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shanethvarosa · 4 years ago

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Music Review: 2020

My blog has been a lot of things over the years, but it did originate as something I used to publicly review music; especially in the Visual Kei scene. Since I began the blog so many years ago, I had actually been hired to review Visual Kei and J-Rock music for an actual website: VKH-Press.com, work I am very, very proud of to this day. However, with not much news to comment on or work to critique, I haven’t been as active. Plus, personal issues always seem to stand in my way. However, I always take the time to discuss my passions at the end of the year. There were so many incredible releases, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, and so I wanted to take the time time to discuss my favorite releases and, maybe, the not-so-favorites as well. Quick shout out to Bastille’s Goosebumps EP and Megan Thee Stallion’s Good News LP as I did not get to listen to them before I wrote up my lists, but were still excellent releases. See my thoughts below!

Overall, there were about 75 albums or groupings of albums I listened to this year and split them between various tiers. Starting with the bad tier, there were actually only ten albums listed here and mostly just because they were seemingly unnecessary collection albums. For example, another Satsuki collection? Rides in ReVellion releasing two greatest hits LPs after only five years of work? Beyonce releasing The Lion King: The Gift again? None of those felt like necessary releases. There weren’t many albums that really screamed bad to me this year, but I really could not stand Vanessa Carlton’s “Love is an Art” or Justin Bieber’s “Changes.” The only other albums on this tier were just underwhelming compared to what I know the artist is capable of, but the “best bad tier album,” in my view, was The 1975′s “Notes on a Conditional Form.”

The mid-tier albums had all sorts of reasons for being only mid-tier. They weren’t quite bad or outright unnecessary, but are mostly by artists who put out work that was nowhere near the caliber of their usual work or were re-releases or other collection albums. For example, Tove Lo’s “Sunshine Kitty: Pawprint Edition” or Man With A Mission’s remixes/b-sides/covers albums. Nice to have with good quality music, but I wish we’d just have had brand new EPs or LPs.

The good-tier albums were all really excellent releases, but didn’t hit home the way anything on the “God-Tier” list did. Here, I’d like to share a quick top ten:

10. Taeyeon’s “Purpose: Repackage” & Japanese EP, “#GirlsSpkOut” 9. Charli XCX’s “How I’m Feeling Now” 8. Miyavi’s “Holy Nights” & “Holy Nights: 2020 Lockdown” 7. TK’s “Sainou” 6. PVRIS’s “Use Me” 5. Buck-Tick’s “Abracadabra” 4. Katy Perry’s “Smile” 3. Alicia Keys’ “Alicia” 2. Dua Lipa’s “Future Nostalgia” & “Club Future Nostalgia” 1. Ava Max’s “Heaven & Hell

Without furhter ado, though, the God Tier Top 25:

25. Acme’s We Are Visual Kei: Essentially a collection album of several songs that were b-sides that never made a full-blown album. This LP was loaded with some of Acme’s best work and shows that they are going to be here for a long time, despite Div not quite working out. Recommended tracks: Mononoke Requiem, Gekiyama Celluloid, Houkago no Shiiku

24. Alanis Morisette’s Such Pretty Forks in the Road: Admittedly, a huge fan in the 90′s and loved her cover of Seal’s Crazy. However, before this album I didn’t really listen to much of her body of work and I can see why today’s youth might not listen to this album. It is very “adult” insofar as it deals with her struggles in marriage, parenting, religion, etc. Her vocal performance is exceptional and her song writing remains some of the best in the business. Recommended tracks: Smiling, Nemesis, Reasons I Drink.

23. Niall Horan’s Heartbreak Weather: Not my usual cup of tea, but for some reason Niall’s music makes me feel softer than normal. He’s very cute and charming and his words are always so romantic. It feels more genuine than the music made by other members of One Direction and kind-of reminds me of earlier Taylor Swift writing, but from a male perspective. Recommended Tracks: Put A Little Love On Me, Arms of a Stranger, Still.

22. K/DA’s All Out: I don’t even really understand what this is, but I love it. There’s something to do with League of Legends? Cartoons? International pop stars? Whatever it is, I’m totally obsessed. These songs just completely slap. Recommended Tracks: The Baddest, More, Drum Go Dum.

21. Darrell’s Brilliant Death: This might even “officially” be a single, but there’s enough content to market it as an album. Darrell is a band formed from the ashes of Deathgaze and Ai’s solo project. Who knows why Ai didn’t just continue after his solo album, Confusion, but he decided to go back to the band-format with confusingly-named Darrell. This album is then, incidentally, mostly Deathgaze covers. It brings the production into the new era and gives you a lot of nostalgic love for old hits. Recommended Tracks: Brilliant Death, Evoke the World, Abyss.

20. Alice Nine’s Fuyajou Eden & Kuro to Wonderland: Neither album was particularly long, in fact these were glorified EPs that could’ve been merged to one two-sided LP, but in either case... Both albums had something really special to offer and felt like a true comeback after years of name changes and finally going back to their original, kanji-styled name. Recommended Tracks: Kakumei Kaika -Revolutionary Blooming-, Testament, Replica, Glow.

19. Mucc’s Aku: This album felt very long in the making after a series of weird singles that didn’t feel like they were going anywhere. Ultimately, a lot of those singles did not make the album including my favorite one: Taboo. The resulting album, though, did feel very cohesive and thematic and even featured one of this year’s heavy hitters: Hazuki. Recommended Tracks: Aku -Justice-, Memai, Ameria.

18. Miley Cyrus’s Plastic Hearts: This person is absolutely one of my favorite people in music. I’m pretty sure they have comeout as genderfluid/non-binary, so I want to stick with safe pronouns, just in case. However, they’ve always been a favorite and as they’ve come out as such a champion for the LGBT, I love them even more. The album though gave me a lot of hype for something very 80′s rock, but didn’t quite give me what I expected. All in all, the music was fantastic, just a little off-beat from expectations. Recommended Tracks: Gimme What I Want, Angels Like You, WTF Do I Know.

17. Rina Sawayama’s Sawayama: I didn’t expect to fall in love with this girl the way I did. My boyfriend recommended “STFU” to me as kind of a joke because the song discusses a lot of Asian racism that I’m always criticizing people in my life for falling into, but then the song was so bad ass I checked out the album. There were so many different types of music on it and she really did a good job with all of them. Then, with the deluxe edition coming out and the hardcore club banger “Lucid” being involved... Just really brought it all home. Recommended Tracks: Tokyo Love Hotel, Lucid, Fuck This World.

16. Amber Liu’s X: This was just an EP, but every song on it was great. Amber Liu was from f(x), a K-Pop Icon Group, but she always seemed like the odd one out. She was such a tomboy, so silly and funny all the time, and didn’t really behave like other Korean idols. I mean, really, she isn’t actually even Korean. I believe she’s Chinese American. In either case, the EP really noted some of her own personal strugles in the business and also remaining pretty fun at parts too. I saw her live in Philly before COVID-19 and she was truly excellent. Recommended Tracks: Numb, Stay Calm, Other People.

15. Blackpink’s The Album: Not much of an album at only 8 tracks, but that’s K-Pop for you. I bet next year I’ll be putting “Blackpink’s The Album: Repackage” on my top 25 list. The quality of the music was pretty dope though, all things considered. It was a very solid debut effort with all of their previous songs being somewhere in the same lane as this one. I still kind of believe they are a reminder of what 2NE1 could have been, but they’re doing well enough on their own. Recommended Tracks: Ice Cream, Lovesick Girls, Pretty Savage.

14. Hazuki’s Year Over All: Kind of a weird way to word it, but Hazuki basically released two albums this year in different formats. His work with his band, Lynch., was pretty magnificent. I’m not one to usually dwell on a Lynch. album. Their singles or featured tracks are what I usually get into, but the actual album (Ultima) really did a good job of showing how versatile Hazuki can be. His solo album, Souen -Funeral-, was an entirely stripped down, gothic orchestral album of Lynch. covers and other J-Hard Rock artists. Hearing it done like this was almost transcendental. Recommended Tracks: Xero, Idol, Ray, D.A.R.K.

13. Sam Smith’s Love Goes: They had me scared that their album wasn’t coming this year once they pushed it back, back in May. Then again, at the time, an album called “To Die For” was probably super tone deaf. In any case, literally every single released for this album had me in love. So, when they all got included in the final version, I was thrilled. Sam gave us a bonus song after the album as well, but I can see why that one didn’t get on. In any case, this is a huge step up from “The Thrill of it All,” which I didn’t really care for. Recommended Tracks: Another One, Dance (’Til You Love Someone Else), Forgive Myself.

12. Troye Sivan’s In A Dream: I love this kid. He’s so gay and so not shy about it and it really makes me smile. The EP comes after his last LP, Bloom, where the title track basically talks about bottoming for the first time and this new EP deals with a few other queer issues over weirdly produced beats that just... make sense. Recommended tracks: Stud, In A Dream, Easy.

11. Matenrou Opera’s Chronos: Unfortunately, this band just lost their guitarist again. Their original, Anzi, was basically the most consummate guitarist in the visual kei scene that wasn’t Hizaki and he left them. Their sound wasn’t quite right since and they seemed to just get it back with Chronos when Jay left them. I guess we’ll see what they do next, but I think Chronos could be their last great release. Recommended Tracks: Chronos, Silence, Reminiscence.

10. BoA’s Better: A very recent release that hasn’t had much time for me to digest. This is strange for me to put it so high on my list for that reason, but BoA is one of my all time favorites. She never disappoints me. This album was no different. It wasn’t exactly up to par with “Woman” or “Watashi Kono Mama de Ii no Kana,” but it definitely gave us some new and very iconic Queen BoA bangers. Recommended Tracks: Cut Me Off, Start Over, Temptations.

9. Kesha’s High Road: A semi-step down from Rainbow, only because a lot of the same melodic elements and, sometimes, even beats were used on this album too. However, her vocal performance was outstanding and she even gave us a new dirty-pop song with some interesting indie-pop tracks to go with it. Plus, who doesn’t love a Big Freedia feature? Recommended Tracks: Resentment, Raising Hell, Tonight.

8. Lady Gaga’s Chromatica: Anyone who knows me knows I don’t really love Gaga anymore. After all the drama with Madonna and her experimentation with “Joanne” I didn’t think I’d ever like her music again. However, she definitely won back big points for me on Chromatica. It was finally fun, weird, dancey, and then simultaneously emotional and I was really able to get back into it. She’s always had the voice, but on this one it also showed us that she still has what made us love her. Recommended Tracks: Rain On Me, Plastic Doll, Enigma.

7. Koda Kumi’s My Name Is... Angel + Monster: She is, very likely, my Japanese Pop Queen. She always makes these absolutely outlandish bangers of dance tracks that have such a great attitude and beat and when she released re(CORD)... last year? 2018? Who can remember... I thought she could never outdo herself. Then she released “Lucky Star” and I was floored. I was a bit disappointed when they were only to promote a “My Name Is...” collection album, but then, to my surprise, a full set of new tracks came out just after that just blew me entirely away. Guess the last 6 albums must be pretty great, huh? Recommended tracks: Killer Monster, Work It!, Alarm.

6. Grimes’ Miss Anthropocene: I’ve never been a big fan of Grimes, but when Violence came out I was really looking forward to whatever album this was going to end up promoting. The song is actual fire, but then the LP ended up being some kind of experimental Gothic Pop with Asian Pop influences I never expected. I doubt I’ll ever find something she does this good ever again, but it was really a musical light in the darkness of this year. Recommended tracks: Darkseid, Delete Forever, Violence.

5. Kylie Minogue’s Disco: Admittedly, my draw to Kylie has always been that she is like some kind of Australian Madonna. Madonna being one of my all time favorite artists... In fact, number 2 for all women I listen to, Kylie has some big shoes to fill with her sometimes generic pop that she puts out. However, I haven’t really truly loved a Kylie song since “Get Outta My Way” and then this album comes out filled with tracks to love for the rest of time. Recommended Tracks: Miss A Thing, Till You Love Somebody, Magic.

4. Chanmina’s Notebook/Angel: I don’t have really any way of knowing how popular Chanmina is in Japan or if she is as popular in the Japanese Queer Scene as she should be, but god damn does she know what she’s doing. Her music is raunchy, bitchy, and condescending at it’s highest and deeply personal at it’s most mellow. There is no “lowest.” “Notebook” was a two-sided album and “Angel” a strong follow up EP, but all the recommended tracks are from “Notebook.” If you have not listened to “Picky”.... go do it now, I’ll wait. Recommended tracks: Picky, Baby, Lucy.

3. The Weeknd’s After Hours: Incidentally, I got into The Weeknd after someone said something shitty about him here on Tumblr! I took their likely-valid criticism and went to check him out for myself and I gotta say, I love his work. The beats are literally always on point and his voice is like silk. This album provided more than a few iconic songs and I always can’t wait to see what he does next. Recommended Tracks: Alone Again, Heartless, Blinding Lights.

2. Halsey’s Manic: The singles and features she did between Hopeless Fountain Kingdom and Manic gave me such insanely high hopes and I was not disappointed. HFK was a strong album of course, but this was near perfection for me. I think the production of this alt-pop album was the star of the show because it wasn’t all one way, there were heavy-bass songs, interesting piano riffs, striaght up punk rock, all of it. She really made an album quite like it’s namesake. Recommended Tracks: Ashley, Killing Boys, Still Learning.

1. Dexcore’s Metempsychosis: A newcomer to the visual kei and death metal scene, they’ve been putting out single after single for years in preparation for their extemeley long and multidaceted debut album. With a total of about 33 songs, the entire second disc was rerecorded singles from their early days and some even got new lyrical treatment. The main series of songs were, of course, also totally flooring and all of the recommended tracks are the new ones. If you haven’t checked them out by now, you have to! Recommended tracks: Cibus, Scribble, Period.

#personal #music #2020 #visual kei #k-pop #dexcore #halsey #the weeknd #chanmina #kylie minogue #grimes #koda kumi #lady gaga #kesha #BoA

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bestmovies0 · 7 years ago

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The Final, Terrible Voyage of the Nautilus

On May 3, 2 008, a sunny Saturday in Copenhagen, a mob amassed along a dock to watch a 58 -foot submarine be lowered into the sea. Part art project, component engineering achievement, the submarine weighed 40 tons and had been has been established by volunteers at minimal cost from donated iron and other portions. The spectators cheered as the submarine swam for the first time. Peter Madsen, the designer of the vessel and the organisers of the day’s event, climbed into the hatch, smiling in a white skipper’s hat, before the submarine motored into the water.

Madsen christened the ship the UC3 Nautilus , after the fictional submarine in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea . Jules Verne’s antihero Captain Nemo was a figure who lived outside social statutes, sailing the seven seas in search of total freedom. Unlike Nemo, Madsen had stayed close to home in Denmark, but he had devoted his life to constructing audacious vehicles of his own design, ones that might venture high above the atmosphere or down into the depths of the ocean.

Shortly after the launch of the Nautilus , Madsen started another undertaking. He and a former NASA contractor named Kristian von Bengtson cofounded a company called Copenhagen Suborbitals. Their programme was to launch the first manned built-from-scratch rocket. The two set up shop on Refshaleoen, a zone of the city that extends into Copenhagen’s harbor and once had been the heart of Denmark’s shipping empire. That industry’s wane “d left” empty warehouses and mills, which had been reclaimed by artists, engineers, and other creative characters. Madsen and von Bengtson were among them, occupying a hangar, and financing Copenhagen Suborbitals with crowdfunded donations. It was, von Bengtson wrote in 2011 on a WIRED blog he started that year about the rocket build, “the ultimate DIY project.”

The programmes made Madsen a kind of antiestablishment celebrity in Denmark. “You had a sense that he was doing something different. It was something bigger. It was something worth being part of, ” Robert Fox, a filmmaker who made a 2009 documentary about Madsen called My Private Submarine , told me. A biography of Madsen was published some years later. Madsen parlayed this fame into speaking engagements.

In 2016, another filmmaker released a documentary called Amateurs in Space , about Madsen and von Bengtson and their efforts to build a rocket. To watch the cinema is to see the men’s relationship fall apart. In June 2014, Madsen opened a new workshop of his own, Rocket Madsen Space Lab, in a hangar across the paved lot from Copenhagen Suborbitals.

In March 2017, a freelance columnist named Kim Wall learned about the rival rocket manufacturers. Wall had been raised in a Swedish township called Trelleborg, simply 40 miles from Copenhagen. She had left home for schooling in Malmo, Sweden, then London, Paris, and eventually New York, which she was calling home for a while. She was in Refshaleoen visiting her collaborator, Ole Stobbe, a Danish designer who had just moved there. The two were walking around one afternoon, past the vestigial houses of the old shipyards, when they came in all the regions of the rocket-building workshops.

In the four years Wall had been a reporter, she had traveled to Haiti to write about practitioners of voodoo; to Sri Lanka to document the tourism on former battlefields of the long civil war; to Cuba to follow the underground network of people delivering TV proves and internet culture. Wall was fascinated with what she called “the undercurrents of rebellion.” Here was just such a tale simply minutes from where she was staying.

Wall reached out to various publications, and had email exchanges with editors at WIRED, working towards getting an assignment to write about the rocket builders. She and Stobbe had also decided to move to Beijing together, and their departure date was approaching. She had interviewed one of the builders at Copenhagen Suborbitals and was hoping to speak with Madsen, but she hadn’t will reach him. She had only a few periods left in town.

Wall got the text she had been waiting for: Madsen was inviting her to tea.

On August 10, a Thursday, Wall and Stobbe were preparing to hurl a goodbye party. In the late afternoon, just as they were setting up for a barbecue on the quay along the water in Refshaleoen, Wall got the text she had been waiting for: Madsen was inviting her for tea at his workshop. Madsen’s hangar was not far, so she set off. About half an hour later, she returned to let Stobbe know that Madsen had submit a report to take her out on his submarine. She decided to forgoes her own goodbye party for the interview. She asked Stobbe if he wanted to come. Stobbe was “insanely close to saying yes, ” he told me, had it not been for the group he had assembled. Because she was going out to sea, Stobbe committed Wall a bigger kiss than he would have had she gone out for, say, ice or lemons. Wall promised to be back in a few hours.

Just before boarding the submarine around 7 pm, Wall texted Stobbe a photo of the Nautilus . A little later, she mailed a photo of windmills in the water, and then another of herself at the steering wheel. A while afterwards, Stobbe was tending to a quayside burn when a friend told him to look up. He watched the fix sunlight and Wall aboard the submarine in the distance, waving toward him.

By most public accounts, Madsen was a charismatic rebel. He had a weathered face with the prominent features of a plaything troll. His habitual uniform was coveralls and hiking boots. Fox, the filmmaker, calls him a “modern-day Clumsy Hans, ” for the apparently dimwitted suitor in the Hans Christian Andersen fairy-tale who wins the princess’s favor over his more intelligent brethren. Wall was in the early stages of her reporting, and she would not be aware of this much more about Madsen than what had already been published. It was only later, after everything that happened, that the details of his private life would become important.

Refshaleoen had once been the heart of Denmark’s shipping empire.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

Madsen was born in 1971 and grew up in a small town south of Copenhagen. His mom, Annie, was more than three decades younger than Madsen’s father, Carl–a pub owner. She had three boys from two previous wedlocks, and the union with Carl did not last long. Madsen was six when his mothers split up. Annie moved out with her other sons while Madsen remained with his aging father.

According to Madsen’s biography, writes to Thomas Djursing, Carl was a brutal boy who beat his stepsons, though not Madsen. It was Carl who stoked his son’s fascination with rockets, telling him , among other things, about a human who would become a hero to Madsen: Wernher von Braun, the Nazi aerospace engineer who later came to the US and helped develop the Apollo missions. Carl died when Madsen was 18, and for the next few years, Madsen ricocheted around, starting several degrees and apprenticeships��in welding, refrigeration, and engineering–before falling out of each.

As a adolescent, Madsen detected the Danish Amateur Rocket Club but was eventually kicked out because he wanted to use fuels that others in the group seemed weren’t safe. He invested his twenties and thirties organizing their own lives around the building of submarines and rockets. He often slept at the workshop where he built things.

Madsen’s obsession with submarines and rockets was all-consuming, but not to the exclusion of sex. I get in contact with Camilla Ledegaard Svendsen, an age-old friend of his, through Facebook. She told me that Madsen became a regular at sex fetish parties. These were a place of community, she said, “where everyone was relaxed about everything, including their bodies, ” and where women felt safe. He also availed himself of Travelgirls.com, a website that advertises meeting “thousands of adventurous girls who want to travel.” Deirdre King, who was Madsen’s close friend for more than a decade, told me he could be doting. “I broke both of my hands once, and Peter came by every day for two months and brushed my hair, ” she told me. “He is a man who loves women.”

Fox, who spent 100 periods with Madsen and his crew while attaining My Private Submarine , said that “women discovered him fascinating” and that the Nautilus sometimes played important roles in his seduction strategies. “’This is my submarine. You want to see my submarine? ’ He kind of used to draw that off a lot, ” Fox recalled.

After he split from Copenhagen Suborbitals, Madsen moved his rocket-making workshop simply across the lot.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

The goodbye party continued into the night that Thursday in August and finally moved to a nearby bar. When Wall still had not returned, Stobbe began to worry. The couple was supposed to leave for a wedding early in the morning, and it was unlike Wall to not stay in touch. Stobbe waited for his partner by the wharf. Then he went back to his room, tried to sleep, get up, grabbed his bicycle, and ride around the island in search of her. Around 1:45 am he called the police; a half hour later he called the navy. Wall was missing.

Just before 4 am, the police were notified of a possible accident by the local maritime rescue middle. Soon after, helicopters and ships began searching the water around Copenhagen. At 10:30 am, the Nautilus was spotted near a lighthouse in Koge Bay, near a desolate stretch of coastline southwest of Refshaleoen. According to a local news report, at 11 am a man out on his craft helping with the search discover Madsen in the submarine tower. He read Madsen go down the hatch, then reemerge as the sub began to sink.

Madsen then began swimming toward a nearby motor craft, where he was pulled out and turned back to land. By now, newsrooms had learned about the search for a missing submarine. Upon Madsen’s rescue, reporters headed to the dock. When he stepped ashore, a reporter called out to Madsen, asking if everything was OK. Madsen turned around and committed the reporter a thumbs-up. He said he was fine but sad because his Nautilus had dropped. There had been a defect on the ballast tank, he said.

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Stobbe was at the dock where the press had amassed that morning as Madsen devoted his thumbs-up. He knew that something was off and braced for the worst. Still, he wasn’t prepared for what was to come. Afterwards that day the police put under a statement saying that Madsen had told them that he had dropped off Wall on the tip-off of small island developing. The police clearly did not believe him; they arrested him and accused him with involuntary manslaughter “for having killed in an unknown route and in an unknown place Kim Isabel Fredrika Wall of Sweden sometime after Thursday 5 pm. ”

The next day, a Saturday, Madsen appeared in courtroom at a closed-door conference. He hadn’t dropped Wall off on the island; she died in road traffic accidents onboard the submarine, he said. His tale was changing. A hatch had fallen on her psyche, and he panicked, he would claim. He said he dragged her body out of the submarine by a rope and “buried her at sea.”

On August 21, a cyclist journeying along on Amager Island , not far from where the submarine drop, came across a torso that had washed ashore. The next day, DNA analysis confirmed that the torso is accountable to Wall. On September 5, a court approved the prosecutor’s request to change the charge against Madsen to manslaughter. An autopsy afterwards revealed that she had been stabbed 15 hours in and around her vagina. Then, one month afterwards, divers procured her psyche, attire, and a knife in plastic bags, in the seas not far from where her torso was discovered. They also detected both her legs, tied to pieces of metal. Despite these breakthroughs, Madsen stayed to his tale: Wall had made her chief and succumbed, and he disposed of her body, but he denied killing her or dismembering her. Even after divers acquired a watch that might have been used to dismember Wall’s body, even after the police searched Madsen’s computer and discovered videos that appeared to show females being strangled, beheaded, and tortured–he stay to his story.

Kim Wall and I were both freelance novelists, both young and female, both reporting from abroad. Our relationship began after we followed one another on Instagram and Facebook. Then, a year or so later, in 2016 we found ourselves in New York. We invested most of the summer sitting across from each other in a glum coffee shop in Williamsburg, working on our laptops. We didn’t yet know where reporting objective and living began. We ensure in one another a companion, but likewise a guide. She was my friend and likewise the closest thing I had to a colleague. When I left for Afghanistan that autumn and she for Denmark and later Cuba, we kept in touch by text, talking each week if not more often.

When I learned that Kim had disappeared, my instinct was to find out everything I could about what happened to her. I could say that I was trying to control grief by examining the source of that sorenes, but that would be reasoning in hindsight. All I knew was that it was painful to think about Kim, and it pained me simply a little less to try to report about Madsen.

In the weeks and then months following Kim’s death, I read local news stories, watched the documentaries about Madsen, and scrolled the posts on the blog he maintained on an engineering website. I went on Madsen’s Facebook page and mailed friend requests to every one of his contacts there. I spoke to dozens of people are attached to Madsen–family members, buffs, collaborators, fans, and childhood friends, many of whom would not let their names to be used for this story. I spoke with lawyers, a forensic pathologist, and an oceanographer. In late September I flew to Copenhagen. I met with members of the police division leading the investigation, but they did not uncover much and did not want to speak on the record. I objective up committing them a statement. They asked about my friendship with Kim, and I told them what kind of person she was and why it wasn’t surprising that, as a columnist, she would have chosen to go with Madsen on the submarine.

On my first afternoon in Copenhagen, I met with Jens Falkenberg at a restaurant on Dag Hammarskjolds Alle, in an affluent part of township. Falkenberg is a 58 -year-old roof salesman. He first heard about Madsen years ago, when he saw a segment about him on television and, by coincidence, gratified him the next day at a diving store. He started volunteering at his workshop and helped build the Nautilus . He told me that the police had been calling, asking about a ascertain that was missing from Madsen’s rocket workshop.

If something did not please Madsen, “he would behave like small children who just lost his toy.”

Falkenberg was like many of the others who volunteered with Madsen, who called himself “a maker of extreme machines.” They expended their weekdays in regular undertakings but were weekend builders. They wanted the feeling of community the workshop made them. At the center of their alternating cosmo where boys constructed submarines and rockets was Madsen himself.

Some volunteers “was talkin about a” Madsen as a generous spirit, the various kinds of guy who would invite a pal who was feeling down “to take part in his little adventures as a means of applauding him up, ” as a friend named Lars put it.

Others reexamined old incidents and behaviours. Madsen could sway between rage and euphoria. One volunteer at Copenhagen Suborbitals told me that if something did not please Madsen, “he would behave like small children who just lost his toy or plummeted his ice cream or something.” When his feeling turned, “most people would know what was going to happen, so they would stay away from him before material started flying.” Volunteers said Madsen threw hammers, screwdrivers, and other tools. One volunteer, who asked to be identified by his initials, S. W ., helped build the Nautilus . He recalled how Madsen would go from being supportive to “pensive, jubilant, irritating, and sarcastic.”

“It’s hard for us to understand what drives a madman, because we are not mad, ” Falkenberg told me. He then described a recurring gag: Madsen would pretend to be a violent Nazi and would mime reaching Falkenberg, saying “Should I punch you in the kidneys? ” or Madsen might joke: “What if I inject battery acid into your veins? ”

There was also a lot of joking around about Nazis in the workshop. Crewmembers called each other by Nazi-inspired names. Madsen was called Kaleun, for Kapitanleutnant, a nod to the 1981 film Das Boot , about a fictional German U-boat unit during World War II, Falkenberg said. When they went out in the sub, the crew spoke German, reciting lines from the film.

Madsen’s fascination with space and rockets and technological sciences could hoodwink you into thinking he was a man of the future; you are able miss the fact that his obsession was rooted in nostalgia. He was enamored with the early Apollo missions in American space exploration. The venerate he held for the Third Reich was hard to detect as it was framed as irreverence, but it was there. “Some of the behavior the Nazi regime worked, they did horrible things and they should be executed and everything. But some of the things they did, it ran, ” the former workshop volunteer told me. “They built the biggest military machine in just four years. They constructed it virtually out of nothing.”

Building something out of nothing was central to Madsen’s philosophy, as was his sentiment that he should be able to play by his own rules and control his own destiny. He seemed down on people for being cautious. He talked about wanting “to be free from authorities” in attaining his submarines. After he left Copenhagen Suborbitals, he continued a blog about the progress at Rocket Madsen Space Lab. In one enter from 2015 he described his team as people who “all know that they are taking part in a Peter Madsen project, just like they would do if it was a von Trier movie … the unqualified impression that Madsens crasy[ sic] dreams tend to become reality … induces these people invest period and money.”

Windmills on the water.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

I had been in Copenhagen a week when I moved looking for a woman I knew did not want to talk to me. She was a friend and recent sexual collaborator of Madsen’s. She lived in a converted building in Refshaleoen. One afternoon I walked through its vast hallways until I managed to find her chamber. I knocked on her doorway, and she let me in. I had twisted my ankle on the way over and was limping. She let me sit on her carpet and keep my injured foot elevated while she ate toast. Her eyes seemed heavy with sleep.

We ended up spending the rest of the working day together. She missed a concert; I skipped an appointment. We smoked Bahman cigarettes, an Iranian brand I had brought from Afghanistan. We boozed home-brewed kombucha. Music filtered in from another studio down the dorm, filling the occasional stillnes between us.

Like others I spoke with, she said she was enormously angry at Madsen and felt guilty for what she believed he had done. Her ache about Kim’s death seemed deep and genuine. And like others, she was reaching back into her remembrance of every exchange she had with him in search of clues that might explain this misfortune. She told me that she had either considered or talked to Madsen nearly every day in the weeks leading up to Kim’s death. Then she told me about a particular exchange that was still bothering her.

Wall was early in her job but had already reported narratives from Cuba, Haiti, and the Marshall Islands( above) in 2015.

Courtesy of Jan Hendrik Hinzel

Some periods before Kim stepped onto the Nautilus , the woman and Madsen were exchanging notes via iMessage. “It was a joke, ” she said, pulling out her phone and scrolling through the white and blue text. Like many people I met in Refshaleoen, this woman was typically resided with an art project of one kind or the other. “Shes been” be very difficult finishing a video, and she’d asked Madsen to motivate her with a threat. The dialogue began as a casual sexual exchange but speedily intensified. She read the texts to me, translating into English as she went.

“He says he has a murder plan ready in the submarine, and I tell him I am not afraid, you have to be more threatening. He talks about the tools he wants to use, and I say,’ Oh it’s not threatening.’ ” The scenario darkened to inviting a friend to the submarine, where they would suddenly change the feeling and begin cutting her up. At the time, the woman didn’t give the exchange much imagine; it was not something she took seriously. After a letup in the backward and forward, she responded by sending him a video of ponies. The minute passed. The police now have the texts.

Kim and I often “was talkin about a” the challenges of reporting while being young, while being a woman. Harassment, come-ons, and our panic of not being tough enough were perennial concerns. This is particularly true on the road leading. During a reporting trip-up to Cuba in 2016, Kim texted me to say that as a strategy against unrelenting harassment, she had devised a “fictional NYC fiance.” The incongruity of the go-to deflecting move being to proclaim attachment to another man was not lost on us.

Lately I have been thinking about a question Kim posed in a series of texts last spring: 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> i only have questions 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> about organization as a woman 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong> and if we will ever be free , no matter what we do 3/14/ 17, 7:43 am: Kim Wall : strong>( leaning towards no)

In the working day after she disappeared, I hear people ask questions that betrayed a misunderstanding about reporting–couldn’t she have done the interview over the phone ?– and casual sexism–why was she there alone so late? On nighttimes when I couldn’t sleep, I would end up on internet chat room where specific comments parts filled me with fury: “She is a woman–how could she go alone with a boy she does not know? ” And: “She had skirt and pantyhose–how could she egg on a poor uncle in that way.”

In Afghanistan, where I worked mainly with men, I never wanted to show any sign of weakness or panic. In reporting this story, my editor attained me promise that I wouldn’t set myself in harm’s style. But much of the submission of reports is just that–routinely putting yourself in uncomfortable points. In the four months I spent on this story, I did things that in other circumstances might have seemed foolish. I went on long drives at night with sources. I satisfied strangers on their doorsteps and entered their homes. In stepping onto that submarine, Kim was doing what any reporter onto a good story would have been able to done.

My love for Kim has turned into devotion for her parents and for Ole. I’ve invested time with them in Copenhagen, Trelleborg, and New York when they came for a commemoration for Kim; it was held at Columbia University, where she had received her master’s degrees in journalism and international affairs. We talk online and discuss the fund we are setting up in her name. I want to alleviate their suffering, but I also know that the one thing they genuinely crave is Kim.( They did not wish to be interviewed for this article, and I understood .)

Ole and I speak on the phone, to talk about heartbreak, and what is to be done about it. He is still moving to China. Movement is good, he says.

Wall and Stobbe stayed in a converted building in Refshaleoen.

Mustafah Abdulaziz

On October 30, the Copenhagen police reported that Madsen had changed his account of that night in August yet again; he said Kim might have died from carbon monoxide gas poisoning. He likewise admitted to dismembering her body. Three a few weeks later, the police detected an arm in Koge Bay, weighed down with pipes. Eight periods after that, they found another limb. Madsen’s lawyer, Betina Hald Engmark, declined to comment for this story.

I wrote Madsen two letters at Vestre Prison in Copenhagen, where he was being held before trial. I FedExed the first and dropped off the second in a mailbox near the prison. I told him who I was, who Kim had been, my sadness over losing her, and my wish that he would tell me what happened. One afternoon in January, several months after I’d returned to New York, I went to pick up my mail and acquired an envelope with no return address. It was postmarked from Denmark on December 6, 2017, but that didn’t register until after I’d opened it and started scanning the neat, hand-written pages. It was only when I got to the word “submarine” that I realized Madsen had written to me from his detention cell. I remember telling myself to keep breathing as I tried to fold the pages back into the envelope. I did not succeed. The envelope was small-scale and thin and rent in my hands.

When I ultimately forced myself to look at the letters–there were three, dated in September and November–I was struck by their terrifying cliche. He spoke patently about the boredom of prison–he had few visitors and few pastimes besides penning. He described recognizing Terminator 2 in prison and identifying with the specific characteristics played by Linda Hamilton. He explained what he had access to( paper and pencil) and what he didn’t providing access to( nearly everything else ). He also wrote about Kim. He wrote that he thought about Kim every day and that they are able to “feel her feeling somehow.” There was a disturbing friendship to his words, as if he were writing to an age-old friend. He flattered my writing style and extended an invitation to visit. He asked me, “What are you? An explainer trying to understand? A terminator sent to terminate me? … Without exception–whatever you are–you are welcome, I am all yours.” He aimed one of the letters by saying “I will try to get this letter out to you as soon as is practicable, and hope that you will stay in touch as things get easyer[ sic ]. ”

On January 16, the police released the following statement announcing that Madsen was being indicted for homicide that “took place with prior plan and preparation, ” and likewise charged him with “sexual relations other than intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature, as well as for dismemberment.” A week subsequently, the full indictment provided more excruciating details: Madsen had brought onboard “a understood, bayonet, sharpened screwdrivers, straps, zip ties, and pipes.” Madsen had bound, thump, and stabbed Kim before killing her, possibly by choking or cutting her throat, the indictment said. Madsen’s lawyer told The New York Times that she was “puzzled” by the indictment. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial on March 8, with a judgment anticipated in April. In between is March 23, who had allegedly been Kim’s 31 st birthday.

“What are you? An explainer trying to understand? A terminator sent to terminate me? ”

The case has been deeply unsettling to people in Denmark, a country of five. 7 million people where there were only 54 reported homicides last year. It is hard for Danes to fathom the gruesome discoveries and to imagine that someone as well-known as Madsen could be responsible for them. In December, the Danish publisher Saxo withdrew the first book in a true-crime series about the example, written by Djursing, after it comes down under criticism.

Before my trip to Denmark, I talked on the phone with a humankind who had worked with Madsen off and on for nine years. He was in shock. But he likewise allowed for the possibility of setting up unseen perversion. “Some are walking around with a fantasy like this for perhaps 10 times, ” he said, “and one day they will do this thing.” Madsen had expended his adulthood pushing against the bounds of society, of reason, of the present, of gravitation. Did he think he could get away with committing the ultimate act of brutality? The trial may offer some answers.

On one of my last day in Copenhagen, I returned to Refshaleoen. I stopped by a eatery to ask directions to the building where Kim and Ole had lived. The line cook didn’t know the building, so I asked if he knew where the reporter who had died had lived. He cut me off midsentence as I was explaining how I knew Kim and asked, “Why are you doing this? ”

I didn’t have a ready answer. I said something about how I wanted to know what had happened. But saying this out loud, to this stranger, I knew I could never actually know, could never measure the precise weight of her agony. Trying to find out what happened to Kim, in hopes of seeing meaning in the senselessness of her death, is a selfish act, designed to serve the living. It feels like an act of betrayal.

I still don’t yet know where reporting aims and living begins. All I know is that it hasn’t sink in yet that she is dead. I’m still wishing for a smaller tragedy: that she was kidnapped but will soon be rescued, or injured but healing somewhere, or lost but will find information. I wish for life. I wish for a different story.

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May Jeong (@ mayjeong) is a novelist and a visiting intellectual at the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University . em>

This article is displayed in the March issue. Subscribe now . em>

Additional reporting by Andrea Powell