#“Historical Soundscape”

[hanvanmusic]

Medieval Journey: Cinematic Scenery & Relaxing Music | Tavern Ambiance & Lofi Instrumentals

Step back in time and immerse yourself in a 'Medieval Journey.' This video offers you a unique blend of cinematic medieval scenery and soothing tavern ambiance set to the tune of relaxing Lofi instrumentals. Perfect for studying, working, or unwinding, our #MedievalMusic will transport you to another era, while the stunning visuals of #MedievalBeauty provide a calming backdrop. Experience the soothing rhythms of life in a medieval tavern with this atmospheric compilation. Remember to Like, Share, and Subscribe for more immersive, historical experiences. #MedievalAmbiance #TavernMusic #LofiInstrumentals #HistoricalJourney

[autumncozy]

I took us back to the Edwardian era in this cozy *NEW* potion maker’s office ambience. Hope you enjoy, and please subscribe here for more! 

[gayestpiano]

idk there's no way i'm listening to all that

i made a playlist of song titles in chronological order

[jourquet]

welcome to the soundscape of my sapphic viking romance i plan in the future.

[novlr]

6 more writing playlists for theme, mood, or specific scenes

These playlists are an eclectic mix to inspire you across a variety of genres, styles, and themes. Got a character starting a semester at music college? We got you! Do you need to encapsulate the spirit of 1960s counterculture? Sorted! There are even some genre-specific playlists to inspire your next Fantasy or Steampunk project, a collection of emotional songs for when you want to break a character’s heart, as well as a mix of lo-fi tracks with an urban feel that you can use to write quiet night scenes, or as an ambient soundtrack to some night time writing sprints.

Writing a Semester at Music College

This playlist, with its modern Jazz vibes, will help you perfectly capture and write about the life of a student at a music college. With complicated rhythms and virtuosic performances, you’ll be able to write your characters’ whole college experience from dorm room to classroom.

Writing 1960s Counterculture

No matter what genre you’re writing, this playlist is the perfect snapshot of the changing musical styles and social politics of the 1960s for the writer looking to capture the vibe. Whether you’re a non-fiction author writing a book on the time period, or a fiction author writing a thriller with a 1960s setting, this is the playlist for you!

Writing Quiet Nights in Urban Spaces

This collection of minimalist lo-fi tracks has the perfect calm feel for a dark city night. It perfectly captures the sounds of the city going by in the darkness. This is the ideal playlist for writers to imagine a moment of calm in an urban world, whether it’s for your characters, or just as an ambient soundscape for a midnight writing sprint.

Writing Fantasy Battles

If you need to capture the epic highs and lows of fantasy battles, then this collection of instrumental music is perfect. Full of thumping drum beats and virtuosic strings, this is the ideal playlist for both historical and fantasy writers to get their imaginations into gear.

Writing a Breakup

Moody tunes to inspire writers to write about heartbreak and breakups. Let the performances of these singer-songwriters wash over you as you prepare to break your characters’ hearts.

Writing Steampunk

This eclectic mix of Victorian-style instrumental music and cabaret carnival sounds will help you write the perfect Steampunk setting. With elements of melodic, symphonic sounds, ticking clocks, and industrial soundscapes permeating the background of these tracks, you’re sure to get all the Steampunk inspiration you need.

We're always updating our writing and inspiration playlists, so give us a follow on Spotify! Are there any specific playlists you'd like us to put together, let us know.

[choosingwhatmatters]

Music in The Loyal Pin, Episode 1

My goodness, what a beautiful chocolate brownie of a first episode! There are already wonderful posts about the way in which the funds of the series have been put to good use. One aspect that has not been highlighted yet (please correct me if I'm wrong) is the music. And oh!, the music we get in this series.

My ears perked up from the very beginning of the show. We get an orchestral score! All the instruments of magic welcome us at the palace: strings, a harp, a glockenspiel, woodwinds, bar chimes, a piano - I was smiling within seconds.

Tv shows very rarely receive a score like this because arranging, recording and mixing music for twenty different instruments is time-consuming and complex, by which I mean expensive. One trick you can use to lower the costs is using synthesised instruments. The strings we can hear are not real. However, a brilliant thing the scoring team does here is mix in real instruments. For example, we can hear real flutes, if I am not mistaken. Some cello and violin pieces throughout the episode have also been recorded with real instruments. For me, the whole soundscape is simply beautiful!

What about the music itself? There are three things I would like to talk about: the pentatonic scale, Pachelbel and a melody that I hope will become one of Pin and Anin's.

1. The very first thing we hear when Anin has landed on Pin is a melody comprised of five different notes. For Western ears, these fives notes are inevitably associated with music from South-East Asia. The scale resulting from these notes is called a pentatonic scale, and if you ever feel like playing it: look for the black keys on any piano keyboard and go wild. The cool thing about the pentatonic scale is that it's fantastic for improvising. In Western music, it's used all the time because these notes simply sound good together.

We have a lot of ambient music in this episode. Music that blends with the peaceful atmosphere onscreen, and often the pentatonic scale is used to do just that.

2. Which brings me to another piece of music I want to talk about: Johann Pachelbel's Canon in D major. It's the first and the last piece played at the dance. While the king discusses Anin's future with the rest of the family, we can see Pin and Anin dancing to this piece. I find this significant because most music scholars believe that Pachelbel composed the Canon as wedding music (for Bach's brother, no less).

I haven't read the book the series is based on. I have avoided spoilers as best as I could. Logically, I KNOW that it is very unlikely that we get a happy ending here. But I get to see two women in a historical setting dancing to a wedding piece and this fact alone makes me very, very happy.

3. Off to my last point. Even though most of the episode features music, I have noticed very little repetition. There is, however, one piece of music that comes back.

We can hear it when Pin and Anin have their first meeting, and again when Anin discovers her windmill and her ribbon in Pin's bedroom. (What do you call those tiny windmills? And, more importantly, what is it with these two and tiny windmills? Thank you, creators, for the nod to your GAP fandom.)

The piece sounds somewhat like this:

The harmonies are more intricate, but this gives us an idea what we can listen out for in future episodes. The melody is simple and sweet. It could be connected to childhood and adolescence. I'm curious to see if we encounter it again.

And I'm very excited to see whether the score team continues with motives and reprises. I love straining my ears for these because they give us even more clues about the happenings onscreen.

Thank you for riding along with me! I am so excited to see what the show has in store for us!

[1997thebracket]

Round 6 - FINALE

The winner takes all! Which piece of media deserves to be the Champion of 1997?

Revolutionary Girl Utena: If it cannot break its shell, the chick will die without ever being born. This sentiment, originally found in Hermann Hesse’s 1919 novel Demian, features during a repeated sequence in the 1997 anime Revolutionary Girl Utena. Hesse is far from the only reference to philosophical, surrealist, or heavily symbolic text in the show, which trades in visual metaphor and multi-layered subtext. Revolutionary Girl Utena follows the story of Utena Tenjou, a young orphan who aspires to princehood-- challenging or outright circumventing the place of gender in that aspiration-- and is entangled in a series of duels centered around a girl named Anthy Himemiya. Written by Kunihiko Ikuhara, Chiho Saito, and Yōji Enokido (known collectively as Be-Papas) and soundtracked by J.A. Seazer and Shinkichi Mitsumune, the show has an instantly recognizable style, combining lush fairytale visuals and French-inspired architecture with a choir that functions as a sort of Greek chorus to the internal worlds externalized in combat. Utena is a story about many things, arguably all things, taking a surgical scalpel to adolescence and using the flat of the blade as a paintbrush, leaving a deeply human, visceral work of art in its wake. It has been massively influential on feminist, queer & sapphic, and otherwise gender-deconstructive or gender-subversive modern media. Smash the world's shell! For the revolution of the world!

Radiohead's OK Computer: I go forwards, you go backwards, and somewhere we will meet. By the middle of the decade, Radiohead was weary of the ubiquity of their 1993 hit Creep; although the record that followed it (The Bends) was a lusher, more evolved album than their first, it had failed to produce a distinctive enough image for the band to undo what Creep had done. The song threatened to define the band entirely to those outside their devoted following. In 1997 the band swung for the fences with the haunting, abstract OK Computer. It was a move their label cast immense doubt on at the time, and its success then and now would cement Thom Yorke and his bandmates as soothsayers of a sort, draped not in bohemian silk robes but in white hospital sheets. It's an album that speaks to the future with dread more than wonder, that critics described as "nervous almost to the point of neurosis," but marries the uneasy experimental soundscapes with poetic, surrealist, and increasingly prophetic songwriting regarding the parallel lives we lead with technology. Featuring the singles Karma Police, Paranoid Android and No Surprises, OK Computer is hailed by many as the band's magnum opus: it's certified double Platinum in the US and five-times Platinum in the UK, and in 2014 it was included in the United States National Recording Registry as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."

[cirrus-grey]

My mom has given me the golden offer of listening to one (1) episode of Archives/Protocol with me since I've ranted to her so much about it. Which one do I show her???

Advantage to Archives: My main obsession, can introduce her to Jon and Martin, there are a lot of episodes without too much metaplot so I don't need to explain as much going in. She's not a horror person, and there are plenty without any excessive gore/graphic violence that I could show her.

Advantage to Protocol: I've been giving her weekly updates on the plot so she kind of knows what's going on already, it would give her a chance to pin voices to names for all the characters, I think this was the show she was actually interested in hearing before I mentioned that the horror is a lot more gorey.

I've narrowed down a list of episodes; pros and cons of each are elaborated under the cut.

Episode Pros and Cons:

TMA 23: Classic episode format. Not too violent or gorey. Nice little stand-alone statement that you don't need any extra context for. Has both Jon and Martin.

TMA 53: Same as above. Does not feature Jon reading a statement, but does feature the idea of Other Archivists - which I've talked about a bunch with her because of Protocol.

TMA 180: Surprisingly easy to explain the metaplot going into this one, even though it's season 5. Lots of jmart cuteness. More developed soundscaping than the other two. Need to explain who Annabelle and Salesa are.

TMAGP 1: It's the official introduction to the series so you truly don't need any context going in. You meet pretty much every major character except Celia. It's a bit long though, and she'll probably want to skip the two cases to get it down to dinner-length listening.

TMAGP 7: Has every major OIAR employee in it, the case isn't too disturbing, and most of the metaplot is self-explanatory... except for the Klaus bit, which might require pausing the episode to remind her where Gwen got that video.

TMAGP 19: Again, all the major cast, and the metaplot handles itself. The case is pretty tame... except it’s about a 50/50 shot she'll be really put off by the whole "experimenting on a dog" thing. She does like historical stuff, though.

[humbledragon669]

S2E1 - The Arrival Write Up P4 - the Present Day from The Box to Crowley's arrival at the coffee shop

There has been an awful lot of rambling from me on this episode so far, so let’s see if we can’t rattle through a few scenes without me picking them to pieces. Unfortunately, I am going to fail at the very first frame of this section of the episode, because I want to talk about the location this scene is shot in. It caught my eye from the off because I was struck by how beautifully picturesque it was, despite us being led to believe that our storyline is still in London (note the lack of placard to tell us otherwise). And so of course I Googled. Turns out this street isn’t in London at all, but is in fact in Edinburgh (for those amongst you for whom UK geography isn’t a necessary knowledge item, that’s a distance of just over 300 miles). Huh. Well alrighty then, Crowley and his Bentley are in Edinburgh. Despite us just seeing Crowley in St. James’s Park. But wait, what’s that in the background?

Well on the right of the tower structure is the Gherkin building, and I believe the one on the left is the Shard (this is confirmed in episode 2). Huh. So London after all then, seeing as even the most eagle-eyed of people wouldn’t be able to place London skyscrapers in the background of a photo taken in Edinburgh. I have 3 possible suggestions for what I think is going on here:

Crowley really is in Edinburgh. There’s some sort of portal that he is able to navigate through, which also shows him the background to where it leads.

Crowley really is in Edinburgh. The background view is another example of the impossible view we can see from Heaven’s HQ.

Crowley is in London. This is just a quirk of filming – somebody found a beautiful location for a shot and wanted to use it. Adding distinctive London landmarks into the background is a convenient way of reminding the audience that the storyline hasn’t left London.

Of the three of those possibilities, I am actually minded to go with the last one. I know, I know: it’s not like me to be so dismissive of potential subtext possibilities. If you’ll forgive me, I would like to revisit this little scenario in the next episode, when we get a little more of that background, and I will happily argue my case further.

There’s something I find interesting about Shax’s behaviours. Or more, her lack of them, and what that suggests for Crowley. She is completely clueless to any kind of human subtlety. She doesn’t understand the etiquette of calling vs. showing up, she doesn’t understand sarcasm. It’s something that Crowley seems to think he can educate her in, as if its part of her training for her to reside on Earth successfully. Here’s the interesting thing though – Crowley never had that sort of induction period. He understood sarcasm, manners and etiquette right from the beginning of his time on Earth; we see him using all three during his conversation with Aziraphale on the wall. Furthermore, Shax’s behaviours appear to be consistent with other demons – Hastur doesn’t understand jokes, and Ligur had little historical knowledge of life on earth. In my mind, all of these things just serve to enforce the idea that Crowley has never really been “all demon” further – he’s always been closer to human than he was to a demon. Not only that, we can apply this same set of suppositions to Aziraphale and his (lack of) similarities to his angel brethren, because we see the same sort of discord between his natural human behaviours and their forced ones.

Ooh, soundscape time! It’s been a LONG time since I pointed out something in the soundtrack, not because it’s any less important or impressive, just because there is so much to say about this season in general. We’re coming back to the miracle noises though, and it’s about time because I think they will be come incredibly important to the storyline from now on.

Alright, so we’re back something that sounds like a cymbal being brushed, possibly with a little trumpet-like call at the end of it (that could be part of the soundtrack, rather than the noise for Shax’s disappearance: the two blend into one another so it’s impossible to tell). Now that we know what a miracle sounds like in this season (at least as far as demonic miracles are concerned anyway), we know what to look for going forward.

Alright, so remember what I said about the fly not being in the box but then crawling into the box? Well, the fly is definitely in the box when Aziraphale opens it:

It is very hard to see - it’s probably a bit easier to pick out in the shot that immediately follows, but this one is what we see as the box is being opened, so there can be absolutely no debate on this one as far as I’m concerned. We will also hear the fly leaving the box in a few minutes when Aziraphale steps away from his desk.

Now then, what is this funny exchange between Gabriel and Aziraphale? This is one of those moments that, like the interactions between them in the previous write up section, I have struggled to reconcile with the narrative from the first season where Aziraphale is, rightly, scared to be in Gabriel’s presence.

GABRIEL: You’re funny. I love you. AZIRAPHALE: Oh. Thank you. I- (Gabriel looks on expectantly.) Hm. (Aziraphale looks away.)

So firstly, I’m of a mind that Gabriel says this in his innocent amnesiac state where he doesn’t understand the weight that those words carry (we actually hear him say he “loves” the names Gabriel, Jim, and James, shortly after this exchange – it’s clearly a word he doesn’t understand the weight of). His expectant look at Aziraphale suggests that he understands he wants to hear it said back to him, but the vacant grin also suggests that if he did he’d just assume that was a normal part of conversation. At this point in the storyline, I actually think Gabriel’s behaviour is rather reminiscent of watching a child that ate the brownies Mommie made for the grown-ups, and as such, I don’t think we can put a lot of stake in the words he happens to vomit out of his mouth. It’s actually Aziraphale’s reaction I find more interesting because his first reaction is to say thank you. His expression even suggests that he has taken this to be a compliment, as if he finds it flattering to believe he could be lovable.

angel? What would possess you to even consider saying those words to this being? Granted he stops himself, it’s just I can’t understand why he even begins to say it in the first place. I don’t think I could even argue it was instinctive reflex – there wouldn’t be a pause between Gabriel’s statement and his reply if that was the case. And let’s be clear about the tone here – Aziraphale isn’t under any sort of pressure, there’s no threat of danger, and the dominant mood I get from him towards Gabriel at this point isn’t one of fear, but of exasperation. There’s just something about this little exchange that I can’t make sense of – I even went so far as to consider whether the statue in the background (which I believe is of Diana the Huntress) and the fact that it could be argued to be threatening him with an arrow to the back, but I couldn’t get that to make sense either. Maybe (just maybe) this is just something that was added because it was funny, but I’d love to hear what other people think about it.

 Alright, let’s move on, and talk for a second about what I think is probably a little Easter egg. Where is it that Aziraphale plucks Gabriel’s yet-to-be adopted name from?

Aside from the fact that these books appear to be in literally NO order*, and that Gabriel is about to become the namesake of another nonchalant “Lord” reference, there might be something in the plot of this book that makes it the perfect choice. From what I understand, the book is about a crew that abandons a passenger ship in distress (for “ship in distress” read “Heaven”), and the subsequent effects that the event has on one of the crew members, whose name is Jim, who spends the rest of his life coming to terms with himself and his past, seeking redemption and acceptance. I mean. Oof doesn’t really cover it, does it?

* Some of them don’t even have any writing on their spines for somebody’s sake. I can’t tell you how distressing I find this. The only reason for this I am prepared to accept is that the books are deliberately in a shambles so that no customer can ever find the book they want, and therefore can’t buy it.

Couple of quick notes about the first time we actually see our hero couple interacting in the present day for this season:

Crowley doesn’t offer a greeting when he picks up the phone in the Bentley. Doesn’t even look as if he’s going to before being interrupted. Personally, I think this indicates that there’s only one person that ever calls him – what need is there to offer a meaningless greeting if you’re only really resuming the conversation you had with that person anyway?

Aziraphale gives the whole name of the coffee shop when he tells Crowley where to meet him. Why? Why not just call it “the coffee shop”? There’s only going to be one coffee shop “across the road from the bookshop”, and even if it had changed hands/name since Crowley was last in Soho, I don’t think Crowley would notice the difference.

“2 minutes” is how long Crowley tells Aziraphale it will take for him to get to Soho. 2 whole minutes (that’s sarcasm there). And if we put our detective hats on for a moment, we can see that Crowley is actually already in Soho at the point where the phone rings. How do we know this? Well, it’s the bar. There’s a bar that Crowley screeches out in front of called The O Bar.

Google (and legacy Google Maps photos) shows that this bar used to be on the corner of Wardour Street and Brewer Street, in Soho. And that’s quite apart from the obvious that in order for Crowley to be there in “2 minutes”, he would already have had to be pretty close. So really my point is that it would appear he was already making his way to Aziraphale’s anyway, despite not having spoken to him beforehand. Granted, he has some intelligence from Shax that he likely needs to discuss with the angel, but the fact that he makes his way back to Soho without prior announcement speaks volumes to me about how comfortable the pair of them are with each other at this point. And in all honesty, if my head canon is to be believed, he’s really just making his way home after the night sleeping in his car (which I am pretty sure he does just to maintain the cover story that they aren’t already in a relationship).

There’s that fly again, this time being a nuisance and flying around Jim’s face. He notices it, tries to shoo it away even. Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t up figuring out how important that damned fly was when I first watched this episode, it’s pretty bloody obvious.

One last thing here – a sighting of Terry’s hat and scarf!

Aside from how beautifully it’s posed on the rack (or in fact that it’s there at all), what I love about this is the callback to the ad in the paper from season one I pointed out:

Goodness, the Easter egg force is strong in this section. Here’s a whole bundle of them, wrapped up in a tiny object, delivered with a healthy dose of foreshadowing:

Let’s break this down a bit, shall we?

The story of Job will become a big storyline later in the season, bringing with it a host of revelations about both Aziraphale and Crowley.

The verse numbering can be reversed to give “1941”, another hugely important and impactful part of our hero couple’s chronology.

The matchbox itself originates from The Resurrectionist pub, a link to the final historical time period we will see in this season.

That’s all three of our minisodes that will play out later in the season referred to in one shot. Kudos for that, because that is smart. Not only that, but the quote (which we forcibly have our attention drawn to, so we know it MUST be important) is an accurate and genuine bible verse. It brings to mind Crowley’s actions in Heaven when he’s “dressed” as Aziraphale. How that ties in to everything else, I’m not sure.

There’s one more thing of note in this shot:

What’s that you say? Tartan? IN Heaven? Actually IN Heaven? Interesting. I raised the idea previously about exactly what it is I think the tartan additions to Aziraphale’s outfit symbolise way back in the first season:

Now that would make things really interesting, wouldn’t it? Because if that’s true, that would suggest that Muriel is also capable of exercising free will. And they’re not wearing a simple little bow tie like Aziraphale – their costume is riddled with it. It’s on show in a fancy little cravat sure, but it’s also weaved into the layers of their skirt, which I find really interesting. Wearing it in such a fashion would mean that sometimes it’s hidden, other times not, and that when it is on show, you rarely see its full extent. I love that Muriel gets their own tartan pattern too, rather than sharing the one that Aziraphale has; if you look at this in the context of free will, this would signify that there isn’t just one way to exercise it. More on the presence of tartan in Heaven later…

Alright, Crowley’s dangerously fast arrival in Whickber Street seems to me like a good place to stop, not least because I know I have plenty to say about the upcoming scene. Jeez, I said I was going to try and be less microscopic; that didn’t really pan out very well though, did it?! For now though, and as always, comments, questions, discussion; all welcome. See you next time 😊

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 8/13/2024

i think i'm going to take a break from scifi written by men for a bit

listening

Ahmed Malek's Les Vacances de L'inspecteur Tahar, from the 1972 film of the same name.

if i can be really really real for a minute here the only thing i've listened to more than twice this week is GUESS by charli xcx but i don't want to have the same tuesdaysong twice in a row. this would make for an annoying end of year playlist.

i got an ad for a collected set of Ahmed Malek's Algerian jazz music on instagram. a session musician in Algiers, he made his name as a soundtrack composer with this comedic detective movie and was in demand for the rest of his life-- he's still really beloved in the African jazz scene, his works are super collectible, and his daughter gifted all his masters to a tiny record company so they could rerelease and preserve them.

it sounds exactly how you think a 70s cop movie should sound. impeccable example of the genre. instantly evocative. i wonder if it influenced the wider cop drama soundscape or if it's just an early example?

-

reading

many books disappointed me a great deal this week.

thank you philip.

the only comic i did like was Marauders (2019-2022), trying to get a little bit more into the xmen since my bestie has decided we're watching all their movies. this is really fun bc i knew who kitty pryde was, and she's a privateer captain who looks beat to shit the whole book. extremely fun and gay and swashbuckling, i placed holds for the other volumes already.

the two rogue and gambit books assumed i knew more about those characters than i already did, and had a heavy reliance on flashbacks and references to other issues.

the magic order was insufferable and did not stick its landing. made me worry about the characters and then feel really fucking stupid for worrying about the characters. i don't know why i keep trying mark millar books and thinking i will like them.

HOTELITOR had a very fun concept (mech hotel), but was a little more middle-grade than i was expecting, even from a teen book. very calarts visual style. very power of friendship will undo an evil corporation, which, i wish.

this little mermaid manga was not for me. and that's fine. most manga isn't for me.

we have to take a brief detour into how i store my books (poorly). these big middle shelves hold an unsorted mass, mostly of stuff i'm not sure i want to keep. i'm trying to be more thoughtful about which books i keep bc realistically i do not reread very often (if at all) and i am running out of space. as much as i love weird little scifi and fantasy paperbacks it would be cool if they all fit on one shelf.

here are four books i rapidly cycled through this weekend that are going to be donated.

Michael Moorcock's The Black Corridor, 1969, about a man slowly going insane in a spaceship fleeing a politically violent Earth with his friends and relations in cryosleep. not a very beloved Moorcock book among the Moorcock fans. this has a heavy focus on the rise of British fascism and i'm not now, nor will i ever be, in the mood for this. a shame bc this slim hardcover has proportions that were very nice to hold.

Thomas Burnett Swan's Where is the Bird of Fire?, 1970, three not quite short stories but not quite novellas about mythical creatures at the founding of Rome, Xerxes the Great's empire, and Britain near the fall of Rome. states very clearly exactly what it is on the tin and delivers it, unfortunately i don’t like any of the flavors on offer. every single one of these has the half-coy kind of sex scene common in historical fiction, where in order to represent the past accurately and with full verisimilitude we Must convey that they fucked nasty and had fun doing it. many times. unfortunately a middle aged man wrote these and our erotic sensibilities are Very far apart.

Glen Cook's Cold Copper Tears, 1988, a noirish urban fantasy. there are fourteen books in this series so clearly people like them. i found a lot of the Noir Similes a little tortured. "but kay isn't that the point--" yes but these annoyed me. also there's a rape joke i didn't enjoy on the fourth fucking page. i have very few hard outs in fiction and one of them is on-screen or on-page sexual assault or rape jokes in chapter one. i am slightly less likely to drop a book if it has rape jokes in chapters that are not the first but like. it’s still almost a flat line at 100%.

and the only one i got two-thirds of the way through, and which i partially liveblogged here,

Eric Kotani and John Maddox Robert's Between the Stars, 1988, the third in their Island Worlds series. it stands alone fairly well, which is impressive.

this book is good at differentiating a very large, very clannish cast, which is a hard thing to do in a political opera. people are often differentiated by little physical movement quirks, which a spy later uses to identify someone. it’s a lovely bit of business and definitely the authors’ strong points.

also props for two of the most capable people, an ill-liked matriarch/scientific genius and a femme fatale Russian, for being two of the most interesting characters with the most screen time, both on their own and in other character’s thoughts. unfortunately, with such a large cast and so many factions, the action is often split and meandering. racist in the very specific orientalist way cyberpunk eighties fiction often is, but uncommonly, they remembered Turkey existed and included in the orientalism?

severely suffered from a second act where it tripped over its own feet a lot instead of continued forward motion, quite honestly i got bored and tired of being hit over the head with various points. a very whedonesque quality of needing to comment on the political implication of something the instant after it happens.

this is not a subtle book, and it smacks less of an urgency to get a point across in as few words as possible and more an uncertainty in the authors of getting their point across at all. this is confusing to me bc this was their fourth book together and the third in this series. have some more confidence in your writing abilities. like, if you've already established your baddie as a fascist torturer who literally owns slaves and plans on taking over earth, you don't need to have him also say "Hitler was much-maligned" at a dinner party he's holding in a room full of hunting trophies where the only things on the table are red wine and whole game birds. you've more than established him as evil. the whole book is like this. it's exhausting.

not a book for me! many such cases!

-

watching

my brother was really singing the praises of vampire hunter d's animation and i was like, postapoc roaming vampire bounty hunter? say less! im already getting in!

i watched the 1980s version with some bemusement until he was like "why did you watch that and not the 2000 version." well that would have been so cool of you to be more specific, my boy!!! vampire hunter d (1985, dir. Toyoo Ashida) was still fun but clearly had way less of a budget than Vampire Hunter D Bloodlust (2000, dir. Yoshiaki Kawajiri)

i enjoyed bloodlust a little more bc it had a postapoc style i enjoyed a little more: showed me big manta rays that hide under the sand, big ruined radio dishes, and lots of beautifully ruined skyscrapers and fucked up highway overpasses. every time you see me post about a BIG!!! FUCKING!!! DISH!!! you should hear this schoolchildren "YAAAAAY!" sample from Jet Set Radio

-

playing

nothing much to report, a lot of grindy genshin impact shit as i try to clear all my map markers before the new nation drops at the end of the month.

-

making

the girls have three litter boxes available to them (laundry room/spare bathroom/utility closet), all in the correct and recommended locations, all with good sightlines and escape routes and all out of the main hustle and bustle of the apartment, all open top, all with the same kind of litter and the same kind of litter mat. they only use the one in my laundry room. since phil has had free roam of the house she has not used the one in the office bathroom. i asked my vet about this and sent her pictures to make sure i was doing everything right and the diagnosis was "yeah that's a little weird of them". can we spread the wear and tear out a little more, girls? so i don't have to deep clean the same litterbox every week?

[fernthewhimsical]

Fern's Nehalennia Deep Dive: pt. 3

Correspondences:

🌊 Animals: Dogs, seals, any sea animals, seagulls 🌊 Crystals/Rocks: Grey moonstone, aquamarine, moonstone, shells, sand dollars, sea urchins, clear quartz 🌊 Flowers/Plants: Seaweed, wheat, apples, apple blossoms, coastal flowers 🌊 Food/Drink: Apples, breads, grapes, pears, fish, salt, fish sauce, wine, fresh water 🌊 Colours: Greys, blues, beiges, whites, golds, bronzes, golden browns, sea greens 🌊 Moon Phases: All, especially full and blue moon 🌊 Festivals: Buddingh ties Nehalennia to a Zeeland's festival called Hanneliesjesdag. A day where the youth of Zeeland would go out and revel. This was celebrated on the first Monday of May, and the first Thursday of November. I personally celebrate Nehalennia at the Autumn Equinox, as well as on the 14th of April, when she resurfaced. 🌊 Magics: Abundance, success in business, protection in travel, sea witchery, mermaid magic, selkie magic, knot magic, when needing guidance, to connect to the land and sea where I come from. Tranquillity and serenity, but also tempest. 🌊 Nature: the sea, apples, wheat, storms, waves, the scent of salt on the breeze 🌊 Other: cornucopia, basket with harvest, front of a ship, canopy shaped like a shell, pereline, anchor, ship’s wheel, Selkies, mermaids, lighthouses, stars for navigation, knots, navigational tools, maps, ships, bow and arrow, Avalon or other magical isles (of the dead) across the sea

How to honour:

🌾 Light a candle, like a lighthouse 🌾 Practice sea witchery or knot magic 🌾 Go to the sea and walk the shore 🌾 Travel by ship 🌾 Tend a garden and harvest 🌾 Go apple picking 🌾 Bake bread or something with apples, pears, or grapes 🌾 Make an offering stone 🌾 Donate to sea or ocean preservation causes 🌾 Pick up litter at the beach 🌾 Go to an aquarium 🌾 Listen to ocean soundscapes 🌾 Walk, feed, or pet a dog

Other Info:

⛵ Nehalennia is the only one to wear her distinct pereline, or short shoulder cloak. No other Goddess has been found who wears it. The significance is not known, perhaps it was a local way of dress. ⛵ There is a rebuild temple in Zeeland on Colijnsplaat. A square roman building painted an earthy orange inside and out. Inside are several historical pieces displayed, as well as a large stone statue that often has offerings in front of it. In "het Archeon", an open air historical re-enactment museum, there is also a small shrine to her, as well as another replica of her temple where they hold daily rituals in her honour. ⛵ The Dutch paganfolk band Heidevolk has a song called Nehalennia, as does the band Twigs and Twine. ⛵ She is the most well known local Goddess of the Netherlands, and many things are named after her: from archaeological magazines to viaducts. ⛵ In 2019 the Dutch contestant of Miss Universe wore a blue dress completely made of trash fished out of the sea. It was called Nehalennia and made in honour of the Goddess.

Prayers:

Deae Nehalennia (in Dutch) In de kolkende golven hoor ik Haar stem. Nehalennia Haar wind speelt door mijn lokken, Haar zilte zegening raakt mijn lippen. Deae Nehalennia. Zij die de storm trotseerd, en sterker er uit voorvloeit Zij die de weg laat zien en onze reis bewaakt Zij wiens woede schepen ten onder doet gaan Zij wiens tedere omhelzing rust en vreugde brengt Vrouwe Nehalennia, Kracht van de Noordzee Hoor mij aan! Want ik ben Uw dochter, Uw gezoute water stroomt door mijn aderen Uw storm raast door mijn lijf Uw kracht en diepte heb ik geërfd Moeder Nehalennia Hart van de Noordzee Wees met mij!

Deae Nehalennia (in English) In the churning waves I hear Her voice. Nehalennia Her wind plays with my locks, Her silten blessing touches my lips. Deae Nehalennia. She who faces the storm and flows from it, stronger She who shows us the way and guards our journey She whose rage causes ships to perish She whose tender embrace brings us peace and joy Lady Nehalennia, Power of the North Sea Hear me! For I am your daughter Your salted water flows through my veins Your storm rages through my body Your strength and dept I inherited Mother Nehalennia Heart of the North Sea Be with me!

Nehalennia chant Stuurvrouw, Oogstmoeder, Vrouwe van de Zee. Ik drijf if uw golven, Draag mij met u mee

Steerswoman, Harvestmom, Lady of the Sea, I float in your waves, Lady, carry me

(to the tune of Horned One, Lover, Son)

[Link to the Masterpost]

[hanvanmusic]

Tavern Queen | Relaxing Medieval Instrumental Music & Ambient LoFi #medievaltavernmusic

Journey back in time with 'Tavern Queen', an enchanting blend of medieval tavern music with calming, modern LoFi beats. This instrumental and ambient masterpiece is perfect for study, relaxation, or simply taking a moment to unwind and transport your imagination to a medieval tavern. Immerse yourself in the mesmerizing tunes of our 'Tavern Queen', a captivating fusion of the old world charm and the soothing rhythm of LoFi beats. Whether you are studying, working, or simply looking for a peaceful ambiance, our meticulously curated music promises to deliver serenity and focus. Remember to like, share, and subscribe to our channel for your regular dose of tranquility. Stay tuned for more, as we continue to bridge the gap between the past and present, one melody at a time. #TavernQueen #LoFiAmbience #MedievalMusic #RelaxingBeats

[7grandmel]

Bonus Rip! [07/10/2024]

Another Stickerbrush

Season 4 Episode 1 Featured on: Now That's What I Call Quality! 2

Ripped by pedipanol

Surprise!

I was feeling a bit bad over how long Week 4 ~ Wanting to Funk the Truth was taking to come out, but wasn't quite sure what I could do to make up for it: I've been a bit bad at planning my posts ahead of time, so I couldn't really throw out a Character's Archives post or something along those lines out just yet. But I figured its best to return back to basics and do things the way I did back on the blog's first year: Put out a shorter, more concise post out of schedule! Can you believe I used to do this stuff DAILY?!

Another Stickerbrush is a rip with a very simple appeal, a rip you can pretty much already know is S tier through just looking at its name, thumbnail, and ripper. To some, that may not be immediately obvious, but back on Viva la Robocop and Thwâmpröck Desert, I wrote about how there are certain very bizarre games held in incredibly high regard by the chiptune community for the ambitious soundscapes they contain contrary to what you'd expect on the surface. Be it Robocop, Solstice, Plok!, Pictionary or indeed The Smurfs, true gems can come in the most bizarre packages possible, all thanks to the work of the incredible composers and sound engineers working on these projects. And sitting right alongside treasured names like Tim Follin, David Wise, Naoki Kodaka and more, is one Alberto José González.

The composer of games such as The Smurfs on Game Boy and... The Smurfs on NES - which was featured on here way back with The SiIvaGunner Smurfs Collab! While perhaps not as well known to the mainstream eye as Follin or Wise, González's work is revered in chiptune spaces for reasons that I hope Another Stickerbrush alone make obvious: There's a spaciness, a perfect implementation of a dreamy reverb, found in so much of his work for The Smurfs games in particular, that sticks with you unlike anything else you can find on the Game Boy. And sure enough, ripper pedipanol is one of those chiptune artists well aware of Gonzáles' work, and one who's deeply talented in the art of chiptune herself! I've covered her on here before with Beautiful! ~ Curveball of Sean Kingston, which was another rip utilizing the sound of a rather obscure and out-there game, but pedipanol - aka Saria Lemes - is absolutely the real deal, having done substantial work on indie games such as Yokai Inn and Evertried, in the years since her time on SiIvaGunner. From Season 1 to Season 6, she was contributing bangers just like Another Stickerbrush left and right and showing just how many sides there are to the world of chiptune.

So I said at the post's beginning, and with all of that additional knowledge in mind, this is the kind of rip that you're able to just SENSE is going to be a banger - with the cherry on top being the choice to rearrange Stickerbrush Symphony in particular. Its one of the most classic, revered pieces of old-school VGM out there, one I've covered many times on here before, be it with toonlink's Stickerbrush Queen, or eva "hawk tuah" twin's Sable's Stickerbrush, or l4ureleye's Sidelined Symphony, or eg_9371' Satinpanties Symphony, or wheel able's Stickerbrush State of Mind...like with The Smurfs games, or Robocop, or all the other silly examples I listed above, there are certain core pieces of the chiptune community that feel ever-present, ever-enduring, forever to be cherished by members old and new - some of the rips listed above are pushing 8 years old, Another Stickerbrush is sitting at 5 years old, and we're still getting rips of the tune made today. It's like a recurring ritual, a historic anthem for all the atmosphere that video game music can instill without a single live instrument employed: the magic of video gaming's bleeps and bloops, distilled into its purest form.

Another Stickerbrush is one in the line of many, yet done with the finesse of an amazing chiptune artist in the sound of one of the medium's forgotten greats. There's very little I can say about it that the tune itself doesn't already convey: So I suggest just hitting play and letting the sounds wash over you.

[mariacallous]

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu made headlines in April after coasting to a second term in office by nearly 12 percentage points. Imamoglu, who has served at the city’s helm since 2019, is seen as a major political threat to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). The latest win in Istanbul cemented Imamoglu’s continued popularity among the Turkish public.

But Imamoglu is only the most prominent face of a broader opposition, led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP). In March’s municipal elections, the CHP secured its most crushing victory over the AKP in decades. Possibly more notable than Imamoglu’s reelection was the newly elected class of women executives of provinces and districts across the country.

One of these women—Sinem Dedetas—may hold the keys to the future of Turkey’s opposition. Imamoglu is currently battling slander charges in the country’s high court, in addition to a slew of other cases that could eventually ban him from politics, even as he is the favorite to run for the CHP in Turkey’s 2028 presidential election. No matter how those fortunes play out, Dedetas promises to be central to the party’s strategy in a post-Erdogan Turkey.

Istanbul is the only city in the world to straddle two continents. Uskudar, a seaside constituency on the Anatolian side, lacks many of the bars and clubs across the water in the European districts. Instead, the conservative area is known for its historical mosques. It is also one of Istanbul’s key transportation hubs, home to a confluence of ferries, rail, metro, and bus lines. Millions of people from all over the city—and world—pass through Uskudar every day.

In April’s elections, Dedetas, a 43-year-old engineer, made history as the first woman to ever win the Uskudar municipality mayorship, a position similar to that of a New York borough president. She also flipped the district from the AKP to CHP rule.

Dedetas moved to Uskudar from her native Eskisehir, a city in northwest Turkey, for college in 1999. After receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in naval engineering from Istanbul Technical University, she got her first job in the district as an engineer. In 2014, she went on to work as a marine engineer at the Halic Shipyards, the oldest continuously operating dockyard in the world. Over the centuries, the facility has produced vessels from sail boats to steamships and submarines to electrical passenger taxis.

Dedetas’s career has featured many firsts. In 2014, she became the first chairwoman of the Turkish Chamber of Naval Engineers. While she was in that position, Istanbul’s AKP mayor tried to privatize the public harbor and turn it into a terminal full of restaurants and shops. Dedetas protested the project and was barred by the government from entering the shipyard.

She continued to oppose the new real estate development, concerned that the city’s ferries—an indelible part of Istanbul’s social history, skyline, and soundscape—would grind to a halt without the vital maintenance work done at the docks. “We fought to keep [it] from being lost,” Dedetas later said after her success in blocking the project.

Then Imamoglu became mayor of the city, bringing Istanbul back under CHP rule. “The privatization processes of the shipyard were being carried out,” Dedetas told Turkish media. “If [the mayorship] had not changed hands in the 2019 elections, there would be no shipyard left.”

One of the new mayor’s first orders of business was to appoint Dedetas as manager of Istanbul’s maritime public transportation system; she was the first woman in the role. Over the last quarter century, the city’s water transport fell into disarray as Istanbul’s population swelled and moved further inland, contributing to congestion and gridlock on road and rail. Yet municipal-run ferries predate the first Bosporus bridge and remain one of the city’s fastest options to cross continents.

Dedetas proved herself to be a masterful administrator, overhauling the entire water transit system. She opened 11 new ferry lines and launched a 24-hour weekend ferry that connected the European and Asian sides of the city. She also doubled the patronage of public water transport, in part by restoring the iconic white and orange vapur ferry ships. And she launched an electric sea taxi service, providing a personal, environmentally friendly option to traverse the Bosporus Strait and the Marmara Sea.

Through the effective management of maritime transportation, Dedetas gained national attention. She set her eyes on her home district, Uskudar—the Istanbul neighborhood with the longest Bosporus shoreline—ahead of the 2024 municipal elections. “Uskudar is the first gate for people who arrive from Anatolia, and for Istanbul, it is the gate to the rest of the country,” said Onur Cingil, an Uskudar native and CHP member.

The borough had been an AKP stronghold for as long as Cingil and most others could remember. It is even home to Erdogan’s private villa. Cingil said he saw local government officials claim eminent domain and exaggerate concerns about earthquake vulnerability to demolish buildings and hand over lucrative sites to construction companies, religious associations, and other party loyalists. “This happened … to my own student dormitory, and many other places,” Cingil said.

Cingil was one of the many CHP candidates vying to be the nominee for Uskudar’s mayorship in March’s elections, but the CHP leadership eventually selected Dedetas to run due to her reputation for being a technocratic consensus builder.

“Normally, I wouldn’t expect such a profile to be nominated for Uskudar,” said Burak Bilgehan Ozpek, a professor of political science at TOBB University of Economics and Technology. He described Dedetas’s young, professional, and secular profile as going against the grain in the district. The CHP typically nominated old-school, male party insiders for such roles, Ozpek said, adding with a laugh that they always lost the race. “This was a radical change,” he added.

Dedetas took a pro-people approach to her campaign against the AKP incumbent Hilmi Turkmen, who had been a mainstay in Uskudar’s politics for decades. She canvassed the district neighborhood by neighborhood, underlining her accomplishments governing the city’s maritime transit system, which has a budget the same size as Uskudar’s.

Dedetas vowed to redress the AKP’s neglect of women’s issues on both the district and federal levels. She promised to prioritize women’s employment and noted that, during her time helming Istanbul’s maritime transit system, she nearly tripled the number of women working there. She also proposed the creation of a free HPV vaccine program to protect against some forms of cervical cancer. (The cost of the vaccine has become nearly equivalent to Turkey’s monthly minimum wage.)

The candidate pledged to create child nurseries in every neighborhood in Uskudar. “This will enable women to work,” especially residents with low incomes, said Rumeysa Camdereli, an activist and member of Havle Women’s Association, the first Muslim feminist organization in Turkey.

Dedetas promised to expand welfare initiatives, and called for additional municipally subsidized cafeterias in Uskudar. Imamoglu created these during his first term for residents to get a healthy meal for just over a dollar, and his AKP competitor Murat Kurum mocked them on the campaign trail. “We are tired and bored of the rhetoric that tries to deceive the people by … giving half a tea glass of water or milk as if it is a service,” said Kurum. He also made fun of Imamoglu’s background as a kofte vendor.

Kurum’s gaffe turned off blue collar voters. Istanbul’s public eateries fill up every day for lunch and are vital in a country enduring a cost-of-living crisis amid annual inflation of nearly 70 percent.

“Local elections are less ideological and always more focused on services,” said Emine Ucak, the program director for social policy at the Reform Institute, an Istanbul-based policy center, who researches women in Turkish politics. “Women always think about their children, and they had stopped seeing a future for them.”

The campaign also focused on securing areas most vulnerable to earthquakes, a national concern after the devastating February 2023 earthquakes in Turkey’s southeast. Many locals fear that the slate block flats populating the hills above Uskudar’s wharf are in imminent danger in case of an earthquake. In response to their concerns, Dedetas is establishing a natural disaster directorate to help the district become prepared for earthquakes and other catastrophes.

On election night, Dedetas triumphed, beating Turkmen by more than seven percentage points. In doing so, she tore apart the long-held myth that Uskudar was an AKP stronghold.

“It’s a district with a lot of conservative families,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution. “For an uncovered woman to win is a real testament to her political appeal.” Unlike past CHP candidates, Dedetas shied away from the hardline, sometimes alienating secularism her party is known for. Pragmatism and empathy won the day.

Dedetas was not the only victorious woman on election day. Altogether, voters tripled the number of women mayors across Turkey. While only four female mayors had been elected in the previous municipal elections in 2019, 11 provinces and 64 municipalities are now governed by women, the vast majority of them representing opposition parties. Together, they won, on average, 53 percent of votes.

Female political representation is a welcome change after what many in the country see as backsliding on women’s rights under Erdogan. In 2021, Turkey exited the Istanbul Convention, an international treaty to combat gender-based violence that was drafted in the city a decade earlier. The Turkish president had urged women to have at least three children, claiming that those who reject motherhood are “deficient” and “incomplete.”

Although Turkey has a highly centralized political system, mayors remain key to managing districts and municipalities. They are where citizens first access the country’s welfare systems, and where businesses are registered, among other duties.

Following March’s elections, Dedetas and other mayors in the Turkish opposition now have their best chance in decades to govern with less interference from Ankara. She has wasted no time in initiating programs that address locals’ needs, such as grocery subsidies of up to $150 for retired residents. The district also plans to provide elderly residents free shuttle services to food markets. (Pensioners, who compose more than 10 percent of Turkey’s national population, receive roughly $293 per month from the state, an impossible wage to live on in Istanbul.)

Uskudar’s new mayor is also working to counteract the AKP’s neoliberal strategies, which many accuse of benefiting political patrons through shady backroom dealings all while poverty has deepened. To help promote transparency, Dedetas has begun to broadcast all municipal council meetings live online.

Figen Kucuksezer, an optometrist and Uskudar resident, is very excited by these changes. They’ve already helped preserve Uskudar’s Validebag Grove, one of the last wild green spaces in Istanbul. The area, which Kucuksezer volunteers to protect, is home to 400-year-old trees and migratory birds.

“The former mayor always wanted to make changes to the grove,” she said, referring to the AKP’s plans to develop the area by adding parking lots and food stalls and removing some native flora. But Kucuksezer and other local activists filed a lawsuit and have fought for years for Validebag to be left alone. “We had to block the Caterpillar [equipment] from entering in,” she said.

Since being elected, Dedetas has promised to protect it as a green space for all residents. In May, the local court annulled the previous government’s construction plan. “It is a breath of fresh air,” Kucuksezer added.

There is a saying in Turkish politics that whoever wins Istanbul will one day win Turkey. It was the case for Erdogan, who previously served as mayor of Istanbul before leading the country for the past two decades.

After years in the political wilderness, the CHP is now trying to repeat its success in the next national election, which should be the first without Erdogan in nearly 30 years. The challenge for Dedetas is to help Imamoglu triumph so that she can be his successor in Istanbul as he runs for the presidency.

So far, her stances have mirrored those of Imamoglu; Dedetas regularly highlights their work together on social media. But she has also bolstered her own profile by engaging in key culture war debates—including by opposing controversial legislation that will kill beloved stray dogs on the streets to rooting for the women’s national volleyball team at the Paris 2024 Olympics, a squad that has been vilified by the conservative right. Imamoglu’s and Dedetas’s fortunes are now intertwined.

“And this is just the start of her office,” said Cingil, Dedetas’s one-time party rival. “There are already rumors that she will be the next candidate for Istanbul mayor.” That would be another first.

[depressedraisin]

Parklife (1994) and Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino (2018): What does it mean to be an album of the times?

At face value Blur’s third studio album Parklife, released in 1994, and Arctic Monkeys’ 2018 release Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino, their sixth, are very very very different albums. One the Britpop classic, the other a widely divisive experimentation -- they don’t even seem like they could hang out in the same sentence together. Then what the fuck am I on about?

Both albums are individually iconic in the respective band’s discographies -- with Parklife Blur conquered the heights of the Britpop war and firmly cemented its place in British music history while TBH&C marked a pivotal turn in style for the Monkeys, which in my very humble non-musician opinion, will make it historic sometime in the future. If you have spent as much time as I have overthinking the lyrics and pondering over interviews of another British rock band you are hyperfixating on though, you might see something more connecting these two albums. Written about 20 years away from each other, in wildly different times,  the two weirdly enough, have these faint threads tying in their themes and subject matters. 

Damon Albarn, the principal author of Parklife, described the album to NME as, “a loosely linked concept album involving all these different stories. It's the travels of the mystical lager-eater, seeing what's going on in the world and commenting on it."  Rings a bell? That’s extremely TBH&C coded! That one has often been called a concept album based on a luxury hotel and casino on the moon with various eccentric characters and their stories, wryly commenting on issues plaguing life in the 2010s. 

Parklife was a kind of a study of middle class English life of the mid-90s. With an extremely catchy pop soundscape and cheeky-cockney-laced lyrics about London parks and bank holidays, it became a quintessential symbol of Cool Britannia. They say the album never took off in the States because it was so British. In the years since, however, the band has described it more as sarcastic critique rather than a celebration of Britishness. Going through the lyrics with a fine toothed comb  with that in mind then, you can feel the impatience a bunch of 20s somethings were feeling with the ideal 9-to-5 picket fence lifestyle as well as exhaustion with the hedonistic decadence of youth in the backdrop of an unpopular Conservative-led economy in decline. A similar, if updated for 30 year olds in 2018, sentiment can be sensed in the absurd surrealism of the lyrics of  TBH&C. What do you do when you are fed up with tribulations of life and the ghosts of mistakes you’ve made along the way-- you fuck off and escape into whimsy of science fiction. 

The political context of the time when Parklife and Tranquility Base were released does matter. Opens up another perspective to reading the album.  It’s quite a stretch but bear with me.  

 The 90s in the UK began with Thatcher resigning and the Conservative government which dominated the 80s, becoming increasingly unpopular. There was a recession plaguing the early years of the decade. Britpop happened smack dab in the middle of this, and it was all about reacting to grunge and shoegaze and bringing back what is essentially British back to its music scene. Oasis, Suede, Pulp, Elastica (Justine Frischmann is the queen of Britpop btw) -- and ofcourse, Blur, were reviving guitar pop, singing in working class accents and about working class life and bringing back memories of the Swinging Sixties. Though each drawing from a wide variety of influences, these bands were becoming the face of a wider movement in music, art and youth culture.  The political scene took note.

In the mid-90s, the Labour Party led by Tony Blair quickly aligned itself with Britpop and Cool Britannia. Noel Gallagher and Damon Albarn were being courted by politicians , label execs getting party membership invites, headlines went like “What’s the Story? Don’t vote Tory”. Britpop soon acquired nationalist undertones --- never forget Brett Anderson showing off his twinky waist with Union Jack in the background and “Yanks go home!” headline. 

By the end of the 90s, when Britpop had begun crumbling, the economy had recovered and Tony Blair was in Downing Street.

TBH&C and the Monkeys in general, perhaps have less political currency. When they burst onto the scene with their Sheffield accents and garage rock riffs in the generally stable pre-2008 economic climate, the Arctic Monkeys did occupy the space in British pop culture left vacant by Blur and Oasis in the wake of post Britpop, at least for a time. Their debut broke the record of being the fastest selling one, which used to be held by Elastica previously. The Monkeys were indie rock darlings in the UK and with 2013’s AM, became darlings in the US (and Tumblr) as well. Tranquility Base though, came out in a whole different world. 

2018 was a fucking atrocious time, to put it mildly. The world was in total freefall inching rapidly towards disaster, which ultimately culminated in the pandemic of 2020. Trump had been elected in 2016 and 2018 was arguably one of the peaks of his shitshow. Over in the UK, Theresa May and her Conservative Cabinet were deep in the quagmire of Brexit negotiations. (Gotta note that Turner has said he voted against leaving in the referendum. Albarn is of course, a very vocal critic of Brexit.) Right wing governments were coming into power everywhere it seemed like, the climate crisis took on a new sense of alarm among the larger public - and things only spiralled in the years following. I can’t think of another album which could accurately capture the sheer fatigue of seeing outrageous headline after headline, how desensitised we had all become, how disillusioned with life- in a mason jar like TBH&C has.   

That’s what makes an album legendary doesn’t it? You listen to it and immediately remember what living at the time was like. Even if 1994 was 10 years before I was born. 

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let’s look at the two albums a little more closely. 

Some lyrics which give me very similar vibes: 

sexual hedonism // start treatment (tbh&c) and girls & boys (parklife)

mundanity of relationships // four stars out of five (tbh&c) and end of century (parklife)

the performativeness of middle class activism/social work // tranquility base hotel and casino (tbh&c) and parklife (parklife)

losing friends and losing touch // the ultracheese (tbh&c) and badhead (parklife) - now these aren't really similar, but i feel a connection. in my bones trust me bro. the whole "i'll grin and bear with it" thing about badhead is very reminiscient of the sense of insouciance about life that haunts tbh&c....almost??

the myth of america // the ultracheese (tbh&c), golden trunks (tbh&) and magic america (parklife) - magic america is making fun of reagan era the american dream while a disillusionment with the glitz and glam of life in la is pretty much consistent throughout tbh&c

a pathological dependence on technology as escapism // jubilee (parklife) and start treatment (tbh&c) - digital cameras and the internet and tvs were taking baby steps into invading our daily lives back in 1994, and by 2018 we were all fully under the vice grip of tech addiction. this parallel i find particularly funny so.

astronomical references // far out (parklife) and star treatment (tbh&c) - alex james, the blur bassist wrote and sung far out about his love of space. it's a pretty nice parallel hey.

For the last one, let's talk about Tracy Jacks from parklife. I couldn't really draw a direct parallel with a song from the other album, but that song spiritually fits right in I feel. An average Joe in the throes of a midlife crisis, teethering so so close to the edge and one day just snaps - that's a character one would expect dwells in the lounge of the Tranquility Base Hotel to drown themselves in the decadence and escape from all their shit, when all is said and done.

Now what's the concluding point of all this rambling. I don't know lolz. Y'all just read a thousand words of nothing.

Just kidding. Actually I read somewhere Damon Albarn was inspired by the 1989 novel London Fields, a science-fiction adjacent black comedy set against the backdrop of an impending nuclear crisis, while writing Parklife. That kinda rung a bell. (Yes, I did wonder if Alex has read this)

I just wanted to see if we can find any interesting connections parrallels or references between Parklife and Tranquility Base Hotel and Casino. I dunno if I've been successful in getting any point across, or it's just pointless waffling on. But one thing that did get confirmed to me once again, these two albums are really the Albums of Their Times. Captures the zeitgeist in such a specific but unique in their own ways, it's really wonderful.

And also studying the legacy and impact of AM with reference to other musical outfits is always fun. I think we can all safely say that AM is well on their way to capturing a seat in the pantheon of great British bands, where somewhere in a corner Blur also sits. Damon Albarn is a fucking legend of course -- from the pretty posh boy of Britpop he has gone to becoming one of the most versatile, experimental and prolific songwriter/composer in the contemporary music scene. He is apparently working on the music for an Goethe's fragmented libretto of Magic Flute Part 2. How many rockstars do you know have composed operas - how fucking dope. I wanna hope that we'll get to see Alex exploring crazy paths in music like this, he definitely has the potential. This whole exercise would probably have made more sense with one of Damon's post-Blur works, his first solo record Everyday Robots or even Blur's last album The Magic Whip, but I started this essay so had to finish it.

Maybe another day eh.

[shamandrummer]

Archaeoacoustics: The Archaeology of Sound

Archaeoacoustics, a burgeoning field within archaeology, combines the study of ancient sites and artifacts with the science of sound. By examining how sound was used and experienced in historical contexts, researchers can gain unique insights into the lives, cultures, and environments of ancient peoples. This post will delve into the principles of archaeoacoustics, its methodologies, significant findings, and the implications of these discoveries for our understanding of history.

What is Archaeoacoustics?

Archaeoacoustics is the interdisciplinary study that merges archaeology, acoustics, and sometimes anthropology, to understand the role of sound in past human activities. This field investigates how ancient peoples produced, manipulated, and perceived sound, whether in rituals, communication, or daily life. By reconstructing these soundscapes, archaeoacoustics offers a sensory dimension to historical inquiry, enriching our interpretation of archaeological sites and artifacts.

Methodologies in Archaeoacoustics

Acoustic Measurements and Simulations

One of the primary methods in archaeoacoustics involves acoustic measurements and simulations. Researchers use modern technology to analyze the acoustics of ancient structures such as theaters, temples, and caves. Tools like sound level meters, directional microphones, and computer simulations help in understanding how sound behaves in these environments. By measuring reverberation times, frequency responses, and sound distribution, archaeologists can infer the acoustic properties and possible uses of these spaces.

Sound Mapping

Sound mapping is another critical technique, where the distribution of sound within a particular area is documented. This involves creating detailed maps that illustrate how sound travels and is experienced at different locations within a site. These maps can reveal areas of optimal acoustics that may have been used for specific activities, such as speech, music, or ritual practices.

Experimental Archaeology

Experimental archaeology also plays a role in archaeoacoustics. By recreating ancient instruments or sound-producing devices, researchers can explore how these tools might have been used and what kind of sounds they produced. This hands-on approach provides tangible insights into the auditory experiences of ancient peoples.

Significant Discoveries in Archaeoacoustics

The Acoustics of Stonehenge

One of the most fascinating studies in archaeoacoustics involves Stonehenge, the prehistoric monument in England. Researchers have used acoustic modeling to understand how sound would have behaved within this stone circle. Findings suggest that the stones could have amplified speech and musical sounds, creating an immersive auditory experience. This has led to speculation that Stonehenge may have been used for rituals or gatherings where sound played a crucial role.

The Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni

The Hypogeum of Hal-Saflieni in Malta, an underground temple complex, is another site of interest. Acoustic studies have shown that certain chambers within the Hypogeum have unique resonance frequencies that enhance the human voice. This has led researchers to believe that the temple may have been designed with acoustic properties in mind, possibly for chanting or other vocal rituals.

Chavin de Huantar

At the ancient site of Chavin de Huantar in Peru, archaeoacoustics has revealed that the temple complex was built with sophisticated sound manipulation in mind. Researchers discovered that the architecture of the site, including its network of tunnels and chambers, could have been used to create disorienting and awe-inspiring auditory effects during religious ceremonies. The use of conch shell trumpets and other sound devices would have added to these effects, enhancing the spiritual and psychological impact on participants.

The Maya Pyramid of Kukulkan

At the Maya ceremonial center of Chichen Itza in Mexico, an incredible acoustic phenomenon can be heard at the Pyramid of Kukulkan. If you clap your hands directly in front of the pyramid's main staircase, it echoes back an almost mechanical bird-like chirping sound. Handclaps from different positions along the base of the staircase likewise trigger the echo, but with different musical tones spanning half an octave. Recordings of the hand-clap echoes match the chirp of the nearly extinct Quetzal, the sacred bird associated with both the name of the pyramid and its plumed serpent deity Kukulkan.

The Maya Ruins of Palenque

Archaeologists discovered that the temples and public squares in Palenque, Mexico could clearly project the sounds of a human speaker and musical instruments of the time across at least a hundred meters, or about the length of a football field. The investigation identified rooms that could have been used by musicians, speakers or priests to amplify the frequency, quality and volume of sound, allowing the music or the message to travel further and reach more people. The findings strongly suggest the design and structures at Palenque involved a great deal of knowledge about acoustics and the behavior of sound.

Implications and Insights

Understanding Rituals and Ceremonies

Archaeoacoustics provides valuable insights into the rituals and ceremonies of ancient cultures. By reconstructing the soundscapes of these events, researchers can better understand the sensory experiences of participants and the role of sound in these practices. This can shed light on the spiritual and cultural significance of sound in ancient societies.

Reinterpreting Archaeological Sites

The study of sound can lead to new interpretations of archaeological sites. Structures that were previously thought to serve purely functional purposes may be re-evaluated in light of their acoustic properties. For example, a room that was assumed to be a storage area might be reconsidered as a space for ritual chanting if it has unique acoustic characteristics.

Enhancing Public Engagement

Archaeoacoustics also has the potential to enhance public engagement with archaeology. By recreating the sounds of the past, museums and heritage sites can offer immersive experiences that bring history to life. This sensory approach can make historical sites more accessible and engaging for visitors, fostering a deeper connection with the past.

Conclusion

Archaeoacoustics offers a fascinating and innovative approach to the study of ancient cultures. By exploring the acoustic properties of archaeological sites and artifacts, researchers can uncover new dimensions of historical experience and gain deeper insights into the lives of ancient peoples. Despite its challenges, the field holds great promise for enhancing our understanding of the past and engaging the public with history in new and exciting ways. As technology advances and interdisciplinary collaboration continues, the future of archaeoacoustics looks both promising and intriguing, inviting us to listen to the echoes of history in ever more profound ways.