#2010 release date really shining through here

[thisiseditsandstuff]

just learnt that the German translation of Peace Walker has Kaz and BB use the formal you for each other which- is the biggest "no homo" choice I've seen in a while in German translations and genuinely makes ... no sense.

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at The Summit in Houston, TX, USA - December 11, 1977

This is the legendary Houston show - legendary largely because its video was the one of the most sought-after documents of Queen for decades. Bits of footage have been seen in various documentaries dating back to 1987's "The Magic Years."

The filming (pro-shot footage that was shown on the big video screens during the concert) was the result of an agreement with the venue not only for Queen, but plenty of artists who played at the Summit during this period. The footage of Aerosmith, The Eagles, and Kiss is well-known amongst collectors, and the footage of Kiss, The Who and Bruce Springsteen has been officially released. Springsteen surprised his fans in 2010 with 1978 footage that was released in a box set. Footage of Led Zeppelin is rumoured to exist as well.

The performance is fantastic overall, although it's a bit of a rough night for Brian. After flubbing his solo in Somebody To Love and the transition from Death On Two Legs into Killer Queen, he breaks a string a minute into Liar. Roger has to improvise on his hi-hat for a short while until his guitarist gets a Red Special copy. They then play a spectacular version of the debut album gem, with an extended jam in the middle where everyone shines. Brian plays great from here onward.

Freddie, after '39: "We'd like to try out something very different right now. This is from the new album, the News Of The World. Have you got it yet? The album, that is." He feels the need to distinguish the album from the British tabloid of the same name, but it actually wouldn't matter to an audience outside of the UK. "Ok, you might just about recognize this one. This is called My Melancholy Blues."

Freddie makes a very rare reference to his recurring nodule problem which was an issue at many points in his career (but not during this great period for him). "It's a real bitch of a song. It really gets to the nodules, but we're gonna do it for you tonight. This is..." (he hesitates and chuckes to himself, probably because he's surprised at himself for even mentioning it) "a song entitled White Man." He offers a great version of the song, as his voice is in superb shape tonight.

The high quality of the recording is apparent at the end of White Man, as Roger can be heard dropping his drum sticks with the knowledge that he has a 10-15 minute break ahead. The band skip the reprise of The Prophet's Song - the only time this is known to have happened on the entire tour - as Brian jumps right into Now I'm Here after his rather unique guitar solo (which starts with him fiddling with his EBow). Perhaps this was done because of time constraints (having a limited amount of film?). At the end of Now I'm Here, Roger breaks a drum stick during his brief drum break before the final fanfare.

This show was also filmed by Bob Harris' Old Grey Whistle Test crew, along with plenty of other footage (on and off stage) from the tour, originally intended for a documentary for TV in spring 1978 that ultimately never aired.

On January 14, 1978, short clips of the regular and fast versions of We Will Rock You from the beginning of the show (overdubbed with the studio version) were seen on German TV (ZDF Kultur Rockpop), possibly a combination of the in-house feed and the Bob Harris footage.

In 1989, My Melancholy Blues from this show was released on the UK 12" "The Miracle" single, and on The Miracle CD single in the UK and Austria. Also in 1989, an edited version of the song was seen on the Rare Live video release.

In November 2009, the band posted some concert videos from the 70s on their website in conjunction with the release of their "Absolute Greatest" compilation, including The Millionaire Waltz and a non-edited My Melancholy Blues from this show. The picture was brightened for the latter. In 2011, the complete and visually unaltered My Melancholy Blues was posted on iTunes.

Some of the Bob Harris footage from Houston was first seen in the 2011 Queen documentary "Days Of Our Lives" that aired on BBC Two. Rhys Thomas, producer of that documentary, has confirmed that Houston was the only complete show filmed on the tour. He added that there are bits of Houston footage from other angles as well, often filmed from backstage, with no audio, and no complete songs. Thomas stated in 2012 that the Harris documentary and the Houston concert may be released as a package in the next couple years. Only the former has come to fruition thus far, in the form of the "American Dream" documentary in the News Of The World box set released in 2017 (also broadcast as a slightly different edit on the BBC as "Rock The World" in the same year). Much of the backstage footage in the documentary is from Houston as well, including footage of Mercury speaking about the show afterward - particularly about how he tripped and fell in his entrance for Now I'm Here, about Brian's broken string in Liar, and how audience enthusiasm is "up and down" on this tour, compared to the smaller venues of the previous tour.

An overdub in the second verse of We Are The Champions in the 2017 documentary clarifies that a 24-track master of this show does indeed exist in the Queen vaults (the drums sit differently in the mix as well) - see Chinwonder's video analysis for details.

A great picture of the crown lighting rig was taken before the concert by the head of the Queen crew, Peter "Ratty" Hince, and it can be seen on his website.

Pro pictures from this show can be seen at http://www.rockinhouston.com (pics 26 through 39). (I can’t upload them here but you can check from the link!)

[fuckheadwitha]

Listening to Rolling Stone's Top 500 Albums of All Time

Rolling Stone released an updated list of their top 500 albums of all time and being trapped in the purgatory of covid quarantine this seems like the perfect moment to tackle what an almost completely irrelevant former counter-culture institution has to say about music (we can’t actually blame Rolling Stone for this list, a huge number of musicians and critics voted to make it). I am going to listen to every single one of these, all the way through, with a level of attention that's not super intense but I'm definitely not having them on in the background as simple aural wallpaper. Two caveats though: I can make an executive decision to skip any album if I feel the experience is sufficiently miserable, and I'm also going to be skipping the compilation albums that I feel aren't really worth slots (best ofs, etc.). In addition, I will be ordering them as I go, creating a top 500 of the top 500 (it will be less than 500 since we've already established I'm skipping some of these).

Here are 500-490:

#500 Arcade Fire - Funeral

I can already tell I'm going to be at odds with this list if one of the most important albums of my high school years is at the bottom. That being said, I haven't actually given this whole thing a listen since probably the early 2010s, before Arcade Fire fatigue set in and the hipsterati appointed band of a generation just kinda seemed to fade from popular consciousness. I actually dreaded re-experiencing it, since the synthesis of anthemic rock and quirky folk instrumentation which Arcade Fire brought mainstream has now become the common shorthand of insufferable spotify friendly folk pop. Blessedly, the first half of the album easily holds up, largely propelled by dirty fast rhythm guitar, orchestration that's tuneful rather than obnoxious, and lyrics which come off as earnest rather than pretentious. The middle gets a little sappy and “Crown of Love”, a song I definitely used to like, really starts the grate. And then we get to “Wake Up”, whose cultural saturation spawned thousands of dorky indie rock outfits that confused layered strings and horns with power and meaning. This song definitely hasn't survived the film trailers and commercials which it so ubiquitously overlayed, but the line about "a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust" still attacks the part of my brain capable of sincere emotion. This album is probably going to hold the top spot for a while, because although so many elements of Funeral that made it feel so meaningful, that made it stand out so much in 2004, have been seamlessly assimilated into an intellectually and emotionally bankrupt indie pop industrial complex, the album itself still has a genuine vulnerability and bangers that still manage to rip.

#499

Rufus, Chaka Khan - Ask Rufus

Before she became a name in her own right, Chaka Khan was the voice of the band Rufus, and it’s definitely her voice that shines amongst some spritely vibey funk. That’s not to say that these aren’t some jams on their own. “At Midnight” is a banging opener with a sprint to the finish, and although the explicitly named but kinda boring “Slow Screw Against the Wall” feels weak, this wasn’t really supposed to be an album of barn burners. This was something people put on their vinyl record players while they chilled on vinyl furniture after a night of doing cocaine. “Everlasting Love” is a bop with a bassline like a Sega Genesis game, and the twinkling piano on “Hollywood” adds a playful levity to lyrics that are supposed to be both tackily optimistic about making it big out in LA and subtly realistic about the kind of nightmare world showbiz can be. “Better Days” is another track that manages to be a bittersweet jam with a catchy sour saxophone and playful synths under Chaka Khan’s vamping. This album definitely belongs on a ‘chill funk to study and relax to’ playlist.

#498

Suicide - Suicide

We’ve hit the first album that could be rightly called a progenitor for multiple genres that followed it. Someone could say there’s a self-serving element of this being on a Rolling Stone list (the band was one of the first to adopt the label ‘Punk’ after seeing it in a Lester Bangs article) but the album’s legacy is basically indisputable. EBM, industrial, punk, post-punk, new wave, new whatever all have a genealogy that connects to Suicide, and it’s easy to hear the band in everything that followed. But what the band actually is is two guys, one with an electric organ and one with a spooky voice, doing spooky simple riffs and saying spooky simple things. Simplicity is definitely not a dis here. The opener “Ghost Rider” makes a banger out of four notes and one instrument, and the refrain ‘America America is killing its youth’ is really all the lyrical complexity you need to fucking get it. “Cheree” and “Girl” have almost identical lyrics (‘oh baby’ vs ‘oh girl’) but “Cheree” is more like a fairy tale and “Girl” is more like a sonic handjob. “Frankie Teardrop” has the audacity to tell a ten minute story with its lyrics, but of course there is intermittent, actually way too loud screaming breaking up the narrative of a guy who loses everything then kills his family and himself. The song is basically a novelty, and I think you can probably say the whole album is a novelty between its brevity and character. But for a bite sized snack this album casts a huge shadow.

#497

Various Artists - The Indestructible Beat of Soweto

The fact that this particular compilation always ends up in the canon has a lot to do with the cultural context it existed in, being America’s first encounter with South African contemporary music during the decline of apartheid (it wouldn’t end until a decade later in 1994 with the country’s first multi-racial elections). Music journos often bring up the fact Ladysmith Black Mambazo, the all male choir singing on the album ender “Nansi Imali”, sang on Paul Simon’s Graceland like their virtue is they helped Paul Simon get over his depression and not, like, the actual music. But also like, how is the actual music? Jams. Ubiquitous, hooky guitars propel the songs along with bright choruses over low lead vocals, but I didn’t expect the synthesizer on the bop “Qhude Manikiniki”, nor the discordant hoedown violin on “Sobabamba”. “Holotelani” is a groove to walk into the sunset to.

#496

Shakira - Donde Estan los Ladrones

So this is the first head scratcher on the list. It’s not like it sucks. And I think I prefer this 90s guitar pop driven spanish language Shakira to modern superstar Shakira. But I mean, it’s an album of late nineties latin pop minivan music, with a thick syrupy middle that doesn’t do anything for me. The opener and closer stand out though.  ‘Ciega, Sordomuda’, one of the biggest pop songs of the 90s (it was #1 on the charts of literally every country in Latin America), has a galloping acoustic guitar and horn hits with Shakira’s vocals at their most percussive.

#495

Boyz II Men - II

So, if you were alive in the 90s you know Boyz II Men were fucking huge, and the worst song on the album is the second track “All Around the World”, basically a love song to their own success, and also the women they’ve banged. You can tell it was written specifically so that the crowd could go fucking wild when they heard their state/city/country mentioned in the song, and I’m not gonna double check but I’m sure they hit all fifty states. Once you’re over that hump though you basically have an hour of songs to fuck to. “U Know” keeps it catchy with propulsive midi guitar and synth horns, “Jezzebel” starts with a skit and ends with a richly layered jazz tune about falling in love on a train, and “On Bended Knee” has a Ragnarok Online type beat. Honestly this album can drag, but you’re not supposed to be listening to it alone in a state of analysis, you’re supposed to have it on during a date that’s going really, really well.

#494

The Ronettes - Presenting the Fabulous Ronettes

A singles compilation of the Ronettes, the only ones I immediately recognized were ‘Be My Baby’ and ‘Going to the Chapel of Love’, the latter of which I didn’t know existed since the version of the song I knew was by the Dixie Cups, which was apparently a source of drama since the Ronettes did it first but producer Phil Spector refused to release it. I feel like as a retro trip to sixties girl groups it’s full of enough songs about breaking up (for example “Breaking Up”) getting back together (for example “Breaking Up”) and wanting to get married but you can’t, because you’re a teenager (“So Young”).

#493

Marvin Gaye - Here, My Dear

This album only exists because Marvin was required by his divorce settlement to make it and provide all of the royalties to his ex-wife and motown executive Anna Gordy Gaye. It’s absolutely bizarre, phoned in mid tempo funk whose lyrics range from the passive aggressive (“This is what you wanted right?”) to the petulant (“Why do I have to pay attorney’s fees?”). There is a seething realness here that crosses well past the border of uncomfortable. I don’t think it’s an amazing album to listen to, but it’s an amazing album to exist: Marvin Gaye is legally obligated to throw his own divorce pity party, and everyone's invited.

#492

Bonnie Raitt - Nick of Time

I have never heard of Bonnie Raitt before but apparently this album won several grammys including album of the year in 1989 and sold 5 million copies, which I guess goes to show that no award provides less long term relevance than the grammys. The story around the album is pretty heartwarming, it was her first massive hit after a career of whiffs, and Bonnie Raitt herself is apparently a social activist and neat human being. I say all this because this sort of 80s country blues rock doesn't really connect with me, but the artist obviously deserves more than that. I unequivocally like the title track though, a hand-clap backed winding electric piano groove about literally finding love before your eggs dry up.

#491

Harry Styles - Fine Line

I do not think I have ever heard a one direction song because I am an adult who only listens to public radio. I’m totally open to pop bands or boy bands or boy band refugee solo artists, but I don’t like anything here. It’s like a mixtape of the worst pop trends of the decade, from glam rock that sounds like it belongs in a car commercial to folky bullshit that sounds like it belongs in a more family focused car commercial. This gets my first DNP (Does Not Place).

#490

Linda Ronstadt - Heart Like a Wheel

Another soft-rock blues and country album which just doesn’t land with me. But the opener “You’re No Good” is like a soul/country hybrid which still goes hard and the title track hits with the lyrics “And it's only love and it's only love / That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out”.

Current Ranking, which is weirdly almost like an inverse of the rolling stones list so far;

[kimyoonmiauthor]

Myka and James Stauffer rehoming a disabled child--What more can you do?

I wrote this once, but then it wouldn’t post. So this is a second time, excuse it if it’s not as eloquent as it should be. I’m an international adoptee, so we’re more affected by this case than most because according to Reuters 2013 more of us are “rehomed” than others. Because of this, I’ve also been following the case since 2010. So all of the people “shocked” by this terminology needs to listen to adoptees. Over the last 10 years or so, I’ve been collecting resources and things YOU as non-adoptees can do to help. This has included listening to Birth Parents, Adoptees, Adoptive Parents, Former Foster Youth, and basically using my Anthropology training to collect a list. I have to remind you that going after the Stauffers alone isn’t enough. We have to go after the systems that enabled them to do this in the first place so this does not happen to another child. I get it. Vigilante justice feels good. It’s short, sweet and you get results and to see the face of the individual. A system doesn’t have a face you can gloat over. But if you really do care, you’d go after prevention and long term change, otherwise your outrage--and I’m including all of those youtubers I had to sort through (which was painful at best, but so goes advocacy), is empty. You only care about your own self-satisfaction rather than the long term cause or the people involved themselves. (My anti-Cancel Crew objections are along this line of thought.) Since I’ve been asked what this looks like and re-pasting it over and over is a pain, I decided to centralize the post with the levels of justification for the action. I get this post is longish, but take the part you need to make that change you want to advocate for.

If you want to take parts of this post, you can take the links without credit, but not the specific words. And don’t take credit for work you didn’t do.

What is Rehoming?

The often legal, but immoral act of placing a child without oversight of the state or government by placing them on the internet or doing backyard deals. We adoptees have been battling facebook pages for years to shut it down. I am not naming them, because I don’t want to encourage the behavior.

This is separate from dissolution of adoption. This is done with home study and legal oversight.

Why is this a Problem?

Adoptive parents go through a long, long process call home study this can take anywhere from a few months to a year. This has evolved over the years. Since this specific case involves international adoption, I’ll do a run down of the evolution of how home study has evolved in the International adoption community. I know it’s dry and boring, but it’s important to understand why the Stauffer case is egregious and why I am holding Holt responsible.

Home study used to be, “Are you Christian?” as done by the Holts. To be clear, social workers and his translator at the time objected to this. His reasoning? He thought all Christians are good people. (Though if you check the qualifiers for genocide by the UN, this is loosely on the list.) Adoptees were lucky to even get half a page.

This resulted in children being put into sex trafficking rings and child slavery. Social workers and Adoptees legislated against the Holts and the restrictions went up. (The whole list of immoral, yet not illegal crimes the organization has done as a whole, is a whole other story. I know it backwards and forwards as an adoptee with dates and countries since I’ve been in the adoptee community since roughly 1999.) This took 20 years from the first children in 1940′s and 1950′s. The home study in the 1970′s was still thin, but the amount of abuse cases went down. By the 1980′s, there was pressure to actually care about the children, so ESWS (one of the Korean agencies) and the other agencies in Korea started pushing for more extensive home studies (at the behest of Adoptees). The packet and requirements were thin. This included things like checking the financials of the family in question. Giving the parents language lessons, and then a packet usually about an inch thick. They would also get family statements and recommendations. A social worker would come and check the safety of the home. By about the 1990′s the packet has increased, and psychological evaluations started to be put into place. There were lists of books added to the list. (I asked Adoptive Parents to help me with this.) These were “suggestions” but no one tested if the prospective parents read them. So the packets given were about 6 inches deep, with the books about a foot. The in-class studies, several honest Adoptive Parents called “laughable” there was no race training at all and most of it was hanging out.

By the early 2000′s, they started to finally let parents of color adopt in larger numbers. (I know) The rehoming had gotten far more decent. The psych evaluations got deeper. They started to exclude criminal activity, do background checks on the parents, and do deeper psych evaluations, requiring deeper studies. But the Adoptive Parents I talked to said they were not getting the support they needed. The agencies weren’t listening on what they needed to parent their child. This is about the time I started collecting a wishlist and sending it to agencies. As far as I’m connected, nothing has really changed since then. The problem with rehoming is that it sets us back to 1950′s rules. All of this progress that Adoptees, Social workers, and well-meaning Adoptive Parents have fought hard for is done in an instant. There is no home study and the former parents get away with it because Adoptees and Foster Kids are not protected by the same laws that children from birth are.

What does this have to do with the Stauffers?

The Stauffers, a few years ago, decided to adopt a kid from China. They are social influencers. So they asked to fund their child’s adoption. They opted to have a child with special needs and by reports “checked 99% of them.” They paid zero for the adoption, and then used him to boost one of their channels and Instagram follower’s accounts. Their channel boosted by a ton of money, such that they could move into a mansion, their “dream home”, go on several large family vacations, made off of publicizing his story for their own “disability savior” points. Some of the videos, however, were problematic.

He was later said to have autism, and was in speech therapy, by Myka who wanted to “save” money on him by bringing him to a cheaper therapist. Despite this, the channel grew.

Then suddenly the boy disappeared from the channel. After months of pressuring her, they released a video saying they had “rehomed” him. The internet was enraged by this and went after her and James Stauffer. They tried to push Myka to receive all the blame to protect James Stauffer’s channel. All of the videos of this little boy were still up and monetized. They came up with a petition to force all of the videos down. The monetized videos came down and a new petition started: https://www.change.org/p/youtube-shut-down-myka-stauffer-s-youtube-account?signed=true

I also started a letter writing campaign to the governor to make sure it was getting investigated. Everyone else posting about it was trying to go after Myka Stauffer, but I wanted legal change. With me and my network, we worked three days straight to finally get an answer and make sure that the boy they had adopted and “rehomed” was safe.

Is Rehoming New?

Internet Amnesia is real. No. It’s been happening to public knowledge since 2010.

There was the NYC case which got turned into a Law and Order Special Victims Unit episode: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/svu-shines-a-light-on-the_b_4735153

There was the Justin Harris case.

There was the Hart case. (They rehomed once and were able to adopt two more times.)

And if you didn’t think it was covered before then there is also:

https://www.today.com/parents/it-takes-more-love-what-happens-when-adoption-fails-918076

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2018/11/children-who-have-second-adoptions/575902/

https://mljadoptions.com/blog/adoption-rehoming-disruption-dissolution-20140520

I’ve been riding my own state to institute laws against rehoming, and they finally did it, after the Governor vetoed it once, and I chased him about it. You could be a person that does this too.

So What Can I Do to be a Part of the Change? Here is a PDF of the current anti-rehoming laws. Press for the ones in your state to be cleaned up/invented. https://www.childwelfare.gov/pubPDFs/custody_transfers.pdf Here's contacts for the city where they live if you want to make sure they get justice for him. http://www.delawareohio.net/agendas-motions-summaries-meeting-recordings/meet-city-council-2/ You can contact Governor Mike DeWine and ask him to do something similar to this law https://www.writing.ucsb.edu/sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.writ.d7/files/sitefiles/publications/2010_Sho.pdf which would give Huxley 90% of the earnings in a trust fund and protect the other Stauffer kids: https://governor.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/governor/contact The petition to take down their videos is here (They shifted their channels, but still have Huxley's content up.): https://www.change.org/p/youtube-demand-the-stauffers-remove-all-monetized-content-ft-huxley-from-their-youtube-channel?recruiter=1095019618

There is a more strict petition here: https://www.change.org/p/youtube-shut-down-myka-stauffer-s-youtube-account?signed=true There is a federal law that's been in the works since about 2015, when the Justin Harris case broke. Langevin has been trying to get it passed. It has bipartisan support.  https://langevin.house.gov/press-release/bipartisan-bill-will-protect-adopted-children-rehoming He is the one that said that cats and dogs have more protections than adoptees or foster care youth have. 

https://willbrownsberger.com/rehoming-of-adopted-children/

Send them love and support for working on this for so long. I think if people really, really did care, they'd call their Senators and make sure they are supporting this bill (It has bipartisan support): https://www.senate.gov/senators/How_to_correspond_senators.htm

Why and How to Hold Holt Responsible

Holt wasn’t responsible for the placement of this young boy. However, he is still their charge. When they absorbed the other agency, they should have checked on their charges and made sure they were doing well. But they didn’t.

This seems like a mild crime in most people’s eyes, but case after case, their failure to give Adoptive Parents support and check on them has resulted in a huge list of them saying, “This is unfortunate.”, but then not changing their contracts and trying to clean up the system they perpetuate. Since they are the largest of the International Adoption agencies, they also could set an example, by say, not enabling people to adopt on repeat from them if they’ve rehomed a child. (Shouldn’t their records show that?) and creating a network of adoption agencies to prevent abuse and rehoming so the Hart case doesn’t repeat.

https://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/nyregion/chinas-adoption-scandal-sends-chills-through-families-in-united-states.html https://books.google.com/books?id=ABEoAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA224&lpg=PA224&dq=Holt+International+abuse&source=bl&ots=3tvNla8X2x&sig=ACfU3U00GO4BzWMLUnU9dnI_EYqy1VwilA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi546nirOvpAhV3HzQIHWTwCow4ChDoATAFegQIDBAB#v=onepage&q=Holt%20International%20abuse&f=false And this is the complete list: http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/6194

Their contact:

https://www.holtinternational.org/contactus.php

But what do I ask for?

I compiled this list with the help of Adoptive Parents who have dealt with Holt before.

- Psych evaluations to take out the Narcissistic people (though stop selling it as a Savior Project would also help.) - Check their parenting styles--some styles do and some styles don't work for adoptees because of the initial trauma. - Minimum Foster Care training.

Many adopters go the rehoming route because they believe the Foster Care system is broken and listen to the news. It is, but they should work with Social Workers because Backyard deals are less than that. Obama (no matter how you feel about him) suggested Foster Care training for all Adoptive Parents which is more rigorous than home study for most states (though this also needs revision). - Make them learn the language of the adoptee they are adopting for at least one year (where it applies and they would have to pass with a C or better.) This is mostly so they learn the cultural standards of the country and it helps cement ideas about socialization as well that is hard to describe otherwise. - Holt specifically forbids Adoptive Parents from contacting Foster Parents after placement--reverse that.  Adoptive Parents had to work around them and those that did had better outcomes for their child. Often the Foster Parents were eager to help. - Adoption agencies would be required with any international adoption to give a run down from the foster parents of some basics of socialization (for the country), and maybe some basic training. This would be interactive. (as supposed to the next item)

- Give a basic rundown sheet of things to help the child transition from standard socialization practices. How to comfort the child? What specific foods was the child eating? Is there a brand of detergent that was used in their original home? Where does the child sleep? What are their sleeping hours? What type of clothes do they wear? Things people take for granted and think are universal. Anthropologists and Foster Parents could help with this. - For parents taking on disabilities, they should be required prior to encounter the disability and meet more seasoned parents currently dealing with the disability in question--especially adoptive parents. So they can ask questions, network and really, really see if they can handle it. Don't take their word for it. - Adoptees, PoC, etc and any other diversity labels involved with the child should be required to be in close contact with them. i.e. not the internet. Basic race, etc training should apply and they have to pass a test.

-Check on the Adoptee after placement.

After Adoption care. Several APs said they would have really liked this, but then they were left in the dark. In fact their agencies gave them zero support. And the baby would cry and cry and they were totally lost on what to do. They were lost on which experts to ask, and who they could contact. This is unacceptable. Dogs and cats get more checks and aftercare than human children.

On the consequences end,

Child trafficking and Abandonment--Holt should press for those laws. APs that care are for this. They said, why aren’t there these laws?

Also any adopters that rehome would be banned from adopting again, and they would be added to a general blacklist and spread that information to other agencies.

Through this dissolution of adoption should be the key.

If they break the contract, you can sue.

Lastly, don’t believe you are alone. Your anger can make change. At least let your anger last long enough to make this change to the laws so we adoptees don’t have to hear next year how people are shocked yet again by another rehoming case. Be the change the world needs. You aren’t helpless.

[kpopmusiclyricsalbums]

My Thoughts on JYP Entertainment

Founder/CEO: J.Y. Park - Good but problematic 

I have complicated feelings about JYP as a person.  I think that as a business man he is smart and knows his business.  I also think he knows how to train his trainees, but as a person and creator he has done some questionable things.  Mostly he is very misogynistic towards his female trainees, along with his own music lyrically.  

Two examples of this is during Sixteen he told Jihyo that she was too fat...to a 17-18 year old girl.  She also wasn’t what people would even considered fat.  His reasoning was not a good one, it was simply a stylistic look choice of a dancer’s body that he wanted and thus a 17-18 year old girl who was probably going through puberty wasn’t the ‘right size’ for him.  He also said this to another girl who was 17 on the nizi project in 2020.  Only five years later, his views unchanged.  

The second example is his questionable lyrics that he gives TWICE.  Not only in Cheer Up which is basically telling a guy, even when I say no, keep pestering me.  And Yes or Yes, basically disregarding that No isn’t an answer.  If either one of those songs was sung in context of a boy group, they would have been accused of disregarding the probablemic argument that as a society of a whole, women face daily.  There are other songs for example Girls Girls Girls by Got7, and I will probably go into a deeper separate post about cheer up and Yes or Yes, even other songs he has written as well, but I wanted to give examples here.  (Also not trying to put down TWICE or GOT7, counting that they didn’t write the lyrics or choose the song.  I’m talking about the Song writer, a man in his 40’s.) 

Company as a whole: Not the worst, but not the best.  (But really is any company) 

As a company, to me at least, they always wanted to be seen as a creative and forward thinking company rather then looking at it for money reasons, but how they treat their groups scheduling wise, future groups, and even trainee’s it seems to be more about money then what they want you to think.  It sometimes feels like a shady company that wants a sugar coat cover to hide what they do.  

JYP Entertainment is always praised for their look on mental health in their company and health in general.  Which is a good quality to have, but they also are just doing the bare minimum.  They are not doing it proactively, instead of only doing it after it’s a huge issue to the point were it affects business.  

Such as with Mina, it’s good that they didn’t force her to be on stage when she has a panic disorder, but also they let it get to the point where she couldn’t even go on stage.  With how much they promote and with no rest really given to the group until it’s absolutely necessary, meaning the girls’ are constantly working, I’m surprised only one member seems to have broken.  

Their trainee system: They don’t seem to care so much about talent

For their trainee’s they seem to pick nice, wholesome people who work hard.  Which isn’t bad qualities at all.  They also have strict rules that they have to follow, such as the dating ban, the no going to bars ban (which makes sense to me considering the burning sun scandal and so on).  They don’t seem to have a diet for trainee’s, but from the views of their Founder, I think it’s probably an unspoken rule.  

Compared to other companies, talent wise, they seem to focus more on dancing skills then actual singing.  When they do have singing, they seem to have a more westernized singing rather than a technical one.  This is kind of made apparent on the show Unnies, when Tiffany recorded with JYP.  Tiffany was trained at SM Entertainment which is known for having a more technical singing education.  During their recording he showed her a more breathy way.  She even stated, it was more about feeling rather then technique.  Which isn’t bad.  Most theatre performances want to emphasis feelings rather then technique, but if you can’t hit a note, there’s a too much of a problem.  Plus this doesn’t necessarily mean a good longevity career wise, because if you are using improper technique for long periods of time, it could result in vocal issues in the future.    

Moving on….

On how they treat Male Groups: They last longer then the girl groups.

Current Male Groups they have: 

2PM + Soloists 

Day6 - Band + Soloists 

JJ Project 

Got7 + Soloists 

Stray Kids 

Jus2 (sub Unit) 

3Racha (Sub Unit) 

J.Y. Park (Soloist) 

Former Notable Groups they had: 

2AM

G.O.D. 

Rain (Soloists) 

So with The boy groups, they seem to have a more usual staggered comeback release date, other then Day6 which for a year, they released a single every month.  From my past experience, they seem to promote Got7 over Day6 and now that Stray Kids have entered the chat, Got7 is now getting less promotions resources wise.  Which makes sense in terms of business, because they are already established while Stray Kids being the new kids on the block have less of a fan base.  That is normal for most companies, given that the Kpop system relies heavily on the already established fandom that they create in the first couple of years rather than a long term comeback and promotional system.  

2PM is from their 2nd generation of idols, along with their counterpart 2AM.  They had a similar single release date between the two like got7 does with stray kids.

I am mostly excluding G.O.D. and Rain from this conversation because they are from the very beginning, where JYP was just starting out.  G.O.D. is considered a legendary 1st generation group, and Rain is considered a legend in term so of male soloists himself. 

Just mainly speaking on Got7, Day6, and Stray Kids, their most active male groups currently, here is a timeline from their debut years and how many singles they each had.  

2014 - got7 Debut 

Got7: 4 singles, 2 Ep’s, 1 Studio

2015 - Day6 debut

Got7: 4 Singles, 2 EP’s 1 Repackaged, 

Day6: 1 Single, 1 Ep

2016

Got7: 3 Singles, 2 Ep’s,  2 Studio 

Day6: 1 Single, 1 EP

2017 - Stray Kids Debut 

GOt7: 3 Singles, 3 Ep’s

Day6: 12 Singles, 2 Studio 

Stray Kids: 1 Single 

2018 

Got7: 5 Singles, 1 Ep, 1 Studio,1 Repackaged 

Day6: 6 Singles, 2 Ep’s, 1 Compilation, 1 Studio 

Stray Kids: 3 Singles, 4 Ep’s 

2019 

Got7: 3 Singles, 4 Ep’s, 1 Repackaged

Day6: 2 Singles, 1 Ep, 1 Compilation, 1 Studio 

Stray Kids: 5 Singles, 2 Ep’s 1 Repackaged 

To note, in 2020, Stray kids have 6 singles already planned or have happened.  Out of the three, Day6 seems to have the least amount of promotions all together minus one year when they released a single a month.  

On how they treat Female Groups: Milk them for they got then leave them to dry Once they hit a certain age.  

Current Female Groups they have:

Itzy 

Twice 

Former Notable Groups they had: 

Miss A + Soloists 

Wonder Girls + Soloists 

15& + Soloists 

Jeon Somi/Trainee - complicated thing

Baek A Yeon (Soloists) 

They treat their female groups  differently then their male counterparts.  For them, they either care or they don’t.  Which is a weird thing to say, but you can tell by how they promote and how many singles they have.  For most JYP Groups, they seem to be more of an afterthought with recycled concepts over and over again. With Itzy is too early to tell they path that they will go with.  Will it be like MissA whose single count capped out at 8, with only one member the focus of the group?  Will it be like 15&, who was never actually given the chance to shine and disbanded before they were even known as a group?  Or will they overwork them like Twice?  Wonder Girls started off good, but once they went to US and didn't get the results that I think JYP wanted, they were fazed out, as they grew older.  JYP with their girl groups, seems to not know what to do with them once they hit a certain age.  Which isn’t just a JYP problem, but a KPOP problem.  The only differences is, he doesn’t wait till they are close to 30.  They tend to stop earlier.  

Let’s look at the numbers shall we….

15& - Deserved better!  

Debuted in 2012 at 15 (Both girls were 15) 

1 Studio Album 

5 Singles (4 of them on one album) 

Disbanded after having a four year hiatus 

Active only for 3 years (2012-2015) 

Disbanded by at the age of 18.

Miss A - Should have focused on the group as a whole, not just one member.

Debuted in 2010 at average age of 19.5

2 Studio Albums, 2 single Albums, 3 EP’s 

8 Singles...yeah just 8.

Active for 5 years (disbanded in 7 years) 

Disbanded by the average age of 24.5 (2015) 26.5 (official Disbandment) 

Wonder Girls - a Legend that had so much potential with their band concept!  

Debuted in 2007 at the average age of 16.2

3 Studio Albums, 4 EP’s 

15 Singles (with 2007 being their most releases in a year with 4)

Active for 8 years (Disbanded in 10) (In 2017 they had one goodbye song never promoted)  

Disbanded by the average age of 26.8 (2017) 

TWICE - Overworked for money

Debuted in 2015 at the average age of 16.8

3 Studio Albums, 2 Compilation Albums, 4 Repackaged, 9 EP’s (Still counting they haven’t disbanded yet) 

23 Singles in 5 years (not counting the 1 in 2020). 

They had 5 singles alone in 2017 only in korea 

In 2018 they had 9 comebacks total between South Korea and Japan 

Back to just 5 in 2019.  

Average is 2-3 comebacks a year for girl groups for the first two years then 1 or 2 after that...TWICE’s least active year was 2016 with 2.  (Not counting their debut in 2015.) 

As of 2020, their average age will be 21.8. 

Also on solo artists, he has no idea what to do with them really, regardless of male or female.    

Overall, I think I’m more critical of JYP as a company, because they try to hide the fact that they function like a business as opposed to YG or SM in terms of big three.  They want to be seen more of an artist themselves rather then a business, which I find hypocritical.  I based my opinions on facts and overall feel of the company that I get from them.

In terms of music, I tend to like vocal’s more, which also is not just a kpop thing.  It’s true for most music genres, which is a personal preference.  

So To end on happy notes, 

Groups I Like from the company: 

Miss A 

Wonder GIrls 

Day6 

Baek A Yeon 

I know it’s a lot of former….

Some Songs that I like that you should check out from this company: 

ITZY - Dalla Dalla 

TWICE - What is Love?, Like OOH-AHH, Dance the Night Away 

MISSA - Hush, Only You, I Don’t Need a Man, Bad Girl Good Girl 

Wonder Girls - Tell Me, Nobody, Be My Baby, Why So lonely, Draw Me 

Day6 - Congratulations, Out of My Mind, I need Somebody Lean On Me  

Got7 - Just Right, Miracle, Hard Carry 

Baek a Yeon - Sad Song, Shouldn’t Have, So-So Just Because 

Stray Kids - Hellevator 

Things to note in general: 

Some of these are not just JYP issues, but also a kpop industry as a whole.  I tried to point those out, when I can.  

It’s well known that Male groups are a gamble in terms of profit either they make a ton of money or the loose a ton of money, while Female groups always bring you money just with a shorter life span and don’t tend to out sell male groups (With some exceptions), which is why most small time companies debut female groups in order to gain money to debut a male group.  

Also this just my opinion, so these issues might not be a problem for you, maybe you even prefer dancing groups to vocal groups.  Both are valid.  I’m just giving another opinion.  

Masterlist

[latin-dr-robotnik]

What went wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces? (ft. beevean)

The following is a project I’ve been cooking for some weeks, trying to find out some reasons behind the general lackluster feeling that surrounds Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces. As you may have spotted already, this is not a solo project, since I’ve had the opportunity to talk about this very same topic with @beevean and she raised quite a couple of interesting points that I’m going to bring up as we go through. 

Also, Spanish speakers: you can catch the Spanish version of this post here, it’s probably a more polished experience with additional text.

Long post below, so, bring up a ladder and a boombox, I’ll explain along the way. (there’s also a tl;dr at the bottom if you are that type of person)

Sonic Forces stands as a divisive point in the Sonic fandom, that much we all know, and we are not going to discuss the game’s general quality at all on this post. But we are going to take a solid look at Classic Sonic and, most importantly, its music, since I consider that’s the most clear symptom of a bigger problem with Classic Sonic in general, in this post-Generations Modern Sonic world.

A quick look at Classic Sonic

When Classic Sonic debuted in Sonic Generations (2011) as this new-but-also-old Sonic, gaming as a whole was still being bombarded with this “retro-revival movement” that brought back many classic franchises (like classic Mega Man with MM9 and 10 after a decade since MM8), and SEGA itself was in the middle of that train with the recently released Sonic 4: Episode 1 (2010). While Sonic 4 tried to marry Sonic’s current style with classic level tropes and even Genesis-inspired music in a seamless way (showing Sonic’s physical transition from his Sonic 3 days to Sonic Adventure as a smooth one), this new “Classic Sonic” guy in Generations suffered from a mixed message about his origins: is he Sonic from the past, from an alternate universe, or both? Is his music supposed to sound like arrangements of his classic 16-bits tunes or just modern-sounding remixes like the rest of the soundtrack? The fandom still debates about it to this day.

This all led to the introduction of a character that, although considered a “Sonic” like the other “Modern” one, could not establish his own identity beyond Generations’ anniversary-title plot threads. No unique music style, no unique traits, he was just a simpler Sonic.

Major manifestation of the Classic problem.

Fast-forward some years to November 2017, Sonic Forces’ release date. Besides gameplay, story and character criticisms, the music of Forces turned out to be quite controversial for a part of the fandom. Although I personally consider the Avatar songs as top-tier Sonic music, I share similar concerns as the rest about the rest of the game’s music, specially the Classic Sonic level themes. 

With Forces, it seems the composers managed to solve some of Gens’ Classic Sonic music problems, as this time there was a better and more consistent attempt at making Classic’s music sound more at home with the “Genesis days” tunes, but even then the composers fell into other traps that ended up being more damaging to the final product.

Years later after the game’s release, I finally brought up this very same topic during a conversation with beevean (I encourage you that, if you find the following snippets interesting, read the entire conversation), and she had the following thoughts to share as to why Classic Sonic’s music was so... underwhelming:

the classic music in forces is the weakest part of the ost, some tracks are okay while others suck, and the main reason for this is that they hired the wrong people for the job

Okay, that wasn’t a fair cut on my part. She talks a lot more about each and every aspect behind the music, and about the people that composed it, she had the following to say:

Okay, about Forces’ music. First of all, the Classic tracks were handled by two people: Tomoya Ohtani, who also composed pretty much 90% of the OST and has been working solo since 2013 (relevant later), and Naofumi Hataya, one of the two geniuses behind Sonic 2 8-bit’s and Sonic CD’s OSTs (plus some miscellaneous work in Heroes, Colors, Generations, etc.). If you loved tracks like Sky High, Palmtree Panic or Stardust Speedway, you have to thank him.

This is already a reason as to why the Classic music in Forces doesn’t resemble the music in the Genesis games. While I can understand that it would have been impossible to hire Masato Nakamura again, Jun Senoue would have been good for the job, having composed music for Sonic 3 and most importantly Sonic 3D Blast. But apparently Senoue was MIA until 2019, so who knows.

I’d like to point out that Naofumi Hataya’s involvement will play a bigger role later in this post, as we keep searching for what went wrong and we look for a potential solution when adressing Classic Sonic.

Beevean continued with:

There are mainly two problems here:

1) some of the tracks just don’t fit their stage. I already mentioned that Ghost Town sounds way too happy for a city under attack by giant robots. Death Prison sounds vaguely Egyptian and the difference with the original, bass-heavy composition is staggering. Chemical Flow is the most generic thing and would fit everything and nothing, and again comparing it with the original iconic track is just sad. I think the reason Casino Forest and Iron Fortress are my favorite Classic tracks is that they go very well with their respective stages. This is a problem Adventure 2 had as well, associating a particular style to a particular character, and while I think Forces did it better, for me the priority should be fitting a level.

2) Ohtani was once a very versatile composer (the guy could go in one game from Wave Ocean to Crisis City, for example), but since Lost World, the first game in which he had the responsibility of an entire soundtrack, his style quickly became “anime”. Runners’ tracks? “This sounds like an anime opening!”. How do you recognize his only track in TSR? It’s the one that sounds like an anime opening and uses a synth.

And look, I love Ohtani, he has nothing but my respect, and he made some of my absolute favorite tracks in the series. But I do think they’re making him work too much - he’s the best when he can work with at least another person, and has the chance to span a little. I also think his style is incompatible with the Classic music, which was never anime: even at its mellowest in Sonic 1 it always had a little jazzy/new jack swing touch. Basically the only thing they got right in this game is having a wicked bassline :P

It ain’t *only* the composers’ fault

Following beevean’s words, I’d like to add my own take on the problem. You see, I do agree that the composers maybe weren’t up to the task of nailing the classic Genesis tunes’ vibe (Hataya got real close, though), but at the same time I do think they weren’t properly oriented or didn’t have enough time to keep reiterating on the frameworks they were working with. Like beevean said, some of the tracks improve quite a bit after leaving behind that mixed as hell “almost Genesis but not quite” soundfont.

The composers will work on what they were told to make and I have a strong, albeith unconfirmed, feeling that the Classic Sonic composers where asked to “make it sound retro” by someone higher up on the project management chain, and after checking on their progress, simply said “meh, it’s retro enough, no one will notice”.

The “make it sound retro” argument, in my opinion, opens up a big discussion about Sonic music, because there is no easy way to make it “retro” with Sonic. You just can’t pump out a few nostalgic chiptunes and call it a day. Sonic music may have originated back in the 16-bit days of the Sega Genesis, but his identity is so much more than just that Genesis FM sound. I personally believe, similar to another thing beevean point out, that Forces focused too much on sounding “retro enough” instead of fitting each track better to each level theme or even tap into what really made Sonic appealing on the classic days. 

This last point is something that SEGA struggled a lot during the past decade, they introduced Classic Sonic as an entity separated from the current Sonic, yet they simply don’t give Classic Sonic enough development as it’s own character. He’s there because he’s there and we don’t know what to expect from him beyond “he represents the good old days”. But not even SEGA itself knows what that means.

So, what really makes up Classic Sonic’s identity?

For me this is the true heart of the post. Knowing full well what makes Classic Sonic should be the key to every project that features him. 

There are lots of points to make about Classic Sonic’s identity and how to establish him should he return once again on a 3D Sonic title (not even using the “modern” anymore, and I personally wouldn’t like to see him again on a 3D title for another decade, if ever), but seeing as the main topic of this post has been music, I’m going to focus on what music style makes Classic Sonic shine.

I already said that throwing some generic chiptunes won’t work, but I DO think that Genesis-inspired tunes can still work, should they stick to what made the classics so great.

And what is that? Well, you have several options here: you can choose from more J-Pop and jazzy tunes to some sick R&B and New Jack Swing beats, all the way through to late 80′s Acid House and wacky 90′s Dance music, even cinematic-like scores and ambient sounds.

Personally, I think the heavy R&B (with its fair share of New Jack Swing) influences are a constant throughout Sonic’s first years, and that kind of sound is one that goes well with his cool attitude™. Spring Yard Zone has always been referred to as “16-bit Every Little Step”, while Sonic CD... well, and Sonic 3... well... JAM. Even Masa’s demos of Sonic 2 feature some sick basses that aren’t all that different from what I was thinking (Chemical Plant and Metropolis come to mind). Sonic CD (JP, also the work of Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata) in particular springs up to my mind as the purest representation on everything that Sonic was about on his old days, but “pure” doesn’t necessarily mean “refined”, so I think the Sonic CD style coupled with some more smooth Pop for emotional moments (straight from Nakamura’s school of smoothness) and harder 90′s raves for boss fights (think how iconic Stardust Speedway Bad Future has become) could make up the perfect blend for Classic Sonic to follow in terms of style points, but also considering the general themes of each zone (Wacky Workbench being this Dance-heavy zone was a stroke of genius if you ask me, the same with Spring Yard being a jazzy urbanscape.)

Sonic is a product of the late 80′s and 90′s pop culture, he has the moves of MC Hammer, Bobby Brown, and of course, Michael Jackson (also his shoes). As such, no generic “retro nostalgic” tune will fit with him, unlike many other gaming franchises. By embracing Classic Sonic’s wacky nature gems like Sonic Mania happened, and just like I pointed it out to beevean, if you were there the week that game was first announced, you probably saw how much people were gushing about Studiopolis Act 1 sounding so much like Sonic CD with that funky beat. People instantly knew that was the Classic Sonic music they wanted to hear.

And just to make this section even better, I recently asked beevean about her thoughts on what makes Classic Sonic’s music identity. I now urge you to go and read her full analysis because it’s so deep yet very accessible, as I’ll be collecting just a few parts of her response for this post. Trust me, that post is so useful, go and reblog it now, I’ll wait here.

About Classic Sonic’s music styles, beevean says:

So… which is the style that fits Classic Sonic better?

The big love letter to the Classic series that is Mania used CD as an inspiration, and while Mania’s OST is excellent and one of my favorites… I don’t automatically associate New Jazz Swing with Classic Sonic. Before Mania, it was only in one game, the odd one in the bunch too.

3D Blast is my favorite Genesis soundtrack, and as I said it combines the best of two worlds (plus it’s just full of bangers), but it influenced the next era more than the Classic one. The same could be said for the American OST of CD - and besides, tracks like this are nothing like Sonic anyway.

Sonic 1 is the first one and all, but that mellow style fits that particular game more than Classic as a whole, I think the closest OST to this style was Advance 1, actually - another slow-paced, simple game.

So the choice is narrowed down to the ultra-popular Sonic 2 and the refined Sonic 3 & Knuckles. And I’ll be honest, while I think S3&K has higher “highs” compared to S2… my brain immediately jumps to the latter. When I think of Classic Sonic, I think of Genesis brass (the real deal, not that fake synth they used in Forces), twang basses, a swingy rhythm (too many to choose lol), and tons of energy.

Only one Classic track in Forces came close to this description. The others sound more like either a pale imitation of Sonic 1 or modern tracks with a bad soundfont, and that’s when they’re not a complete insult (no i won’t link to it you know what i’m talking about :V).

Author’s note: it’s been, like, two months and she still refuses to talk about Faded Hills, lol

Author’s note: sorry, beev.

(TL;DR) Closing thoughts.

So, what did go wrong with Classic Sonic’s music in Sonic Forces?

A lack of definition on what Classic Sonic even is about, carried from Generations, made the task of defining his style more difficult.

The composers weren’t up to the task, or they were simply asked to make Classic Sonic “sound retro”, generic sound be damned. 

This also means management of the project wasn’t that interested in the Classic portion, or they ran out of time to make it better. This is something that the entire game seemed to have a problem with as well.

The music didn’t fit the stages, and even if it did, Classic’s identity was all over the place. He was there just to be there, and his music suffered from that (compare it to Mania).

Tomoya Ohtani (often credited as the maker of the arguably worst tracks of Classic Sonic in the game) has experienced a shift on his musical style over the last few years that led to his tracks start sounding very similar to each other, this, coupled with the fact he was working on the other 2/3rds of the game’s OST, caused his Classic tracks in particular to suffer.

Classic Sonic’s tracks didn’t take from the 90′s Pop and R&B influences that plagued the old games, and as such, the current Classic Sonic doesn’t have an identity as strong as the original 90′s Sonic. Beevean’s take on this point involves Classic Sonic tracks that feature strong, legit Genesis brass, with twang basses, swingy rhythm and tons of energy.

Once again, I’d like to thank beevean for providing such insightful information and opinions (you can clearly see we both tend to have different takes on what made Sonic back in the 90′s, but in the end agreed to a similar set of requirements to make good Classic music, like basslines and lots of energy), which helped this post a lot more than you can imagine. I wanted to post this back in late January, but the extra time allowed me to keep thinking, searching and listening, while also opened the door to ask beev again about her opinions. This is probably the first “big” article I’ve written this year, and I hope to return soon enough with more. 

[shazzeaslightnovels]

Seireitsukai no Blade Dance 1

Official English Title: Blade Dance of the Elementalers

Author: Yuu Shimizu

Illustrator: Hanpen Sakura

Label: MF Bunko J

Release Date: 21 December 2010

Art Notes: This series went through 3 different illustrators throughout it’s life and I’ll be talking about each of them as we get to them. Hanpen Sakura was the original artist and covered the series for 13 volumes before having to step down due to health issues. Their art is definitely done in the moe style and, while it’s not really to my taste, I do like the character designs (Restia’s especially) and I think that it suits the series. I do remember Sakura’s art does get better as the series continues so I look forward to seeing that improvement.

Ecchi warning: aside from the cover, there’s also a colour illustration of a nude Claire getting attacked by a slimy water spirit.

So, first off, I have read part of this series before. It was years ago though, back in the day when fan translations reigned supreme, J-Novel Club wasn’t a thing yet, Yen-Press wasn’t licensing many light novels and I hadn’t begun to learnt Japanese yet. While my memories are a bit fuzzy, I do remember quite a bit about it so, while I don’t intend to spoil anything, there’s a possibility that I may do so on accident to please keep that in mind.

Anyway, I enjoyed this, though there were a few scenes that frustrated me a little bit. I especially enjoyed the fight scenes and found the protagonist to be charming. I definitely recommend it if you are into magic battle school series and don’t mind harem and ecchi elements.

Story:

Genre: Ecchi, Harem, Action, Fantasy, Magic school, Comedy

Elementalers - people who are able to make contracts with elemental spirits and use their powers for battle. The power usually only appears in pure maidens but it appears that Kamito is an exception. Having lost some of his memories three years ago, Kamito is on a search to find someone. His search takes him to a prestigious academy for young elementalers and the headmaster forces him to enrol there, telling him to compete in the blade dance, a competition in which elementalers compete in order to have their wish granted. Seeing as the blade dance may lead Kamito to find who he is looking for, he complies. But, this year, the blade dance is a group battle and Kamito must find 4 teammates in order to compete...

Content warnings: the ecchi here isn’t very hardcore (I mean, in comparison to modern ecchi light novels, anyway) but it is still there so I don’t recommend reading this series if you’re bad with that kind of thing. Also, there are violent tsundere characters and a character who has the form of a child but is actually hundreds of years old so, again, if you have issues with these character types then I don’t recommend it.

Yes, this is one of those series with a power that’s only meant to be used by girls except for the male protagonist who can use it because reasons, a bunch of tsundere, ecchi “comedic” scenes, misunderstandings and a magic battle school. I know that a lot people hate these types of series but I’ve always thought that they have a certain charm to them and I found myself enjoying this volume despite all of it’s cliches. The magic system is interesting and the battle scenes are exciting and the characters are likeable and that’s all I really want out of a series like this. There were some scenes that annoyed me like the misunderstanding scenes where Kamito ends up in a situation that looks bad and the girls are quick to jump to conclusions and accuse him of doing something that he didn’t actually do. It gets tiresome after a while but I did manage to look past it, in the end.

One of the main things that is set up in this volume is teamwork. The characters are very strong but they are really terrible at teamwork, especially Rinslet, and I look forward to seeing them get better at it. The other major plot points that are introduced here have to do with Kamito’s and Claire’s past as they’re both searching for someone. I’m really looking forward to unraveling the mysteries behind Kamito’s memory loss.

Character:

Kamito is an interesting and likeable protagonist. He has a mysterious past and slowly more facts about it get revealed over the course of this volume but we still don’t know everything and I look forward to learning more. I also find his personality charming with how he tends to tease the tsundere ojou-sama around him when they yell at him but is willing to apologise when he realises that he’s crossed a line. As you can tell from the cover, Claire, the fiery red-haired tsundere, is our main heroine for this volume. Her catchphrase is “I’ll burn you to cinders”, she weilds a whip that she often uses to wrap around Kamito’s neck and her first meeting with Kamito ends with her declaring that he needs to take responsibility and become her slave. The series has a few tsundere characters but she’s probably the most violent of them so she’s definitely one of those characters that is easy to hate. I think her tsun is made more bearable thanks to Kamito’s personality and his willingness to tease her when she gets violent and I found myself able to like her despite all of her flaws. I think there’s a lot of potential for good development with her and I hope to see her become less abusive as the series goes on.

As for the other heroines, 4 are introduced in this volumes and one’s a spoiler so I’ll just talk about the other 3 for now. Ellis is the captain of the school knights and she initially hates Kamito upon discovering his existence but she comes around to him by the end of the volume. She’s not as violent as Claire is but she is still a tsundere and often threatens to turn Kamito into *insert food of any type here* which I found amusing. Of the girls, Rinslet fits the archetype of “tsundere ojou-sama” the best but she’s less tsun than Claire and Ellis and is probably the least prone to violence of the three. I really enjoy her rivalry with Claire and I love her way of speaking. Est is a spirit that Kamito makes a contract with at the start of the volume. She doesn’t do a whole lot here but readers who enjoy the kuudere loli archetype should enjoy her. The supporting characters in this volume are memorable enough.

Adaptation Notes:

The manga adaptation is complete at 6 volumes and features art by Issei Hyouju (provided the art for the manga adaptations of Slayers Revolution, MM!, Slayers Evolution-R and the ongoing Isekai Meikyuu de Harem wo). It’s pretty good so far and has some great action panels and adorable chibi art. Some stuff is cut or moved but a lot of it improves the story as some of the more silly misundersting scenes are taken out and the moved scenes improve the pacing. It’s worth a mention that the scene in the light novel where Claire gets attacked by the water spirit is changed in the manga so that Claire and Rinslet get attacked by it while clothed. Anyway, I enjoyed the manga and I recommend it as a substitute for the light novel.

Apparently, there is another manga adaptation with art by Zenzai Yoshihira but it was cancelled after a few chapters due to health problems and a volume was never released so I can’t talk about it at all.

The anime adaptation is 12 episodes in length and this volume is adapted in the first 4 episodes. This is one of those cases where I wish that the anime staff had been more willing to cut stuff and change things. This is a short volume and it does not need 4 episodes to adapt it. The mediocre adaptation for this series is why I have to defend adaptations like Saijaku Muhai no Bahamut and Danmachi whose creators knew that volume 3 would not be a good enough stopping point to make an impression and saw opportunities to cut things out and I wish that Blade Dance had received a similar treatment. It’s also really low budgeted and you can tell. As for what I do like about the anime, I do enjoy the character designs and I like that the majority of the voice actors selected for the anime did not have much experience at the time, like Kana Yuuki, Shizuka Ishigami, Makoto Furukawa and Saori Oonishi. And they all nail their performances and are perfectly cast in their roles. There are some well-known voice actors cast as well, like Youko Hikasa, but most of the actors were not expeirenced when the anime was produced and I like that the anime gave the opportunity for these newer actors to shine.

Recommended for:

If you’re into battle school fantasy series and don’t mind harem and ecchi elements, read this. If you’re currently trying to learn Japanese through reading light novels and want to read a fantasy series, I found this easy to read. There is a bit of fantasy jargon but not too much and it’s quite short at around 250 pages.

I’ll be reading volume 2 fairly soon.

[re-vised]

I think we should talk about Nancy Drew

Hey. So I don’t post much here anymore. Sorry about that. But as a person who is somewhat of a gaming journalist, and Nancy Drew Game fan I wanted to talk about Nancy Drew: Midnight in Salem, which is launching very soon (about 6 hours from now).

For those of you unaware I’ll try and get you up to speed as best as I can. All jokes aside (bc tbh Nancy Drew is a bit of punching bag), I do in fact love Nancy Drew games. I’m a mystery fan, and a puzzle fan so it stands to reason that I fell in love with the series when I was younger. Herinteractive did some insane work, pumping out 2 games a year, leading it to currently having over 30 games in the series. But there has been a bit of a stir regarding the most recent entry: Midnight in Salem.

Midnight in Salem was first revealed, as the games were at that time, with a post-credit’s teaser in the previous game, Sea of Darkness. This is where we got the basic premise, and people started getting excited for a new entry. But on the eve of its launch, there is a lot of animosity flying around. It all stems back to the desire by Herinteractive to innovate.

Nancy Drew in its prior form was a point-and-click game. It makes sense I suppose, it’s first entry, Secrets Can Kill. So it seems that going forward into the 2010s, where point-and-click isn’t on trend, Her interactive saw fit to innovate by changing the formula. Seemingly the developer, looking to grab new audiences, hopes the changes will bring in higher numbers. Maybe it will, but in my experience this fandom is rather... shall we say insulated. The fandom is passionate and tight knit, but there isn’t any kind of movement of people into the fandom. Nancy Drew Games are well known, but there is already some stigma that lingers around the franchise. It’s perceived as girly, and casual. Is it deserved? I mean sure a bit yeah, but a move to a new engine will not change that. Hell, Unity has cheap devs not paying to have the Unity Ident removed, causing the engine to be associated with bad-quality games in some narrow minded individuals. The shift to Unity, would allow players to fully explore the 3D environments of the ND universe, but this means a lot more work. Work that Her interactive vastly underestimated.

The first obvious problem is that Her interactive had some vastly, inaccurate predictions of the work needed. It seemed to many that, whilst there might be *some* delays, that Midnight in Salem wouldn’t fall too far from the standard biannual schedule. In this case, Salem was set to release the year after it’s predecessor, giving a difference between the two of 9-21 months. With the upcoming date, it is being released just short of 55 months later. Now of course, delays happen. We don’t like them but they happen. But to have a game being kicked 4 years down the road is pretty crazy. It’s crazier if that four and a half year development time is that big a discrepancy from your initial projections. That’s just underestimation, and oversight like that has left some cold on the release.

Many are of course looking through a crazy lens. This game basically replaced 9 possible releases. People are giving an unfair view of this. As such people are wondering if it is “worth the time” spent on it, which I mean it won’t be. A game can’t really be that good that it is going be worth 9 games that’s unrealistic.

But could it all be worth it? Well no I don’t think so. Nancy Drew as a brand is not something that people have been itching to jump on. There are no COD bros who secretly wanted to jump on board but didn’t want to bc it was point and click. I think for the most part, Midnight in Salem will not bring in new fans to buy stuff, but some fans seem to be feeling a bit dejected.

Whilst I can’t abide the fans jumping on #NotMyNancyDrew, protesting the crime of changing the format, let’s be real, it is a step back. See the games looked good in their previous style, but creating a fully immersive 3D environment is pumping totally different, unused muscles, and it shows. Textures are unimpressive. Character models leave a lot to be desired. Simply put, the resources are stretched thin, and there are some obvious faults in the screenshots we have been seeing.

All in all Midnight in Salem is rather disappointing. In trying to capture more audience, Her interactive is doing a disservice to itself. It’s done so much work polishing point and click to a mirror shine, and seems to have thrown it away to pursue something that seems poised to fail. The backlash, whilst a little overblown, is not unjustified. Unfortunately with the backdrop seemingly being Her Interactive flagging as a company, this will probably fail. And as much as I do not want it to be the truth, the company as a whole might not be far behind

[noveltylsland-blog]

Our 2019 First Quarter Roundup

thank u, next - Ariana Grande

(Republic)

Ariana Grande has followed up last year’s charming Sweetener with a more consistent, more confident and more moving record; thank u, next. As usual, Ariana’s voice is really something to behold, hitting every note perfectly as she delves into her own heartbreak, loss and guilt following the death of her ex-boyfriend, Mac Miller. Ariana bravely goes into this with no features, which proves to be a powerful decision, as there are no obnoxious Pharrell additions or out-of-date Lil Wayne verses, making for an appropriately personal record. As if to ease us away from the lack of rap features, we are treated to a Wendy Rene sample on ‘Fake Smile’, which will put a real smile on the face of any hip-hop head. The juxtaposition of deep lyrical themes with the positive, playful instrumentation is rather refreshing, and it’s good to see Ariana excited about life and this new chapter in her life. -M

Gallipoli - Beirut

(4AD)

Zach Condon’s Beirut project has buried Balkan folk deep in the hearts of the Western indie fanatics ever since the release of its first three albums. He’s had us enamoured with the sound ever since, and while Beirut’s work has seemingly gotten ever more formulaic and poppy, that folky, worldly manifesto has never really left Condon. Compared to 2015’s No No No, the most recent Beirut project Gallipoli actually sees him taking it in a more varied and independent direction, and you’ll be hard-pushed to find anything objectionable as Beirut traverse their usual pastures of percussive ukulele and various organs and synthesisers. Gallipoli isn’t short of entirely new sounds for the band either and, indeed, it’s hard to see it as anything but a solid record. Condon might not be making the same impact on the musical landscape as he was thirteen years ago but this is his most consistent release in a decade. Gallipoli proves there are indie bands in far worse form than Beirut; an admirably fresh and progressive release for a band who probably don’t particularly need to be either of those things. -E

Assume Form - James Blake

(Polydor)

Even if it isn’t quite the musical landscape-defining, career-best record that James Blake seems inevitably destined to produce, Assume Form goes quite some distance to confirming him as one of this era of popular music’s defining and most influential figures. And that means a lot, considering no one else is really quite like him. There’s a very particular beauty to the combination of Blake’s music style and his love-themed lyricism, and Assume Form sees both assemble for an impressive, career-best effort. More checked for excess than The Colour in Anything but more stylistically developed than Overgrown, the niche Blake has found treads a fine line between hip-hop and sparse, soulful electronica. Assume Form shows what he can do with both, seeing the likes of Travis Scott and Andre 3000, but also Moses Sumney and Rosalía, make impactful and appropriate appearances alongside Blake’s own plainly romantic lyrics. He’s refreshingly obsessive and open but never too doting or unrelatable, and tracks such as ‘Assume Form’, ‘Can’t Believe the Way We Flow’ and ‘I’ll Come Too’ clearly reveal this untethered romantic happiness. Whether you like his newfound bessottedness or not, one can’t deny Blake has carved himself a distinctive aesthetic, to such an extent it’s no wonder his collaboration is so sought-after by hip-hop artists. Even more exciting is that there’s probably much better to come from Blake, and he remains (as he has for the last ten years) one of the most interesting and exciting artists in popular music. -E

Liv - Daniel Blumberg & Hebronix

(Mute)

Apparently a collaboration between Daniel Blumberg and himself (an endeavour I’m still not sure is artistically innovative or a bit pretentious) Liv builds on Blumberg’s 2018 release Minus with impressive amounts of abrasive noise and more chaotic baroque instrumentation. Hebronix is supposed to be Blumberg’s own psych-pop project, predating his releases under his own name, but on Liv it seems like he’s used it to fill out his own sound. His lonely vocals are more like Phil Elverum on the louder Microphones/Mount Eerie records, while the scrawls of anxious feedback that underly the majority of Liv endlessly build to lengthy, haunting finales; entirely validating the record’s lack of drums. The fact that Liv was recorded in only one take is a feat unto itself, never mind the consistency and coherence that it gives the record. Despite seeing releases on the infamous Mute Records, Blumberg continues to be overlooked by pretty much everyone – and as he’s putting out exceptional, genre-bending experimental music like this he deserves far, far more attention than he currently enjoys. -E

Careful - Boy Harsher

(Nude Club)

Despite “minimal wave” having seemingly ran its course, Boy Harsher provide another argument for it being the perfect time to rework the genre. On Careful, inspiration is clearly drawn from the likes of Depeche Mode and New Order, but whereas these bands created colourful, dynamic dance tracks, Boy Harsher do the complete opposite; as if they’ve been booked to DJ a funeral. Ghostly vocals speak of abandonment and loss over layers of cold, pounding synths and minimal drums – fit for any cyberpunk movie. Dotted throughout the record are a handful of quieter, atmospheric moments which add to this cinematic feel; intensifying the anxious, dark nature of the project. This is a synthpop record which truly reflects the times. –M

Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery - The Comet is Coming

(Impulse!)

The sophomore offering from The Comet Is Coming is the latest outstanding British jazz record, taking the reins from from Sons of Kemet’s 2017 offering Your Queen is a Reptile (incidentally another project with the involvement of Shabaka Hutchings), with more of an electronic, rock fusion. Fusion of the last twenty years has usually been the result of influence the other way, injected jazz into electronic, funk or rock music; but Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mystery appears to have come the opposite way. Foremostly a jazz record but enhanced and driven by elements of other genres, it’s catchy and passionate spiritual jazz, topped off with harks to Sun Ra and an inventive space-age theme. The Comet is Coming are yet more evidence of the burgeoning, world-leading London jazz scene and this is easily one of the year’s most striking and innovative releases. -E

Czarface Meets Ghostface - Czarface and Ghostface Killah

(Silver Age)

The follow up to the much-anticipated and mostly-forgotten Czarface Meets Metal Face, Czarface Meets Ghostface proves to be an enjoyable return to form for both Czarface and Ghostface Killah. As usual, all beats are produced by The Czar-Keys (7L and Jeremy Page) and are an electrifying mix of updated, gritty boom-bap, and futuristic beats reminiscent of early-morning superhero cartoons. Lyrically, the emcees really entertain, bringing the right amount of corniness needed for a project based around comic book superheroes, but still manage to sound imposing and even threatening when necessary. A specific standout moment is Esoteric’s verse on ‘The King Heard Voices’ in which he moves his way between four different flows with such ease. Comparisons with the collaboration with MF DOOM were always going to be drawn, and, for this album, that is a good thing. I’m not sure it would have been able to stand on its own, but in comparison, it shines. –M  

Remind Me Tomorrow - Sharon Van Etten

(Jagjaguwar)

Sharon Van Etten’s most lyrically and instrumentally developed record yet, Remind Me Tomorrow continues to carry Van Etten’s reputation for impressive songwriting and great capacity for reinvention. Her vocals are emotionally resonant and forthright and, helped by super-producer John Congleton, her instrumental developments clearly exceed that of her previous contemporary folk. Often the instrumentals here are moodier and heavy, even descending into lower-key, electronica-influenced, more Annie Clark-esque sound. Contrasting with that are lead singles ‘Comeback Kid’ and ‘Seventeen’, which have a Springsteen stomp to them, but mostly Remind Me Tomorrow’s tracks are of a more sullen quality. Well written, well produced, well performed, there isn’t much more one can ask of an indie album – and though Van Etten doesn’t pull out anything spectacular out of the bag on Remind Me Tomorrow, it’s one of the year’s strongest releases and a progressive release for her artistically. -E

This Is How You Smile - Helado Negro

(Rvng)

Robert Carlos Lange takes a step back from his usual focus on race and politics to reflect on his life and hone in on his musical soundscapes. Latin folk and atmospheric synths are mixed beautifully to create a cathartic listening experience which Lange guides us through with his gentle vocals, switching back and forth between English and Spanish. Lange’s hauntological influences are evident more than ever on Smile. Beneath the cosy, relaxed instrumentals there are field recordings and unnerving samples which give the nostalgic feel of a Caretaker project, with some of its dejectedness too. The perfect example of this is ‘Fantasma Vaga’, which directly translates to “Ghost Knife” in which Lange describes a supernatural figure over droning synths and sparse steel drums. The triumph of Smile is this ability to overlay and mix these tranquil folk songs, with a hint of discomfort, giving it just the right amount of edge. –M

Crushing - Julia Jacklin

(Polyvinyl)

The 2010’s have become synonymous with female singer-songwriter indie folk; Sharon van Etten, Angel Olsen and Courtney Barnett are just some of the artists who have really championed the genre. It has, however, become rather saturated in the past couple of years, making it that much harder to standout and make a name for oneself. Julia Jacklin has a lot to say, however, and is determined to be heard. Themes of betrayal, loneliness and acceptance are touched upon in a mature and articulate way. Jacklin stands out because she really gets into her subject matter; she intensely scrutinises herself and her surroundings in order to find answers to her questions and solutions to her problems. It is empowering and refreshing to hear an artist not only acknowledging their struggle with humanity and empathy, but so confidently confront and explore it. –M

Love Is - Jungstötter

(PIAS)

Gaining some buzz from his tour with Soap&Skin this spring, Fabian Alstötter’s debut album under the name Jungstötter is a gloomy affair. The name Jungstötter is a mix of his family name and the German word ‘jungstoter’, which translates to ‘young dead’, which perfectly embodies the overall theme of this record. The general slow pace of the album is occasionally disrupted by more intense and chaotic moments, creating some really dynamic and striking tracks. On listening to this record, a barrage of familiar sounds will flood your ears. From the intense baritone ballads of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds to the androgynous vocals of ANOHNI, there is a wealth of alternative art rock influences dotted throughout. Though, at times, Alstötter does seem reliant on his influences, it is a marvellous debut from the German, obviously keen to form his own signature sound. –M

[X X] - 이달의 소녀 [LOONA]

(BlockBerryCreative)

Loona’s reissued EP is a modern and fashionable set of pop tunes pretty typical of K-pop but with some characteristics Western listeners might find in the work of Grimes or, to a lesser extent, other electro-pop artists like SOPHIE and Charli XCX. Considering there are twelve members of Loona, [X X] is a watertight release, even if it stylistically varies a bit between tracks. Opener ‘X X’ combines electronic chillwave with dubstep in an interesting way, followed by the very modern album highlight ‘Butterfly’; and while many of the rest of the tracks aren’t particularly memorable, they certainly aren’t dull – ‘Colors’ even seems overtly influenced by American R’n’B. With all its similarities to Western pop, it’s easy to see [X X] as a record that could be a gateway into Korean pop music for Western listeners; with the added bonus of being of slightly more substance than your usual idol group. -E

Elephantine - Maurice Louca

(Northern Spy)

A by-product of the Arab Spring in 2011 was the development of a flourishing music scene in Egypt. Cairo-born composer and performer, Maurice Louca, is one of the most exciting names to have risen from this scene. On his third project, Elephantine, Louca explores native Egyptian jazz, surrounding them in the avant-garde. On the track ‘One More for the Gutter’, outbursts of free jazz are complemented by the intensity of guitar-led post-rock. Whilst the finale, ‘Al Khawaga’ is a powerful, repetitive groove littered with swinging horns and hectic drum fills. Elephantine is an inventive exploration, covering immense musical ground throughout its six compositions. –M

Malibu Ken - Malibu Ken

(Rhymesayers)

Aesop Rock has always kept a low profile and doesn’t seem too fussed about reaching the mainstreams. This collaboration with Tobacco of Black Moth Super Rainbow fame certainly doesn’t’ change that as his infamously lengthy and challenging bars have finally found a match. Tobacco’s own brand of neo-psychedelia and indietronica is so out of skew with traditional hip-hop beats that it gives Aesop an edge which he has certainly been missing in the past couple of years. Aesop revisits old themes and is as introspective and philosophical as ever, and opener, ‘Corn Maze’, and ‘Suicide Big Gulp’ showcase some of the best flows of his career. Tobacco’s production is faultless throughout the entire ten tracks, which is good to hear after last year’s lacklustre BMSR effort. Aesop Rock’s dry, esoteric style finds a new home in Tobacco’s weird world of psychedelia. –M

Girl With Basket of Fruit - Xiu Xiu

(Polyvinyl)

Even for Xiu Xiu, Girl With Basket of Fruit is a wild release. Post-pop, post-industrial, post-punk and post-everything, there’s nothing comfortable or light about it – especially compared to the Arcade Fire-cum-lunatic style of 2017’s Forget. So much of this record is unsettled and eerie, isolating and unpredictable. There’s bits of Swans (Thor Harris showing through), some Einstürzende Neubauten, some Suicide, some drone, some Baroque. There’s no belittling Xiu Xiu’s ability to entirely manipulate mood, and here demonstrates again the emotive uniqueness of Jamie Stewart’s exulting, uber-dramatic vocals as well as a new, unsettling sound that includes a pretty vast array of instruments from upright bass to electronic percussion. I’ll be listening to this for years before getting anywhere close to actually dissecting and understanding what Xiu Xiu are doing here, but that’s what makes it so compelling. There’s nothing else like it, an album of intriguingly formless music that’s worth hearing just to for the experience of being so entirely, helplessly intrigued. ­-E

[omdaily10]

OLLY MURS

Album: Debut

Writers/Producers: FutureCut, Claude Kelly, Steve Robson, Adam Argyle, Martin Brammer, Matt Prime, Andy Green, Steve Fitzmaurice, John Shanks, Jerry Abbott, Grant Black, Paddy Byrne, The Invisible Men, Mark Taylor, Trevor Horn, Ed Sheeran

Release Date: 29/11/2010

Chart Positions: #2 (UK), #3 (Scotland), #11 (Ireland)

Certifications: 2x Platinum (UK, 800k+)

Awards: ‘Album of the Year’, BBC Radio 1 Teen Awards 2011

Launched in a trilby hatted, tight trousered blaze of glory in the winter of 2010, Olly's self-titled debut album was the fastest selling release by a brand new British artist that year, taking less than a month to achieve its first of several platinum discs with sales that, in any ordinary instance, would have given him a chart topper, had it not run into the newly-five-piece-again Take That with their monolith 'Progress' album which swept all before it in the last quarter of that year.

Looking back on it now to write this review, and the overwhelming feeling is to view this album as a scrapbook of ideas – and that’s without the withered craft masking tape effect dotted around its artwork to reinforce this proposition. Perhaps because of the nature of the show he came from and its demand for instant audience satisfaction, there was less time for Olly to be discovering his identity as an artist separate to what might have been seen on The X Factor away from public view, even though this first album didn’t emerge until almost a year after his final.

Instead, he's very much finding his identity as an artist out in public and trying several different guises on for size in the process, hence there is a sense that this album is more primal and less cohesive in comparison to what came after it. The building blocks are in front of him, he’s just trying to figure out how to piece them together. But that, if anything, is actually part of this album’s roguish charm – from the moment the balls-to-the-wall opener ‘Change Is Gonna Come’ kicks in, with all the bravado of early Robbie Williams and George Michael in its defiant opening lyrics: ‘Something’s come, I feel it down in my bones / Yeah it’s been a long time to come, but you’re here tonight’. Even if he doesn’t have all the answers yet, he’s damn well gonna make a good attempt to leave his mark on pop.

A nod to many of his heroes permeates the album; there’s a bit of Michael Bublé swagger on the swinging and swaying ‘I Blame Hollywood’, which he premiered acoustically on his first ever radio tour for ‘Please Don’t Let Me Go’ that summer, and which quickly became a fan favourite. Its chorus lyrics of ‘I try to be strong, to be brave / To behave like a hero, hero / I try to be tough, to be cool / To be smooth like DeNiro, DeNiro’ hint at a sense of self investigation into who he wants to be as an artist. Then ‘Accidental’ takes on the early cheek of Justin Timberlake, with Murs crooning like a soulful puppy to a prospective beau about being ‘always at the place where your friends meet / It’s a long way home but I’ll walk your street.’

‘Hold On’ really is the lost single that never was from this era. With a sample from ‘So You Wanna Be A Boxer’, a number from the evergreen popular stage school musical staple ‘Bugsy Malone’, the chorus of this song which, as its title implies is about staying strong through adversity, sees a cheeky call and refrain with the samples’ chorus line of ‘Well you might as well quit / If you haven’t got it’. Musically, the repetition of ‘Hold on, hold on, you’re gonna get through it’ to this acts as the first response to his detractors, which he was already generating in the likes of The Guardian’s incredibly withering review of the album.

But there is more of a vulnerable side showcased here too, even if it’s not always successfully done. Piano led contemporary ballad ‘Ask Me To Stay’ is perhaps the most engaging, and the most believable in terms of his vocal delivery and the song’s structure. The ending refrain of ‘At first you make a wish and pray that things will never change / And then we reach the point of being just good friends again’ is that magical moment of emotion and wistful feeling in a great sad banger pop song that is incredibly difficult to capture well on record.

The roll call of talent that worked with Olly on this album is quite astonishing, even when you consider that this was firstly a debut album, and secondly one from an artist that few were expecting to be around for very long. The legendary Trevor Horn is at the controls on the closing track, an epic, sweeping ballad called ‘A Million More Years’, and a few songs before that, the sunshine bright, gospel soaked midtempo ‘Love Shine Down’ marks the first writing credit for a young singer-songwriter then cutting his teeth and paying his dues, and just a matter of months away from signing his own deal, called Ed Sheeran. (There’s also backing vocals, somewhat typically over sung, from a pre-fame Jessie J too, but we won’t dwell on that.)

Eponymously titling this album seems fitting really. Only on another album of Olly’s that we’ll come onto in future weeks do we hear him at his rawest and at his most untouched if you will. This ticks those boxes, but for very different reasons. It has boundless enthusiasm throughout, and a feeling of excitement and anticipation of the unknown, and all the success that was to follow and more readily guide his material and his identity as an artist and performer. 

As Fraser McAlpine wrote in his review for BBC Music, he had ‘revealed a debut album almost as good as his taste in his hats’. And on its way to producing his first four hit singles and taking him on his first ever sold out tour of the UK – including four sold out nights at Southend Cliffs Pavillion in his own backyard of Essex, two sold out nights at London’s Hammersmith Apollo and a support slot with labelmates JLS on their summer arena tour, Olly Murs fever was about to sweep the nation – and the charts.

[tjsawesomename]

The Top 50 Songs of 2017 Part 2: 20-1

And we’re back! It’s time to talk about my absolute favorite songs of the year. These are the songs that I can write a little bit more about because they had a bigger impact on me.

So, let’s get started!

20. Calvin Harris feat. Katy Perry, Pharrell Williams, and Big Sean - Feels

Let’s talk about Katy Perry. She’s been in somewhat of a career slump as of late, with most of her singles absolutely failing on the Billboard Hot 100, and her general new “persona” being extremely negatively received by the general public.

So Calvin Harris releases a collab with her and a few other artists, and it’s an absolute banger. While it might be a diss track to Taylor Swift, it’s so good. It’s just so good. It’s Calvin Harris’ best song to date, honestly, and it’s heavily benefited by Pharrell’s influence. It’s almost a perfect pop song, but not quite. I’ll get more into that later.

19. Paperwhite - Only Us

There’s pop music that’s ahead of this time, and then there’s pop music that doesn’t catch airplay because it’s too far ahead of this time. “Only Us” falls into the latter category. But I can guarantee you that 3-5 years from now pop music will sound very similar to this, because it’s so great that people can’t quite grasp just how great it is. Kinda like Carly Rae Jepsen.

18. Courtney Barnett - Three Packs a Day

There’s something about Courtney Barnett’s ability to make an entertaining song about any mundane activity while also giving it a deeper meaning. This one is about trying to quit smoking, and while it’s not her best song (I found this one a bit too refined compared to some of her earlier work, but that doesn’t make this song bad by any means clearly), I certainly don’t care. It’s still Courtney Barnett. And an average Courtney Barnett song is still an amazing song overall.

17. SZA feat. Kendrick Lamar - Doves In the Wind

SZA is one of the best new artists of the year, at least she’s my favorite new artist that I discovered this year. Her album was one of my personal favorites this year, culminating in this track featuring a tight verse from Kendrick Lamar. The whole album is a gem, but this song truly shines the most.

16. The Pretty Reckless - Take Me Down

I love rock, but the definition of rock has vastly changed over the year. Lately there has been a dearth of old-fashioned hard rock.

Enter Taylor Momsen and her band. The days of cute little Cindy Lou Who, and now are the days of Taylor Momsen: Rock Goddess. “Take Me Down” is the Pretty Reckless’ best song to date, with an infectious beat you can’t get out of your head. Sometimes the old ways truly are the best.

15. Lorde - Perfect Places

Everytime I hear this song, an immense joy just immediately comes over me. I was certain that Lorde would be going in a different direction for her sophomore album, but I was wrong and I’ve never been happier to be wrong. “Places” is the kind of banger where you close your eyes and shout as loudly as possible to the lyrics of. I can’t wait to see where Lorde goes next.

14. N.E.R.D. & Rihanna - Lemon

Lemon is one of the best rap songs of the year, managing to be fun, fierce, funky, and featuring Rihanna’s best guest appearance to date (my personal favorite before this? Her being featured on Kanye West’s “All of the Lights,” still one of my favorite songs of all time). This is the most fun rap song of the year, being self-indulgent in the best way possible while also letting loose. Let’s hope Rihanna raps more in 2018!

13. Geowulf - Saltwater

Almost 90′s-esque in nature, “Saltwater” captures a very esoteric tone. You absorb yourself into the music and feel the song move through you, kinda like water. If the goal of the song is to capture how the ocean feels, Geowulf conquered that in spades.

12. Anik Khan - Kites

“Kites” is the most relaxing song of the year. I mean that, it’s seriously so incredibly relaxing. I can guarantee that Summer 2018 I’ll be basking in the warm sunlight under the oak trees in the park, joint in my hand.

11. Missy Elliott feat. Lamb - I’m Better

I missed Missy Elliott so much. She’s one of the best rappers of all time and she always knows how to bring the beat. Coming back from a decade-long hiatus is never easy, and while it might not have been as successful as I’d like, she still released one of her best songs to date, up there with “Work It.” I’m definitely glad Miss E is back and better than ever!

10. Foster the People - Sit Next to Me

I’ve been a fan of Foster the People for quite a few years now. They were honestly the first indie band I fell in love with, though a large part of it is because two of the band members are smoking hot. Regardless, I’ve enjoyed almost all of the work they’ve put out over the years, but no song quite sounds as good as “Sit.” I know I’ve said quite a bit during this article that this was x’s songs “best song to date,” (and this won’t be the last time, either!) but that’s because there were so many bands that actually did release their best songs to date this year. 2017 was a good, good year for music.

9. Kesha - Bastards

Kesha is free, and I’m so happy. While “Praying” is an amazing song, “Bastards” shows just how angry she really is, not just at Dr. Luke, but at everyone involved, from the press, to the internet trolls, to the people who silenced her for years. She’s moving on and I’m so excited to see where she goes now that she’s finally free.

8. Portugal. The Man feat. Richie Havens and Son Little - Number One

Yes, I could have put “Feel It Still” on here, because “Feel It Still” is a great song. But it’s not a Portugal. The Man song. It feels so out of place in their discography. “Number One” is the best song on their album, because it’s the best direction they’ve evolved in. “One” is one of the best songs they’ve released, up there with “Modern Jesus.”

7. RAC feat. St. Lucia - The Beautiful Game

RAC is a great act I discovered in 2017, and I’m so glad I did. Everything has a funky beat. I love it. This song features the best of Rac AND the best of St. Lucia, another favorite band of mine. “Game” is fantastically upbeat and just makes you want to dance, and sometimes that’s all you need.

6. HONNE - Warm On a Cold Night

Sometimes you just need to relax with a joint or a pax and listen to some groovy tunes. “Night” is the best example of one of these tunes, up there with “Necessary Evil” by Unknown Mortal Orchestra and “Same Ol’ Mistakes” by Rihanna. This is the kind of song that absorbs you and lets you sink into every note.

5. The Weeknd feat. Daft Punk - I Feel It Coming

Earlier I talked about a concept called the “perfect pop song,” and how “Feels” wasn’t quite one. “Coming” is a perfect pop song though. I define a perfect pop song as being encapsulating of the current pop music milieu while also being wildly successful. “Coming” is exactly that; in fifteen years time, “Coming” will be considered one of the staple songs of the year 2017. Not only is it The Weeknd’s best song to date, it also shows that Daft Punk is still incredible. Truly a song to remember for a long time.

4. Arcade Fire - Everything Now

This is the first song I can think of that utilizes pan pipes that I ended up loving, but the pan pipe hook is what makes the song incredible. But I also love that it’s a song about materialism and our dependence on things that don’t matter, while acknowledging that on a certain level we do need these things to survive (the song wouldn’t be upbeat if it didn’t recognize the necessity of ownership on some level. Regardless, this is Arcade Fire’s best song to date.

3. Chet Faker feat. Banks - 1998

2017 was the year I discovered Chet Faker. And I’m so glad I did. “1998″ is one of the most perfect songs I’ve ever heard. It’s a song about drifting apart over the years, and it’s every bit as melancholy as it is an absolute banger.

2. Childish Gambino - Redbone

At first I didn’t get Childish Gambino’s new album. Now I do. Redbone is his magnum opus and one of my personal favorite songs ever. The moment when I finally realized I loved this song was when I heard it for the first time in “Get Out,” my favorite film of 2017. The foreshadowing that this song used from the lines “stay woke” add a double layer of enjoyment to this song. I truly hope Childish Gambino’s last album is his best.

Let’s go over the #1 songs of each year this decade before we reveal the number one song:

2010: LCD Soundsystem - Dance Yrself Clean

2011: M83 - Midnight City

2012: Alabama Shakes - Hold On

2013: Lorde - Royals

2014: Courtney Barnett - Avant Gardner

2015: The Black Keys - Weight of Love

2016: Glass Animals - Season 2, Episode 3

1. Dej Loaf - No Fear

When I pick the number one song of the year, one of the things I always end up asking myself is what songs I ended up listening to the most. From the moment “No Fear” came on for the first time I was absolutely addicted to it. And I still am today. Everything about this song to me is perfect, from the sentimental lyrics to the pulsing beat. Everything about this song comes together perfectly. And that’s why this song is my number one song of 2017.

So that’s it! The best songs of 2017! Check back later for more stuff, and 2018′s list in about a year!

[happymetalgirl]

TesseracT - Sonder

Helping the djent movement continue to propel through the beginning of the decade with a greater focus on space-y prog than most of their peers, TesseracT made their first mark with the prototypic, but still musically proficient and emotionally gripping epic, “Concealing Fate” (released as an EP in 2010), which later showed up as part of their debut full-length, One, in 2011.

During singer Daniel Tompkins’ time away from the band immediately afterward, TesseracT recruited the vibrant, talented, and classily showy Ashe O’Hara as a short-lived replacement to release one of the decade’s freshest and most melodically enticing progressive metal albums, Altered State, in 2013. A little lighter on the djent and completely devoid of growls, Altered State and Ashe O’Hara showed how TesseracT could shine by playing to their more atmospheric and melodic strengths while using djenty heaviness in a more dynamic way than they had before. After looking forward to the future of TesseracT with him at the helm, hearing of O’Hara’s departure so soon after his joining was a big disappointment for me.

It can’t be easy returning to a band who just released their best work (and one of the decade’s most notable prog albums) without you, but since his return Daniel Tompkins has adapted nicely to the band’s exclusively cleanly sung approach and he’s done the songs on Altered State justice on the stage (which I happened to have the pleasure of seeing front row during their tour with Gojira). He’s a talented and fitting frontman for TessereacT and I don’t want my unabashed love for O’Hara’s work with the band to ruin my possibility to enjoy what the band are doing once again with Tompkins. While of course following up Altered State was always going to be a gargantuan feat, the band handled the challenge well and showed themselves to be moving forward nicely with Daniel Tompkins at the helm on the at-least-adequate Polaris.

Though it’s their shortest long-play to date at 36 minutes, Sonder marks the first time for the band to have released two consecutive LPs with the same singer; even though this one’s short, it still counts. Taken from the artificial Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, the album’s title, “Sonder”, is defined as the enlightening realization of one’s own insignificance in the lives of others who live lives as emotionally complex as one’s own and who one them as one of many negligible secondary characters of life just as one sees them as such: an obscure melancholic meditation indeed. Bright, atmospheric, melancholic, and enlightening have long been fitting descriptions of TesseracT’s work, especially their more recent, exclusively cleanly sung output. On Sonder, though, Tompkins unexpectedly reintroduces the mix of harsher vocal techniques to TesseracT’s dynamic, just a little bit, but giving many sections a far less meditative, somber mood than what the album’s title suggests to be abundant.

That being said, TesseracT’s reunion with screams and growls has come at the right time. Tompkins has been continually and tenaciously improving his vocal chops over the years (tremendous respect to him for his continued improvement and hard work, by the way), and although he is a talented vocalist, his use of only cleans in TesseracT’s music on Polaris felt like he was trying to synthesize what Ashe O’Hara brought to the band. Again, Tompkins is a fantastic singer, and he performs O’Hara’s parts well on stage, but it didn’t feel like he was being entirely himself on their last album. With this record, he breaks through that, and perhaps it’s a realization of his own characteristic merits as a vocalist that shaped the reflection of this album. After trying to live up to his replacement, Tompkins seems clearly more content being the singer he is on Sonder.

“Luminary” starts the album off on kind of rocky footing, awkwardly jumping to and from basic djenty sections and more atmospheric prog rock sections. The clean vocal melody of the chorus (which comes in just before the instrumentals kick in, in distinctly cheesy alt. metal fashion) isn’t one of the band’s most exciting either. Following it, the second-longest track on the album, “King”, ups the prog and metallic heaviness, introducing some screamed lines and a gradual build that culminates in a somewhat fulfilling bridge section, but even ten minutes into the album, it still feels like the band is just warming up.

Although it’s the shortest track on the album, serving as kind of an ethereal segue, “Orbital” brings in a feeling of euphoria that the previous two songs were missing, and it continues magnificently into “Juno”, whose gorgeous, uplifting, and energetically cathartic instrumentation conjures the type of positive emotional whirlwind that I love hearing from this band. Both end up being the best two songs on the album, and together one of TesseracT’s most beautiful suites.

The two-song suite “Beneath the Skin / Mirror Image” falls in line compositionally with most of what was on Altered State in how it so smoothly blends these gorgeous, spacey swooning sections with more metallic, syncopated rhythms from all the instruments. I love the string-bending riff that plays in the first, optimistic section of the song. The second half of the track takes a more confessional tone, and the super bright but melancholic atmosphere the instrumentals cultivate remind me so much of Anathema’s recent work (Weather Systems and Distant Satellites). Again, this could easily have been added on, at least from a musical standpoint, as one of the suites on Altered State, and not that he should be worried about it, but with his clean vocal performance on this track, Daniel Tompkins has proved himself capable of achieving with TesseracT what Ashe O’Hara was.

The album’s lead single, “Smile” integrates a hazy synthetic beat that persists between the bass line and the more straightforwardly djenty guitar rhythms. But it’s Tompkins’ frightening wordless use of his high range and his familiar growls that really elevate the track. Its transition into the closing track is executed smoothly and serves as a nice coda to the song, but the last song on the album, “The Arrow”, doesn’t really feel like it concludes the album all that well in its short burst of soaring djentiness followed by echo-y ambiance.

Though the middle of the album is packed with quality prog metal with TesseracT’s name written all over it, by the end its unusually short run-time still makes it feel like it’s not totally complete, like it’s something more of an EP than a full-length experience. It has some of TesseracT’s best moments on here, and it’s not all that inconsistent past the first two songs. I can appreciate Sonder as an honest expression of TesseracT where they are now, and I’m glad they didn’t pack it with filler just to stretch it out to a typical prog album’s length. But simultaneously, I feel like the band should still be capable of more than what they showed here, and I can’t shake the feeling of this new album’s shortness being a product of a fear of not being able to include more on-par material. Nevertheless, I’ll appreciate Sonder for what good it has brought to the table, and I hope it continues to propel TesseracT further as they build their artistic chemistry. I know they’ve probably meditated through it and probably even discussed it as a band, but if I could tell them anything, I would just remind them that they don’t need to make Altered State again, and they don’t need to feel sucked toward doing what worked on that album if it’s not working so consistently now. They’re a talented group on both the performance and compositional fronts, and they shouldn’t be afraid to facilitate their creative urges in unfamiliar directions.

[thesinglesjukebox]

MIGOS FT. NICKI MINAJ & CARDI B - MOTOR SPORT [7.33] Also ft. Clara Peller.

Julian Axelrod: "Motor Sport" finds itself at the center of several larger narratives. It's simultaneously a primer for Culture II, a "Save the Date" for Offset and Cardi B, and a coda to the (mostly imagined) Nicki-Cardi beef. (Weirdly, Cardi dismisses the rumors while Nicki stays mum, even when she ends her verse with a string of lines that rhyme with Cardi.) So it's impressive that the song lives up to the hype, gives all five players time to shine, and still stands on its own two (ten?) feet. The beat is as durable and multifaceted as the diamonds on Takeoff's wrist, accommodating a variety of flows without wearing out its welcome. But equal credit goes to Migos, Nicki and Cardi, who are all experts at making every line sound like a hook. More than anything, "Motor Sport" is a victory lap -- a State of the Union Address from five superstars who have earned the right to flex. [7]

Nortey Dowuona: Thank god there is NO BEEF. None. Cardi hops in and swings over the tinkling synths, purring bass and seemingly invisible drums and doesn't stop going in. Nicki has been killing things for a while so her dope verse was expected. You know what wasn't expected? Migos completely wasting the open lanes on this empty road. Culture 2 doesn't look good. [7]

John Seroff: Is it gauche to point out that Cardi just pulled a Monster on this track? Props, I suppose, to Nicki for doing the I-don't-even-need-to-say-your-name ultraviolet shade in her last bars. [7]

Stephen Eisermann: Let's cut to the chase - this is all about Cardi and Nicki. Cardi comes in hard and rough, immediately asserting herself as a heavy hitter and using her clever word play and knowledge of Spanish to make one hell of a verse. Listening to her it's hard not to fall into an immediate trance and just want to root for her, be her, be jealous of her, and want her all at once. Nicki, though, doesn't back down at her challenge.; her verse starts off more slowly, sure, but by the end of the verse Nicki has gone through three different flows, an array of (sometimes weird, always interesting) wordplay, and ends it all with a more understated assertion of her place. It'll be interesting to see these two careers collide as Cardi releases more music, but one thing is certain: Nicki will be all the better for it as she rises to the challenge, one she hasn't really faced since the inception of her career. [7]

Alfred Soto: The Migos crew mumbles and strawberries in the usual places, so I look to the fading star and the star ascendant for wit and fury: Cardi is as belligerent as Nicki Minaj in 2010, Nicki slows down her cadences and occupies an impressive space, as if she asked everyone involved to step away while she thought through her lines.  [7]

Thomas Inskeep: Oooh, these Migos boys are smart. Sure, Murda Beatz and Cubeatz provide a slick, stripped trap chassis for them to ride. (Love those chimes.) And sure, Offset and Takeoff's verses are solid (and as for Quavo, well, maybe he should consider ditching the Autotune for a minute? His chorus is more repetitive than anything). But this isn't just a hot-sounding single, this is an event record, because thanks Quavo (who originally envisioned this is a single between him and still-the-queen-until-someone-deposes-her Nicki Minaj) and Offset (who's engaged to biggest-new-female-rapper-since-Minaj Cardi B), this single features both Minaj and Cardi B, and is thus kind of a meeting of the minds. Minaj offers up her best verse in at least a year, switching up her flows and going for the jugular; just when you might think she's gone soft, she's gonna prove you wrong. But the VIP here is Cardi B, who had plenty to prove: was "Bodak Yellow" just a lucky shot? Clearly not, because she sounds  savage, taking down everything in her path. And calling herself the "trap Selena" and then quoting Daddy Yankee's "Gasolina" is the true cherry on this sundae. She ain't playin'. "Motor Sport" is the dictionary definition of heat.  [9]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

[harbourcoates]

Top 100 Songs & Singles Of 2017

It’s list week my dudes! At the end of every year a lot of rock critics have the debate of how a year compared to others. I can say, at least for myself, this year *may* have shown up last year a bit - proven by my list sizes alone this year. We’ve got 15 EPs, 15 “best of the rest” releases (compilations, live albums, reissues), 15 honorable mentions, and finally 60 albums that ruled my listening world this year. For now, to begin, here are my favorite 100 songs of 2017. I’m only going to talk about the top ten in detail, but linked below the results is a Spotify playlist where you can listen to all 100 songs. On with the music, as they say.

10. Lil Peep - ‘Awful Things’ (from Come Over When You’re Sober Pt. 1)

Lil Peep was one of those musicians that really confused the hell out of me the first time I heard him, then as I got more into his material I realized how otherworldly the music was. I’m always actively seeking out different-sounding artists every year and Lil Peep’s emo/rap hybrid that brought him to the mainstream was unavoidably addictive - this track ‘Awful Things’ being the standout single of his this year. It’s super moody with equally dark production, and comes with one of the best music videos of the year as well. Lil Peep’s tragic passing earlier this year was such a shock and a complete bummer, but I’m happy that he at least got to release his major label debut before he left us - despite him deserving much more time to this world.

9. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard - ‘Rattlesnake’ (from Flying Microtonal Banana)

Australia’s psych masters King Gizzard have thus far been good on 80% of their promise to deliver five albums this year. And the song that started it all, the first song to the first album of the series, made it to constant rotation throughout this year since its February release. ‘Rattlesnake’ is a catchy, groovy psych/kraut hybrid that is hyper-unstoppable - additionally with another one of the year’s best videos (something I should keep track of for next year it seems). King Gizzard will appear more than once on my albums of the year list, but here they’re getting their first praise with one of the best songs of 2017.

8. Ted Leo - ‘Can’t Go Back’ (from The Hanged Man)

Ted Leo is exactly the type of songwriter I aim to be. Both in musical style and process, he’s rock’s unsung hero of pop mastery. Though he released the self-titled effort from The Both with Aimee Mann in 2014, The Hanged Man is Leo’s first rock album under his own name since 2010′s The Brutalist Bricks with his longtime band The Pharmacists (with whom he still tours). On an album of wholly great tracks front to back, ‘Can’t Go Back’ became the standout song for me due to its simplicity, its Motown influence, and incredible vocal performance (and once again, killer video). This track proves that while Ted Leo might have been under the radar for a while, he’s still an absolute force.

7. The Mountain Goats - ‘Abandoned Flesh’ (from Goths)

Since 2009 The Mountain Goats have remained in my top three or five favorite bands of all time. Over their last stretch of albums, John Darnielle and company have really pushed themselves with every release for something new, whether its the pro-wrestling diary of Beat The Champ or the mystical and dark themes throughout Transcendental Youth (which I still think might be their crowning achievement). But this year they really won me over (more than usual) with their tribute to the music, the culture, and the history of the aptly-titled Goths. The album’s closing cut ‘Abandoned Flesh’ is a swing-influenced ballad praying for the respect of ‘80s goth stalwarts Gene Loves Jezebel with some of the most clever and intriguing lyrics on the entire album. And perhaps the greatest motif appears in the very final words of the record; “Because the world will never know or understand / the suffocated splendor of the once and future goth band.” A brilliant track in a set of equally brilliant cuts, this one stuck the landing for me the hardest.

6. Baths - ‘Yeoman’ (from Romaplasm)

Will Wiesenfeld hasn’t graced the world with new Baths music since 2014, but if there was any way for him to come back from the gap, he couldn’t have done it any better than Romaplasm. Perhaps his most bombastic and colorful release yet, the opening track and lead single ‘Yeoman’ became an instant hit for me. I played this at least twice a day for a few weeks straight after its release (and still listen to it pretty frequently now). The production is super bouncy and bright, the lyrics are super upfront and sharp; “Come kiss me swell / the feeling like a buoyant waltz / look goddammit no I don’t know how / I love it though your steps are never gonna make a lick of sense.” It’s a electro-pop love anthem for the eccentrics.

5. HAIM - ‘Little Of Your Love’ (from Something To Tell You)

California’s HAIM sisters are one of the most impressive pop acts out right now. Taking a four-year gap after a wildly successful major label debut could prove to be treacherous - although halfway through that break they were on the road opening for Taylor Swift on the massive 1989 tour. Most notably they’ve broken the “sophomore slump” cliché with their excellent follow-up Something To Tell You. On an album full of pop perfection, it was extremely difficult to pick one track for this list but ultimately ‘Little Of Your Love’ shined through. It’s an infectiously catchy track in the typical HAIM cannon that really explodes at the end with horns, strings and more. One of their most ambitious songs and one of their most fun and danceable - it’s impossible to keep your feet still for this one.

4. Filthy Friends - ‘Any Kind Of Crowd’ (from Invitation)

If I could give Filthy Friends an award, I’d give them as many as I could - but particularly the absolute best collaborative project of 2017. Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney matched with Peter Buck from R.E.M. is the absolute apex of a perfect indie rock band. ‘Any Kind Of Crowd’ was released in April for Record Store Day before the full-length album Invitation was even announced, but had the album not been released this song still would have made it into the top ten here. It is the catchiest song this year had to offer and sounds exactly what a Sleater / R.E.M. team-up would sound like. And I was even more thankful the group did release an LP this year that’ll make a fairly high appearance on the albums list at the end of this run.

3. Craig Finn - ‘God In Chicago’ (from We All Want The Same Things)

The Hold Steady frontman Craig Finn released his third solo album this year and it’s easily his strongest one to date (outside of the THS catalog that is). We All Want The Same Things is a beautiful tribute of “songs about two people” (as he claimed many times during his Chicago live show), the most captivating of which is ‘God In Chicago,’ the almost entirely spoken word piano ballad closing out the album’s first side. This track might not have hit everyone as hard as it did to me, but having the two characters traveling around my home city and specific references to suburbs I used to hang out it was really moving the first time I heard it. It was even more moving to me once I saw the video which was filmed about ten minutes from where I grew up. While you could argue that all my lists are personal, this track specifically hits close to home (no pun intended).

2. Queens Of The Stone Age - ‘The Way You Used To Do’ (from Villains)

Other than Filthy Friends, 2017′s best team-up had to be Josh Homme and Mark Ronson. While the Queens’ last album Like Clockwork… may have been my least favorite of their output, they returned in full force this year on Villains with their grooviest, catchiest, and most upbeat record to date. All things considered, ‘The Way You Used To Do’ is a weird track for QOTSA. They’ve never embraced dance grooves and pop production like this before, but again a bulk of that is all at the hand of Ronson producing. This is a song that isn’t heavy enough for the metal fans but is too odd for mainstream rock fans - and I think a perfect song is one that’s gonna piss off both sides of a fanbase. Polarizing as this song and record may have been to most fans, I think Villains is an incredible album front to back and ‘The Way You Used To Do’ is this year’s best original composition. What does that mean, you might ask? The number one pick below should help explain.

1. Motörhead - ‘Heroes’ (from Under Cöver)

Singer-songwriter Chuck Prophet proclaimed on his new record this year, it was a “bad year for rock and roll.” The last couple years have been extremely rough as far as lost legends go - I won’t attempt to list them all here since there’s unfortunately too many and I don’t want to slight anyone. But I must talk about the back to back passings of Lemmy Kilmister and David Bowie for this entry. To some it might be disingenuous to list a cover as the #1 pick for this list, but there was no track more emotionally moving and ultimately encapsulating of the year than this recording. The version as a song is excellent; Motörhead has a pretty solid history of cover songs and this is among their best. The heavy guitars and bass are kept at roughly the same speed of the original, just “louder than everything else” as the band always said. Lemmy’s iconic vocals are delivered with grace and passion like no other. Perhaps the most haunting part of this track is that Lemmy’s death preceded Bowie’s by a couple weeks, which had this been released around that time, would’ve been far too heavy for a lot of listeners (myself included). This was one of the last recordings Lemmy would lay down before he died and it’s a beautiful testament to the legacy of both Motörhead and David Bowie alike.

COMPLETE PLAYLIST OF 100 SONGS

[alexanderking]

Another top 20 albums of 2019

This is another tough list for me as there were quite a few standout albums this year, as well as some I’ve still yet to check out. With that being said...

“Have I left anything out?” – Albums of 2018:

Chris Dave & The Drumheadz – Chris Dave and The Drumheadz: While I can’t say I was blown away by this project (hence it not making my honourable mentions list last year), there are some truly standout moments on here. Those being ‘Dat Feelin’’, ‘Spread Her Wings’, and the fantastic cover of ‘Lady Jane’...

Georgia Anne Muldrow – Overload: I paid very little attention to Georgia Anne Muldrow’s output after 2010, despite it being consistent. I checked this project out due to its grammy nomination and was impressed by the more complete and focused selection of tracks, while keeping those quirks that I loved about Muldrow when I got into her earlier work. This would have made the honourable mentions. I no doubt have a rabbit hole to venture down in the future...

Alex Isley – The Beauty in Everything Part 1: While ‘La Brea’ is one of my favourite Soul/R’n’B tracks of the decade, and I love the work she’s done with Brandon Williams, I haven’t loved a lot of her full projects. I really enjoyed the music on here however...

Ashley Henry – Easter EP: Henry’s growth as a composer continues to grow. While the more jazz-leaning pieces appeal to me the most, I love the tinges of hip-hop influence appearing through the stylised cover of ‘The World is Yours (I love Music)’ and the sampling on ‘St Anne’s (Remix)’...

Dame Drummer – Loveloution: I DESPERATELY wanted to have this on this year’s list, but alas, this was released in October of last year (according to Bandcamp). This project covers politically conscious aspects like racism, self-worth and police brutality, as well as loving ourselves and each other. What’s more, all of this flows really well with the tracks being in alphabetical order! This would’ve got an 8 or a 9...

Ray Angry – One: I loved the work Angry did with ‘The Roots’, particularly on ‘How I Got Over’. Sy Smith had shared ‘Bjork City’ on Twitter, which caused me to check this album out. ‘Really enjoyed the compositions on here. I think this would have got a 19...

Mac Ayres – Something to Feel: Despite constant plugs of this artist on my Twitter feed, I STILL ignored this album last year. I have no idea why I did this...This album has a slight throwback to the borderline slow jam/neo soul sounds of the late ‘90s and early ‘00s. The subject matter covers love and relationships on the whole but the real standout here is the composition. This would’ve got a 6...

...2019:

20) Flying Lotus – Flamagra:

This is probably Flying Lotus’s longest project to date, but it stays as musically consistent as its predecessors. Not only are there strong moments in tracks like ‘The Climb’, ‘Heroes’ and ‘More’, there are also a lot of callbacks to earlier pieces later on to tie this project together. This will be one I appreciate more and more on each listen...

19) Little Brother – May the Lord Watch:

Phonte and Rapper Big Pooh reunite after (at least) eight years apart, blazing their own respective trails may I add. Each emcee brings their frequent collaborators on board to deliver some head-nodding and some soulful beats, well-delivered flows and some great in-jokes for Little Brother fans. And apparently there’s EVEN MORE to come...

18) Solange – When I Get Home:

This album takes on a way more positive and celebratory theme than the highly acclaimed ‘A Seat at the Table’. While this can be seen as a sequel to the aforementioned, I personally consider this a side quest taking off from the “intermission” track ‘Borderline (An ode to self care)’; this is literally what I would think a whole album in the vein of that track would sound like. This project also reminded me of Thundercat’s ‘Drunk’ in how all these short pieces are put together to create a fully cohesive album. My stand outs are ‘Way to the Show’, ‘Dreams’, ‘Almeida’ and ‘Jerrod’...

17) Anderson .Paak – Ventura:

Not even six months after ‘Oxnard’, we get ‘Ventura’! This can be arguably seen as the more soulful side of a double album, the first side containing more rapping. Despite this being so low on this list, I enjoyed ‘Ventura’ way more than ‘Oxnard’; these are the kinds of melodies I vibe more with these days. ‘Reaching’ 2 Much’ to ‘Chosen One’ is the strongest part of the album for me...

16) Rapsody – Eve:

Rapsody becomes more and more focused with each project! Much like ‘When I Get Home’, ‘Eve’ takes on a celebratory theme, but this time using each track to highlight one of her personal heroes, all of whom are women. My favourites are ‘Oprah’, ‘Maya’, ‘Iman’ and ‘Afeni’.

15) SEED Ensemble – Driftglass:

The Jazz Re:Freshed label deliver yet ANOTHER quality project via the SEED Ensemble. The subject matter on here is pretty dark as it deals with race relations in the UK; a narrative which I feel was becoming increasingly dismissed with the “but at least you’re not Black American” argument when discussing racism in this country, passive-aggressive or otherwise. The piece ‘Interplanetary Migration’ closes the album with a more hopeful message through the bouncing thump of the drums and the blaring burst of horns. My favourites are the ‘Stargaze’ interludes, ‘The Dream Keeper’ and ‘Mirrors’, although the piece ‘W A K E (for Grenfell)’ must be noted...

14) Raphael Saadiq – Jimmy Lee:

I’ll be honest. I was not a fan of the ‘Modern Soul’ era of Raphael Saadiq. I cautiously gave this a listen, keeping in mind that his last album was in 2011. I was impressed, not just with the selection of musicians that brought their sound to the table, but with the narrative it follows. ‘Jimmy Lee’ is the story of Saadiq’s eldest (and favourite) brother and his battle and eventual defeat with drug addiction. That being said, ‘Jimmy Lee’ doesn’t entirely take a sombre note. There are moments of hope in tracks like ‘So Ready’, ‘I’m Feeling Love’ and to a far lesser extent, ‘My Walk’. Not only is this (for me) Saadiq’s best project since ‘As Ray-Ray’, but it’s his most personal album in his entire career so far...

13) KAYTRANADA – BUBBA:

I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed ‘BUBBA’. This project takes on the similar bouncy, dance-tinged groove that KAYTRANADA is generally known for, but also includes some elements of Afrobeats to give it an edge. This album also gives ‘Teedra Moses’ another iconic track through her feature on ‘Culture’...

12) Resolution 88 – Revolutions:

Resolution 88 have fully come into their own on this project. While there are still clear influences of the Headhunters/Weather Report era, the music feels a lot less like a direct homage. Each track is inspired by a sequence or nuance when dealing with vinyl records. My favourites are the title track, ‘The Matrix’ and ‘Warped Memories’. It’s also worth noting the ‘Butcher Brown’ shaped rabbit hole I went down after hearing the Marcus Tenney feature on here (well...this and their feature on Mac Ayres’s ‘Juicebox’... 

11) Mac Ayres – Juicebox:

This is one of the many recommendations Dan has sent me over the past few years. There was something about the opening track ‘I Wanna Give Up’, nothing to love right off the bat but something. It was the following track ‘Shadows’ that made me want to hear the rest. ‘Juicebox’ has less of the throwback element of ‘Something to Feel’, which for me is most welcome. While this project stays on a high from ‘Where do we go from Here?’ to ‘Come Thru’, my favourites are ‘Jumping off the Moon’, ‘S**t Covered in Gold’, ‘Caught Up’ and the closing track ‘Something More’, which has an extended closing that I can't help but hum/sing along to...

10) Zo! – FourFront:

I’m not sure of my mood had anything to do with it, but ‘FourFront’ marked a return to form for me after ‘SkyBreak’ (I liked it, ‘didn’t love it). The Soul, Jazz, R’n’B and Disco influences are a-plenty, all which lend themselves to this album well. Devin Morrison and Madison McFerrin are welcome additions to the FE+ friends of family. And might I add, the interludes are as strong as some of the tracks here...

9) Dego – Too Much:

I’m thinking and hoping that the pattern for a specific Dego album release will be every four years as this has been the case with the last three (along with the myriad of releases under different pseudonyms and with different artists over the years...). ‘Too Much’ delivers some good old broken vibes while leaning more on the vocals for the first two thirds of the album. There’s a nice revisit in ‘You Are Virgo’, referring to the 2011 track ‘We Are Virgo’. It’s only the last few tracks that wane for me a little bit, but not enough to put this any lower on the list...

8) Shafiq Husayn – The Loop:

After about a nine year wait, Shafiq Husayn releases his sophomore solo project !! I would say this album feels a tiny bit less cohesive than ‘Shafiq En’ A-Free-Ka’, but the tracks are individually stronger. My favourites are ‘May I Assume’, ‘On Our Way Home’, ‘Cycles’ and ‘Hours Away’...

7) Ashley Henry – Beautiful Vinyl Hunter:

I. Am. KICKING. MYSELF. For missing the Ashley Henry show at Jazz Re:Freshed on December 19th!!!! I love this album! There’s some great contemporary jazz as well as hip-hop and orchestral influences to make ‘Beautiful Vinyl Hunter’ really shine! My standouts are ‘Realisations’, ‘I Still Believe’, ‘Sunrise’, Lullaby (Rise and Shine) and ‘Battle’...

6) Kendrick Scott Oracle – A Wall Becomes A Bridge:

This album was the result of a bout of writers block, which musical director Derrick Hodge helped Kendrick Scott work through. The result is effectively an off branch of the Robert Glasper Experiment, through its use of echoed recordings and DJ scratches to deliver themes or words of wisdom. Much like 2013′s ‘Conviction’, ‘A Wall Becomes A Bridge’ plays seamlessly, so seamlessly that I either forget to skip to my favourites, or I let the filler play as it introduces my favourites so well...

5) Devin Morrison – Bussin’:

A tweet from ‘KING’ (or ‘We Are KING’) put me on this album. For anyone wanting to fill that classic R’n’B void, Devin Morrison is another artist keeping that era alive. Even the funk inspired jams that I wasn’t too hot on have become growers. My favourites are ‘Guaranteed’, ‘The Call (407)’ and the slightly smug ‘No’...

4) Lucky Daye – Painted:

My sister put me on Lucky Daye. And how glad I am she did!! ‘Another crooner filling the R’n’B void (and helping us forget how hard Daniel Caesar ****ed himself in Feb...). While Lucky Daye has been behind the scenes as a songwriter for a while, it’s great to see him step to the forefront with his own blend of vulnerable lyrics, as well as the occasional blunt rap verse, delivered with an impressive flow might I add! ‘Extra’ is one of my favourite R’n’B tracks this past decade...

3) Daniel Casimir & Tess Hirst – These Days:

The sounds of Daniel Casimir kept me company during my walk on the Capital Ring trail back in 2017. Hearing ‘What Did I Do’ had me itching to hear the rest of this album. And I wasn’t disappointed! ‘These Days’ also has Soul, Jazz and some big band influences throughout. Tess Hirst impressively delivers vocals touching on race relations in the UK and the effects of gentrification in the capital...  

2) Esperanza Spalding – 12 Little Spells:

The first 12 tracks were actually released in 2018, but the full release came in March of 2019, hence why this is on the list. I see ‘12 Little Spells’ as an amalgamation of Spalding’s musical journey so far. Tracks like ‘All Limbs Are’ and ‘Readying to Rise’ calling back to ‘Chamber Music Society’, tracks like ‘Touch in Mine’ and ‘The Longing Deep Down’ calling back to ‘Radio Music Society’ and tracks like ‘To Tide Us Over’ and ‘With Others’ calling back to the more recent sounds of ‘Emily’s D+Evolution’ and ‘Exposure’. This continues in the experimental vein as each track is part of a long sentence and touches on the nuances and subtleties of various parts of the body. This was nearly my album of the year but...

1)

Brandon Williams – The Love Factor: Despite ‘matters of the heart’ being a sore spot for me at the moment, I couldn’t deny how much I enjoyed the offerings on ‘The Love Factor’, one of those being a cover of one of my favourite George Duke pieces, which opens and closes the album. As the title suggests, each track covers a facet of love, including our resilience toward desiring love, trust issues, vulnerability and the dream-like state love can create. While there are many vocal and musical features on here, Alex Isley takes the MVP spot for her work on the album’s centrepiece ‘Say That You Love Me’...

Honourable mentions:

There are many honourable mentions, but I only have space for 10...

Tyler, the Creator – IGOR: I was as taken aback as a lot of people on initial listen. I also can’t pretend that the narrative concept doesn’t still go over my head. But I can’t deny Tyler’s progress in his music writing and composition, nor his skill utilised on the various verses throughout the second half of ‘IGOR’

Steve Lacy – Apollo XXI: ‘An enjoyable debut from who has become one of the most prominent members of ‘The Internet’. As well as the sounds we’ve come to expect from the band, Lacy gets a chance to delve into more of the rock influences on tracks like ‘Lay Me Down’ and ‘In Lust We Trust’. There’s also a potential anthem in the coming out suite ‘Like Me’ and a beautiful moment in ‘Amandla’s Interlude’...

Matt Martians – The Last Party: ‘Martin’s second solo project (’something closer to his 12th project overall). ‘The Last Party’ has a theme of being accepted as we are this time around, but keeps the format of having hidden tracks in each song. My favourites are ‘Off My Feet/Westside Rider Anthem’ and ‘Look Like’... 

C R O W N – Unlearning: After a number of EPs, C R O W N graces us with her debut LP. ‘Unlearning' utilises Jazz-tinged soul instrumentals to ultimately deal with addressing our needs and letting go to help ourselves grow. My favourites are ‘15 Summers’, ‘S**t To Do’ and the acoustic track ‘Lines’...

  Moonchild – Little Ghost: This was a strange one for me. All the elements that I love about this group is present. But I wasn’t feeling this as much as ‘Voyager’ (2017′s #1). I’m not sure what’s missing for me here...there are still glowing gems in ‘Wise Women’, ‘Got To Know It’, ‘Whistling’ and ‘Still Wonder’...

Bree Runway – Be Runway EP: It’s criminal that Bree Runway hasn’t quite gained the recognition she deserves just yet. Bree is easily one of the most interesting vocal artists the UK has to offer right now. I found myself head nodding uncontrollably to ‘2ON’ and ‘X2C’! I’m looking forward to even more in the future...

Quelle Chris – Guns: Quelle Chris returns so soon after ‘Everything’s Fine’ to touch on race relations in the US through the love of guns, at times to people’s detriment. The head-nod factor of the slightly odd-ball instrumentals, along with the various reflective and celebratory moments in the second half had me return to this album a lot... 

YBN Cordae – The Lost Boy: This was another recommendation from Dan and yet another welcome surprise! It’s emcees like this, who integrate the trap rhyme style with storytelling and punchlines that will progress the genre even more. Standouts are ‘Have Mercy’, ‘Thousand Words’ and ‘Been Around’...

Alex Isley & Jack Dine – Wilton EP: I found out about this EP through someone who liked my tweet listing my top 10 R’n’B songs of this decade. I recognised Jack Dine from his collaborations with Mac Ayres. His production allows Isley to delve even further into soulful slow jam territory. Check out ‘Wait’ and ‘There was Love’

Joe Armon-Jones – Turn to Clear View: I loved ‘Almost Went Too Far’ from 2018′s ‘Starting Today’. This caused me to investigate this 2019 project. ‘Turn to Clear View’ takes a departure from the Dub influences of his previous offering to venture into electronic jazz and west African music to an extent. My favourites are ‘Yellow Dandelion’, ‘(To) Know Where You’re Coming From’ and ‘Self: Love’...

[drvinyl]

Omni’s Latest Excursion Proves That Less Is Definitely More

Words by Zainab Hassan.

Since their debut with ‘Deluxe’ in 2016, Atlanta GA band Omni have steadily been developing their brand of anxious and frenetic post-punk, with a slight edge amidst the onslaught of post-punk bands arising in the mid-2010’s. Comprised of core duo Philip Frobos and Frankie Broyles, their experience in bands prior offered them an advantage to hit the ground running with an assured debut sound. 2017’s follow up Multi-task upped the intensity of their minimal and jagged punk energy, and on Networker, the band’s third full length released in early November, Omni are just hitting their stride and coming into their own.

Experimenting with structure and space is the group’s forte, and Omni manage to tap into something special on ‘Networker’. Compared to the erratic spark existing on previous two albums, there's a more refined approach here - with greater clarity, the change in production allows the dynamic between drums, guitar, and bass and vocals to really shine and we hear the band in their best form to date, performed with confidence and conviction. 

This being their first release since signing to the celebrated indie label Sub-Pop, the pressure to deliver is strong, but nothing falters. They have the same energy and spark of the early bands of the punk and new wave era. Their strengths in songwriting and musicianship allows them to tap into their influences of the 70s and 80s, and produce something fresh and current with a lyricism to match, sardonically taking aim at the woes of the digital age, disconnection amidst so much connectivity, 'Skeleton Key' as a prime example of the voyeuristic nature of social media and obsession with online self perception.

Tentative attempts are made at expanding the bands sound with a great deal of success, as various genres are interpreted through the lens of their wiry and skewed instrumentalism. Although there are obvious echoes of Gang of Four, Wire and Television, there are a few flashes of brilliance that show how expansive the groups musical knowledge is. 'Blunt Force' has a brisk and jazzy affectation, while 'Underage' sways effortlessly. ‘Present Tense’ is the B-52’s circa Planet Claire, and a sneaking funk underlies ‘Skeleton Key’ coming in with an air of glam rock in the vein T Rex or even Queen if you stripped them back to the very, very bare elements.  The alternative pop sensibility that underpins many of the tracks makes for a welcome variation amongst their peers, and excited the listener to wonder where the band could take this exploration further.

Networker adds to Omni’s catalogue of incredibly catchy but gone-too-soon tunes. Although they may wear their influences on their sleeve, they borrow and adapt without sounding like a rehash, and the execution and creativity on this album is thoroughly enjoyable.  We’re in the early years of a band with a sound that is cautiously developing, and with albums just breaking the 30 minute mark, who knows what will come next? Let's just hope they give us a courtesy call.

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