Guzi

Every other day there's a story that calls our eyes heavenward to wonder about new planets discovered in nearby solar systems, terraforming Mars, or exploring the smallest elements in the universe. Anywhere has to be better than here, any time better than here right now. At least that's what a lot of people are feeling. How about the power of music to elevate us into vast dimensions of the imagination. One band out of New Zealand is interested in finding out what limits one can breach when the driving power of doom rock is hotwired with adventurous sci-fi/fantasy storytelling.

I speak, of course, of Wellington quartet PLANET OF THE DEAD Last year, Mark Mundell (vox), Malcolm McKenzie (guitar), Kees Hengst (bass), and Josh Hussey (drums) brought us the impressive first introduction to their soundscape and narrative concept, which elicited no small amount of praise for 'Fear of a Dead Planet' (2020), including the enthusiastic Bandcamper who gushed, "Some of the best jams I've heard in this universe!" Listen to fan favorites "The Eternal Void" or "Mind Killer" and you'll discover why there's excitement around this band's future.

But Planet of the Dead wasn't done yet. As many of us have already experienced, unexpected and elongated times of forced aloneness do crazy things to the creative mind. For one, it frustrates, as you cannot express the present songs you feel so strongly about to live crowds filled with spontaneous drifters. The moods usually shift out of sheer exasperated boredom, leading to the insatiable urge to begin tinkering again. 'Pilgrim' (2021) comes at us like an explosion with stories to tell and songs to wail. It's purpose-driven interdimensional doom we're talking about here. This may have been the impetus behind the second album’s creation, so closely after the birth of their first (incidentally, both records feature exactly eight songs a piece).

"Gom Jabbar" is the first creature we chance upon in this otherworldly dimension. He speaks with synth-enhanced vocals (ever so slightly) that's practically like an alien encounter if you listen to it high (gosh, sorry. I've gotta stop leaking album reviewer secrets like that). A defiant second voice joins the dialogue, sounding for all the world like Goliath, Hercules, or Hulkian figure.

"Pilgrim" stirs up grey and purple auras as this groovy sandcrawler glides across dunes and high above deserts, searching for the most fitting place to (re)build the world they once knew, perhaps even dare to dream beyond it. I'm assuming they're a scientific voyage on the run from a restrictive government in a week's long mini series I should have pitched to NBC 20 years ago for big bucks. The song allows your imagination drift on its own recognisance, before the closing words call us back to the shadows.

A dire feeling blankets the air throughout "Nostromo," a stomping little number that's straight-up doom rock, with a cool streetwalking kind of stride. It's impossible to not to think of previous adventures aboard vessels christened Nostromo, but each are mysterious encounters with the unknown, some of which yield new insights into our humanity by taking us back through some strange luck of heavy metal time travel to experience pivotal moments in astral history.

"The Sprawl" may be one of the most dismal legs of this journey, but in an exotic acid-soaked kind of way that makes you question your reality (and your own sanity) before the trip is done. The song is good about building various layers of joy and tension, then meshing them together for some distorted, fuzzy, electric, sparkin' Frankensteinian experience. Where will the spiral take us next? Confident lead gets a riff-enhanced jolt, staging march-like-groove that eventually turns meditative, psychedelic, and ethereal. And that's just the first side of the record! Go ahead, flip it over. You can't stop this far-invested in the trip. Shhh. Listen. Grungy, rumbling energy, extraterrestrial harmonics, and gnarly acid-touched solos are just ahead.

"Escape from Smith's Grove" jars the senses with the unexpected tonal shift from clarinets into a seismic pattern of eruptions that match our stomping feet. This is, after all, a jailbreak of sorts.

"Directive IV" takes the perspective of an enforcement officer who is just doing his job. Mark Mundell's vocal stylings are on-point. For me they compare to the pipes of the late-great Wayne Static, the spastic, growling frontman of Static X. Others may see more similarity with the "common man" grit of Scott Angelacos from Hollow Leg and Junior Bruce. Or even Kirk Windstein's apocalyptic spitfire with Crowbar.

The song appears to be a struggle of conscience between compassion and machine-like order, a tug-of-war that after several epic call and response segments in which our protagonist is put on trial by his peers. The tight grip of fascistic space goons gradually loosens their grip in the song's final minutes, as a street-worn riff storm carries our rebels far away from the grasp of whatever the fucks. That means our (now treasonous) soldier has a second chance at life in the (are you ready for this?) the unknown wilds of...

..."The Cursed Earth." This is a perfect song for that moment in a show when the alcohol or "legal tobacco" has sufficiently unlocked your third eye with stellar riffs and choruses (this song has several "ah-ha" moments). The vocals are obscured here and are sometimes backed up by other singers to emphasize a specific point in the lyrical narrative. The final moments again are slowed down with impactful tonal moments that make you think you're on the edge spying some strange meeting of warrior souls.

Things are not what they seem They never are

"The Great Wave" pulls you right into its hypnotic sway, interjected with extraterrestrial strains of thought communicated as if by a very blasted HAL 9000, our onboard computer. It's downright creepy when it hits you. Then again, maybe that's what we want from an intrepid album such as Pilgrim, to rope us into a fascinating narrative and invite us to return to sort out the details, several spins down the road. Now that I think of it, maybe these songs are all references pinned to great Alien, Robocop, and Judge Dredd moments? Listen closely to "Nostromo" and "Directive IV" and wonder. A good album should do that to a person, draw you into its storytelling and musical colour. It has me listening to it immediately from beginning to end, then end to beginning. If you wanna give it a shot, Planet of the Dead's monsterpiece will definitely reward your back-to-back listens.

Look for Pilgrims to come to life on July 23rd, with a fantastic spread of options on vinyl and CD (pre-order here). In the meanwhile, Planet of the Dead are letting us join the party leading up to the big drop right here at Doomed & Stoned HQ, where you can hear each track in full. Don't miss crucial insight from the band itself in 'Some Buzz' to follow. Then join in sharing your thoughts and theories (stoned or otherwise) on this transcendental New Zealand metal album in the comments below!

Give ear...

LISTEN: Planet of the Dead - Pilgrim

SOME BUZZ

Just little over a year following the release of their auspicious debut album, 'Fear of a Dead Planet' (2020), which attained more than 35,000 views on YouTube, New Zealand cosmic stoner and doom four-piece band Planet of the Dead are back with a new full-length album titled 'Pilgrims' (2021).

Hurtling towards the forever yawning void within their busted-up space freighter, they draw inspiration from classic science fiction and horror, and push supermassive and megalithic riffs to the outer limits.

"Our second album came together around the titular track 'Pilgrim', which is based on the book 'Slaughterhouse 5' by Kurt Vonnegut. Musically, it plays upon the themes of moments trapped in the amber." So says the band about this new album.

"Our basic concept is heavy music played heavy, and we try to keep it simple. There are recurrent themes in our riffs which gives the album a sense of coherence, but we've experimented with some new sounds in the latest album which we feel results in a greater sense of dynamism.

"Lyrically, we dug deeper into our obsessions with classic sci-fi and horror. There is a distinctive and undeniable fan-fiction element to our work. We actively seek out cultural references, and weave them into our tapestries. Ultimately, we do everything we do for the great god Dyzan, for his greater glory...and for our mutual pleasure.”

Set for release on July 23rd, 'Pilgrims' will surely cement Planet of the Dead’s reputation as serious riff merchants.

Follow The Band

Get Their Music

[popjuicemag]

The tender catharsis of Phoebe Bridgers’ ‘Punisher’

by Raphael Cheong • June 19, 2020

Moving away from the folk sounds that characterised much of her debut album, Bridgers’ long awaited follow-up is a sparse, atmospheric odyssey.

Starting with lead single Garden Song, an exploration of intimacy and growing up, Punisher at once finds itself in dreamy territory. The song carries the influence of British band The 1975, whom Bridgers recently collaborated with, by way of distorted background sounds atop a guitar melody.

As always, it is the 25-year-old’s precocious songwriting that forms the nucleus of much of the record, as with this line from Garden Song that invokes a sense of melancholic blur:

I'm at the movies, I don't remember what I'm seeing The screen turns into a tidal wave Then it's a dorm room, like a hedge maze

Where there are slightly more upbeat moments on Punisher, they are merely foils for heavy subject matter. Kyoto, the album’s second single, is a chirpy indie rock number about her relationship with her father, as well as the imposter syndrome she experienced when in Japan. On Chinese Satellite, she questions her identity and sense of powerlessness:

I've been running around in circles Pretending to be myself Why would somebody do this on purpose When they could do something else?

Identity is a recurrent theme on Punisher. On the hauntingly soothing ballad Halloween, which features vocals from her Better Oblivion Community Centre bandmate Conor Oberst, Bridgers sings that “It’s Halloween, we can be anything”. On Savior Complex, she confronts her psychological shortcomings in a lush, string-filled number that takes its time to unravel itself.

At the end of the record, we get the very aptly titled I Know The End, in which she sings about a discordant world where Germany is Texas, complete with “Big bolts of lightning hanging low” as lightning sounds come in for some blink-and-you-miss-it text painting. The song’s outro is a true highlight of the album, as everything from clashing drums, horns, screams and growls get a part to play in the cacophony. Drawing from the title, it’s almost as if we’re witnessing the Punisher release their pent-up wrath. Yet it remains unclear what role Bridgers plays in it all: is she tormentor, or tormented?

Either way, as the album draws to a frightful, grandiose close, one thing is certain: catharsis is a dish best served cold.

[dustedmagazine]

Apartment House on Another Timbre: Three Perspectives

If you survey the website of Apartment House, you won’t find an “about” page or any exposition of the ensemble’s history or philosophy. While such reticence is rare these days amongst artistic endeavors of any stripe, the very lack of information tells you something about Apartment House’s raison d’être. It’s all about the work, and the ensemble’s role is to make performances that are about the music, and not Apartment House’s take on the music. This renunciation of ego makes sense when you consider that the ensemble’s name derives from a John Cage composition; one of Cage’s intentions was to envision music that was open to the world and wasn’t about assertions of selfhood. Cellist Anton Lukoszevieze founded the ensemble in 1995, but its recording career didn’t get into gear until 2013.

Since then, the group has released 22 single or double CDs covering work by contemporary composers ranging from Cornelius Cardew to Christian Wolff to Linda Catlin Smith to Ryoko Akama. With a rotating membership, performances range from solos and duos to chamber ensembles. Thirteen were issued by the Another Timbre label, including three titles at once in late 2020, each presenting the music of a single composer — Martin Arnold (b. 1958), Antoine Beuger (b. 1955) and Maya Verlaak (1990). The act of releasing these albums simultaneously affords a chance to consider how Apartment House engages with the different intentions and requirements asserted by each composer. Dusted writers Marc Medwin, Michael Rosenstein and Bill Meyer cover the three recent releases.

Maya Verlaak / Apartment House— All English Music is Greensleeves (Another Timbre)

All English Music is Greensleeves by Maya Verlaak

Múm was an Icelandic group with singers channeling the wisely innocent voices of children while a lush landscape, rife with music boxes and other liquid-crystal sonorities, multihued the adjacent soundspaces. There is something similarly open about this music, something so unpredictably predictable, so comforting, so quietly inclusive! Belgian composer Maya Verlaak delves to the depths of experience’s networks while observing from just far enough to escape the iron grip and rationalizations of memory. This is music in which even the harshest sounds melt into a winning simplicity, a world of sound and sense in symbiosis.

It would be too easy to point toward modality to explain such a beautifully optimistic vision. After all, “All British Music is Greensleeves” tears that increasingly irrelevant construct to shreds in a hurry as two layers of sound, one prerecorded, spin bits of the tune down the dimly lit corridors conjoining memory and reflection. Chord, cluster and motive blur boundaries, even as space ensures a tidy trail of readily identifiable components needling consciousness reluctantly toward recognition. It’s a world with which Ives or Mahler might have made contact, had chamber music been more in their sights, such are the buds and blooms of poly-event amidst distantly lit string writing that refuses to answer Ives’ perennial question. The unfurling harmonies, formed of motives in quasi-counterpoint, are inextricably linked with their kaleidoscopic timbres. Recurrence is both evident and backgrounded but none so blatant as the delicious silences, almost periodic, separating the streamlined multivalences. Fortunately, as with many Apartment House recordings, vibrato is nearly absent.

The “Formation” pieces place a similarly subversive emphasis on relationship so subliminal that a simple listen won’t unlock the door or open the blinds. Any hats doffed toward conventional chord or set are quickly displaced by the gentle but insistent winds of change emanating from a vocal imperative or an intoned repetition. Mark Knoop and Sarah Saviet are in something near dialogue with overlapping technologies guided by a compositional voice whose questions also seek a malleable answer. The openness at the heart of Verlaak’s work stems from the various paths through subversion, re-subversion and integration integral to the majority of these pieces. What, in the case of “Song and Dance,” do performers do when confronted only with the analysis, or justification, for a musical score rather than with the score itself? What happens when the justification becomes the score? How is it possible, practical or desirable to confront musical parameters neither heard nor witnessed? The wonderful thing about such conceptions is that they really form the metanarrative of all artistic endeavor. No art, no matter how explicit, relinquishes all of its secrets, just as no single pitch or sonority, even those as pure as Apartment House offers with staggering consistency, is the actual embodiment of that sound. Composers and performers deal in approximations, and it is to Verlaak’s credit that the processes have been rendered at least partially transparent with such beautifully cooperative forces to give them form and voice.

Marc Medwin

Martin Arnold / Apartment House—Stain Ballads (Another Timbre)

'Stain Ballads' by Martin Arnold

This is the second release on Another Timbre by Canadian composer Martin Arnold, the first being The Spit Veleta a 2017 program of violin and piano solos and duos by Apartment House members Philp Thomas and Mira Benjamin. This time out, Arnold provides the group with a program consisting of a solo, a duo, a quartet, and piece for sextet. Across the four pieces, the composer balances a sense of lyricism with a fascination with the abstracted concept of “formlessness.” In his interview on the Another Timbre site, he puts it this way when asked about the title of the CD. “Stains are… radically specific – always stain-shaped. They might remind one of something – like when one looks at the inkblots of a Rorschach test (though significantly, they don't have Rorschach's added symmetry) – but they don't present a form, a coherent outline, a generic structure that can be abstracted and distilled; with a stain, form and content are the same thing. My work continues to aspire to that condition.” Each of the four pieces here delve in to the way that melodies and themes can be opened up to ride the edges of lyricism and abstraction.

The program opens with “Lutra” for solo cello and humming performed by Anton Lukoszevieze. The piece starts out with arco themes colored with hummed and bowed diaphanous overtones. Hovering at the upper registers of the instrument, threads are introduced, slowly progressing, punctuated occasionally by softly plucked notes. Staying within the same set of registers as well as harmonic and timbral areas, Lukoszevieze lets the notes resonate and serenely decay. In the last section the piece moves to percussively plucked notes with poised slow resolve, fading to hushed resonance in the final moment. “Stain Ballad” follows, orchestrated for cello, piano, viola, two violins, reed organ, and percussion. Arnold voices the various layers in a slow flux, moving in and out of synch with each other. The ensemble does a sterling job of maintaining an overall balance so that no one particular instrument is ever the sole focus. Instead, the various parts wend along as various subsections of the ensemble coalesce and then dissipate in to the mercurial overall flow of the piece. The striated parts adeptly take advantage of the timbral synergies and contrasts of the instruments as one moment, string arco melds with reed organ while in other sections, the percussive attack of Philip Thomas’ piano, the woody retort of Simon Limbrick’s percussion and pizzicato strings shift and shudder across each other.

The pairing of Lukoszevieze’s cello and Mira Benjamin’s violin on “Trousers” dives in to specific techniques like the utilization of multiple mutes, bowing with the wood of the bow, hushed microtones and a sliding sense of harmonics. Arnold talks about it, noting that “the sound of “Trousers” is certainly at odds with a “good” Classical sound: I shut down projection, fullness of tone, resonance, the consistency, stability and predictability of the sound being produced.” Over the course of the 22 minute piece, fragments of melody, muted textures and quavering string overtones play off of each other with measured consideration. Themes play out, get subsumed into the progression of the piece and then resurface. The recording closes out with “Slip,” a quartet for cello, violin, bass clarinet, and piano. The piece takes its name from the Irish slip jig, a jig that is in 9/8 as opposed to the usual 6/8 and a slowed pace accentuates the odd time signature. For the first quarter of the piece, cello, violin and bass clarinet move in woozy unison, lithely navigating the precarious phrasing. Pianist Mark Knoop’s entry, a quarter way in, introduces spare chords that serve to unsettle the phrasing even further, though the quartet never wavers in their assuredly ambling momentum. As the piece proceeds, the four parts veer off from each other, with lines dropping in and out. High-pitched violin arco sounds against crystalline piano chords making way for pizzicato cello and piano. The final section featuring Heather Roche’s dusky bass clarinet playing brings the piece to a transfixing conclusion. On Stain Ballads, Arnold continues to expand on his strategies toward opening up and abstracting melody, balancing compositional form with a sense of “formlessness.” With the members of Apartment House, he has found worthy collaborators.

Michael Rosenstein

Antoine Beuger / Apartment House—Jankélévitch Sextets (Another Timbre)

'jankélévitch sextets' by Antoine Beuger

In 1992, Antoine Beuger cofounded Editions Wandelweiser, the publishing arm of a community of like-minded, post-John Cageian composers. Along the way he has taken on the roles of artistic and managing director. Since Wandelweiser is a collective, his stewardship of the label and publishing arms makes him influential, but not an authoritarian figure. Quite the contrary. On Another Timbre website, there is an interview with Beuger that raises a provocative point about the authority of the score. He compares the current position of a classical composer to a perspective prescribed by Christian theology. The composer hands down rarefied instructions, which he (Beuger emphasizes the masculinity of this approach) best understands, and leaves to others the work of realizing his often very difficult and inscrutable instructions.

With Jankélévitch Sextets, Beuger takes a different approach. It is the fourth in a series of pieces that he wrote for specified numbers of musicians. Each composition deals with relationships implied by that number, and each does so employing mainly quiet, sustained tones. Additionally, each acknowledges a cultural figure; in this case, the Franco-Russian philosopher, Vladimir Jankélévitch. Beuger cites his appreciation for two of Jankélévitch’s ideas. First, music has no itinerary; it flows unpredictably. Second, sounds appear by disappearing. The latter point makes sense if you consider how you notice phenomena only after they stop. One suspects that if Jankélévitch was a fan of mid-20th century American music, he’d have had a lot of time for William Bell’s “You Don’t Miss Your Water (Till The Well Runs Dry).”

Beuger’s piece consists of repeated statements of a close bundle of long tones, each followed by a brief silence, with instruments insinuating themselves or dropping out during each pass. While the name is plural, the music is presented as a single, 64:20 long track, which asks the listener to accompany the ensemble through its entirety. The instrumentation consists of accordion, bassoon, bass clarinet, violin, viola, and double bass, which affords many opportunities for similar-sounding pitches to ease shift between close harmony and beating difference tones. This is not music that tugs at your sleeve; neither ingratiating nor imposing, it’s there if you wish to approach it, cycling through changes that reveal sounds by removing them. The music locates the essence of six-ness not in some contrapuntal exchange that draws attention to all the voices, but in the way that a group can persevere over time by allowing its members opportunities for respite. Apartment House’s treatment of this material captures its subtle balance. It takes discipline to blend sounds so patiently, and even more to do so in a way that don’t ask you to admire their restraint.

Bill Meyer

[recentanimenews]

Happy Birthday, Space Cowboy: A Shinichiro Watanabe Retrospective

  Today we wish a very happy birthday to the Cowboy Bebop director, the one and only Shinichiro Watanabe! Watanabe-san has been a powerhouse in the world of anime for well over two decades, working with acclaimed studios such as Sunrise Inc., Studio Nue, and BONES. His mastery at blending Western and Eastern elements has earned Watanabe a devoted fanbase in many different countries. One of the most consistent aspects of Watanabe's catalog is his skill at successfully amalgamating a variety of genres from sci-fi to Westerns to comedy and more.

In honor of Watanabe's birthday, I'll be exploring the artistic depth of three anime from his impressive oeuvre and celebrating the very special spark that can be found in all his works. Read on for more!

Terror in Resonance (2014)

Terror in Resonance seems critically underappreciated when compared to some of Watanabe's other directorial efforts. Though it lacks the robust character development and sense of immersion found in his other titles, the series still retains many of the qualities that make Watanabe such a globally respected anime auteur.

Terror in Resonance follows two high-school-aged terrorists named Twelve and Nine as they plot a series of bombings in order to reveal the injustices enacted against them — and many other children — during a secret government operation called the Athena Plan. Along the way, a lonely girl named Lisa finds herself enwrapped in the boys' mission, and experiences camaraderie for the first time due to their presence.

The show's basic premise alone reflects Watanabe's willingness to explore uncommon thematic spaces by featuring literal terrorists as two of the main characters. Common in his other works as well, Watanabe invites viewers to feel compassion for characters who inhabit the outermost margins of societal acceptability. The show doesn't endorse Twelve and Nine's actions, but it does position them as isolated characters with real human attributes, acting coherently in retaliation to the incorrigible exploitation they faced as children. Twelve and Nine also make extreme efforts to make sure no one is killed due to their bombings, which serves as an empathetic deviation from standard depictions of terrorists as one-sided, monstrous caricatures.

Ultimately, Terror in Resonance features many trademarks of Watanabe's unique touch: compassionate explorations of loneliness, a tragic narrative interspersed with brief moments of beauty, and yet another gorgeous soundtrack by Yoko Kanno (a frequent collaborator with Watanabe).

Macross Plus (1995)

Watanabe made his directorial debut as co-director for Macross Plus working alongside Shoji Kawamori (the creator of the original Macross). This four-part OVA is the best flying mech, artifcial-intelligence-pop-music-gone-horribly-wrong redo of Top Gun I've ever seen. I remember I first saw it on the Starz Channel back in 2002 or 2003. It was fun to revisit the US dub recently with the fresh realization that Bryan Cranston — aka Walter White, our favorite fictional suburban meth dealer — did the voice acting for the main character Isamu. Isamu is like a more womanizing Spike from Cowboy Bebop, mixed with the arrogance of Mugen from Samurai Champloo, and is an early example of a recurrent protagonist-archetype in Watanabe's titles. The playful comedic qualities Watanabe would become known for were already apparent in much of Macross Plus, such as the scene when Isamu and his rival Bowman bring up old adolescent/high-school gripes while they're both engaged in an airborne mech-duel to the death.

Once again, Yoko Kanno's absolutely incredible score must be mentioned. The soundtrack ranges from orchestral music perfect for dogfights to emotional ballads and '90s trance (there's also a really cool reference to the Aphex Twin album "Selected Ambient Works 85-92" on a bus sign in one scene). Watanabe's first directorial outing already grapples with a subject near and dear to his heart: music. The last episode features an intense sequence involving an AI popstar named Sharon Apple, who takes control of everyone viewing her concert via seductive musical mind control. This scene explores a what-if scenario: an imagined future where technology meshes with the power of music for nefarious — rather than healing — ends. Either way, since Watanabe is a self-proclaimed "music freak," it's fun to watch him implement a plot device about just how disruptively powerful music can be (his most recent anime Carole and Tuesday tackles AI and pop music with a more neutral lens, as an FYI). Macross Plus is not to be missed.

Cowboy Bebop (1998)

  I'll never forget what it was like to experience Cowboy Bebop for the very first time when it initially aired on Adult Swim in 2001. I must have been 12 or 13 at the time, and few pieces of media have made such a lasting impression on me. I was already extremely impressed even after seeing the first episode "Asteroid Blues," but it's the fifth episode entitled "Ballad of Fallen Angels" — where viewers are introduced for the first time to the central antagonist Vicious — that completely sold me on the series.

"Ballad of Fallen Angels" culminates in a climactic battle that takes place in a church, with the main character Spike duking it out against Vicious and his goons. The most memorable moment for me is the scene when Spike is thrown out of the top of the church by Vicious. Spike falls in slow-motion as viewers are treated to a montage of his tragic crime syndicate past and his relationship with his lost love Julia. It's such a stunning moment that perfectly echoes the old creative writing adage "show don't tell," since it subtly expresses so much about Spike's life without explicitly battering it over your head. The scene speaks volumes in just a few wordless seconds, with no sounds to be heard at all other than Yoko Kanno's gorgeous choir and piano-based track "Green Bird." I've drifted toward arthouse movies as I've grown older, and I truly think the aforementioned scene was my first time experiencing the ineffable artfulness that I find in the experimental films that move me most. It feels a little silly and overblown to say, but the sequence feels like it contains a large spectrum of life — love, hate, sadness, memories, dreams, etc.

Cowboy Bebop is a show that abounds with moments like this. There are so many moving scenes rich in an atmospheric tenderness that aches with longing, loneliness, and beauty. Intimate scenes where characters in interstellar ships stare quietly at a sea of stars. A view of someone smoking a cigarette alone in a dimly lit alleyway. Or something like the ending of "Waltz for Venus," when a music box-esque song plays while Spike gazes into the sky as spores that can blind drift downward like snow.

I could go on and on about the series — the masterful quality of Keiko Nobumoto's screenplay, the riveting action sequences and lovable characters, the expert blend of genres coupled with breathtaking animation and music, and how Spike's somewhat Buddhist philosophy (whatever happens, happens) influenced my own. Cowboy Bebop truly deserves all the praise and is undoubtedly one of the best animated works of all time.

So here's to you Shinichiro Watanabe. I hope you have a birthday as stunning and cool as the anime you've graced the world with.

What else do you love by Shinichiro Watanabe, and why? Sounds off in the comments below!

    Do you love anime? Do you love writing? If you have an idea for a features story, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!

By: news+feed@crunchyroll.com

[intoxicatingimmediacy]

There Existed an Addiction to Blood by clipping.

1. Intro 2. Nothing is Safe 3. He Dead (feat. Ed Balloon) 4. Haunting (interlude) 5. La Mala Ordina (with The Rita) (feat. Elcamino & Benny The Butcher) 6. Club Down (with Sarah Bernat) 7. Prophecy (interlude) 8. Run for Your Life (feat. La Chat) 9. The Show 10. Possession (interlude) 11. All in Your Head (feat. Counterfeit Madison & Robyn Hood) 12. Blood of the Fang 13. Story 7 14. Attunement (with Pedestrian Deposit) 15. Piano Burning

The science-fiction visionary Octavia Butler once declared that “there is nothing new under the sun, but there are new suns.” The aphorism could apply to any art form where the basic contours are fixed, but the appetite for innovation remains infinite. Enter Clipping, flash fiction genre masters in a hip-hop world firmly rooted in memoir. If first person confessionals historically reign, the mid-city Los Angeles trio of rapper Daveed Diggs and producers William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes have spent the last half-decade terraforming their own patch of soil, replete with conceptual labyrinths and industrial chaos. They have conjured a mutant emanation of the future, built at odd angles atop the hallowed foundation of the past.

Their third album for Sub Pop, There Existed an Addiction to Blood, finds them interpreting another rap splinter sect through their singular lens. This is clipping’s transmutation of horrorcore, a purposefully absurdist and creatively significant sub-genre that flourished in the mid-90s. If some of its most notable pioneers included Brotha Lynch Hung and Gravediggaz, it also encompasses seminal works from the Geto Boys, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, and the near-entirety of classic Memphis cassette tape rap.

The most subversive and experimental rap has often presented itself as an “alternative” to conventional sounds, but Clipping respectfully warp them into new constellations. There Existed an Addiction to Blood absorbs the hyper-violent horror tropes of the Murder Dog era, but re-imagines them in a new light: still darkly-tinted and somber, but in a weirder and more vivid hue. If traditional horrorcore was akin to Blacula, the hugely popular blaxploitation flick from the early 70s, Clipping’s latest is analogous to Ganja & Hess, the blood-sipping 1973 cult classic regarded as an unsung landmark of black independent cinema, whose score the band samples on “Blood of the Fang.”

From the opening “Intro,” Clipping summon an unsettling eeriness. Diggs sounds like he’s rapping through a drive-thru speaker about the bottom falling out, bodies hitting the floor, and recurrent ghosts. You hear ambient noises, footsteps and shovels. The hairs on your arms stick up like bayonets. You can practically see the knife’s edge, sharp and luminous.

Each song contains its own premise and conceptual bent. There is “Nothing is Safe,” a reversal of Assault on Precinct 13, where the band create their own version of a John Carpenter-inspired rap beat and the cops are the ones raiding a trap house. Diggs sketches the narrative from the perspective of the victims, full of lurid and visceral details and intricate wordplay. The windows are boarded and sealed, the product simmers on the stove, the bodies sleep fitfully in shifts. Then law enforcement arrives and the bullets start to fly.

“He Dead” turns police officers into werewolves while Diggs flips Kendrick Lamar’s “Riggamortis” into something gravely literal.“All In Your Head” finds Clipping re-contextualizing the pimp talk of Suga Free and Too $hort into a metaphor for an Exorcist-style possession. The album contains interludes featuring hissing recordings of demonic invasions and guest appearances from Griselda Gang’s Benny the Butcher and Hypnotize Minds horror queen La Chat. Other tracks feature contributions from noise music legends The Rita and Pedestrian Deposit. It all ends with “Piano Burning,” a performance of a piece written by the avant-garde composer Annea Lockwood. Yes, it is the sound of a piano burning.

In the hands of the less imaginative or less virtuosic, it could come off as overwrought or pretentious. Instead, Clipping annex new terrain for a sub-genre often left for dead. In its own way, one could compare what they’ve accomplished to Tarantino’s post-modern reworkings of critically overlooked but creatively fertile blaxploitation, horror and spaghetti western cinema.

Everything fits neatly into the broader scope of the band’s career, which has seen them expand from insular experimentalists into globally recognized artists. Since the release of their first album in 2013, Diggs has won a Tony and a Grammy, as well as co-written and starred in 2018’s critically hailed Blindspotting, while Snipes and Hutson have scored numerous films and television shows.

Clipping’s last album, the 2016 afro-futurist dystopian space opus Splendor & Misery was recently named one of Pitchfork’s Best Industrial Albums of All-Time. Commissioned for an episode of “This American Life,” their 2017 single “The Deep” became the inspiration for a novel of the same name, written by Rivers Solomon and published by Saga Press. But it’s their latest masterwork that embodies what the band had been building towards — a work that finds them without peer. This is experimental hip-hop built to bang in a post-apocalyptic club bursting with radiation. It’s horror-core that soaks up past blood and replants it into a different organism, undead but dangerously alive. It is a new sun, blindingly bright and built to burn your retinas. releases October 18, 2019

[adrianalvas]

Podcast 188: Figure Section [aufnahme + wiedergabe] [ +Interview]

Figure Section arose from the meeting of Austrian-French musician and actress Olivia Carrère - aka Olive - and Belgian artist and producer Yannick Franck (RAUM, Orphan Swords, Mt Gemini), who first crossed paths on a theatre stage in Brussels.

Although founded on an acknowledgement of these styles, their execution is experimental, idiosyncratic and entirely modern in spirit, guided by an intent to revise their influences and an approach shaped by romanticism and a surreal, Dadaistic sense of humour. The recurrent themes of the project address friendship, love, loss, existential angst, survival, irony, degeneration, queer culture, non-conformity and ‘the expiation of tensions through modern day rituals’.

The duo’s first single ‘Teutonic Knights’ was hailed by The Brvtalist as an illustration of ”infectious wave [music] with an eerie atmosphere and frigid vocals”, a track that subsequently generated widespread acclaim. In October their debut EP was released on the cult Berlin based label run by Phillip Strobel, aufnahme + wiedergabe.

TF: What motivates you to create Figure Section?

O: My collaboration with Yannick is an intersection between a strong friendship and similar interests and tastes in music. What’s more, the collaboration between us is really complementary in the creative process and allows us to explore new musical playgrounds which neither of us would probably reach if we were working separately.

Y: There are certain musical realms I wanted to explore for a long time whilst doing very different projects (Orphan Swords, RAUM, Y.E.R.M.O.), and since we met and started to experiment together, we dreamed of having a proper duo. It took time but here we are, I am very glad the project exists and I couldn’t dream of a better companion to do it with.

TF: Tell us something about you. What’s your background? Where did you studied and who influenced you to explore musical processes?

O: My background is rather diverse, and it took me a long time to discover how intimate I was with music as a listener, but also as a composer. I come from a theatrical background. I trained as an actress, though I started my studies with a degree in communication – specifically in socio-cultural animation - knowing that I would change path after obtaining it. It’s quite funny to see how tortuous life can be before finding your way through and beyond all these experiences. When I started as an actress ten years ago, something was missing in my professional contribution. I was desperately looking for some creative language that I could develop on my own. I was already familiar with singing since my childhood, so I started learning the basics of music theory online, and quickly I realized that I wanted to compose songs, and to find the easiest way of recording them without any external help. I got my hands on a keyboard and software and started composing, singing and producing at home. It was more a secret process for a few years, until I created a solo piece in the National Theatre of Belgium, which involved performing some of my compositions. This was a fundamental step where I learned that, with the music, I could be really free in the writing and performing process.

Y: I studied painting, but it quickly became clear that music was a territory worth exploring and one that I had to invest my time and energy into. Since I was pretty disgusted by the blatant materialism and the general mindset of the art world; the galleries, and a lot of the attitudes adopted by other artists (competitiveness, individualism, tendency to follow an art world, scale version of the Star System), I found there would be more freedom making music. People attend a concert to have an experience. Anyhow I love art, all sorts of art and my friends are usually creative people. Also, there have never been any boundaries for me, you can build sonic sculptures or paint rhythms, you can conceive a concert as a performance, you can do whatever you want. I recently moderated a panel at BOZAR about the underground art scene in New York in the 80’s, in East Village in particular. I had the pleasure of interviewing Dany Johnson (she was a resident DJ at Club 57 and later at Paradise Garage), Leonard Abrams (he ran the fabulous magazine The East Village Eye) and Gil Vasquez (DJ and president of the Keith Haring Foundation) and what struck me was the fact that at that particular moment in that scene you had zero boundaries between visual art, music, dance, performance… Klaus Nomi shared the bill with Ann Magnuson and John Sex and Haring curated shows and painted almost 24/7 while listening to music. It was all about energy. It’s academicism and speculation (art as a luxury product) that kills such energies (and eventually did in that case) Two different problems, both normative and alien to any creative essence. I stumbled upon a Serge Daney quote lately: ‘Academicism is the aesthetics of nihilism.’ And I agree with that, once you “do things because that’s the way they’re done”, reproduce them in blind fidelity and separate, classify, and annihilate boundary breaking forces, you start producing numb, meaningless objects. In this case a painting has to go from a gallery to a living room or a collection where it belongs. Is it a nice base material for speculation or a good way to seem educated and exhibit your taste as a buyer, to impress others? Hell no…a painting is rather an expression of life itself, a celebration, an exhibition of the worlds revolting features, its horrors, its injustice, its sadness, qualities and themes such as these…in every case it is an essential, vital gesture. Otherwise why even take a look at it? Music should be just the same.

TF: Do you spend all your time for your musical activity or do you have another job?

O: Yes, I do now. The musical activity has taken the vast majority of my time even though I’m still performing as a theatre actress, but that part of my professional activity is becoming more and more scarce. I’ve been recently offered to create music for theatre. So, my work today is divided between Figure Section, and other emerging projects for which I compose and produce for other artists, and my work as a music composer for the theatre. Maybe one day I will come back to the stage with a performance in which I’ll be the actress as well as the musician. I do keep an eye on that prospect even though it’s not the priority for the moment.

Y: I teach sound in cinema. We analyze movies and their soundtracks most of the time. It is a very interesting way to make a living next to music making.

TF: How is your live set up going to be? Any particular equipment? What’s your favourite track to play live and why?

O: We are working on the simplest and most efficient way of touring. So, our set is based on live keyboard playing, voice mixing, and equalizing the tracks live. So, there’s no particular equipment at the moment.

Spectral Dance, is one of my favourites to play live. It’s a more nostalgic synthpop song that offers a vast sense of space for the vocals and the keyboard parts. I just love its simplicity, almost naïveté, contrasted by lyrics about pernicious ghosts from the past that try to keep us from moving forward.

Y: There is a lot of different processes and ideas colliding and merging in Figure Section. It is always quite challenging for us to write a new song and perform it on stage. I think my favourite live song is currently Disfigured Section. We both sing on that one and I love that. Lyrics and vibe wise it’s sort of a Neo Dada track, maybe a tad surrealistic too, from apparent nonsense a lot of sense can emerge from the lyrics. Also, it is nervous, rough, noisy, kind of pissed off. At the same time desperate and full of energy. A union of opposites.

TF: What new hardwares did you apply to make 'Spectre' LP? Do you have a particular method while working in the studio?

O: There’s no new hardware utilized, but we have a more precise choice of instruments these days as well as a particular approach in the production process. Yannick and I work just as well separately as together in the studio. It just helps us to be more efficient because of our very different schedules. We both share online a musical file filled with musical ideas, loops, drums and lyrics. We are both the composers and mixers of the songs, but Yannick is more the writer and the producer and I’m more the arranger and singer. I think that we have now reached the perfect balance in the creative process, which is almost symbiotic.

Y: Yes, it is super interesting because I never know where Olive is going to take a song to when she starts working on it with her great skills and sensibility. What I know is that great stuff will eventually happen, leading to things that will stimulate us and give us even more ideas.

TF: How do you compose this tracks? Do you treat them like musical narratives or more like sound sculptures or images?

O: It really depends on the material. Sometimes Yannick comes with a very complete composition and I add the keyboard and voice arrangements, sometimes I come with a proposition and he completes it. Our strongest asset as a duo is that we started music completely differently, Yannick as an electronic experimentalist and performer, and I as a pop songwriter and singer. So, what we do is bring these assets together in our songs. I think the first track of the Spectre release is the perfect example of that symbiosis. This is what we aim for.

Y: Yes, it is a creative adventure, we have no such thing as a clearly established routine, it’s more laboratory like. It is not “experimental music” but the way it is done is not conventional either.

TF: Any movie, documentary, album (not electronic music) that you would like to share with our readers?

O: We are big fans of horror, thrillers and sci-fi. The last movie that left me fascinated as well as horrified is Midsommar by Ari Aster. I loved that movie because its director knows how to subtly inject weird elements of comedy that make you feel uncomfortable, as well as conveying an ice-cold intrigue about ancient pagan practices and rituals. Loved it.

Y: +1 for Midsommar. I loved that the movie never seems to bring any judgment about the neo-pagan community it depicts, it is just utterly different from what we know but it seems to make sense no matter how shocking it can be. It gives us a break from the ethnocentric attitude of many North Americans and from the extreme arrogance of modern western civilizations, which seem to be absolutely convinced of their superiority to any previous or different civilizations. Also, the visual effects are amazing. Der Goldener Handschuh (The Golden Glove) was quite a great movie too. Being utterly disgusted by this ugly, messy, desperate serial killer’s gruesome murders without being able to restrain myself from laughing was for sure a wild experience. And it really triggers thoughts afterwards. Moral thoughts especially. I found it pretty strong. A non-electronic album: Lux perpetua by Ensemble Organum, which is a very particular version of the Requiem by Anthonius de Divitis. It is such a beautiful requiem and such an incredible interpretation; it even features throat singing which is very unusual in the context of European polyphonic reinterpretations. 15th century art tends to focus a lot on death and mortality. And as Regis Debray said in his 1992 book The Life and Death of Images: “Where there is death there’s hope, aesthetically speaking.”

TF: What are the forthcoming projects?

O: Wrapping up our debut LP.

Y: We are also planning tours, confirmed dates are in Israel and the US so far but more will be announced later on. It would be fabulous to come play in Mexico too!

source https://www.tforgotten.org/single-post/Podcast-188-Figure-Section-aufnahme-wiedergabe-Interview

[kpoplyricsanalysis]

Outro (Divina Comedia) - G-Dragon

Lately I’ve been having many conversations regarding the biggest oppositions humans come to face: good and evil, reason and emotion, identity and alterity, dream and reality. Every time I happen to ponder on these oppositions I always wonder “is it me?”, but then someone tells me how they feel like they have no control, how they feel uncertain as though they were floating on a stream oblivious to them. Then I think, and I hope, that maybe it’s collective, maybe it’s generational or maybe it’s our age.

In 2017 G-Dragon released an album he named with his real name: Kwon Jiyong, which is very telling. Released prior to his enlistment after turning 30 in Korean age, the album seeks to reveal the persona behind G-Dragon and his attempt to temporarily abandon the stage.

It is also revealing the fact that he chose to release the album as an USB, which has much to say on the music making in itself today (and caused much controversy on charting), but it is also a choice to convey the proximity of this album to the listener, engaging him in a game. The USB is something we use to save and transfer, to back up. But this meaning of residual, of permanence is contrasted by the transitory writing (with G-Dragon’s real name, birthdate and blood type) on the USB - which easily fades off - and by the fact that the USB in itself doesn’t have the songs it (the can be downloaded online). This model of distribution is not only interesting because it is certainly a new way to engage the listener, and not only is a meaningful commentary on the music industry, but it substantially conveys the meaning of the album: the impossibility to define one’s identity (Kwon Jiyong) and to confine it in memory or a medium, G-Dragon’s identity and music don’t exist as something, they are continuously deferred.

This album is probably the apex of his lyrical and artistical potential. It reflects on recurrent themes of GD, playing on the palindrome of GOD/DOG - which references his pseudonym G-Dragon - in Bullshit (the title in Korean being 개소리, literally dog noise), questioning his hallow status as a celebrity in Super Star, which is connected to the solitude and the crumbling of personal relationships in Middle Fingers Up. All songs are self-referential and rich of intertextual references and play with the concept of identity, solitude, good and bad, reality and dream.

All of these themes are condensed in the last track “Outro (Divina Comedia)”. The song’s meaning, aside of its lyrics, is conveyed by the amount of intertextual references (the following are not all) : through the lyrics there isn’t only Dante’s Divina Comedia - which is not just a reference, but it also shapes the structure of the album and tour - but also to the Truman Show. The song also features samples of Daft Punk’s track “Veridis Quo” in the album Discovery: the title, aside from the latin meaning and play on word “quo vadis” (where are you going, meaning what is the purpose?), it is also a play on word in it self - as “Veridis quo” can be read as Very Disco, therefore Discovery). It is again highlighted the centrality of the theme of discovery, not only that of Dante and the otherworldly, but the journey of finding and freeing oneself. It is at this point that come in questions such as what is right and what is wrong/evil, what is real and what is not, is the I/the persona an identity or alterity?

The first verse depicts the journey from the underground, the null, to fame and artist. During this journey, G-Dragon has contracted an occupational desease: he has focused his entire self and lost his I to his stage persona. And through this journey he discovers that his rise to fame is a fall, not into money and mundane things as we might think. While his fame is considered a success, it has depleted him of his youth and his growing up process: “While others grew, I listed stocks. That’s why I’m a little short”.

And while other people wonder at his status, at 30 years old (nel mezzo del cammin, halfway one’s life, which in Dante corresponds to 35yo) he begins to question the persona of G-Dragon and wonders who is Kwon Jiyong and his past, wonders if he is an exception or if he is normal. He feels lost and as Dante he seeks guidance, which comes through his mother. From assuring her that he is not the problem but the solution, his certainty crumbles in the chorus: in the impossibility to distinguish right from wrong, the only clarity is that “everyone a sinner”. He assures his mother that while he can be a sinner, he is trying to do what is right and we cannot judge, because our lives are entirely subjective. If we cannot discern our rights and wrongs, how can others? The only consolation is that “we are all the same”.

But it is not enough, because what can seem as a discovery, the realization of the impossibility to apply manicheistic oppositions to our lives doesn’t lead to our freedom, to change: in the post chorus there is an almost inaudible and heavily modified cry for help, “Gone, I’m numb”.

The third and fourth verse examine the disintigration of identity and the lack of meaning to our lives. We reach that point in our lives where we realise that we are entirely lost and when we thought that our lives could lead to a meaning we end up discovering that none of the categories we pondered about apply to our lives “Putting our lives on the line to self-hypnotize ourselves”. Not only they don’t apply, but our entire life is spent trying to hypnotize ourselves, to mask our alterity with prosthesis of meaning, of identity, of concreteness. This realisation comes at once and “if the waves of life come crashing” G-Dragon invites us to “ride it” and warns us on not to “get swept away”.

The complete dis-covery and un-covery comes in the bridge. G-Dragon comes to the conclusion that “we all live in our own world” and as such we create and complete its meaning by acting like we are “on stage, planning, production, screenplay, directing, main leads”. In this game where we confuse and fuse our aspirations with our reality, our life becomes something other, a simulation: “in our dreams, unreality is reality, Truman Show”. As a result we end up trapped in the same game we made.

It is at this point that we see not only the faux being of G-Dragon, but also that Kwon Ji Young is an artefact, the simulacrum of his aspirations, idealization. There is indeed no such thing as identity, as absolution, as right or wrong, there is no ascent to paradise; our journey to self discovery ends up only, as the song does with the post-chorus, in numbness.

If you want to read more analysis, click here.

If you want to share on instagram, click here.